I would like to know why our wonderful government is compelled to pass/enforce laws that only serve to protect me from myself.
Laws are important, they help ensure that the actions of one person or group do not harm another person or group. If I commit robbery or assault, I have impacted another person and that person should be able to cite the law that forbids this and insist that the judicial system make me pay for my actions.
This holds true for the majority of laws/rules/regulations but I think this protection crosses the line when a law is designed purely to protect me from myself and in this regard I refer to drug legislation, marijuana in particular.
As our laws state, it is illegal to possess,distribute,grow or use marijuana. Why? Who, exactly, are they protecting here? I could grow it in my yard, take it into my livingroom and use it in total privacy, without somuch as seeing another person much less harming them yet my actions are illegal. Why?
Could someone enlighten me on any pertinent information that I may be missing? I think that this should be a decision I make for myself, but, apparently I am wrong.
Booze and tobacco are legal, would they if invented today ?
I suspect the government are following medical advice about it being bad for you ? no ?
As far as marijuana is concerned, the reason it is illegal has very little to do with medical concerns. It has to do with the stalk of the plant, hemp, and the competitive threat it posed to a recent invention by the DuPont Corporation, plastic.
Hemp is a naturally grown fiber with a myriad of uses, from clothing to paper to pressboard. About the only thing you can’t do with hemp is build a house. Hemp was grown as a cash crop by America’s Founding Fathers (Washington & Jefferson.) The fact that the leaves & buds of the plant could be used for psychedelic purposes was merely a bonus. 
Enter plastic, a man-made substance that can do just about everything hemp does. In true American fashion, the DuPont corporation, aided by political conservatives on Capitol Hill and such media magnates as William Randolph Hearst, unleashes a smear campaign against the recreational use of marijuana, including such baseless propoganda as the film “Reefer Madness”. Marijuana ends up being demonized as “the evil weed” and is made illegal, thus eliminating DuPont’s competition and allowing them to make enormous profits from its unnatural, unrenewable, and environmentally damaging product.
In other words, the laws against marijuana ARE in place to protect a person’s interest. Just not yours.
J.E.T.
mojo asked:
Because, obviously, you just are not smart enough to know better. Those great men in Washington, however, do know better. So just sit down and shut up and let them do the thinking for you.
The nerve of some people…
[small highjack]
You can not get high off of hemp. That is why it is so ridiculous that Hemp is illegal. You wanna keep marijuana down? Ok, good, fine, just do us all a great justice and let us have our hemp. Paper is gonna run out. There is no doubt about that, may not be tomorrow or 75 years from now, but sometime. Hemp paper could save our asses without having to cut down some of our last virgin forest. Once you are done with the hemp, grow a new patch. Viola.
[/small highjack]
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that we should just go ahead and legalize all drugs (and prostitution and gambling too, while we’re at it). Nonetheless, I, like the Great Cecil, am pretty deeply skeptical of this whole “evil Du Pont conspiracy” line. I think good old-fashioned moralizing Puritan high-minded hysteria was more than sufficient to account for the prohibition of marijuana, just as it was for the prohibition of alcohol (with maybe a dash of racism, too–after all, Negroes smoke marijuana, which everyone knows turns them into crazed sex maniacs–distrust of hard-drinking Irish Papist immigrants probably played a similar role in this country’s experiment with alcohol prohibition).
If the US criminal justice system were not so busy with, and if the prisons were not so crowded with people “guilty” of trying to feel good and/or have fun (or assist someone else in doing so) – that is, violators of our drug, gambling, and prostitution laws – we might be able to deal more effectivly with people who commit real crimes; crimes with actual victims.
I must admit that I had not thought of hemp while forming this question, I actually had another conspiracy theory in mind.
Our government has become so enthralled with the eradication of all of our personal liberties that they couldn’t find a way to legalize marijuana even if they wanted to. In other words, they’re in too deep, they can’t stop now.
Billions of dollars are spent each year in the War Against Drugs. Whole departments of local, state and even Federal law enforcement agencies are dependent on the money they receive for this war.
