Posted on 09/18/2002 1:19:47 PM PDT by WindMinstrel
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
WorldNetDaily's poll last Saturday concerned whether pot should be legalized.
The final tally of respondents was 56 percent pro and 43 percent con with variation among those answers. An unqualified yes hit the charts at 32 percent. One percent answered "other."
While not scientific and prone to problems, the response didn't surprise me much. There has always seemed a receptive attitude regarding changes to our current drug policies among WND readers. Since my first column on the subject, I've received overwhelmingly positive feedback to criticism of current policies and recommendations for change.
But it's not all whistles and roses.
Reader Joel I. Hunt, for instance, fired off this missive to WND when he saw the results of the poll:
I was shocked when I voted on the poll then saw that most people voted in favor of legalization. What really shocked me was the fact that the readers of WND voted this way. I thought that WND readers for the most part are Christian, conservative, reasonably intelligent people. This may not mellow Hunt's shock, but there is nothing incongruous with wishing drugs legalized and one's Christian confession, being conservative or reasonably intelligent. In fact, I think the opposite is closer to true – a fact about which a majority of WND readers seem savvy.
Christianity
There is nothing in Scripture, for instance, that particularly plugs prohibition. While it says nothing specific about narcotics, Holy Writ is adamantly against drunkenness and dissipative abuse of alcohol. If we want a biblical approach to drugs, we must apply Scripture's cautions about booze to other brain-meddlers, as alcohol is but one of many psychoactive substances around.
If we do this, we will see that the Bible distinguishes between sin and crime here. While strongly condemning drunkenness and dissipation, God doesn't provide a lot of support in Scripture for criminalizing them. Like lying, jealousy, refusing to help widows and orphans, these are sins, yes, but not crimes. If the concern is about some of the ill effects stemming from some drug abuse (property theft, abusive behavior, etc.), legislation actually sanctioned by Scripture already has those bases covered.
If not supporting draconian drug laws is the mark of a non-Christian, then the Bible isn't very Christian.
Conservative
The American right seems very confused on this one at times. Conservatives are opposed to big government, are in favor of states' rights, and laud the Constitution. But perhaps no single set of policies since the New Deal have so totally undermined these things as the drug war.
Antidrug legislation has drastically inflated federal police powers. Federal drug laws – for which there is no provision in the Constitution – have run roughshod over the rights of states to set their own policies regarding matters left unspecified in the Constitution. And drug-war tactics have brutalized the Bill of Rights' protections of life, home and property.
Further, by its constant escalation, the drug war has pushed drug traffickers to trump police in firepower, the resultant gun crime providing ammunition in the ongoing liberal war on the Second Amendment.
Intelligence
Besides being a low blow, any charge that holding a position unfriendly to drug prohibition is a sign of unintelligence is simply stupid. Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, Milton Friedman, Walter Williams – these men aren't "reasonably intelligent"?
Ponder instead how support of the drug war measures a man's intelligence:
Drug prohibition hasn't eliminated drug use. It's pretty hard to measure if it's had much effect at all on curbing use. I think it has, but I don't consider all use damaging to society, so I'm not wetting myself over the prospect of slightly higher drug intake if dope were legalized. Regardless of the law, millions of Americans regularly use drugs, especially pot.
Drug prohibition hasn't helped stem crime. By pushing the market underground, it has in fact helped encourage crime – and more violent crime, to boot.
Drug prohibition hasn't boosted the nation's morals. The opposite might be true, since instead of promoting and persuading correct moral decisions in people we use the wrench of the state to force it. This is just bandaging cancer. Using government as the main inculcator of virtue instead of churches, families and communities is a monstrous mistake. On the other hand:
Drug prohibition has given the U.S. the free world's biggest prison population – many of those behind bars being nonviolent drug offenders. Spending on prisons is up, up, up.
Drug prohibition has provided terrorists with the necessary economic conditions to pad their purses with aims of attacking American citizens.
Drug prohibition has led to obscene corruption of law enforcement.
Drug prohibition has – and this is perhaps more damaging to the country than much of the above – harmed the legal and constitutional system in the country, as it has permitted police tactics that spit in the founders' faces. The Bill of Rights has become void where prohibited by drug laws, which means the constitutional shield used to shelter the assumed innocent has become a battering ram to assault the assumed guilty. Supporting such a policy seems a much better mark of the lack of reasonable intelligence, rather than vice versa. Unless, of course, all those things are the actual intent of drug warriors. If so, they're not unintelligent – just evil.
Contra Mr. Hunt, the fact that WND readers so strongly oppose this terrible policy shouldn't be shocking. It should be encouraging, if not outright refreshing.
Follow the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ;^)
How true, but drug prohibition does raise the morals of the drug warrior, at least in their own estimation.
IOW, WND readers are fringe kooks, so this doesn't surprise me a whit.
Fun With Numbers 101.
Up there with "Pot is the gateway drug" and "pot causing 75,000 emergency room visits". A little truth in a lie goes a long way.
And that's a bad thing? Seriously, I think FreeRepublic has a lot of people who use their heads on this issue. I would say they are pretty smart....even the pot-heads!
I always challenge the Woddies to name, say 5 D*ms who are re-legalizers. I can't think of any. A couple for medical mj, a few more for equalizing powder and crack cocaine sentencing, but that's it.
I wonder if the pro-WOD folks fell for that bit of junk science as well.
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