I have been receiving emails for some days from someone who was concerned that my PajamasMedia piece about marijuana and increased psychosis risk was being "misused" by evil people whose primary goal is "HARM MAXIMIZATION"--people whose primary goal is to throw as many people into prison as possible for drug abuse.
I wasn't quite sure where this guy was going, but I tried to engage in a polite conversation, explaining that while I don't support decriminalization, the primary goal needs to be reducing demand by making kids, especially, aware of the substantial risks involved in using marijuana. Education has to be the primary strategy in reducing pot use, because interdiction doesn't work--and leads to its own set of problems.
The latest email insists:
I am a volunteer medical patient advocate who specializes in human rights. I personally feel that decriminalization is a moral imperative and is inevitable given the facts but if you want to argue against decriminalization I am sure I can find a decrim activist to engage you.Intriguing description of himself: "volunteer medical patient advocate who specializes in human rights." (Rather like the whimsical way that certain persons driving their Cadillacs on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley used to be called "self-employed, mobile, alternative pharmaceutical retailers.") So I Googled his name: Michael Kravitz. And what did I find?
Hey, that guy is pretty good: I was sitting in the crime subcommittee chamber of the Virginia House listening to my mentor Eric Sterling speak to the Members, when the Army veteran who would soon address the Members on the issue of medical marijuana whispered about how good Eric was. I smiled. Read this analysis by the event’s organizer Michael Kravitz.I'm not going to bother talking to this guy anymore. His emails are full of the religious fanaticism that turns everyone who disagrees with him into evil. And this is not surprising; there are a lot of people for whom marijuana is a god. Pretending that he is not a "decrim advocate" when his organization's blog makes it clear that he organizes events for marijuana decriminalization just shows how far the pot worshipers are prepared to go to accomplish their ends.
“Eric Sterling www.cjpf.org/, www.LEAP.cc was the star witness in favor of Decriminalization HB1134. Eric rebuffed the straw men* that Delegate Bell threw in his way of 43 year olds selling to 3rd graders etc. with righteous indignation and roundly scolded the Delegates for their grade school pranks* of putting a tray of brownies* in the Delegates lounge or disrupting Delegate Morgan’s House floor speech with Cheech and Chong jokes showing that he was paying close attention to local politics which hit pay dirt as Delegate Bell’s posse* had pulled those pranks. Eric said that such jokes and pranks showed they believed that marijuana use wasn’t a real problem and referred to real problems such as swine flu.”
When you say "decriminalization", do you mean of pot or of harder drugs also? The side-effects of pot are hard to spot and predict, but the side-effects of, say, cocaine are well known. Yet there is a case to be made that even this should be decriminalized -- the argument is that drug crime, or the drug gangs in foriegn countries, are worse than the drug use itself.
ReplyDeleteI understand the arguments for decriminalization. I have made them myself, when I was younger. My objection is to people misrepresenting their position.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that marijuana and meth, to pick two examples, have substantial social costs. So does prohibition. Much like alcohol, laissez faire creates big problems, and so does trying to ban it.
By the way, one of the points of the PajamasMedia article to which I linked is that one particular problem--increased psychosis rates--is actually easy to identify for marijuana.
ReplyDeleteI follow the 'do the least harm' path on these issues. If prohibition leads to more harm than the drug use itself, eliminate prohibition.
ReplyDeleteI use the same argument about gun control. Banning guns (were it possible) might eliminate some social ills, but at the cost of much greater harms.
I favor legalization of drugs. The harm of prohibition is simply too great, especially when you include the effects in poorer countries.
The difficulty with the harm measure is that harm isn't a simple sum. There is harm done to some people by prohibition, and harm done to others be decriminalization. Not surprisingly, most Americans remain supportive of prohibition because they are looking out for their kids, and regard the harm associated with prohibition as an acceptable cost.
ReplyDeleteAs I have pointed out, there are intermediate steps between War on Drugs craziness and decriminalization. Much of the harm of prohibition is associated with attempts to suppress the supply. There is very little harm from reducing demand.
I think the best solution for these guys is give them all the free pot they can smoke, plus an endless supply of chips and other munchies, a secondhand couch, a basement, and non-stop cable re-runs of 70's sitcoms. Who needs prison when they can imprison themselves?
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty is that the pot worshipers have created an entire subculture, and in some parts of the country, woe unto the middle schooler that doesn't want to be part of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's more important to legalize some drugs than others. For example, we must legalize opiates in order to stop the alliance between the Taliban and Afghan opium farmers. Legalizing pot without legalizing other drugs will simply put it into the category of Official Government-Approved Mind-Altering Chemical That Must Not Be Criticized.
ReplyDeleteI agree that opiates make more sense to legalize than pot or meth. To my knowledge, opiates don't have the psychosis-inducing problems of pot, or the incredible stupidity and violence problems of meth.
ReplyDelete