Smoking Pot and Tying the Knot

Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed for the first time to take on the issue of gay marriage. No matter how it rules in the two cases it will hear next spring, polling data suggest it is only a matter of time before legal recognition of same-sex unions is the norm throughout the country.

Something similar is happening with marijuana, which became legal in Washington last week and in Colorado on Monday. With both pot and gay marriage, familiarity is breeding tolerance.

The cases before the Supreme Court deal with popular reactions against gay marriage: the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that barred the federal government from recognizing state-licensed gay marriages, and Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that amended California's Constitution to eliminate same-sex couples' right to marry, which the California Supreme Court had recognized that year. But something interesting happened after those measures passed: Surveys now indicate that most Americans support gay marriage.

The turnaround was remarkably fast. A 1996 Gallup poll found that 27 percent of Americans thought same-sex marriages should be "recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages"; by last year, that number had nearly doubled. Recent surveys by ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN also put support for gay marriage above 50 percent.

Striking generational differences mean these numbers will continue to rise. In a CBS News poll last month, 72 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds supported gay marriage, compared to 53 percent of 30- to 44-year-olds, 44 percent of 45- to 64-year-olds and 33 percent of respondents who were 65 or older.

The consequences of these changing attitudes could be seen in last month's election results. For the first time ever, gay marriage was legalized by popular referendum -- not in one state, but in three: Maine, Maryland and Washington. Voters in a fourth state, Minnesota, rejected an initiative that would have amended the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage (which is already banned there by statute).

On the same day, voters in Colorado and Washington approved ballot measures aimed at legalizing the cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use. The initiatives won by surprisingly healthy margins of about 10 points in both states, in contrast with a California legalization measure that lost by 7 points two years ago.

Nationwide support for marijuana legalization, like nationwide support for gay marriage, has increased dramatically, although not quite as swiftly, rising from 12 percent in a 1969 Gallup poll to a record 50 percent last year. While support for legalization dipped a bit during the anti-pot backlash of the Just Say No era, it began rising again in the 1990s. Public Policy Polling recently put it at 58 percent, the highest level ever recorded.

With pot as with gay marriage, there are clear age-related differences, reflecting different levels of experience with marijuana. In the CBS News survey, support for legalization was 54 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds, 53 percent among 30- to 44-year-olds, 46 percent among 45- to 64-year-olds and 30 percent among respondents of retirement age.

Just as an individual's attitude toward gay people depends to a large extent on how many he knows (or, more to the point, realizes he knows), his attitude toward pot smokers (in particular, his opinion about whether they should be treated like criminals) is apt to be influenced by his personal experience with them. Americans younger than 65, even if they have never smoked pot, probably know people who have, and that kind of firsthand knowledge provides an important reality check on the government's anti-pot propaganda.

Another clear pattern in both of these areas: Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to oppose legalizing gay marriage and marijuana. Yet Republicans are also more likely to oppose federal interference with state policy choices. In light of DOMA's disregard for state marriage laws and the Obama administration's threats to prevent Colorado and Washington from allowing marijuana sales, now is put-up-or-shut-up time for the GOP's avowed federalists.

25% is not 100%

Read much? That 25% figure was from 20 years ago - and was rising.

that is not enough.

"Enough" for what?

Spotting large commercial type MJ grows from the air is an easy task. No way the entrepreneurial spirit can provide that amount without large outdoor grows. Large greenhouses that utilize massive energy and generate heat are also easily detected.

Since the government had minimal impact on 25% there's no reason to expect it to have much more impact on a 4-fold increase.

Yes, it is a start. If it slows down Chinese made crap so what?

So you'd happily shut down importation to pursue your jihad? Do have the decency to not pretend to be a conservative.

MJ use is in the tonnage not pounds.

As is domestic production.

It had minimal increase because of budget constraints on aircraft fuel and manpower.

Yet another of your claims with no accompanying evidence.

So you'd happily shut down importation to pursue your jihad? Do have the decency to not pretend to be a conservative.

Yes the throw down from a judge who presides over nanny state cases. Pot meet kettle.

What are you babbling about?

Once the derision starts

Unconservative is as unconservative does. Have a hankie.

I can see that you do not want to discuss so bang the gavel, case closed.

You're the one apparently preparing to flee the discussion.

In closing I spent 14 years in the WOD and the only problem was the judges and lack of manpower.

The manpower needed to really win the War On Drugs would bankrupt us and turn us into a police state. Conservatives oppose that sort of thing.

