Posted on 06/24/2010 9:12:15 PM PDT by Walter Scott Hudson
The central conceit of the Left is their regard for outcome above principle, results above rights. “Progressivism” repackages the age-old idea that society has a collective right superior to the individual’s. We saw this in the argument for universal health care, where the Left regarded the outcome of “universal coverage” above the principle of personal liberty.
Unfortunately, this conceit is not limited to the Left. Social conservatives are willing to borrow à la carte from statist arguments when the results suit their taste. No issue evokes this phenomenon more than drug control policy.
NewsRealBlog hosted much debate on the legalization of marijuana over the weekend. The discussion was prompted by Sarah Palin’s recent statement that private in-home consumption is a negligible concern. Calvin Freiburger objected to the characterization of prohibition as a liberty issue, citing among his supporters Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and John Locke. Though Calvin is clearly not a statist, his argument depends upon a fundamentally statist belief.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
I wasn't raised in a household that thinks the government should do for you what you're perfectly capable of doing yourself.
Well you were raised in a politically preferable household. My single mom household was pretty much apolitical.
Then where did you get your opinions on what the appropriate role of government with regard to marijuana should be?
“Then where did you get your opinions on what the appropriate role of government with regard to marijuana should be?”
I was an atheist Libertarian (registered and card-carrying!) until I became a Christian at 21. I then became a Christian Republican. I try to use biblical principles in my reasoning.
In re: the marijuana, I read in the the Bible’s case law that the people of Israel were required to put railings around their roof decks. This was the law. They did not get to wait until someone fell off the roof and got injured and killed. Preemptively, the law required that the railing be put on the roof. By way of explanation, people commonly spent a lot of time on their roofs.
I believe that principle of law is still appropriate for the world today.
I might, in a strictly Libertarian world, put a blindfold on and then drive down the street. No one could arrest me for doing that, unless and until I hit someone or something.
But in my Christian conservative world, I believe I should be arrested for deliberately impairing myself and then driving around. BEFORE I hit somebody.
Similarly, in a strictly Libertarian world, a person high on a substance would be allowed to take care of little kids, or a homeowner could have parties on their roof with no railing.
But in my Christian conservative philosophy, endangering others in a such a manner would be criminal. There is precedent in our civil and common and criminal law that forbids ENDANGERING others. I believe that is legitimate.
There are degrees of endangering. I understand that. Deliberately altering your mental state to where you are not competent to function as a normal adult is too high of a degree for me.
And that is why I do not approve the legalization of recreational drug use. I do not approve the legalization of drunkenness, either.
While your arguments may be justifiable scripturally, I cannot support that as being politically conservative, particularly when applied to national drug policy. We have a national government of limited enumerated powers. Those powers are enumerated in the Constitution, not in the Bible.
I don't encourage or generally condone drunkeness either, but you need to consider the unintended consequences of giving politicians and bureaucrats the power to decide how much wine you should have with dinner, and the police the power to enforce it.
I agree we have to be careful about unintended consequences.
As a practical matter, I don’t think outlawing drunkenness means the feds decide how much wine you have at dinner. Laws against drug abuse would necessarily involve public behavior, unless police were called to the home.
It is for instance against the law (properly so) to torture your dog. But we don’t have animal control going door to door checking to see if anyone is torturing their dog.
If though, for instance, my granddaughter drinks herself stupid every weekend, and she has a 3 and 6 year old to care for during that time, I might call the cops and ask for a check. The cops could see for themselves whether she was in a state to care for dependent children. If she’s not, I’d want her arrested for child endangerment.
I'd have thought you'd want her arrested for being drunk.
“I’d have thought you’d want her arrested for being drunk.”
You make a good observation there, but as you know my main reason for opposing drug abuse is that it endangers others, whether we pretend it doesn’t or not.
So I think child endangerment is more to the point.
I know that's what you've said, but there are laws against child endangerment, just as there are laws against DWI.
There's a difference between arguing that DWI should be illegal, and arguing that being drunk should be illegal because you might get in your car and drive.
Well, maybe we could find a point of agreement if, instead of saying drug abuse should be illegal, I said drug abuse that endangers others lives, health, or property should be illegal.
