Arguments For & Against Legalization

The so-called American War on Drugs refers to a series of failed legislative programs intended to suppress the consumption of certain recreational drugs the plutocratic controlling party was too fearful themselves to consume, or admit to consuming. This bogus war was first put in place by name by the famously paranoid US President, Richard Nixon (sounds like coke if you ask me,) in 1972 to describe the United States’ series of fatly funded programs paid to fundamental conservatives in vein attempts to control society, and the growing class of free-thinkers blossoming around the county.

The So-Called “War on Drugs”

The War on Drugs has always employed a handful of strong-arm techniques towards achieving its goal of eliminating recreational drug use, with the end result being a higher-than-ever prevalence of drug use across the country:

Specialized Law Enforcement

Specialized agencies sprung up overnight, bolstered by billions in tax-payer dollars, flush with officers and techniques designed to (mis)inform and (counter)educate the public on the dangers of recreational drug use. Critics often cite these campaigns as a primary reason to end the War on Drugs; they claim the campaigns are frequently misleading or outright lying. They rely on a strange form of streamlined enforcement and evidence-gathering procedures that would never stand for a minute in other avenues of law enforcement, but get by thanks to the universal inexperience of Public Defenders. Marijuana is one such drug included in this imaginary and ineffectual war.

Roots of Marijuana Law in the US

The Marijuana Tax Act was introduced in 1937. It required sellers to obtain a license, and it would have worked well for taxation and regulation. Prohibiting marijuana wasn’t the explicit intention of this law, even though it happened to kill the trade. Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger testified in hearings that the hemp plant needed to be banned because it had a “violent effect on the degenerate races.” This specifically referred to Mexican immigrants who had entered the country seeking jobs during the Great Depression, but also alluded to blacks and some Chinese who had given up the opium pipe for greener pastures. This was the first, if not the most obvious, basis for using marijuana as a political tool in our history.

The law passed quickly and with little debate since it seemed so harmless on the surface. The American Medical Association (AMA) protested the law soon after, both on the grounds of scientific findings, but also based on the supporters’ outright and obvious lies on the subject. The sponsors of the law had even claimed that the AMA had voiced support for this legislated prohibition, when in fact the exact opposite was true.

There was a fair amount of legal debate over the legal issues after law was already passed, but by then it was too late, as it would take another act of congress to undo it. The people who were allowed to issue the marijuana licenses didn’t due to community pressures, so this enacted a de facto ban on marijuana from the highest levels. The judicial system did not immediately accept that being arrested in possession of marijuana was a tax violation because it must have come from an unlicensed source (because there were no licensed vendors,) but that wasn’t the end of the matter at all. Because of this, the federal government decided that that they somehow had the right to regulate the ingestion of ALL drugs, including marijuana.

As such, marijuana was arbitrarily thrown into the same category as all of the harshest, most addictive drugs the world has ever known, some of which are still legal for a variety of purposes.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA:

An outright prohibition must be weighed against the loss of personal freedom. Countries have a responsibility to respect individual free will and the right of self-determination, and some would argue that America is a free country where free will is respected… others might know better.

Morality vs. Legality

The immorality of marijuana use can only be based on one set of moral beliefs. For example, it is discriminatory to claim that Judeo-Christian abstinence from intoxication is the correct set of moral beliefs. There is no specific prohibition of marijuana mentioned in the Bible, and other intoxicants, even highly addictive ones like tobacco and alcohol, are permitted. Even if it was mentioned in the Bible, what about those of other faiths, or no faith at all, in this great land of separated church and state?

Political Partisan Hackery

The War on Drugs has served short-term interests of politicians ever since its criminalization. By taking a moral stand against all recreational drugs, even marijuana, despite its specific uniqueness among recreational drugs, or fighting the evils caused by the illegal drug trade, these populist politicians have been able to increase their popularity amongst constituents without actually doing anything to benefit the people, or the land. It’s an easy sell to a political base, especially when it’s a secondary matter, which it has always been.

Prohibition Don’t Work

Legal prohibition has never stopped consumers from using drugs, nor has it stopped drug traffickers from producing, transporting, and selling it, often at tremendous profits. Because of the black-market trade in the product, the price of the product on the street increased to sky-high values beyond what an open market would permit, just because of the dangers involved in sale and transport.

Critics of the War on Drugs advocate the partial or complete decriminalization or outright legalization of recreational drugs, combined with a system of regulation, as happens with alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs. By providing legal channels for the supply of marijuana the price will fall, leading to a collapse in the illegal marijuana sales industry, and a reduction in crimes committed by both drug suppliers and users. With very few exceptions, all crimes related to marijuana are for possession or sale. Therefore, not only would taxation and regulation come in to place, but the burden on the court and prison systems would automatically and permanently diminish.

