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| The War on Drugs. Via Andrew Sullivan |
My view - regardless of the arguments back and forth about the effects of marijuana - is simply that it is absurd for any government to prevent people from growing a naturally-occurring plant that requires no processing to provide humans with pleasure. It's pretty basic, actually. This is a core freedom for human beings and requires an insane apparatus of state control and police power to prevent it from occurring. All you have to do is burn a plant and inhale the smoke. If humans are not free to do this in the natural world in which they were born, what on earth are they free to do?Given the amount of ant-drug war sentiment 'round these parts lately, I feel I should disclose I don't light up. Not cigarettes, not jay-bones, nothing. I'm boring and old. Not to say I didn't inhale some stuff back in the day ... but it's been a long time. The reason I'm so fired up about this lately is we are going broke as a nation and we can't afford to throw good money after bad on a "war" that can't be won and, compounding the problem, actually increases the amount of suffering in the world.
I don't think legalizing it is as the top of the list of things to do, we've got other un-winnable wars we should be ending first; but, really, is it so hard to see the link between prohibition and organized crime? Let's get it out in the open, deal with the issues honestly, figure out what the appropriate controls are (like how we allow adults to drink alcohol, but not to drive impaired), and act like grown-ups.
