Aug. 30,
2000
Victimless Crimes...I Think Not
I already knew when I decided to do this article that not everyone would like the idea behind it. But I have a right as anyone else to say my opinions. After all, this is my site, not yours. And this is a long rant.
I just watched a rerun of Politically Incorrect with Bill Mahr. This is a show I follow well, mainly beacuse a lot of my views are reflected by the host. Not all, but some. Anyways, this was the week that he was in prisons, and today featured two people who were in prison for drug charges, as well as a former prosecuter. The topic was presented on why people were put behind bars for smoking marjuihuana, crack, and other drug-crimes. Bill put forth a point that I hold myself. Why is it legal for a person to come home, drink a little scotch, smoke a pack of cigarettes, and calm down at the end of a day--but if the same person was instead smoking a joint, he could be arrested for drug charges? The prosecuter went on and on about legal verses not legal and ducked around without ever saying her views, even though Bill and the two inmates asked her, as well as the fourth person on the panel (whose name eludes me).
Okay, cut show. This is where my views come in. Like I said, my views are not the norm. Then again, I never claimed to be politically correct. Anyways, here goes.
I think marjuihuana should be legalized.
Okay, for the ones who clicked off the page as soon as they read that...*pbbtt* Now, for you people who want to actually figure out some of my logic, read on.
I also think that all drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, should be illegal if marjuihuana isn't legal. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Either strike it all, or let what's good in.
Why?
Marjuihuana is like tobacco. You take the leaves, dry them, roll them up in pretty paper, and puff. The only difference between the two in sales is that cigarettes are shipped in, made by companies, come in nice little packs on the shelf, with nice names like Newport and Virginia Slims, and they get really cute ads that show people having fun and looking pretty with cigarettes, while marjuihuana is smuggled in from whereever it is, rolled up by hand or sold as leaves, and show in a negative nasty light on every commercial and anti-drug add you pick up.
Cigarettes can be puffed on damn near everywhere you look. If a cop walks in and sees a joint on your nightstand, you get hauled off to jail on drug charges. Nicotine causes lung cancer, mouth cancer, breathing troubles, gooey tar teeth, and other really nasty things. Marjuihuana has been proven to aid some diseases and relieve pain with a few adverse affects. I don't want to think about the things that can be stuffed in a cigarette by the companies that make them. Marjuihuana can be rolled and made into joints by hand, so you know what's in your stuff before you puff it.
Oh yeah, there's that whole law thing. Puffing on cigarettes is legal everywhere. Marjuihuana ain't. And let's not even get into alcohol. It was, it wasn't it was again, and its effects didn't change a bit.
Now, I wonder, why is it okay to smoke and drink--which doesn't do a thing to aid a person's health--but smoking weed is a crime that can get a person years in jail? I think I may have a semi-sane theory.
Profit.
A person can't really make cigarettes at home anymore. Too much processing. Too much purifying. Too much this, too much that. Alcohol's the same--the effort it takes to make liquor makes most people throw their hands up and plunk over cash for a good bottle of Jack Daniels. But marjuihuana can be grown at home like a house plant, dried by hand, and rolled by hand. Who really needs the middle man?
If marjuihuana was legalized, there would be almost no way to make a profit. Sure, it could be regulated, even made into a prescription. (Heck, we haven't studied the plant. There might be the cure for something in there. God put the weed here for something--I mean, we did find a use for opium.) But there's no way a person could set up a business, like Miller Beer and Phillip Morris, and make billions. You don't want to buy the product? Grow it raw in your backyard and make a tidy nest egg by selling to others. It's not like Weed 'R Us can stop you.
But nope. Politicians say that we have a drug war to fight, and meanwhile they're puffing on cigars with martinis in their hands. They take away the father who takes damn good care of his kids and smokes a little reefer while listening to his Bob Marley CD and throw him in jail for twenty years, and they take the woman who gets sloppy drunk with the rent money and beats her kids daily and merely send her to AA with plans to just force the kids back to her once she's "clean". They take the child of the crack mother away forever and call her unfit and unworthy to raise a child, and they take the mother of the chain smoker who goes through two packs a day and just advise her that smoking isn't healthy for her child and to lay it off for a few months. And no, I don't endorse crack in anyway, before you go and bite my head off. I don't like any of it. I think they all are nasty, destructive, revolting habits. But if I was to look at it in society, I just think it's really hypocritical.
Let the person smoke weed in their house. Hell, I have people walk past me all the time puffing on cigarettes and sending me into nasty coughing fits that leave me struggling to breathe, but if I was to ride in a car with a close friend of mine who has a joint in his pocket and we got pulled over by the cops, all Hell would come crashing down on my head. And I don't smoke either one.
Why is one drug legal and not another? Don't give me that "death and illness" crap; I can go kill myself with a bottle of asprin and pine cleaner. Want to pull those from the market? Don't give me addiction--people smoke up their rent and drink away the light bill, and get away with AA or nothing in the case of cigarettes. People pay damn near three bucks a pack to taste refreshing tar and methane, along with carbon monoxide (which replaces oxygen, thus causing a slow suffocation). People sued tobacco companies for smoking and dying because of their addiction. People drink themselves into death, kill themselves and each other with car crashes, and lose control of themselves. They have sex when drunk and then can't remember what the hell happened. They claim it's not a drug addiction because this is all legal. Why? Because the government says so. Anyone ever stop to think that just maybe the government was off its rocker?
Hypocritical is still hypocritical. You wanna smoke your life away or search for your inner peace though a beer bottle? Have fun. But don't point at the weed smokers and crack addicts and tell them they're nasty and criminal. Just cause I can legally chew on eletrical cords doesn't mean I should. It will kill me. And so will almost any drug out there, if you stuff it in your body long enough. You know about supply and demand. If Big Brother Government says not to eat the chocolate cake, you know the little chocolate addicts are gonna take it the second you turn your back. If you ban cake, they'll just smuggle it in.
No, I do not agree with the fact that drugs are a victimless crime. I don't like the idea of more crack babies and heroin chic in fashion. But I don't like the idea of infants dying of fetal alcohol syndrome and sexy actors puffing on cigarettes in my movies. Do me a favor. Don't bitch at me that one's wrong and the other's right, cause it's all wrong. Either make it all illegal, cause it will all kill you, or make it legal, because saying A is okay and B is not is hypocritical. Either let people mess up their lives by their own choice, or make it so no one can. Middle ground isn't working.
Hey , big tobacco men? Miller Beer? You're profiting off emphysema and liver disease. What makes you think your being legal makes it any better?
Bush and Gore? You want to win the war on drugs? The way it's going now, I think it's a losing battle.
Prohibition didn't work in the early part of the 20th century. The "war" on drugs isn't doing much better at the start of the new millenium.