Hypotcrisy
Chris is right that medical marijuana is a Trojan horse to get pot legalized. And Chris is also right that marijuana should be legalized. Liberals and libertarians can meet on the freedom to do to your own body what you wish. As in prohibition, it is the illegality that drives the further crime and makes virtually every young person both a law-breaker and dis-respecter of law. If pot is illegal only criminals will have pot. So why make normal people criminals?
I have to admit that I have tried pot. I haven’t had it in 27 years and before that rather singular occasion, I had not had it in the previous 10 years. It is clearly not my drug of choice. (That would be Chateaux Haut Brion 1966, if you were thinking of a gift)
The Trojan Horse technique, as cynical as it may be, should not counter the good arguments for de-criminalizing pot. On the contrary, the strange and non-objective criteria for getting a medical marijuana prescription, argue for eliminating the unconstitutionally vague conditions for an Rx.
Yes, some cases are easy (if you believe in the efficacy of marijuana to combat the effects of chemo and stimulate the appetite. I believe that the munchies are a scientific fact). Chemo patients should be allowed. Also glaucoma sufferers. However when we get into the real but unverifiable chronic pain of fibromyalgia, back or other soft-tissue injuries, we have problems. So let’s eliminate the problems by eliminating the vague criteria and elaborate rationales.
Let’s take the criminals and sleaze out of the equation and let’s add tax revenue. We could probably balance California’s budget by legalizing pot. It is cited as our largest cash crop. And being cash, it is not taxed. We spend fortunes in policing pot, prosecuting pot-heads and dealers and then warehousing them in prisons where they become hardened criminals—at great cost, both social and monetary, to all of us.
Let’s end the hypocrisy on all sides of this issue. As I write this, I am sitting in beautiful Encinitas California, in a house overlooking the sea. Between my window and the sea, I can see a sign on a store on PCH. It reads: Hydroponic Products. Gee, why do we suppose they’re in business? Seems to be an open secret, not even, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” We live in willful denial of reality—and it is expensive.
Nice post, Jonathan, although I would only add the quibble that I am neither a liberal nor a libertarian. I don't think this is so much a philosophical question as a pragmatic one -- namely do laws against pot do any good for the great expense they impose? The answer, IMO, is no.
Allright. Which country has legalize drugs and legalizing drugs was it beneficial to its citizens? Beneficial in the sense of lower crime, better health and other benefits associated with this step? Years ago, I read of a conversation that took place at a party in Washington. A woman asked the Ambassador from
Singapore about the low incidents of crimes related to drugs and the Ambassador's simple answer was "When we catch drug users we lock them away until they dry up. When we catch drug dealers we execute them. That is the Law." End of the conversation.
It would be the end of the conversation if we had those laws and were willing, as a society to enforce them--and enforce them evenly across lines of wealth and race. We are not.
Yes, draconian mesures can work. In North Africa using pot would get you a sure and certain 25 years. The risk had to be measured against the real cost. That is not true here, and is not likely ever to be true. So we have to work with, well, what works. What we are doing now does not, in my view, work.