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Jesse Kline: Anti-marijuana arguments get up in fume
Nosotros would appear to be witnessing the first of the end of marijuana prohibition. But peradventure the best part is that proponents of the status quo seem to have completely run out of steam.
Jan ane was more than than a New Year commemoration for Coloradans who savor the occasional toke. Information technology was the first solar day retailers could legally sell marijuana for recreational use. Despite the high tax rate, many lined up to be some of the first to purchase marijuana in a strip mall, rather than a dark aisle.
Washington state, which also legalized marijuana in a 2012 vote, volition let legal sales afterwards this year. Not to exist outdone, the legislature in New Hampshire — the country with the motto "Alive Free or Die" on its licence plates — is too set to vote on a legalization bill. Activists in Alaska are on track to get a ballot initiative before the voters in that land, likewise.
We would appear to exist witnessing the kickoff of the end of marijuana prohibition. Merely perhaps the best function is that proponents of the status quo seem to take completely run out of steam.
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus warns that pot should remain illegal because "the more widely available marijuana becomes, the more minors will utilize information technology." Even though she admits that the next fourth dimension she's in Colorado, she'll "cheque out some Bubba Kush." And that she has done her "share of inhaling, though back in the historic period of bell-bottoms and polyester." You know, back when pot was illegal and youngsters couldn't go their hands on it.
Besides, in the pages of the National Postal service, New York Times columnist David Brooks touts his stoner bona fides: "For a fiddling while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana.… I recall those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships. But then we all sort of moved away from it."
So Brooks had some fun, learned some valuable lessons and stopped doing drugs. No harm, no foul.
If he were a poor blackness kid from Washington, D.C. — a city where African Americans are viii times more likely to go arrested for marijuana possession than whites, despite using it at similar rates — things might take turned out much differently. Similar millions before him, he could take gone to jail, lost his job and never had the chance to realize his potential. Indeed, despite having smoked pot (even though it was illegal) and grown up to be a successful columnist, Brooks is even so an abet of the status quo.
"Laws greatly mould culture, so what sort of community exercise we want our laws to nurture?" he asks. "I'd say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favour temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship … authorities subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or existence in nature, and discourages bottom pleasures, like being stoned."
In this, Brooks is profoundly mistaken. Culture is not shaped from the peak-downward, only the bottom-upward. Well-nigh every major legislative accomplishment — from civil rights to gay marriage — was precipitated by the people. The politicians had to be dragged kicking and screaming into modernity, and merely did so once they realized the residual of society had already changed their minds. Drug reform is also being driven primarily by election initiatives, not governments.
The idea that allowing adults to freely make up one's mind what substances to put in their own bodies is somehow an endorsement of said substances is besides completely fake. People who don't desire to fume marijuana are not going to start, merely because information technology is available in stores.
If we encounter a drop in toll, people who already swallow marijuana will likely buy more of information technology. It will as well prevent millions of dollars from ending up in the pockets of gang members and other criminal organizations. Saying that legalization will lead to more people using the drug, however, is non supported by the facts.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and saw the number of people using them decline in the years that followed. Holland has also allowed coffee shops to legally sell marijuana for decades and, co-ordinate to the United nations'south "World Drug Written report," a mere 5.four% of its population had smoked marijuana in the past year, compared to 12.6% in Canada and 24.one% in the U.Due south.
If these are the best arguments the prohibitionist crowd tin muster, then information technology truly is time to dismantle our outdated marijuana laws.
National Post
• Email: jkline@nationalpost.com | Twitter: accessd
Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jesse-kline-anti-marijuana-arguments-go-up-in-smoke
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