Surrender

In a few weeks, Californian voters will have the opportunity to surrender in the war on drugs. Not a moment too soon.

Proposition 19 "legalizes marijuana under California. . . law" and "permits local governments to regulate and tax commercial production, distribution, and sale of marijuana." In other words, if passed, this law will immediately save the state millions of dollars associated with jailing people who grow and/or smoke weed and raise millions of dollars in taxes from people who grow and/or smoke weed. Presumably, the state and localities could also realize savings from police budgets or at least redeploy police resources toward more socially useful causes--like finding the Solipsist's lost bottle cap collection (but we digress).

This proposition makes so much sense, in fact, that we have difficulty imagining anyone in his or her right mind opposing it. Indeed, those not in their right minds (e.g., pot-addled tokers) may well comprise the proposition's most ardent supporters. Still, the family-values crowd predictably jumps about and hollers that this will mark the first (or at least latest) step in California's journey to perdition. Amazing how right-wingers can passionately argue for state's rights about everything until a state actually proposes to do something they don't like. Come on, GOP: If pot is outlawed, only outlaws will smoke pot!

But Solipsist, they say (as if we have any family-values followers), you're going to encourage people to smoke pot! You're going to have people driving cars and flying planes stoned! And marijuana is a gateway drug! If you let people smoke marijuana, they will go on to the hard stuff! Cocaine, heroin, Guatemalan toads!

To address these arguments in order:

A) Legalization will "encourage" precisely no one to smoke pot, any more than criminalization has discouraged anyone. People smoke pot (or don't, in our case) because they want to. Sure, if pot is legal, a few more people may say, "What the hell, let me try it." But they will either choose to continue smoking it or not, just as people nowadays make the same choices about cigarettes or alcohol or Will Ferrell movies. Which brings us to

B) Yes, people will drive cars and fly planes stoned--probably to exactly the same extent that people currently drive or fly drunk. Those actions will be just as illegal and, if it makes anyone feel better, the Solipsist has no problem with the idea of strengthening legal sanctions against those activities.

C) Whether or not marijuana is a gateway drug or not, let's take the argument at face value. Let's say that marijuana use encourages people to experiment with harder drugs (which, under this legislation, would still remain illegal), in the same way that a beer drinker may decide to "experiment" with harder stuff like vodka or whiskey. Our response: So what? Yes, folks, we feel that, if anything, this law does not go far enough: Not just marijuana, but ALL drugs should be legalized. Yes, cocaine. Yes, heroin. Yes, crank and meth and whatever new poisons people devise to help numb themselves from reality.

We know we may have lost you with those last few statements, but we're quite serious. Let us be perfectly clear: We do NOT support the use of these drugs. We ourselves have no desire to use these drugs, and were we to find that someone we cared about was using them, we would do everything in our power to get him or her to stop. At the same time, though, we have a completely libertarian view of this issue: If people WANT to use these substances, it is not government's place to tell them they can't. And if the government truly wants to serve its people, it would do far better by ensuring that the supply of these substances is as safe as possible and by providing services to treat these people if and when they decide it is time to quit.

If anyone doubts the preposterousness of the war on drugs, they need look no further than Mexico. In just one state of Mexico, Ciudad Juarez, thousands--THOUSANDS--of people are murdered each year because of rivalries between drug gangs. The police force there has been so decimated--or infiltrated--by the drug cartels, that the Mexican president has nationalized the fight. All this seems to have accomplished is an uptick in the death toll and not all the people--perhaps not even a majority--are actual combatants. Similar stories occur here in the US, as well, of course.

If drug addicts want to destroy themselves in the pursuit of feeling better, that's sad--but acceptable. Better that than leaving collateral damage strewn across the land.

Vote "Yes" on 19. Let's begin the process of surrendering.