Legalize It

Disclaimer: Yes, I blazed regularly for several years. Yes, I still smoke on occasion today. No, I never really enjoyed it. I’ve never identified as a stoner or planned my life around getting high. Why would I engage in behavior I don’t particularly enjoy when it is expensive, among other downsides? The obvious answer is that marijuana is an evil, addictive drug. This is the problem with drug policy and propaganda. Oh, well I know a kid who started smoking a lot of pot and pretty much dropped out of life. Ignore that the drug was a facilitator, not a cause. That it happened despite preexisting illegality. That if it wasn’t weed it would have been something else. That it is not indicative of the overwhelming majority of responsible users. Why tackle complexity when we can settle on an easy answer then hit the bars.

Before you read anything I have to say, I want you to sit back, relax, and read the text of this speech titled “The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States.” I read it every few months like one might a favorite book. If I could force every person to read one thing, it would be this speech. Do it. I read it again, just now. Several times I jumped out of my chair and paced angrily.

I know – it’s a long speech, and all history. What has that ever taught us? So maybe the past of drug prohibition is spotted with little white lies, but sometimes we do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Not so much – marijuana prohibition is the same story reasserting itself, over and over again. It does not represent any preordained, natural order. Just the same tactics, same lies, same self-interest, simply updated for the times.

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I was very well-educated on marijuana before I ever tried it. In fact, I had only smoked a few times when I decided to write my lower division required research paper in support of the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. This was in early 2000. A hackneyed topic popular enough that many teachers don’t allow it, but my section leader was young and didn’t mind. I received A+’s across the board and a suggestion that I should “do something further” with the topic given how knowledgeable and, uh, passionate I seemed to be about it. It gripped me because I had been staunchly against marijuana less than a year earlier in high school. I looked down on people who smoked. Why? Looking back now, through a smoky haze, it’s hard to remember. Why would I have been against something I knew nothing about, just because I was told to…

My stake is bigger than just wanting to get high. Proponents of medical marijuana are constantly derided as stoners who view it as a stepping stone to legal herb; people who, presumably, must be too high to care about the plight of sick people or want to guarantee access to proper medicine if they become sick in the future. Those promoting legalization are just laughed at – there’s no doubting our intentions. Excuse me if I sound too idealistic, but I actually care about personal liberty. I care about truth and accountability in government. I don’t like being lied to, and don’t like other people being lied to then parroting propaganda back at me. There are other issues that are more important, but this one is just so painfully obvious.

Marijuana enhances my appreciation of music. Allows me to look at issues from a different point of view. I know what my sober mind is capable of, and I know that a gentle tweaking of the grid I view the world through can have a profound impact on my outlook. This might be a freedom of thought argument. What else… certainly helped me stay focused during repeated all-night coding sessions. May have slowed me down a tad, but I fail to see the significance in finishing an assignment at 7am instead of 6am. Oh, getting high makes me so self-critical that I second guess every word that has ever come out of my mouth and want to bash my head against the wall. I can’t stand being around other people when I’m high. I’ll smoke less and less as I get older. I have no grand design to get everyone high. I’ve never encouraged it. I have no false notion of global peace and unity if everybody would just chill out and smoke a joint.

In some cases, the greatest good for the greatest number is a reasonable policy goal. Not all marijuana money ends up in the hands of unsavory characters, but enough of it does. I can assure you that nobody along the chain reports their drug income to the IRS. Marijuana isn’t hard to grow and it isn’t hard to find, but the price is inflated by black market risks and an endless chain of middlemen. Quarter the price, double it with taxes, and growers and sellers could still turn a profit. That is, if I could legally pick up a gram at the corner store for $10 on the way home from work.

Yeah, that’s what I want. Caught me red handed. I want a relatively harmless substance that millions of Americans use to be available for legal purchase. The government profits on two ends (tax on income and sales) to finance commercials telling us why we shouldn’t indulge, and treatment for those weak-willed enough to think they need outside help for their addiction to marijuana. I believe the current company line is that marijuana turns you into a pancake and makes your dog judgmental. For the record: my dog has never once text-bubbled disappointment in me for getting high.

It would be fucking awesome if she did.

