I enjoyed Barack Obama's online townhall meeting yesterday - the first ever, and a good thing for democracy, as have been so many other innovations in new media communication initiated in the Obama campaign and continuing now in his governance. (See my New New Media book, due out in September from Penguin/Pearson, for more.) But I think Obama missed a significant opportunity when he joked about the question about legalizing marijuana and the impact of that on the economy, and answered definitively "no".
To be clear, I'm not saying that Obama should have answered "yes," or that he was wrong to smile when he answered the question. But I am saying that I think this is a serious, significant issue, which deserves careful consideration.
Billions of dollars a year are spent on enforcing anti-marijuana laws, and billions of dollars could be made via taxation of legalized weed. Money is certainly not the only issue here, but that's a lot of money, especially in these times.
And then there's the deepest issue, in my view: does the government have the right to tell a consenting adult what to do with his or her own body? Why is prohibition of cannabis ok, while prohibition of alcohol or tobacco or caffeine is not?
For those who are interested, by the way, the only one of the above I ingest several times a day is caffeine, in the form of tea. I have a glass of wine every now and then, and have never smoked - weed or tobacco. I don't like smoke. I like my mind just the way it is, for better or worse.
But who cares what I like or don't like? What counts, if you are a compos mentis adult, is what you like - as long as you don't impose your likes on anybody else.
And it's equally wrong for the government to impose such laws on adults.
Barack Obama should take another look at the benefits of legalizing marijuana - ethical as well as financial.
16 comments:
And here we agree, Professor - well, except I don't think marijuana should be taxed.
In fact, I say all drugs should be legal. Strong evidence suggests that federal criminalization does not solve the problems related to drug use, but instead exacerbates them. Drug legalization, on the other hand, will clear up ineffectively used resources, reduce crime, and make society healthier, all while preserving personal freedom.
Hey, Paul -- good points, but you missed another really important one.
Remove the obscene profits due to drug laws that drive up the price of drugs and make the black market attractive to "entrepreneurs", and you'll achieve some hugely beneficial results:
o The drug lords lose their cash cow and consequently their ability to wage effective war against governments.
o They lose the incentive to recruit children as mules, sellers, and customers when weed costs less than a candy bar.
o The benefit of corrupting law enforcement, judges, and legislators disappears.
o Inter-gang warfare all but disappears, along with the horrible collateral damage it has long carried with it.
In other words, all the damage done to society by the criminal elements who now make exorbitant fortunes on the drug trade will simply go away -- not only here, but in supplier countries like Mexico where open warfare now terrorizes officials and citizens alike.
Best,
Kent
P.S. -- Fran says "Hi!"
Oops. Two more important benefits.
o Victims of cancer and AIDS will be able to get blessed relief from nausea, and glaucoma victims from their malady, when federal laws come into alignment with permissive (and compassionate) state legalization laws.
o Most likely, pot will be taxed and regulated just like alcohol, with two significant results: First, kids won't be any more likely to use it than they are to use alcohol (and we're arguably OK with that situation, or we'd have changed it). Second, there's all the excise tax to be collected -- not something I really favor, but an incentive for the political class.
Paul, HJ, Kent, so spot-on, right as rain, Amen, Amen, Amen.
I can't see why spliff is more dangerous than alcohol, just that booze yields taxes. The tobacco you mix it with is more likely to kill you.
I blogged recently on MC5 guru John Sinclair who served 2and a half years of a ten year sentence for giving two joints to a narcotics cop. How stupid — and politically motivated — is that?
I agree with Paul, it's a shame he didn't smile like a sphynx and say nothing.
Why don't we legalise murder? Think of all the money we'd save on prison overcrowding.
How anybody can see the damage that drugs wreak on society and still argue that we should make it easier for people to get drugs is beyond me.
Until the left gets over romanticising the 1960s and coming up with all kinds of noble-sounding excuses for people wanting to get high,it is never going to get the trust that it needs from mainstream America to accompilsh its goals. Mainstream America isn't fooled-it knows all that many of the pro-legalistion advocates are interested in is making it easier for themselves to get high. And that makes it a lot harder for them to trust th eleft when it comes to their more socially productive goals.
Until the left gets over romanticising drugs and acknowledges that they destroy lives,it's always going to be on the fringes...
Scott wrote: "Why don't we legalise murder?"
Well, that might be because murder is the imposition of the murderer's will upon the murder victim.
In contrast, as I pointed out in my post, I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana for consenting adults - are you aware of the meaning of the word "consenting"?
