How can government function without trust?
How can a country's people, after discovering they've been misled by their government, continue to trust it?
Agents of our government have been misleading us all with regards to cannabis for nearly 80 years. This deception has resulted in untold millions of people jailed, and untold millions more lives ruined.
And I am far from alone in possessing a mountain of anecdotal evidence which shows that our nation's official policy towards cannabis is one of the biggest piles of steaming mendacity ever unloaded on the American people.
To be clear, I don't deny that use of cannabis carries risks. I deny that its risks are some sort of existential threat. I deny that it's risks are so dangerous as to justify the enormous forces hunting nearly everybody who dares to partake in its use, cultivation or trade. I deny that its risks are prevalent and persistent enough to pose a threat to society, a threat worthy of the intervention of the heavy hand of the law into the lives of otherwise model adults who just want to smoke some pot. The notion is flatly ludicrous. And an increasing majority of Americans agree with me.
Still, though, the spook stories about cannabis are believed, even the oxymoronic "gateway drug" smear. Even in the highest echelons of power the lies are believed, and to this day they are propagated as truth. I've been hearing them since I was a teenager; and all along, from those impressionable years onward to the present, I have known they are lies.
More below the fold.
My questions started then, at age 17. The naive questions of a confused (and stubborn) teenager. Questions that caused some of my peers and many of my elders to look at me funny. Questions for which I have to this day not found satisfactory answers.
I actually asked them right out loud, once, for a free-choice writing assignment, an essay boldly entitled "Why is marijuana illegal?"
Once was enough.
Although I did get a good grade on the paper, and though a few of my classmates and I certainly talked a lot about it after school, we didn't have any in-class discussions about it. Because of course we didn't. My English teacher, the best teacher I've ever had and one of the finest people I've ever known, well, I learned later that he understood and sympathized, but he wasn't foolish enough to chance being accused of condoning pot to a classroom of teenagers. The subject was closed. And I felt dumbly puzzled and let down that we didn't immediately start discussing the matter of such a grave injustice.
I was pretty unsettled by the non-reaction to that paper, by the whole situation, for I didn't grok it at all. That came later, at least in part. The taboo that is still so deeply ingrained in so many people, the stigma of which I knew nothing at the time, but nevertheless soon felt in myself, was going very strong and held many tongues.
Whatever the reasons, the ramifications were quite clear.
I knew my government had been lying to me. Right around the time I was first coming into contact with it, and solidifying my notion of what governments should be and do, I was seeing clear evidence that mine was not operating honestly. And I experienced first-hand an uneasy hush upon the entire topic of conversation.
Now, I don't mean that everyone should suddenly and implicitly trust Uncle Sam if and when he finally changes his mind on pot. I think there are many good reasons not to unreservedly trust agents of our government or any government. But I also think that trust, to at least some degree, is essential to the workings of good government; and my trust in mine was deeply shaken when I first learned about their reefer madness.
I know I am not alone in this. Not by a long shot. And generally that seems a pretty bad place for any government to be. Because when one spreads bald-faced lies, gets caught red-handed, and then doubles-down on those lies again and again for decades, one goes a long way towards convincing people that one cannot be trusted with anything.
And how in the world can any government function for long if it's popularly believed that they can't be trusted with anything?