Pubdate: Fri, 24 Feb 2006
Source: Technician, The (NC State U, NC Edu)
Copyright: 2006 The Technician
Contact:  http://technicianonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2268
Author: Daniel Underwood
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?224 (Cannabis and Driving)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

SMOKE SCREENS

Marijuana is safer than cigarettes, alcohol and driving without a
seat belt but is prosecuted more viciously than all three combined.

The only real tragedy of marijuana is its tendency, when used
immoderately, to induce a lifestyle of volitional immobility. But
simple self-discipline can easily counter this; and since marijuana
isn't nearly as physically addictive as many other drugs, like
nicotine, alcohol or opiates, this solution is by no means
unrealistic. If people willingly allow marijuana to do what
television, video games and pornography have done to so many, namely
deprive them of ambition and self-control to such an extent they are
unable to live productively, then that is their prerogative. Society
creates its own filters.

The fact most users of hard drugs began with marijuana drives the myth
of marijuana being a "gateway drug." But once someone enters the
illegal marketplace to obtain marijuana, he usually finds the harder
drugs are just a short stroll away. The trend of moving from marijuana
to harder drugs says more about the market than marijuana itself.

People generally proceed from weed to acid to coke (or some other
sequence) in search of an elevated state of mind. But everyone in his
or her own way searches for this; the difference is only in technique.
The drug user who finds promise in the mystical experience of getting
high will surely be enticed to venture farther down the path of
psychoactive exploration. The path only ends when the risks in
obtaining and using the drugs far outweigh the pleasure or fulfillment
brought about by them. By legalizing marijuana, the government would
widen the gulf between the risks associated with marijuana and the
risks associated with harder drugs.

This would radically reduce marijuana users' interest in trying
dangerous narcotics and would, in quite philistine terms, help keep
our kids off crack.

The most hazardous wall our brave user must scale is not the fear of
consumption but the fear of breaking the law or, more accurately, of
being caught.

Once we've pulled marijuana use within legal boundaries, users can lay
their climbing gear by the wayside and comfortably light-up to the
tune of Phish's "Stash," that greatest of guitar solos in the presence
of which all lovers of things psychedelic fall prostrate. The
indignant pointing finger of a law, whose time and purpose have long
left us and moved into the oblivion of puritanical failures, need not
spoil these harmless gatherings.

Now, I'm no godless heathen, but I've found the religious arguments
against marijuana at best hypocritical and at worst simply vacuous.

The commonly crafted religious argument claims either marijuana
impairs moral discernment or the Bible denounces marijuana as sorcery
(using the Greek transliteration "pharmakeia"). But one could just as
easily argue the paranoia and anxiety aroused by marijuana lead to
more guarded behavior and a more distinct awareness of one's own moral
shortcomings. More than likely any injudicious behavior directly
relates to the specific or general lawlessness of marijuana's present
consumers, not to marijuana itself.

Since marijuana is illegal, common sense dictates the majority of
users would be, by definition, "law breakers." Therefore, samples used
in studies to prove the morally debilitating effect of marijuana
cannot be representative of legally sanctioned marijuana consumption.
And the argument against marijuana as sorcery seems merely a
hypocritical move of convenience. Because alcohol was used religiously
in ancient Greece. The divinity Dionysus ("Bacchus") was referred to
as Theoinos, meaning "God-wine;" and the Greek playwright Euripides
wrote, "Bacchus is poured out as a libation to the gods, and through
him men receive good." So why aren't the same religious attacks
launched against alcohol consumption? Is it not possible most
marijuana users smoke to reflect on the sum of their own knowledge and
experience, not to receive some special new word from another
spiritual realm?

Morality is as necessary for a society to flourish as the most
operative enzymes are necessary for a living organism to sustain
itself. Without morality, we lose the ability to process properly the
ideas and habits we as a society absorb and, consequently, end up
poisoning ourselves.

But the only plausible moral objection to marijuana use is it violates
the law. Marijuana isn't illegal because it's wrong -- it's wrong
because it's illegal.

How long will we continue to subject ourselves to this cruel
tautology?

There may be good arguments against the legalization of marijuana, but
a host of fraudulent ones is stifling them. 
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MAP posted-by: Tom