When we arrest someone for driving drunk, we do so BEFORE they harm anyone, at least often. When we deny custody to a parent with a meth habit, we are doing so BEFORE they do harm to their child. When we forbid a pilot to drink before flying, we are again trying preemptively to stop him from endangering others.
By doing the above preemptive actions, we are presuming that a person under the influence of (name your poison) is not competent and/or physically capable of performing at normal adult capacity.
I am afraid, if (name your poison) is legalized, parents could continue to care for dependents, people could continue to perform in any number of jobs, drive, etc., teachers could extol the benefits of (name your poison), more people would use and be trying to get away with not getting caught endangering others. -
all because it’s legal.
Those are the unintended consequences of legalization.
“When the so-called Dutch “coffee shops,” started selling marijuana in small quantities, use of the drug more than doubled between 1984 and 1996 among 18 to 25 year olds.
“In 1997, there was a 25 percent increase in the number of registered cannabis addicts receiving treatment, as compared to a mere 3 percent rise in cases of alcohol abuse.”
Moreover, Dutch tolerance of drug use has created a climate that drug manufacturers and traffickers have seized upon to produce and market more addictive and dangerous drugs. For example, Peter Reijnders, Assistant Chief Constable and Chief of the Dutch National Unit on Synthetic Drugs, recently told the 25th European Meeting of Heads of National Drug Services, that: “ . . .[T]he Netherlands is a major country as far as it concerns involvement in the production of illicit synthetic drugs.”[28]
The impact of high potency marijuana on Dutch youth has been severe. In Foreign Affairs, Dr. Ernest Bunning of the Ministry of Health, is quoted as saying:
There are young people who abuse soft drugs . . . particularly those that have high THC. The place that cannabis takes in their lives becomes so dominant they don’t have space for other important things in life. They crawl out of bed in the morning, grab a joint, don’t work, smoke another joint. They don’t know what to do with their lives. I don’t want to call it a drug problem because if I do, then we have to get into a discussion that cannabis is dangerous, that sometimes you can’t use it without doing damage to your health or your psyche. The moment we say, “There are people who have problems with soft drugs,” our critics will jump on us, so it makes it a little bit difficult for us to be objective on this matter.”
http://www.drugwatch.org/McCaffrey%20Testimony%20on%20Drug%20Legalization.htm
How about this. Endangering the lives, health and property of others should be illegal, within "common sense" parameters of acceptable risk.
I know that marijuana stays in the system for 30 days, and there is no proof of how long the effects last, so that issue would have to be dealt with before any legalization. Private companies would be free to do whatever drug testing they want, but government would have to strict standards and rules.
There's going to be variation in the effect and duration of any drug that varies from individual to individual, but they've got quite a bit of research that tells us what the ranges are.
It is possible to "know" that there is no proof if you start with an intentionally impossible standard of "proof" that has to be met.
That’s why random drug testing is imperative in private as well as public sector jobs and a failed pee test should be paid for by the person being tested. I don’t want high bus drivers, firemen, school teachers, or even DMV clerks. If we, the tax payers are paying their salaries, I want to know that I am getting my money’s worth.
Government employees, I can understand.
You can explain to Joe the Plumber why he has to pay somebody to randomly drug test him (you can't very well expect him randomly drug test himself).
I’m not talking about self employed people and I don’t really expect trade people like plumbers and electricians to do random testing. I was thinking more like refinery workers, airline workers and other jobs that already do random drug testing on the job, plus the government workers.
I’m pretty sure that refineries would not offer a second chance for a self paid drug test.
Private businesses can and many do random drug testing on their employees now, so there's not much in the way of change there. I agree we ought to be doing it for government workers.
You can figure out if you're getting your money's worth from your plumber without having him pee in a cup.
I can live with all that.
“How about this. Endangering the lives, health and property of others should be illegal, within “common sense” parameters of acceptable risk.”
I could work with that. I do think being high in public, or in your own home if others are dependent upon you, is outside the “common sense” parameters. I don’t know if agree with that or not.
It does seem to make such laws work, you’d need absolute parameters which could get arbitrary. Like the .85 or whatever it is alcohol level for drunk driving.
That’s a lot better arrangement than putting the decision into the hands of some beltway bureaucrat who’s life’s ambition is to figure out how to get 62 pages of paperwork out of one vicodin prescription.
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