For all my adult life, I’ve been among those calling for the legalization of marijuana. Below are excerpts from just a few related commentaries – dating back to 2005, the year I inaugurated this weblog – that will attest to this fact.
From “Landmark Healthcare Decisions by U.S. Government,” June 12, 2005:
Consider that every year 435,000 people in the United States die from tobacco use. (Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.) And, conversely, that there’s not a single documented case of anyone dying from marijuana use.
So what, pray tell, could be the rationale for the geniuses on the Supreme Court to rule that allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes would be hazardous to our health?
From “Legalize Drugs!” October 20, 2011:
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox has been making news all year – not only by blaming insatiable demand in the United States for the drug-related violence that has turned Mexico into a veritable war zone, but also for declaring that the legalization of production, transit, and selling of all prohibited drugs is the only way to fight the so-call ‘war on drugs,’ which both countries have been fighting to no avail since 1971…
Frankly, ever since Prohibition (1919-1933) all reasonable people should have developed an instructive appreciation of this variation on George Santayana’s famous quote, namely: that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it…
So I welcome Fox. I just wish he had the balls to come on board when he was president from 2001 to 2006. Because his voice would have carried a great deal more political weight back then.
From “Legalize Marijuana!” June 5, 2012:
When it comes to progressive laws in the United States it is axiomatic that as California goes, so goes the nation. This was the case when it legalized marijuana for medicinal use in 1996. (Seventeen states, including Washington, DC, have followed suit.)
Therefore, it is very noteworthy that New York is assuming this vanguard role in decriminalizing possession of marijuana for personal use (i.e., not necessarily for medicinal use)…
Not to mention the benefit to Blacks and Hispanics who comprise the vast majority of those routinely prosecuted and incarcerated for possession of small amounts of marijuana…
As one who has been advocating for the decriminalization not just of marijuana but of all drugs, I welcome this second baby step along this progressive road (legalizing medicinal use being the first). I only hope that, in this case, as New York goes, so goes the nation.
From “Obama on Marijuana,” February 6, 2014:
Just as I was always certain Obama was a closeted supporter of legalizing same-sex marriages, I’m certain he is a closeted supporter of legalizing marijuana too. Not least because he’s intellectually honest enough to appreciate that only rank moral hypocrisy (and vested interest in the prison industrial complex) can explain why alcohol – with its many harmful and, in far too many cases, deadly effects – is legal, but marijuana – with its relatively mild and, in very many cases, medicinal effects – is illegal.
And let’s be clear, the harm alcohol causes to others ranges from drunken arguments that lead to domestic violence, to driving under the influence that leads to vehicular homicides.
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This is why I was both heartened and indignant yesterday when the New York Times published an editorial calling for the legalization of marijuana under the headline, “Repeal Prohibition, Again:”
- heartened because nothing confers legitimacy on a cause quite like having the most authoritative newspaper in the United States, if not the world, endorse it;
- indignant because the Times finally doing so is rather like the United States finally lifting its embargo against Cuba (i.e., there’s so little room left on the bandwagon for the cause that getting on board now can only have more symbolic than practical impact).
Incidentally, it’s probably noteworthy that this endorsement comes, despite its most-celebrated columnist, Maureen Dowd, suffering a near-death experience in January after stupidly eating too many marijuana-laced chocolate bars. She had traveled to Colorado to do some mind-altering research, professedly for professional purposes, after that state joined Washington in becoming the first states to legalize the sale of marijuana for recreational use.
In any event, here’s an excerpt from this heralded Times editorial; never mind that it just parrots what some of us have been writing for years:
It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than [80] years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana [with its 1937 Marijuana Tax Act], inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol…
There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012 … falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.
Let’s hope the United States soon comes to its senses and repeals this prohibition too.
Related commentaries:
Landmark healthcare..
Legalize drugs…
Legalize marijuana
Real drug war…
Obama on marijuana