Posted on 02/06/2009 9:15:57 AM PST by bassmaner
And then President Obama, and then George W. Bush, and then Bill Clinton . . .
Michael Phelps, the aquatic icon who won eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics, has violated the law. When a photograph of him smoking a bongful of marijuana was published, he admitted the crime. The same crime for which the better part of a million people were arrested last year.
Shouldn’t Phelps be charged? Along with President Obama and his two predecessors, all of whom, it seems, used illegal drugs? If not, perhaps it is time to have a serious debate about the drug laws.
Of course, Michael Phelps immediately apologized for his poor judgment. Attention turned to his sponsors, since their contracts include the usual moral clauses, which protect their investment in celebrities who behave foolishly, if not actually immorally. Happily for Phelps’s bank account, some of his big-money backers, including Speedo, Hilton, and Omega, accepted his apology. Subway and Visa haven’t been talking, but don’t look like they are going to jump. Kellogg’s, so far in the minority, announced it would drop Phelps.
But if marijuana use is so horrid as to warrant criminalization, why are we wasting time discussing whether Phelps will be able to keep his endorsement deals? Shouldn’t he be prosecuted—just like millions of other Americans, whose lives have been ruined by criminal convictions for smoking pot?
In 2007, 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana violations, 775,138 of them for possession. Some number of the latter undoubtedly were caught growing or selling and were charged with lesser offenses, but, in any case, hundreds of thousands of Americans ended up in jail for doing precisely what Michael Phelps did: lighting up. Roughly three-quarters of those arrested for marijuana offenses were, like Phelps, under 30. With most of their lives ahead of them, they face the greatest harm from prosecution under the drug laws.
So why shouldn’t Phelps go to jail?
To ask the question is to answer it. While smoking pot may be a stupid thing to do for many reasons—risking adverse health effects, endangering endorsements, undermining Phelps’s status as a celebrity role model—he hurt no one but himself. He could have been photographed while drunk and stumbling out of a party, and it would have been no different. Bad press and angry sponsors would have forced an abject apology, and everyone would have moved on. Just like with his marijuana hit.
Of course, advocates of prohibition argue that illicit drugs are different. And so they are—mostly because their use is illegal, a situation that creates the most serious problems usually associated with drug use.
The arguments are old but clear. Whatever the law might say, the people have voted with their lungs: 95 million Americans over the age of 21 have smoked pot, 20 million have smoked in the last year, and 11 million use the drug regularly. It’s hard to believe that all of them, almost one-third of the U.S. population, are criminals who deserve jail time.
Moreover, the violence associated with drugs is principally from prohibition rather than use. Drunks are far more likely to commit (and be victims of) violent crimes than are users of marijuana. Prohibition-era Chicago offered a dramatic lesson in the impact of banning a widely used drug. That city’s violent era is being played out on a larger scale in Colombia and Mexico, where urban and rural communities have been overwhelmed with drug-gang violence.
The health arguments remain disputed, but the basic question is whether we live in a free society in which people can choose to engage in risky behavior. Cigarette smokers, hang gliders, and rock climbers all take risks that many others view as unacceptable. That’s no reason for arresting them.
And it’s pretty hard to argue that marijuana use will prevent Phelps from being productive. Most all of us probably remember pothead classmates who ended up wildly successful in their chosen careers. Will some people use to excess? Yes, just as some people drink too much, gamble too much, spend too much, and act irresponsibly in a multitude of other ways. Criminal law is not the answer.
Is Michael Phelps likely to go to jail? No, and for good reason. But for the same reason, the rest of us should not be arrested for smoking pot, either. Whether marijuana use is good or bad is not the issue. Short of engaging in behavior that directly threatens others, people should be left alone. That’s what a society grounded in individual liberty is—or at least should be—all about.
—Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to Pres. Ronald Reagan, he is the author of the forthcoming Leviathan Unchained: Washington’s Bipartisan Big Government Consensus.
It surely didn’t destroy anything in the millenia in which it was legal and everpresent worldwide, and providing numerous health benefits, and textile uses.
There were no federal drug prohibition laws for the first 137 years of the Republic, and we did just fine. It was the first wave of busybody "Progressives" that pushed for the Harrison Narcotics Act (signed by Democrat Woodrow Wilson) in 1914. They also were partially responsible for Prohibition and the Volstead Act 5 years later (also signed by Woodrow Wilson), and the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act in 1937 (signed by the Left's original fave FDR, shortly after his failed attempt to pack SCOTUS with his sycophants).
