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Cosmic Irony
by lilgrasshoppah | Original Marijuana.com Content | 3.26.2004

In a column titled, “THROW DRUG TRAFFICKERS IN JAIL ,” Mindelle Jacobs made a clear case for drug legalization and regulation. I don’t think she meant to. But any person who recognizes that drug users should not be imprisoned simply for possessing a drug must eventually follow the argument through to its logical conclusion, that neither should they be imprisoned simply for possessing a drug in sufficient quantities to sell it.

If it is wrong to deem criminal the usage of a drug, why is it correct to deem criminal the production and sale of the same drug? Even more damning, if the government recognizes that criminal sanctions do not effectively limit drug purchasing and use, why would criminal sanctions effectively deter drug production and sale? Singapore imposes a death penalty on drug trafficking. Using the logic of columnists like Ms. Jacobs, there should be no drugs produced, sold, bought or consumed in the great state of Singapore. What is the case? Singapore is still killing drug traffickers, and people are still risking death to traffic drugs in Singapore. Draconian measures are not a deterrent. The judicial system of our Great Neighbor To The South metes out strict punishments like the vaunted mandatory minimums that Ms. Jacobs so prizes. They have over one million nonviolent drug offenders clogging the prison system, and yet the US enjoys a far higher drug usage rate than places like Holland, which is nowhere near as punitive. Murderers and rapists receive early release so that nonviolent drug offenders can be locked up. Where is the sense in that?

Throughout her article, Ms. Jacobs refers derogatively to drug dealers as ‘amoral’ ‘scumbag’ ‘predators’ that ‘peddle misery.’ Undoubtedly, many drug dealers are. (The Hell’s Angels spring to mind.) But why is that? If drug-dealing is a criminal offense, then criminals will deal drugs. It is academic.

Why does nobody get the irony of the grow-op in the Molson’s brewery? One recreational drug company (illegal) was occupying the vacated production facility of another recreational drug company (legal), providing jobs and work for hundreds of laborers… that is cosmic irony. Especially since alcohol trafficking was illegal at one time too… meaning the only thing that makes beer moral and pot immoral is timing. Now, guess what? Scumbags and scoundrels of yesteryear made bathtub gin and green beer with the same ingenuity, fervor and cynicism that modern scumbags and scoundrels make methamphetamine and grow “BC Bud”. And you know what else? All through Prohibition, The Seagram brothers of Kitchener, Ontario lined-up barrels and barrels of top-quality Canadian rye whiskey at the US-Canada border to aid Al Capone’s little business ventures. Were they scoundrels for producing a drug that the public demanded? Did they stop being scoundrels when prohibition was repealed, even though they unrepentantly continued to produce whiskey for sale to the States without even pausing for breath? Or maybe they were never scoundrels in the first place. Maybe the law itself was at fault, and the Seagrams were just enterprising businessmen with an eye for a lucrative market and a good understanding of human nature.

The government recognized, after much needless heartache, that alcohol prohibition was a complete failure. Nobody looking back on those days will logically argue that alcohol prohibition did anything but increase the harm associated with alcohol use. The government concluded that the most effective means of reducing the harm of alcohol use was legalization, regulation and education. Legalization and regulation took alcohol production out of the hands of the criminals and put it into the hands of legally responsible, tax-paying professionals. No more methanol cutting the bathtub gin: only pure, clearly-defined ingredients. No more car radiators brewing up mercury-laced moonshine: only government-inspected, sterile copper stills brewing ethanol spirit at up to ninety-seven percent by volume. To be bottled in government-inspected plants, and shipped by government-inspected trucks to tax paying outlets. At every stage of the process, government oversight ensures that the harms associated with consuming alcohol are reduced and clearly explained. The customer entering a liquor store knows what he is getting. He is aware of what dangers abuse presents (from medical problems to social problems to criminal problems). And, by paying for his bottle and taking ownership of it, he demonstrates that he understands there are risks involved, and he accepts responsibility for those risks so that he can go home and enjoy his drug responsibly, with no interference from the authorities, thank you very much.