Advocates for legalization further say that the reduction in price and increase in availability will lead to little, if any, growth in drug use or addiction, due to the inelasticity of demand. Some even state that in a strictly regulated market, drug use may fall overall, by removing the marketing activities of the illegal drug industry. Further, marijuana sales to those under the age of 21 would become illegal, as it is for alcohol, which would decrease the number of under-age users of the substance, who otherwise purchase from drug dealers who will sell to anyone with $10.

Fund Drug Treatment for Serious Drugs

The taxation could also be used for vast increases in currently underfunded drug treatment programs.

It is not worthwhile for the law to forbid people from willingly exposing their own bodies to harm. Whether that is by smoking, staying up too late the night before work, overeating or participating in sky diving. Obesity is a national epidemic, killing millions every year, but the government has no right to regulate how much citizens eat. They also have no right to tell us what we can smoke, provided we do so in a safe environment where outsiders can’t be harmed.

Who Has the Right?

Your government doesn’t have the right to dictate what harms citizens inflict upon themselves, provided no others are harmed in the process. Speed limits are not strictly established not to protect individuals from themselves, but to protect others from their often poor speeding decisions. It is still possible to quit using any drug once a pattern of abuse is established. Many banned drugs are significantly less detrimental to free will than other “sins” like alcohol or tobacco. Severe physiological addiction has been demonstrated for tobacco (stronger than cocaine), but no strong physiological addiction has been shown for marijuana, nor has any pattern of harm to those who live and work around the user.

No Harm but (self-)Harm

There is no third party harm to those in proximity to marijuana users. Driving while intoxicated is illegal, but drinking alcohol without driving is not. The same would be true of marijuana. Marijuana users are not likely to break laws by stealing or robbing to feed drug habits, unlike users of other drugs including alcohol. With prices falling even further, the potential for financial harm would become virtually unimaginable.

Benefits of Legalization

Legalization would allow greater regulation and purity standards, improving overall health risks for those choosing to imbibe. Legal drugs contain a listing of all active and inactive ingredients, as well as drug interactions. Marijuana could be sold legally with this same sort of ingredients lists, safety regulations, standards, warnings, cautions for drug interactions (something it currently does not have) and purity levels clearly marked.

Recreational use of marijuana has no clear and obvious harmful effect on anyone besides the user who chooses to accept those risks through what many like to think of as famously American self-actualization. The War on Drugs on the other hand places non-users’ friends, loved ones, fathers and mothers in jail for doing what is legal in other places, and other times in the history of the same place, even though they do not risk harming anyone but themselves, and even then far less than they would by the consumption of legal products. The only beneficiary to these “crimes” then remains untaxed, operating illegally, selling unregulated products from non-safety tested growers who may be down the street or across the world in an unfriendly nation.

No More Terrorists

Some have argued that illegal drugs supply cash to terrorist states and rogue nations. Though the truth of these claims is widely disputed, the legalization and regulation of the supply chain would eliminate any such possibility.

The legalization of marijuana would permit regulation, shut down the illegal supply chain, ensure purity and quality, create a new tax revenue stream, and free courts and prisons from millions of would-be criminals whose crimes do not involve harm to third parties, but rather just simple possession. Not only would it eliminate billions in tax expenditure, it would create billions in tax revenue.

Countries that have worked towards legalization have had positive results socially, economically and politically.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA:

A government can’t be involved with the distribution of a substance considered immoral by large chunks of their constituency, unless it was handled quietly a long time ago. For example, a national move to legalize prostitution would fail resoundingly, even though it’s still permitted throughout the majority of Nevada because of its age-old legalization.

Just Make More Stoners

One argument is that legalization would create new consumers rather than giving a better alternative to the current ones.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmm-Kay?

Another argument is that all drugs are addictive and rob the user of free will. A drug user cannot make an informed and rational decision to continue using drugs because the use of the drug eliminates that user’s ability to think logically. For many drugs, this is a valid argument, based on scientific study, even if it isn’t for marijuana.

Gateway That Isn’t PC

Another unfounded argument is that the use of soft drugs, such as marijuana, leads to the use of hard drugs like crack, PCP and heroin.

But What About The Children?

An argument that often tops the list is the suggestion that drug dealers will sell to anyone, including children, despite very strong laws prohibiting it, such as those enforced currently against those who sell tobacco or alcohol to minors. Currently, however, many high school students report that it is easier to obtain illegal drugs than alcohol and tobacco, so the argument can work against itself perhaps even worse.

Another argument is that legalizing drugs will send a message to children that drug use is acceptable. This is a debate for you and your family to discuss, debate and decide, because it is not the place of your government to tell you what is, and what is not, an acceptable moral practice.