What, exactly, would we do with all of the officers that are currently fighting this war, lay them off and save the taxpayers some money? You can’t too many votes by saying you are going to lay off the Police.
Politicians run for office on a “War on Drugs” platform and rely on the shock value they can wring from it. They want you and I to believe that we are protecting our friends and neighbors from an evil menace that will, if left unchecked, eventually destroy the world. Very heroic. “Vote for me friends and you will not have to worry about personal liberties…err, I mean drugs, again”. Very heroic indeed.
Nevermind that the primary danger from drugs comes from the illegalization of the drug and not from the drug itself.
The typical scenario of obtaining or using any recreational drug, that is now illegal, goes something like this.
1] Obtain the desire to purchase illegal drug. Drugs are illegal and therefore have a certain allure to them and as anyone knows, most people want that which they can’t have. Especially children and teens.
2]Obtain money to purchase said illegal drug. Drugs are sold on the Black Market and this keeps the price high as the distributors risk incarceration if caught and therefore must make a greater profit in a shorter period of time. How to obtain mass quantities of money? Burglary, thievery or I could sell the drugs themselves since there is such a great profit to be made.
3]Attempt to obtain said drug. Go to area of town that specializes in illegal activity and find color coordinated gang member salesperson and haggle over price and quality of drug. Risk being shot, as the salesperson knows that I have money (see Step 2) and he is very nervous as he doesn’t entirely believe me when I say that I am NOT a cop.(again, see Step2)
4]Actually obtain said drug. I now have broken three laws; attempt to purchase an illegal drug, purchase of illegal drug and possession of illegal drug. If I have bought marijuana I can be semi-certain that I have gotten what I expected. A visual inspection ensures that,at least I can be reasonably assured that I am not about to smoke someone’s science project. If, however, I have purchased any powdered drug or one made into a pill form I can only hope that someone hasn’t tried to modify the chemical makeup of the drug with sugar, baking soda, bleach or anything else I wouldn’t want to ingest. Black market drug makers rarely go throught the FDA when offering a new type of drug to the public, so no testing to ensure quality. Incidentally, crack is the product of the illegalization of cocaine. For awhile the slight differences in the chemical makeup of crack made crack technically different that cocaine so in some jurisdictions was legal, due to loopholes in some communities’ laws. So, the War on Drugs HAS netted one gain, crack. You didn’t know that police helped invent crack? Now you do.
5]Use said drug. Transport drug to home (also a crime). Use drug in the safety and comfort of my own home and rest easy in the knowledge that Big Brother realizes that I have a right to privacy and if I do something in my home and it doesn’t affect anyone else, that I am protected by my God given right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Wrong! If the police find that I have an illegal drug in my home they can, and have proven that they will, storm my home and confiscate all of my possessions, in the name of the law. They will tear apart my home looking for evidence, the will rifle through my well-stocked liqour cabinet looking for a bong or rolling papers, they will tear apart a carton of cigarettes to see if I may have hidden some pot in there and they will empty my utility room of all of the safe, benign and harmless cleaning supplies like bleach and ammonia to see if I have hidden some of those dangerous pot seeds in there.
6] Go to trial and sit in jail. I will share a cell with a murderer or a child molester that will most likely get out before me as noone has declared a War on Murder or a War on Child Molestation. Your state politicians will insist that they need more tax revenue to house me and my fellow prisoners or they will have to let some of us back out into the public. Not the drug users though, some have reached their “three strikes” limit and must stay. We will let the child molesters free, but don’t worry, we make them register so when they have raped your little boy we will know where to find them.
On the other hand, if drugs were legalized, the scenario would be quite different.
1]Obtain the desire to purchase recreational drug. Most adults have the capacity to decide for themselves whether they want use any substance. Most adults enjoy alcohol in a responsible manner and the use of alcohol has no negative impact on their lives.
2]Obtain money to purchase said drug. Now that drugs are legalized and sold alongside alcohol at the local State store the price is down to a reasonable level and can be purchased by the average citizen that chooses to do so. The tax revenue that is garnered from these sales can be used to help fight the War on Child Molestation that was waged in the last election. The gangs have disbanded as they now have nothing to sell and crime in general is down as the lower cost of the drugs has done away with the need to make mass quantities of cash in a short period of time.
