Let's all burn one down in honor of Colorado. If I didn't want to move back before, I definitely do now. As one far-seeing individual told NPR the other morning after he drove for 10 hours and waited for another six to buy a bag of weed, the first day of 2014 was a "monumental day in American history." The signing of the declaration, the Emancipation Proclamation, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and marijuana legalization. We'll all tell our grandkids where we were the first time we toked up legal weed.
Really this whole thing evokes no strong feelings for me. I remember in college that marijuana legalization made perfect sense to me as a libertarian solution to the drug war. Tax the crap out of it and stop buying it from Mexico and use the tax money to fight the really bad drugs. One of my good friends from El Paso was a city councilor who is now a congressman and one of his plank issues was legalization. Seeing the ravages of the drug war across the border in Juarez was enough to convert him and I respected that position. Every day we were inundated with news of beheadings and mutilation and murder just a few minutes' drive from where we enjoyed a privileged first world existence. The contrast is stark, to say the least.
The effects of our prohibition on drug creation in our country has created a war in Central America that is nasty. This, along with the disproportionate effect of our drug policy on minorities (how many white kids go to jail for possession?) is often cited as the central reasons for ending the ban.
But anyone should be able to admit that these are not the primary reasons pot is now legal in Colorado. Don't get me wrong, the above issues certainly merit policy considerations, but I don't imagine those two issues are particularly vexing in Boulder. Pot is legal now because enough people think there is nothing wrong with it. As we live in a democracy, this is fine, but I don't like it when people who just want to get high act as if they have some higher-minded (see what I did there?) social consciousness animating their decision. Of course you can support legalization for a number of reasons, but let's just be honest and admit that for most people who support legalization it is for a selfish reason.
Also, as to those important social issues I can't imagine why anyone would think that removing mandatory sentencing for marijuana offenses would somehow mitigate the chronic (see what I did there?) urban problems of which marijuana possession is only an outward symbol. I can't help but think that if one substance is legalized most people who were looking to profit from the illegal sale of marijuana will merely switch substances. Further, there are ways to elide the disproportionate effect of drug policy on minorities that fall short of legalization.
And here is where I run into a problem with the pro-legalization crowd: they cannot conceive of any reason someone in good conscience might oppose their position. These progressives once again prove more Puritanical than Puritans. Dissent from their position doesn't mean that you have a thoughtful alternative perspective, but that you like nothing better than locking up young black men for petty offenses and preventing other people from having fun.
As to the ubiquitous alcohol comparison, this might be the only argument where, "Hey this thing we want to do is not as bad as another thing that is already legal," has received real traction. Isn't that more of an argument against alcohol than pro-weed? Also, the two substances are different. I had a glass of wine last night and was not drunk. I don't think you can smoke weed without getting high and can't imagine why you would want to were it possible.
We all learned in DARE (how will this effect their curriculum?) about how marijuana is a "gateway" drug to the more serious stuff. This is easy to laugh at in the same way it is easy to laugh at the fuddy-duddies in the 50s who talked about how rock music was going to promote a sex-obsessed, narcissistic, short-attention span culture: both just sound so damn square while at the same time being so damn right. Obviously not everyone who smokes weed turns into a tweaker, but at the same time there are probably very few people who regularly snort cocaine who did not start their illicit drug career with marijuana. What's more, the people who do go from weed to meth are probably socioeconomically disadvantaged to begin with and government-sponsored weed might take the place of clandestinely grown schwag in their consumption choice. Hooray! (The anti-prohibitionists here sort of take the tack of extreme gun-rights folks who argue that we may as well license the sale of automatic weapons because a black market exists for them anyway. Great, kids can get pot now from their friend's brother or their uncle or whatever, but that doesn't mean we should legalize the process.)
I guess my larger point here is that most of the active voices for marijuana legalization are rich, privileged white people. As in most things, the harsh side of a certain practice tends to be softened by money and privilege. Most rich, white people can smoke weed without worrying about falling into meth, whereas a lot of poorer people don't have the same sort of protective structure. What's more, most rich, white people probably smoke marijuana to avoid burnout and relax for a bit (think of the lawyer billing 80 hours a week that smokes on Sunday to come down), rather than to temporarily escape from their boring existence (a solid majority of the people who smoke weed). It is the difference between having a cocktail in the evening after a day in the office and having beer for breakfast on a Tuesday.
This is why David Brooks' much-aligned article was right in asking us to consider what we want our government to promote. To take the Apostle Paul, for instance, is there not a difference between what is permissible and what is beneficial? This is another instance of our culture of consent, whose reasoning goes something like: if consenting adults agree what could be the problem? But is consent the only standard worth worrying about? If it is, what else do we expose ourselves to (slippery slope alert)?
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