Let me start by saying that terminally and seriously ill patients should easily be given medical marijuana. That isn’t debatable.
The debate is a discussion of whether Proposition 203 goes far enough. My support of the statute comes from a strictly libertarian viewpoint in that I want to legalize all drugs, which is what we’ll touch upon today. Our tax dollars are being wasted on a failing “war on drugs” that is being fought for no reason.
I guarantee you that 100 percent of the people who want drugs will get them eventually. Never in my life have I met a person who didn’t do drugs for the sole reason that they were illegal.
If the government legalized crystal meth tomorrow morning, the same people who aren’t doing it now wouldn’t be doing it then. Getting meth scabs on my face is much more of a deterrent than the government prohibiting me from smoking it.
The worst argument to be made for the legalization of marijuana is that the time has somehow come for us to start accepting the culture. The ambiguous time that everyone talks about? That time already came on Sept. 17, 1787, when the Constitution was adopted.
And if our sorry excuse for a government ever decides to start following our supreme law a little more strictly, marijuana will surely be legalized. But I cannot stress enough that it must be legalized with respect to personal choices and individual responsibility. Any other excuse for its legalization will undermine liberty.
We cannot tell our younger generations that we need to legalize marijuana for a while just because we’re in a deficit. If we do this for the sole reason of fixing the deficit, it sets the precedent that it’s permissible to do anything at all, so long as you need the money.
Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand the worries of parents. But if you don’t want your kids smoking, I recommend teaching them not to smoke. Secondly, I recommend that you support Proposition 203. It will get marijuana into the hands of the government where they can regulate the hell out of it.
Right now, at the age of 20, it is so much easier for me to get an ounce of weed than it is to get a case of beer, in my opinion. And why is that? Well, because the black market has no regulations.
I think the future dispensaries are less likely to hand some pot over to your 15-year-old daughter than will Jerry Drugdealer.
Substance prohibition is a costly dream that will never happen. It is illogical and leads to more danger. It was a catalyst in the creation of cheap crack from formerly expensive cocaine. It has created a dark world out of a market that would not have been more harmful to society than the $1 menu at McDonald’s.
And, most of all, it has left a scar on the surface of our faith in the U.S. Constitution to protect our freedoms, harmful to self or not.
With this final remark, I urge every Arizona resident to vote in favor of Proposition 203.
Reach Brian at brian.p.anderson@asu.edu
