Meredith Berger, in her recent column (“Trampled weeds,” Nov. 11), asks the following: “So I am curious as to why states are beginning to legalize the drug. It seems to me that if recreational marijuana is not going to help the economy, then what good is legalizing it?”
Meredith’s question raises several points.
First off, the dictate of a politician proclaiming this or that is good or bad for the “economy,” is rightly taken with a small grain of salt by most (to put it charitably).
But why are people starting to re-legalize marijuana? So that adults are no longer subject to a violent arrest (shot dead if they run or otherwise resist) and incarceration for pot, that’s why.
People don’t believe what government says about pot these days. People just aren’t buying government cries of, “Marijuana — Wolf!” like they once did.
Maybe Berger missed the news: Prosecutors in Washington state dropped pot charges for hundreds of people, and that is just two counties — in the first week.
Arrest. Jail. Prison. Why are these topics ones that Berger forgot to mention? Arrest and imprisonment are somehow not relevant to legalizing pot?
It is unjust to jail people for simply using or selling alcohol — or marijuana. Unjust laws need to be changed. Government isn’t infallible.
As Thomas Jefferson put it:
“Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food.
Government is just as fallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error.”
— Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” 1784
People don’t like government to dictate what medicines they are forbidden to take. They especially do not like being arrested, fined, dragged through the court system and jailed for using the plant. They don’t like having their houses “seized” by the government using pot as the excuse. People do not enjoy being made UNICOR or CCA twenty-five-cents-an-hour sweat-shop slaves for the sake of pot, either. Berger may not believe such happens; or, on the other hand, she may think such punishment is justly meted to cannabis-criminals. If so, Meredith should come out and proudly state that. (She didn’t). But to answer Meredith’s (rhetorical?) question, more and more people — majorities in some states now — don’t agree that people should be jailed for pot.
So, that is why people are beginning to re-legalize cannabis. Juries are nullifying pot cases more and more — even in Charlottesville, Virginia.
People don’t think other people should be violently arrested (possibly shot) and put in prison, for pot.
People are re-legalizing marijuana to re-establish traditional rights and freedoms that all Americans once shared. Access to cannabis, medical and otherwise, is one of those freedoms people want back, again.
Doug Snead is a drug policy analyst.
Read More
PARTING SHOT: On the art of walking and chewing gum
By Nathan Onibudo | YesterdayStudent journalism, and maybe even life more generally, is about holding space for multiple conflicting truths.
PARTING SHOT: Confessions of a nepo baby
By Grace Thrush | 2 days agoWhile I can’t point to one specific “aha” moment where I finally started to dispel my self-consciousness and claim my pride for the paper, I got there gradually over the course of my term as managing editor.
PARTING SHOT: Asked and answered
By Honor Wood | 2 days agoLooking back, the answer has been abundantly clear all along. I did it for the people.
