Marijuana legalization, properly implemented, is such a profound repudiation of many evils infecting our government that its realization becomes a moral and logical imperative. It would be a strike against many of the government’s more unsavory control structures and a challenge to what can only be described as the public’s begrudging acceptance of a tolerable level of repression. The prohibition of marijuana is much more than simply a case of bad law; it is part of many of the population control mechanisms that the authorities have come to depend on. The forces of liberty and justice can effectively use the marijuana issue to undermine key components of the powers lined against them.
So how does the government use marijuana prohibition to chisel away at the rights and liberties of the people? For starters, the War on Drugs is a war on the Bill of Rights. Part by part, amendment by amendment, the government has been engaged in a campaign to devalue the power of these provisions of the Constitution. The First Amendment’s protection of free speech has been removed from forms of expression that involve the simple consumption of a substance. An attempt to use marijuana prohibition to undermine the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is in progress at this very moment. The Fourth Amendment’s directives against unreasonable and warrantless searches and seizures are time and time again treated as little more than suggestions by courts and police all across the country.
The War on Drugs has boosted a prison industry that is allowed to essentially lobby for the creation of criminals, making it a clear obstacle to the Fifth Amendment right to due process. The authorities also use drug charges and raids to confiscate millions of dollars in private assets without even considering that same amendment’s prohibition of it. The Eighth Amendment may claim that excessive bail and fines as well cruel and unusual punishments are not allowed but simple marijuana possession results in countless outrageous, life-ruining sentences for non-violent offenders. And who can forget how the federal government makes a mockery of the Tenth Amendment by seeking to destroy the medical marijuana industry with no regard for the authority of states and the will of citizens.
Marijuana prohibition is also a weapon against implied rights and civil liberties. The “penumbral” right to privacy and control of ones own body, which have been at many times upheld by the Supreme Court apparently mean very little if a substance the government doesn’t like is involved. The absurdity of it all is sometimes hard to fully take in: our government is allowed to use its power of commercial regulation to determine which mental states we may and may not experience. Here is where we find the nexus of this web of rights violations and curtailments, the core principle behind the machinations of the government as it pursues the prohibition of marijuana and the wider War on Drugs in the face of abject and verifiable failure: it is the establishment of an authority-approved mental state, a true intrusion into the last zone of complete freedom, our thoughts. The government has made it quite clear that the problem it has with marijuana are its mental effects. Unlike many other drugs, where health and public welfare hazards can still credibly be cited as a reason for prohibition, marijuana, by its benign nature, has unmasked the villain.
Prohibition is thus revealed for what it is, a tool for thought control that comes with all the trappings of such authoritarian measures. The government pushes a mental baseline, a single acceptable uniform status quo for the population, one that facilitates the progress of the approved ideology and discourages questioning. There may not be soviet style mandatory demonstrations of giant propaganda posters on every corner in this nation, but the message is the same: everything is great just the way it is, carry on, nothing to see here. And while the US is not Libya or Syria and our leaders cannot just order the army to shot unruly civilians, those who do not adhere to the government’s mental state directives are in for a world of hurt. Punishment is vicious and indiscriminate, with 25% of the world’s prisoner population, systematic repression is an unavoidable statistical fact of life in the United States. Our troubled land desperately needs a revival of the fight for liberty that birthed it and fighting for marijuana legalization is pulling on a dangling string that that could unravel the whole tapestry of government abuse.
Originally posted at the 420petition Blog