(crossposted from the frontpage of MyLeftWing)
I write a lot about social, cultural, political and moral contradictions. Sometimes people find it offensive or tiresome, but it’s important to identify aspects of our society that are ripe for improvement, and there are so very many of them just begging for our attention. We won’t even get into the whole "we’re a ‘christian’ nation but we act like heathens" thing (apologies to heathens). Let’s confine ourselves in this brief diary to drug prohibition in general, and marijuana prohibition in particular.
(more below the fold...)
Why shine a spotlight on our national hypocrisy? Because admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
NOTE: I purposely did not capitalize Christian in the first paragraph above, because I was referencing hypocrisy, not religion. No offense intended to anyone. Peace.
NOTE 2: My diaries tend toward the op-ed side of things rather than the journalistic, and if I don’t give elaborate supporting evidence for my every statement or claim, it’s because I assume you understand that it is my opinion that I’m expressing, and not anything carved in stone or spoken to me from a burning bush – necessarily.
A brief recap of how we got here...
"Thank God the American’s got the Puritans and we got the criminals."
~ Australian saying
Our Anglo-Saxon progenitors were always a bit uptight (don’t be offended ye of European ancestry, I happen to be among you). Any Indian or black person could tell you though. We’ve always been a little touchy at best. Early American culture was heavily influenced by Puritanism, Calvinism, and a whole host of other isms that have kept us wound tighter than a clock down through the centuries.
My people have always had a hard time relaxing, what with kings and barons always stealing our barley and running off with our fair maidens and such, religious persecution and whatnot. It’s enough to make a fella uptight. We can’t relax – that damned baron could be anywhere, and the church is burning people at the stake again. The pleasure and refreshment of deep and true relaxation too often eludes us. That’s why so many of us can’t dance and why when we go bad we tend to drink like fish. Alcoholism is a long and proud tradition with us (we Irish anyway) – it kills a good many of us.
Our general uptightness and difficulty in relaxation may also explain why it made us so uncomfortable ‘long about 1930 or so when it came to our attention that Negroes (remember it’s the 30s) and Mexicans were smoking weed and communing with the universe and each other in a most relaxed and jubilant sort of way. They would dance, laugh, make music, and make love, joyfully, gleefully, peacefully, with total relaxation and benign abandon. It made them eerily calm and peaceful. White people didn’t know what to think. It seems that nobody has an inclination to fight or fuss when they’re high on weed – entirely unlike our old friend alcohol.
Peaceful though it might have been, it worried the white folks, especially when white people started smoking it too. Such euphoria just wasn’t natural. No poor folks had a right to that much serenity, or that great a sense of well-being. That was the jealously guarded purview of rich white folk, so they made a law. And they did it in a most underhanded and devious way (so like my people - * sigh *).
THE MARIHUANA TAX ACT OF 1937
Full Text of the Marihuana Tax Act as passed in 1937
Introduction by David Solomon
The popular and therapeutic uses of hemp preparations are not categorically prohibited by the provisions of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The apparent purpose of the Act is to levy a token tax of approximately one dollar on all buyers, sellers, importers, growers, physicians, veterinarians, and any other persons who deal in marijuana commercially, prescribe it professionally, or possess it.
The deceptive nature of that apparent purpose begins to come into focus when the reader reaches the penalty provisions of the Act: five years' imprisonment, a $2,000 fine, or both seem rather excessive for evading a sum (provided for by the purchase of a Treasury Department tax stamp) that, even if collected, would produce only a minute amount of government revenue.
(snip)
Regulations No. 1 was more than an invasion of the traditional right of privacy between patient and physician; it was a hopelessly involved set of rules that were obviously designed not merely to discourage but to prohibit the medical and popular use of marijuana. In addition to the Marihuana Tax Act and Regulations No. 1, the Bureau of Narcotics prepared a standard bill for marihuana that more than forty state legislatures enacted. This bill made possession and use of marihuana illegal per se, and so reinforced the federal act.
The Full Text
So they snuck the legislation through disguised as a modest tax revenue bill. Apparently, screwing the American voting public with dishonest legislative tactics is not a new trick.
