I hope your brother is still alive.
The mellow pot thing is very common, especially among the middle class types, but pot is a real drug, and it did not come from the middle class, it came from where it still is common, and is still the dominate drug, the violent black and Hispanic underclass.
No my brother died 5 years ago. He was never able to let go. At age 45, he looked 65. Beer and Pot were his drugs of choice but he did a little of everything at one time or another. He was never a strung out junkie, but in the end, he had cirosis of the liver, along with Hep B & C, gastritisus, and his skin was as yellow as a banana in the hospital.