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I may have just called marijuana relatively harmless without citation. This question is not as important as you might think. Millions of people smoke marijuana in the United States, and it’s illegal. Would more smoke if it were available legally? Tough to say, and I’ll hit that in a minute. On the issue of health, I could argue that legal-yet-regulated marijuana would lead to low-priced baked goods, reducing the carcinogenic properties of smoked marijuana that are the biggest danger to health. Maybe more would eat, and less would smoke.

Wikipedia did not exist when I wrote my research paper. Altavista was the search engine of choice. Life was hard, son. I persevered despite the odds, spending scores of hours tracking down and reading every legitimate marijuana study. These days most of that information is encapsulated in a Wikipedia entry on “decriminalization of non-medical marijuana in the United States“. When I first read over that article a couple days ago, I immediately went to the discussion page to see prohibitionists whine. The article is strongly in favor of marijuana decriminalization, yet it is written with a neutral point of view. As Colbert said, reality has a well-known liberal bias. Note: there is a difference between legality and decriminalization. This article is mostly about extensive decriminalization, Netherlands style, similar to highly-regulated legality.

Arguments in favor of decriminalization such as increased government taxes, decreased income by organized crime, and less exposure of marijuana users to the black market simply have no counter. Arguments against decriminalization are bullshit, and there are various studies refuting each. Marijuana use leads to abuse of other drugs (gateway theory)? Bullshit. A California roll is a gateway food to eel. Marijuana use leads to increased crime? Bullshit. Serious Reefer Madness bullshit, goddamn jazz musicians seducing our white women with the devil weed. More people would use marijuana if it were legal? Well… maybe. The data we have shows this isn’t necessarily the case, but nothing could predict what would happen in the U.S. market. Maybe more would favor smoking instead of drinking for a net benefit to society.

Marijuana is easy enough to get now. There are some deterred by illegality, and probably just as many spurred on because of it. If legal, I could imagine a strong demographic of people who try it a couple times, realize “holy shit this is not for me”, and move on. Drug stats will then show a huge increase in the number of people who have used in the last year and everybody will shit themselves because they have no idea how to interpret statistics.

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What kind of message does this send to our children? I’m sorry… is prohibition the only way society knows how to discourage something? Prostitution is legal in Nevada – is there an epidemic of young women running off to Vegas to whore themselves out? There was a big fuss recently when Obama admitted to drug use in his life. Teenagers are going to think they can experiment with drugs and still become the President of the United States! It might not be the best message to send, but isn’t it the truth? Fuck rebellion-inducing prohibition and scare tactics when dealing with adolescent drug use.

Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs. Why not? Because they’re bad for you. Because I said so. Because they’re illegal (wholly, or until a certain age). Why not the truth? They ARE bad for you. You’re young, your brain is still developing, doing this shit might fuck up your brain chemistry. You might be more prone for addiction later in life if you start now. You have no basis for comparison now, so you’re not really missing out on anything. It’ll be more fun in college anyway. Shit might stunt your growth. You’ll get more pussy at 6′3″ than you will at 5′10″. Life’s confusing enough as a teenager. Go play some fucking sports and keep the unhealthy shit out of your body. It won’t work on them all – of course it won’t. People are idiots, kids especially, but drug prohibition doesn’t have a 100% success rate and neither will honesty.

Irrelevant side-note: we prescribe kids an awful lot of speed for their attention disorders and highly addictive benzos for their anxiety. These end up getting abused, not by all users, and certainly there are legitimate uses… but… yeah, I’d worry about that more than weed – legal or not.

Most parents allow their teenagers to date. That’s way more dangerous than drug use.

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As a resident of California, I could do some quick research online and find a doctor that hands out medical permits like candy. I could say I suffer from anxiety, which is true enough, and not point out that marijuana makes it worse, which I am morally at ease with. Then I could walk into a club, overpay, and I could figuratively walk up to a non-federal cop and blow smoke in his stupid monkey face. As long as by doing that figuratively, I literally mean smoking in the privacy of my own home. One might ask, “isn’t that legal enough for you, you fucking goddamn hippie?”

