Posted on 01/13/2003 7:31:37 AM PST by MrLeRoy
Twenty-five years ago, Lester Grinspoon noted in his classic study, Marihuana Reconsidered, that "the single greatest risk encountered by the user of marihuana is that of being apprehended as a common criminal, incarcerated and subjected to untold damage to his social life and career." What was true then is even more true today: around 700,000 Americans are arrested annually for simply possessing marijuana, and more than 10,000 Americans are currently in jails and prisons because they have been convicted of marijuana possession, and no other crime.
The government's propagandists are taking full advantage of these statistics: A new anti-drug commercial depicts the potentially devastating arrest of a teenage marijuana smoker (drug convictions bar students from receiving federal educational loans), and concludes: "Marijuana can get you busted. Harmless?" The commercial's unintentionally surreal message - that marijuana is illegal because it's harmful, and it's harmful because it's illegal - is one that seems likely to fill any young person capable of independent thought with contempt for both our marijuana laws and the dangerously authoritarian logic that supports and enforces them.
Imagine if one were to extend this logic to, say, freedom of the press: The government could produce commercials depicting the arrest of young people caught reading "subversive" literature, in order to drive home the point that, if you happen to live under a sufficiently repressive regime, merely reading the wrong sort of book can be hazardous to your health.
Anti-drug zealots will reply that books, unlike marijuana, are harmless. This is of course preposterous: few things are more dangerous than books. How many millions of deaths can be traced to the publication of The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf or, for that matter, the Bible and the Quran? Yet this is hardly an argument for the repeal of the First Amendment.
The idea that something ought to be criminalized because it isn't "harmless" is a key feature of the authoritarian mindset. It's an idea that allows for the criminalization of just about any imaginable activity, since almost nothing in this world is harmless. Marijuana isn't harmless, but it isn't nearly as harmful as, for example, alcohol - a substance that causes thousands of fatal overdoses every year (no one has ever died from an overdose of marijuana).
So why don't we make America an alcohol-free nation by criminalizing alcohol? The superficial answer is that we tried that once and it was total failure. (Attempting to eliminate marijuana use has also been a total failure: almost half the current adult population - nearly 100 million Americans - has used marijuana, and several million Americans continue to use it regularly). The more nuanced answer is that making America an alcohol-free nation would actually be a bad thing, even if it were possible.
This isn't merely because the costs of prohibition are so high. Most people who drink alcohol have benefited from the experience more than they've been harmed by it. What anti-drug zealots are incapable of acknowledging is that the same holds true for marijuana users. Indeed the evidence is overwhelming that, for the vast majority of marijuana users, their use has had no significant harmful effects, and many good ones.
Yet as Grinspoon pointed out a quarter-century ago, "reason has had little influence in this matter." The criminal prohibition of marijuana, he said, was due to "cultural factors that have nothing to do with the effect of the drug itself." In the years since, little has changed, as we waste billions of dollars, and give free rein to an increasingly dangerous authoritarianism, in the futile attempt to stamp out this largely benign practice.
"I write separately only to express my view that the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases. By continuing to apply this rootless and malleable standard, however circumscribed, the Court has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits. Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce." - Justice Clarence Thomas
Tell it to the judge.
Ok, As one who has been known to party and tip a few occasionally, I would like to here from you pot heads what the good effects are from inhaling the magic dragon?
That's the problem - they don't have any...
HR may also be concerned about the following effects of the War On Pot, none of which are addressed by your proposal:
THEY'RE obsessing? Look in a mirror...that's obsession.
I suspect the author has in mind benefits like relaxation and enhanced conviviality.
In my opinion, recreational marijuana use by adults in the workforce is in many ways a harmless and victimless activity. It does not cause hangovers and missed work, it is not addictive, and it does not inflate health insurance premiums for replacment organs, such as healthy livers.
That's like noting FReepers' support of gun rights and asking, "Is Free Republic full of serial-killing snipers?"
That being the case, I doubt 1) it would have passed peer review muster for publication in the British Medical Journal and 2) other studies would confirm it.
Hint: No.
That being the case, I doubt 1) it would have passed peer review muster for publication in the British Medical Journal and 2) other studies would confirm it.
Your arguments from authority do not trump simple logic. (And be aware that many scientists, while adequate number-crunchers or instrument-readers, are less than Einsteins when it comes to drawing conclusions from their results---especially when certain sorts of conclusions can get them a spot in the limelight.)
Either that, or the police would spend more time on real crimes, yielding savings through reduced victimization.
See the Ninth and Tenth Amendments; the federal government has no Constitutional authority to regulate the intrastate making, distributing, selling, buying, or using of any drug.
Think about that the next time you toke one off the bong, followed by a few gulps of cookie dough.
I use no drugs---including the deadly addictive drugs alochol and tobacco.
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