Harry Anslinger and the Bureau of Narcotics would no longer have so much time on their hands. They would have plenty to keep them busy from there on out.
"The only effect that I ever noticed from smoking marijuana was a sort of mild sedative, a release of tension when I was overworking. It never made me boisterous or quarrelsome. If anything, it calmed me and reduced my activity."
Robert Mitchum
in his (unsuccessful) plea for probation stemming from marijuana possession charges
There is no credible research that shows marijuana to be in any way harmful (discounting wingnut mania and reefer madness of course), and there is considerable evidence supporting its beneficial qualities. And if you doubt its capacity for providing an enhanced sense of well-being, stress relief and inner calm, just ask anyone who smokes it. There’s a pretty long list.
Steven King, a best selling author of numerous books, has had his fair share of the herb and has quite a progressive viewpoint on the matter: "I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There’s some pretty good homegrown dope. I’m sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses..."
Celebrity Stoners
Al Gore and Bill Clinton have both admitted to using. Gore was quoted as saying: "During my junior and senior year of college, it was looked at in the same way moonshine was looked at in Prohibition days." Newsflash: It still is. Former president Clinton echoed the famous line: "When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, I didn’t like it, I didn’t inhale it, and never tried it again." And you had no sexual relations with Miss Lewinski... come on Billy, we’re not all that stupid.
Celebrity Stoners
Since it is known to be harmless and even beneficial, and since so many people are smoking it anyway, isn’t it about time we did away with the harsh criminal penalties, isn’t it time to foreswear such hypocrisy writ so damned large? Shouldn’t we let the peaceful potheads out of prison and quit persecuting people for using this benign subtance?
More People in Prison for Marijuana Than Violent Crimes
A Foul Tragedy
Democrats fled in the face of danger
By Garrison Keillor
In These Times, November 2, 2005
Reprinted Courtesy of Portside
We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate
Republicans as we did in signing onto the "war" on drugs
that has ruined so many young lives.
continued...
I am a long-time supporter of NORML, the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. I am a supporter because I support what they stand for, not because I’m impressed with their progress. Thirty-some years is a long time, it seems to me, to get a simple thing done. Pot is not harmful and should have been fully legalized in the 60s. Ask any cop what they’d rather go into, a house full of partying pot smokers or a house full of partying drunks? They will tell you in a hurry that the pot smokers won’t hurt anyone, but the drunks might kill you.
Maybe if we had legalized it in the 60s it would have helped us all chill out a bit and avoid the temptation to rob, rape, and pillage the earth. Just maybe.
People are now smoking, eating, or vaporizing marijuana as medicine. It eases pain in arthritic joints and pain in general, reduces nausea and makes many medical conditions bearable. If it doesn’t cure you, it’ll make you feel better about your condition. Guaranteed. And it’ll do it without any toxic side effects, or undesirable secondary effects other than maybe a little dry mouth and an unnatural desire for twinkies and cornchips. Nothing from Pfizer, Merck, or Glaxo Kline can make similar claims. Well they can, but they can’t back it up.
Is this the biggest issue in today’s world? NO! But it’s a simple thing that sure would make a lot of people’s lives better, including people suffering from chronic pain or debilitating diseases, not to mention the stress relief that the general public could surely use (IMHO), or the tens of thousands rotting in prison right now for no good reason.
It wouldn’t cost us a penny to do this either. In fact it would introduce a whole new revenue stream into the public coffers. We could conceivably help fund universal healthcare and improve our schools with the kind of money that would be generated by taxation of a multi-billion dollar industry – not to mention the billions we’d save by NOT funding the disastrous Drug War. Of course, you have to legalize it first. But what’s the big deal? If they can legalize torture, they ought to be able to legalize pot with both hands tied behind their backs and an eight hundred pound gorilla sitting on their chest. It should be a no-brainer.
We should have done it long ago. It’s high time. :-)
Of course then NORML would have to fold... :-(
Please put it on your list of things to make happen. I thank you, my sisters thank you, my brothers thank you, all my cousins and friends thank you, and America (I do believe) will thank you.
Drug War Facts
DrugPolicy.org
Marijuana: THE FACTS
Marijuana Policy Project
Medical Marijuana
NORML