No, it isn’t. The last blog I wrote favored states’ rights, and I’m generally in favor of referendums and direct democracy. However, the last two referendums to legalize marijuana in Alaska have failed… and if Alaskans don’t vote for legal pot, nobody will. This shouldn’t be up to the people. Not just because they’ve been lied to their entire lives, and therefore aren’t capable of making an informed decision. I should have the right to get high, and nobody should be able to take that right away from me. I can quote all the philosophy, but of course I can’t prove I have that right any more than you can prove I shouldn’t be allowed to murder you. Why have we put the onus on the group in favor of freedom? Why SHOULDN’T I have that right?

I’m getting angry because I’m thinking about conservatives. TOUGH ON CRIME, TOUGH ON DRUGS. Enact one law they disagree with because you want to actually help people, and they scream “NANNY STATE! NANNY STATE!” But drug prohibition is ok? It’s ok for the government to tell me what I can put in my body? Oh, well people are too weak to control themselves, and need to be told what to do. But only on drugs. Because drugs produce crime. Let’s not discuss that it’s because they’re illegal.

Drugs are dangerous? Snowboarding is fucking dangerous. While drug prohibitionists play up the physical health threats of drugs, I have to believe the distinction between herb and snowboarding is that marijuana acts on the brain. I wasn’t thinking this when I brought up snowboarding, but isn’t snowboarding culture known for having strong ties to marijuana use? It’s a gateway sport, and it should be illegal. You know what else acts on the brain? Pentecostalism… motherfuckers all writhing on the floor, talking in tongues, claiming to have direct experience of God. You can’t make that illegal, despite how retarded it is, because they’re practicing religion. Oh, but when someone uses weed or psychedelics and claims a spiritual component they’re just addicts trying to justify their fix.

Unless they’re Native Americans. We tolerate that, but only because they’ve been doing it for a long time. Spirituality is only valid if it is rooted in the tradition of your own people. I’ve still got a sneaking suspicion they just want to get high, but hell, they were good sports about that whole genocide thing. Not constantly bringing it up like those pesky Jews.

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I understand why people buy into the propaganda. I did, when I was younger, despite having a tendency to skepticism over blind acceptance of authority. It’s harder to understand why people, faced with rational arguments against that propaganda, refuse to change their minds.

As I’m writing this, I’m watching a report on the ESPN news magazine “Outside the Lines” about Barrow, Alaska, the northern-most town in the United States. I am led to believe that drug use is pervasive in this small community – of course, no stats were given, but there are drugs. Of course there are drugs. We are fucking primed to alter our consciousness. So they started a football team to keep kids in school and off drugs. Ok – it’s too cold for trees to grow. It snows in summer. Until recently, they didn’t even have a local high school football team. What else is there to do but get high?

People want to live in a perfectly sanitized world where they can raise their kids free from the threats of crime and drugs. It’s a noble cause, but it’s not realistic. Drugs made their way to a small town that is geographically isolated in the freaking Arctic. The economics of drug prohibition almost certainly made the problem worse. Rank and file drug dealers are, themselves, users of the drugs they sell. Drug users generally want drug buddies, and the inflated costs from drug prohibition require some selling to subsidize one’s own habit. Call them “pushers” if you want, but the reality is that most low level dealers don’t fit a cartoonish caricature.

I got through my youth without drinking or doing drugs. 8 years later I’m an alcoholic and I sit around writing about drugs and conspiracy theories. At the risk of appearing to blame my problems on outside influences, being compelled to drink lots of hard alcohol as quickly as possible while hiding in my dorm room due to unreasonable age restrictions did not provide the proper framework for responsible use of alcohol. For those of us who drank in my ambitiously monitored dorm, that was the mode of operation. It could be worse. If I didn’t have access to honest information about drugs on the internet, who knows what I would have tried after marijuana.

Lies are a gateway drug. Hmmm, well I just smoked pot and didn’t go on a murderous rampage. They were probably lying about meth too. I bet it just makes you really energetic for a little while and it’s no biggie.

Drugs are a blight on Barrow, and many other small towns. And big towns. And small cities. And big cities. If there were no drug prohibition, and one had never been attempted, giving it a shot would make a lot of sense. Well… as long as one had no knowledge of the history of prohibitions.