RDH - Weeding Out the Riffraff

Weeding Out the Riffraff

January 24, 2007

In the United States, people have long talked about freedom and democracy. Yet we have never been entirely free. True, some people, like Bill Gates, could be free if they were mentally healthy enough to stop working. But most of us are essentially contracted out as slaves for at least some significant portion of our lives.

"Is marijuana addictive?" Yes, but so is good TV.

Some freedoms we trade willingly. For instance, most of us are smart enough to realize that when we drive an automobile on a public roadway, we are giving away most of our rights in exchange for the freedom to travel quickly to any point in the United States and beyond. Those who don't realize this are the ones who might drink and drive or drive with a suspended license, for example.

"Is marijuana bad for your lungs?" Yes, but so are cigarettes. Yet cigarettes are legal, in spite of the fact that they don't even cause a euphoric sense of calm well-being. Moreover, cigarettes, unlike pot, are essentially useless as synesthetic catalysts.

Our craving for convenience kills thousands each year. Last year, for example, more than ten times the number of United States citizens killed and maimed since the start of the most recent Iraq war were killed or maimed on American roadways. You are taking your life and the lives of others into your hands whenever you drive, and no one has the authority to waive this responsibility—not even successful managers of Major League Baseball teams.

(It's a shame, as far as people who love to go out and get drunk are concerned, that we live in an automobile culture. Gone, for the most part, are the days when you could be an absolute drunk as long as you pulled your weight during harvest time.)

Other freedoms we trade unwillingly or in relative ignorance. Take marijuana, for example. Marijuana is a mild, pleasant psychotropic. It's part of nature's bounty, no less than beer or wine. Moreover, it's obviously far less harmful than alcohol. But that makes it the perfect tool of social control.

Just as all of us trade some of our freedom and safety for the privilege of driving, we trade our freedom to experience a great drug for the privilege of safer upscale enclaves and on-time delivery of our packages 365¼ days a year. The government knows that if marijuana were legal, the poor would have a good excuse not to work, and even the rich might care a little less about maximum productivity. This way, it's perfect: the least obedient among the poor are lured by a perfectly good drug and invariably get caught, whereas the rest—the rule followers and those with a lot to lose—play the game and allow corporations to hum and governments to retain power over an obedient or incarcerated or otherwise marginalized citizenry. (And don't think the government makes no sacrifice: it gives up the extra taxation that it could reap if the manufacture, sale, and regulation of top-flight marijuana were legal.)

"Would legalizing drugs really change anything?" Yes. For one thing, more black people would be out of jail. Do people fighting the War on Drugs know this? Probably.

One other thing the government must do, of course, is to keep its story straight. But that's easy. Even I know the drill: marijuana is a gateway drug; marijuana use by teenagers harms developing brains; marijuana use increases the chance that you will have sex as a teenager; marijuana may cause cancer. That is, of course, part fiction, partly irrelevant, and partly wish fulfillment to those who fully expect not to get ahead in the world.

Marijuana: next to church, the most effective tool in weeding out undesirables from American life.