If the above is true of alcohol, is especially true of cannabis. Not one… not two… but many… reports, from many different sources, all finding that cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol, and that the harms caused by prohibition FAR out-weigh the harms caused by the plant itself. I will say that again: the harms caused by prohibition far outweigh the harms caused by the plant itself.

Prohibitionists here present a curious willful ignorance, not to mention farcically ironic passivity… for, even though man has cultivated cannabis sativa for drug purposes since before recorded history (not to mention the exhaustive study cannabis has undergone since 1937), prohibitionists don’t know enough about the herb to make an informed decision. ‘Let’s hold off on legalizing until we study a bit more.’ What’s to study? What angle can the government investigate that they haven’t investigated over and over since 1937 when pot was first made illegal? What did the British Raj’s Report on Indian Hemp miss, that the LaGuardia report overlooked, that Consumer Reports’ ignored, that the Shaffer commission skipped, that the LeDain Commission denied, that the IOM report misinterpreted, that the Canadian Senate hearings disregarded? What can be so dangerous about pot that we have never heard about it even though we looked and listened and waited for sixty-seven years? The world has shown that it can tolerate all sorts of risky behavior without wholesale societal collapse. Heck, even BASE jumpers get one day a year to do their quaint dress rehearsal for mass suicide. Why is weed so frightening… (not mention: impenetrably mysterious, and confusing) that prohibitionists quail at the thought of even discussing it?

If people weren’t going to jail… if sick people weren’t being denied medicine… hell if sick people weren’t being KILLED like Peter MacWilliams was killed, then I would laugh at the farce this is. There’s that word again, farce. That’s the only way to describe a policy which continually receives payment for failure. That’s the only way to describe a policy which looks at the overcrowded, overburdened, overworked criminal justice system and says, “you know what we need? To lock up more people! Let’s burden the system even more!” Do you know that somebody is murdering women on the Lower Mainland of British Colombia? The cops don’t have a description of the suspect, and do not have any leads. In fact, the last time I checked, they haven’t done any investigation. Guess why. They’re too busy busting pot farmers! So, unless this killer hangs out in grow ops, neither the RCMP nor the Vancouver Police will ever find him. That’s a farce, folks.

Mindelle Jacobs favors harsh penalties for growing pot, which don’t work in Singapore. She favors mandatory minimum sentences, which don’t work in the U.S. She favors jail for growers, while simultaneously recognizing that jail doesn’t work as a deterrent for users. And that’s a farce too.

lilgrasshoppah

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Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

 

beheade

If there is a nail, that was the head. I am printing that for my pa, he is gonna hate it. Mabey I will send a copy to Doc. Hastings my PIA of an elected official.

Brent

CheebaMonkey

Wow, this is a really good article!

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KWhite

Excellent article

Good reading and a more than fair analysis!

Kelly.

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"Your mind is your own, your body as well, from the soul we need not speak, tend it well, making those decisions you deem worthy, aware all responsibility is in your hands when the smoke clears" Kelly L. White

"It is a principle of natural justice that when bad men make bad laws, or when unprincipled authorities compromise good ones, citizens are justified in protecting themselves from the very authority that compromised law and order." Gandhi

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Suetaz

Awesome reply lilgrasshoppah! Well said. You spurred a rant within me.
It is a fact that prohibition creates a black market. Why do people turn to selling drugs on the black market? Out of desperation. Out of the will to live. LIFE is expensive. Some do it to get ahead faster, some do it just to survive. But what it boils down to is that people need the money. The demand for drugs will always be there and the supply will always be there no matter how many drug dealers are arrested. An end to drug prohibition would create a legitimate supply for drugs and would allow for legitimate control of drugs making them safer and would eliminate the 'crime' involved. Eliminate the crime, eliminate the senseless killings. The number of people arrested for dealing or possessing drugs grows at a rapid rate. All those people are now marked for life and may find it impossible to get legitimate jobs. How will they make money? By selling drugs again. What choice do they have? It's a vicious cycle that needs to be stopped.

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