HJ - good to find at least one area of agreement! :) (It comes from the "libertarian" part of my being a progressive libertarian.)
Great comments, Kent - thanks. And best regards back to Fran! Good to hear from both of you! (And welcome to Infinite Regress.)
Welcome to Infinite Regress, MM - pleased to have your comments here!
I am indeed aware of the meaning of the word consenting. Would you define the people who are killed each year by substance-abusing drivers as consenting?
Drunk drivers tragically kill far far more many people ... and our society tries to deal with that, not by making all alcohol consumption illegal, but by making drinking (in excess) and driving illegal.
Or, are you in favor of making all alcohol consumption illegal, too?
I respect Obama he is a talented politician, President Obama seems to posse’s insightful, reasonable judgment on many issues, although in the case of marijuana prohibition laws I find Obama’s choice to answer with mocking humor to be lacking. Smoking marijuana is an easy thing to laugh about, it seems there is something about being stoned that brings a smile to people’s faces, however marijuana prohibition is not a joke. We should not be making jokes as millions of Americans are arrested for being caught on the wrong side of moral politicking, we should not laugh as we spend over 30 billion dollars a year going after Americans for smoking weed, we should not giggle and poke fun as we watch billions of dollars in tax revenue slip through our fingers each year, and should we not be jolly as thousands of people are murdered by cartels profiting from America’s moral hypocrisy. I believe there are profound latent consequences in prohibition that are not even factored in to our assessments of the effects of illegality, such as how we view the rule of law and the role of law enforcement in the community, the divisiveness between users and non users, the stigma of mental shock of incarceration. I say pot prohibition is no joke it has real costs paid for in real lives. Freedom is achieved in a country by placing responsibility in the hands of the citizen and not by the state legally enforcing morality.
http://SunflowerPipes.com
Well said, SunflowerPipes - and welcome to Infinite Regress.
I had a response but it doesn't seem to have gone through. Was there some kind of technical glitch earlier?
Not that I know of - try posting it again.
All righty.
The reason that there was so much difficulty with alcohol prohibtion (which is,I assume,where we were going-I just figured I'd save time and cut to the chase),I've always felt, was societal inertia-it's hard to get people used to the idea of something being illegal when it's always been legal. Legalising drugs would make it that much harder to rid society of the damage that drug use causes.
Everybody going to you-know where in their own way (I'm being careful in case my use of that word caused the tech trouble) sounds good and noble on paper but it doesn't work out that way in reality. Substance abusers don't just stay in their rooms-they cause accidents-fatal and otherwise, screw up their children, destroy their relationships with other people-hurting the other people in the process, do substandard jobs at work-which hurt other people in all kinds of ways,etc,etc. No substance abuser is an island-we're all interconnected.
I'm also a little disturbed by this being all that leftist bloggers seemed to be interested in about Obma's townhall meeting. Surely, how Obama is actually planning on helping poor people crushed by the economy should be a lot more important than wealthy people being upset that it's not going to be made easier for them to get their drugs?
Here's what I think is the best solution to the problem you raise:
Make the illegality the proximate cause of the problem (or, what Aristotle called the "efficient cause").
Take smoking tobacco, as an example. I think laws banning smoking in restaurants and public places are warranted, because people who breathe second-hand smoke in such places can be harmed. But making all smoking of tobacco illegal would be wrong, because if I smoke in the privacy of my home, the only people who could be harmed are me and consenting adults (exposing children to second-hand smoke obviously complicates this issue).
Alcohol is actually far easier to deal with this on this ethical plane than tobacco: the act of drinking has no intrinsic second-hand smoke quality. So all that has to be illegal are bad deeds done under the influence of alcohol, as well as driving when drunk, etc.
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About your concern about left-wing bloggers - I've seen lots of criticism that goes beyond Obama and his response to the marijuana question. Check out the Daily Kos.
Now that's weird-I've posted a response twice and it hasn't taken-all right,one more try.
I don't see how anything but making the substance itself illegal will prevent the damage caused by substance abuse-you can and should legislate against drunk driving,for instance,but arresting the drunk driver isn't going to bring back the person that the drunk driver killed.
I'm a daily visitor to Daily Kos,actually, (Politically, I would describe myself as a left-leaning moderate-basically,I'm pretty left except when it comes to drugs and the Middle East.) and I was really quite upset by how much fuss people were making about that subject on that particular day and the day after (and don't even get me started on Avedon Carol's Sideshow...)
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