jawfish

Medical MaryJane
john posted in politics & culture on June 10th, 2005

The Supreme court ruled this week that the federal government has the right to supercede state laws on drug use. I’ll wait for some constitutional lawyers to comment on the legal implications, maybe we’d lose environmental civil rights legislation if the ruling went the other way – I don’t know… We should get Congress to change the national law to allow states to do what they want on drug laws. But.

There are two themes in this case: state’s rights and the drug enforcement juggernaut.

How ironic that we have come full circle from 1956. The heirs of Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus now argue for heavy-handed federal oversight, and the heirs of the civil-rights movement want states to remain free to go their own way. In fact self-described conservatives have adopted the techniques of the Civil Rights movement: They claim victim status, argue that the Constitution calls for Federal intervention to protect their rights, complain that they are oppressed by the Establishment, organize letter-writing campaigns, use the pulpit to call for change.

It’s a fun-house mirror sort of world where the cabal in power in Washington claims to be oppressed by the very government they control. Where the imposition of one sect of Christianity on the rest of the citizens is claimed to be a redress of wrongs. Where the party of privilege has adopted a poor-me trailer-trash whine, while the Brink’s trucks are backed up to the Capitol, loading up with the taxpayer’s cash.

The Federal shiny-shoe set, the guys who couldn’t handle Ruby Rudge or Waco, or Mohammed Atta, are all over some cancer-riddled women with a couple of pot plants. The drug business is one of the largest in America. Lawyers, bankers, and hoodlums by the thousands are socking away the billions in profits. In a mirror image, the drug enforcement empire, reaching from the federal bureaucracy all the way down to DARE programs for schoolchildren, gets billions in taxpayer dollars year after year, decade after decade, with no visible success. Not a patrol car, telephone, or seat cushion is left unsullied by drug enforcement money. In California, our prisons are roughly half full of drug offenders, many of whom are small time addicts and dealers. The cost is in the billions in California alone, and the state corrections union is so large it has become a corrupting lobby in Sacramento, not unlike the teacher’s union and the ag business.

Drug laws are a joke. A substantial percentage of citizens choose to ignore drug possession laws on a life-long basis. The law is unenforceable, the really serious crime caused by the high prices and illegality of street drugs is epidemic. It really is Prohibition all over again.

For all I know, the economy would collapse if drug profits were suddenly shut off. Maybe Cadillac and Jaguar dealers, Tiffany stores, and cruise lines would fold if all those respectable drug profiteers had to cut back. Maybe the bling bling industries of America are all funded by drug cash, unless a lot of people spend the grocery money on 22inch spinners…

Obviously we need to redirect our energies away from telling ordinary citizens what they can and can’t ingest, inhale, or grow. See Guns Again for another Jawfish look at a citizen’s rights issue. If it is going to be the American way to allow virtually everybody to own handguns, then I think the same set of tax-paying, church-going folks should get to smoke pot, make their own crank, and snort up whatever they want in their privacy. You are free to get obese, you are free to smoke cigarettes at home, you can sleep with any adult you like, believe in your own personal whatsis, spend all your time watching TV, eat nothing but lentils, drink watery beer. I don’t care, live it up.