I've been thinking on what you said re. smoking, and I've figured out why the libertarians are less insistent upon rolling back the smoking bans. Here's my take on why:

The second-hand-smoking issue complicates things. Now, I know that the experiments are often set up to reach the politically correct conclusion. But, unlike with global warming, there isn't an active community of skeptics that recurrently debunk the findings. Junk science second-hand-smoke studies may be, but you not only have to prove it, you also have to have an active community (including scientists) rallying to the cause. (And even then it's tough, as the global-warming issue has shown.) There's been no Climategate in second-hand smoke studies. And, if it proves that second-hand-smoke does cause deleterious effects, then second-hand smoke would have to be pegged as a kind of pollution (aggression) by libertarians.
Smokers may complain but are nevertheless obedient. There's no open cadre of smokers that flout the smoking ban. That's very much unlike Prohibition, where the Volstead Act was frequently and openly broken. Laws that are openly flouted over a wide swath of society (not just in the projects!) are perceived to have something wrong with them.
Despite recent attempts to obliterate the distinction, there's still a hard difference between the civil law and the criminal law. In everyday life, that means a hard distinction between a fine and jail time. That's why laws like speeding laws are regularly flouted but aren't the centre of a mass movement to repeal. If you get a traffic ticket, it's almost like getting a tax bill. The only people who go to court over those tickets are people who want to fight them. No jail time is directly involved. The lawmakers have really picked their spots on traffic laws: the only jailable offenses are ones that either involve outright aggression, have been credibly depicted as tantamount to outright aggression, or represent driving that's typically reckless. For the rest, it's little more than forking over the money. Same goes for the anti-smoking laws.

What I'm trying to get across is that the marijuana laws are low-hanging fruit for libertarian activists. There's no cluster of studies that say second-hand marijuana smoke causes damage to someone else, so there's no widely-claimed third-party effects to complicate the issue. The marijuana laws are widely flouted, including in middle-class circuits: a law that's widely disregarded by people who are law-abiding at heart is easy to cast as too strict. Combine that with jail time, not just a ticket, and you conjure up the image of (otherwise) law-abiding people being hauled off to the hoosegow and Bubba. What's made marijuana repeal do-able is the fact that the typical marijuana user does not show the behaviour patterns of the typical criminal - just as the typical illegal drinker in the Prohibition era did not show those patterns either. This last point is important. You may have noticed that libertarians are for open borders at the theoretical level, but they're for a lot of things at the theoretical level. In terms of activism, they haven't been pushing amnesty. Had their mission in life solely been to festoon libertarianism with liberal glamour, they would have. But, for now anyway, little Pedro is doing without them.

One of the main reasons why the Brits' mercantilist laws were seen as tyrannical in the American colonies was the fact that many people made their living through smuggling - and were men of integrity. In other words, they were the opposite of the stereotypical "black marketeer." Their inner integrity was enough to impress their fellow Americans into seeing the laws as unjust. If there's any point that's decisive in re unjust laws, it would be this one. People who are law-abiding through and through, but who nevertheless break a specific law, put the question mark on the law itself. Smokers, on the other hand, are obedient, so the question mark remains unput. Sort-of like the TSA.

And, I should add, libertarian support for repealing prostitution laws was stuck in the theoretical bubble until the trade itself became gentrified. As long as "what about the pimps?" is a decisive question, even a libertarian recognizes that there's no point in pressing the issue with activism.

To sum up, the behaviour of all-too-many marijuana smokers themselves, combined with the severity of the marijuana laws, make repeal a winning issue. If FedGov were stupid enough to make possession of a handgun a jailable offense, you can bet that there'd be a bevy of libertarian activists agitating for repeal. That issue would be even more of a winner than repeal of the marijuana laws.

That said, winning on repeal would be a major notch in the belt for libertarian activists. Winning encourages them, perhaps enough to throw some muscle behind the repeal of those smoking prohibitions and other "health n' safety" neoPuritanism.

Because there is a giant difference. My point was clear.

<><><><<

Yes, your unsubstantiated opinion was quite clear. A story oft told, in fact, but mostly, like yours, personal opinion disguised as fact.

Your questions don’t bother me at all. In fact, here are the answers:

Yes. On occasion.
It can be enjoyable.
Yes. 3.
They already are, and yes, I have.
It’s never come up. Doubt it will. It’s not how they roll.
Asked and answered.
Asked and answered.

But, to be clear, I don’t equate alcohol and pot. Alcohol kills. I’ve seen it firsthand on too many occasions.

Friend’s brother killed in high school by a drunk driver.
Friend himself drank himself to death at age 39.
Another friend drank himself to death at age 49.

The potsmokers? Still alive. And like the rest of us, some are thriving, some just surviving, and most are somewhere in between.

Cheers.

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