Anyone who supports drug prohibition and claims to be a "conservative" is a hypocrite, as nothing empowers the iron fist of the authoritarian state more.
Mega-dittos!
I haven't heard anyone call for Michael Phelps. What I have heard that a manufacturer of cereal for kids doesn't think he would put forth a good image for their company. Personally I don't want my teenage son thinking if Michael Phelps can do it why can't I?
sincerely,
McGruff
No. What was snide and disingenuous was your language: "preach the glories." It's a roundabout way of implying that those who oppose Amsterdam Libertarianism are snake-handling preachers.
Here's my point:
I agree with many of the goals of small-l libertarians. They seem to want to promote individual liberty. So do I. But there is also the liberty of every community -- and every state -- to allow the voters to decide for themselves the laws they want. It's tangential to the right of assembly.
In my opinion, the Amsterdam Libertarians sneer at those who defend the right of assembly. They believe that individual liberty means that two sodomites can be sanctified in marriage; they believe that whores in windows constitutes personal liberty; and they believe that public crack houses define modern-day freedom.
I disagree, and I will vote that way.
Now if the community sees it the way I do, and outlaws these things, are you going to stand in the way of a community exercising its liberty to freely vote?
Can you point to a single reference in God's word that indicates that there is a single plant other than the "tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" that was not put here for our use and benefit?
This is a different millennium. Let’s just keep it illegal. The war on drugs isn’t as bad as you think it is.
Before we give the dope pushers amnesty and give Barney Frank the ability to tax meth we should probably de-fund the federal government and reverse all the policies that have destroyed our moral fabric. Then let’s have this discussion.
Not my guy. Drug Warriors will probably love the One.
Odds are Zero will 'double down' on the War on Drugs, as leftists like him love having the mailed fist of the state smashing down on citizens. And remember that he smoked weed and snorted blow in his younger days ... the "zeal of the converted" and all that.
Mark my words ...
Are you talking about smoking dope for medicinal purposes (to get high)?
That’s easy.
1Pe 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
Good points. IMO, the biggest problem with the WOD in general is not the communities that want safe neighborhoods -- it's the fact that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT imposes prohibition from above and local decisions are trumped.
Obviously you are an out of context verse quoter, but not a Bible student.
No I was not addressing the abuse of anything; I was talking about God’s plain word.
You're delusional. The war on drugs is a massive and brutal transfer of wealth and power to the basest among us.
Or report to prison?
What about that 'pursuit of happiness' thingie that the Founding Fathers talked about?
If you grow your own (like our first president did at Mt. Vernon, BTW), keep it for yourself, and smoke yourself retarded, why is it any of your business or anyone else's unless someone else gets hurt?
Oh, really? Do you understand the root word behind conservatism? Yes, it's "conserve." So if you're the true conservative here, what exactly are you trying to conserve? Pot-addled youth? Meth-driven violence? Heroin-fueled sloth? Is this part of the American culture you're trying to conserve?
Or is this about liberty, and your everything-goes version of it? If so, then you're the hypocrite if you don't promote it to its logical end. Your sort of personal liberty would have to lead you to the Amsterdam model: Whores in windows and public parks populated by drug addicts.
Is this the path of conservatism to you? I'm being sincere. I would like to know.
“you are an out of context verse quoter”
Nuh huh. The verse fits perfectly. Man I knew it was stupid to wade in here.
“It surely didn’t destroy anything in the millenia in which it was legal and everpresent worldwide, and providing numerous health benefits, and textile uses.”
But it also didn’t create all those cool gubberment/private jobs in the prison/justice industry. Textile uses can’t compare to the benefit to our economy in keeping this plant illegal. /s
Freegards
How, then, were we able to survive for 137 years without drug prohibition? Did the Harrison Narcotics Act and the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act all of a sudden made us ‘righteous’?
Was a there an exigent need for drug prohibition during those 137 years?
Nice ad hominem attack. As I said before, I don't smoke pot, it's a red herring to the actual issue here, which is a citizen's personal freedoms as given to us by God, and laid down in our Constitution.
You sir have run out of ideas and have started blasting personal attacks. A sure sign of the intellectually challenged. Good day.
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