I've been saying for a long time that Marijuana reform is going to happen in my lifetime, and I probably won't have to wait more than twenty years. Once my generation starts to take over, things will change. The old timers all remind me that they were saying the same thing forty years ago, and things have gotten worse, not better. I always respond that there was no cultural evidence that the flower-power generation would be able to decriminalize. The drug was still too marginalized. Today the cultural evidence is swinging the other way, even if the laws are not.
Today, the Wapo published an Op-Ed by Kathleen Parker entitled "Phelps Takes a Hit," the conclusion of which is
It's time to recognize that all drugs are not equal -- and change the laws accordingly.
The Legalize it movement is going mainstream.
Forty years ago, there is no way the Washington Post would publish anything about relaxing our drug laws. It would have brought not just wrath from the public, but ridicule as well. Today, Parker, ostensibly a conservative, laid out a cogent argument for why our drug laws need to be changed, one filled with the reasons you'll find in any of the many of the pot diaries posted by dirty fucking hippies here.
Today's anti-drug campaigns are slightly wonkier than yesterday's "Reefer Madness," but equally likely to become party hits rather than drug deterrents. One recent ad produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says: "Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren't many jobs out there for potheads." Whoa, dude, except maybe, like, president of the United States.
Once a kid realizes that pot doesn't make him insane -- or likely to become a burrito taster, as the ad further asserts -- he might figure other drug information is equally false. That's how marijuana becomes a gateway drug...
Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we've been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once, according to a report published last year in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science.
The U.S., in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, including The Netherlands, where cannabis clouds waft from coffeehouse windows. Among them are no small number of high-ranking South Carolina leaders (we knew us when), who surely cringe every time a young person gets fingered for a "crime" they themselves have committed.
Forty years ago, only the counter-culture smoked weed, making it easy to demonize. Today, at every party I go to, at least three blunts are being rolled. I've smoked weed with conservatives, liberals, gay people, straight people, black, white, latin, and asian.
Our ranks now include not just the presidents and luminaries Parker speaks of, but also a guy who won eight gold medals in a single Olympic games, the MVP of the Super Bowl (actually, it seems like half the NFL smokes pot), actors, doctors, lawyers, and many other functioning members of society.
And now the Washington Post, a paper of record, is advocating for reform, and from a conservative columnist at that.
We are a lot closer than we were forty years ago. It's only a matter of time before we fix these broken policies that have destroyed so many lives for no good reason.
My guess is about twenty years.