3]Attempt to purchase said drug. Go to state store and choose which one I will purchase, simple. Read the label to see what the exact ingredients are and rest assured that, since it is being made by a respectable drug manufacturer and not in someones kitchen, that the drug will be what I expect it to be. The FDA has tested the drug, they do, in fact, state that the drug is not really good for me and they place a warning on it saying so. But, they realize I am an adult and therefore have the final say in what is GOOD for ME. I take my purchases to the register and I am checked out and find the former color coordinated gangmember salesperson has now found gainful employment.
4]Use said drug. This is the tricky part. This is where living in a free country helps, as it involves making a choice or at least, having the freedom to do so. Just as we all know that too much cholesterol is not good for us (yet we eat pork) and too much alcohol is bad for your liver (I’ll have another Bud please) and undercooked beef can cause food poisoning (just knock off the horns, I like it rare), we must make our own choices in life. That’s right our OWN choices. You don’t drink? Fine. Don’t eat beef? That’s your choice. You watch your cholesterol intake? Excellent! You don’t smoke pot? Great, just shut the fuck up if I choose to!
There is no Step 6] I have not impacted anyone with my choice to smoke pot (or snort coke, or even shoot up heroin, although I wouldn’t do that since I am scared of needles), so I remain a free man. The child molesters and murderers can have my cell in the prison and can stay there longer. Some of the prisons could be shut down competely or turned into business schools for the former gang members and drug dealers. They have already proven themselves capable of running a thriving industry and under the harshest of climates.
You see the question really is, “What have we got to lose by legalizing drugs?”
And the answer would be; drug cartels, gangs, drug related crime, drug related murder, overdoses due to poorly made drugs, prostitution for drug money, overcrowded prisons, a bloated police force that syphons away our tax dollars, the allure of an illegal substance and the list goes on.
What have we to gain? Maybe, the most important thing of all. Freedom to decide for ourselves if we wish to partake of an admittedly dangerous practice. But, afterall, isn’t that our own choice to make?
I’d like to point out that drug laws were not originally passed to protect you from yourself. They were passed to prevent people from going crazy and doing all sorts of bad things on drugs and to protect the youth of this country.
Marc
PS: Not that I don’t think those reasons are just a big load of horse crap.
Actually, hemp itself is not illegal. Only the psychedelic parts of the plant (leaves & buds) are illegal. The non-psychedelic stalk of the plant, hemp fiber, is perfectly legal, which is why you can buy hemp-fiber shirts and hats from a head shop.
Thing is…how do you grow a plant without leaves or buds? It would be nice to genetically engineer a plant that only grew the stalk, but I can’t see how that’s possible. (Nor do I know where the hemp shirt & hat manufacturers obtain the hemp fiber in the first place…does anyone know??) Not that it matters to the pro-hemp people, who tend to cover up the fact that they’re mainly interested in legalizing hemp for its psychedelic side effects. Not that I have any problem with that…
J.E.T.
It is, however, illegal to “grow” hemp. Hemp clothing is imported from more “enlightened” countries. Our esteemed Woody Harrelson was recently arrested for planting industrial hemp in protest.
And, I also would like to point the that the notion of a plastics conspiracy against Hemp is ridiculous. Everybody knows that it was the actions of the cotton lobby which helped criminalize hemp production. Damn Conspirators!
MGibson wrote:
And I’d like to point out that the drug laws were not originally passed to prevent people from going crazy or doing bad things or protect youth. The very first anti-drug law in the U.S., which outlawed the smoking form of opium but not other varieties, was specifically targeted at immigrant Chinese. It was done as a means of dissuaging Chinese from immigrating here, and/or to encourage immigrant Chinese to leave. Many native-born workers, particularly railroad workers, were irked that so many Chinese immigrants were taking “their” jobs, and wanted a way to reduce the Chinese populaton without actually attacking them out in the open. (At around the same time, the U.S. passed its first anti-immigration laws, which said, among other things, that you couldn’t immigrate into the U.S. if you were Chinese.)