Our Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, has written an excellent essay that I mentioned a couple of posts ago for Alternet called Making Pot Legal: We Can Do It — Here’s How. We’ll talk with Paul on Friday about that. But I just had to include this comment that his essay received (with boldfacing by me):
Victim baloney
Excuse me? The talk about “victims of marijuana prohibition” is baloney. The last I heard, dope smoking was illegal in the US. That means that people who choose to smoke dope, violating the law in the process, are criminals. Where does the victim stuff come from? If you want to smoke dope– go ahead and smoke it. But please– take responsibility for your actions. If you drive 90 miles an hour on the freeway and get a ticket, are you a victim of speed limits? Knock it off. I smoked plenty of dope forty years ago I stopped because it is a waste of time. Never would I have claimed to be a victim: I was a shit-for-brains dope head. If I had gotten caught I would have deserved whatever the system dished out. I wish you losers would grow up. And if all you can find to do with your time is fight for people’s freedom to screw up their brains with dope, you have too much time on your hands.
This is what we face. Might as well face the truth – there are many people out there like commenter “PJT” who believe this very sentiment. I couldn’t help myself, I had to reply. This is like waving a red cape in front of a bull.
Some other “victims” for you
Not “victims of slavery”, just Africans who deserved what the colonial system dished out. (Shouldn’t have gotten caught… it was legal, after all.)
Not “victims of racism”, just black men who chose to marry white women, violating the law in the process (- criminals!)
Not “victims of homophobia”, just gay men who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. (If you get caught having gay sex in Texas and get arrested, are you a victim of anti-sodomy laws?)
Dr. King taught us that there are “just laws” and “unjust laws”. An “unjust law” is one that a power majority forces upon a minority that it won’t obey for itself. Prohibition of certain intoxicants is such a law: the power majority has no problem with you getting wasted, so long as it’s Budweiser and not buds. And even when the power majority disobeys that law, the effects differ: compare the case of cokehead Bush vs. any crackhead.
Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong, no more than doing something legal is automatically right (i.e., waterboarding torture, warrantless wiretapping, invading the Middle East).
So, yes, there are victims of marijuana prohibition, just as women were victims pre-Roe if they obtained an abortion, gays were victims pre-Lawrence if they made love, and blacks were victims pre-Loving if they married whites.
But you did have something right. Your 11th sentence, with a change to the present tense and deletion of “dope head”.
Yeah, I know, it’s not a perfect analogy and I did get a little ad hominem, but everything you need to know about this guy is summed up when he said “…if all you can find to do with your time is fight for people’s freedom…” Even if you believe that smoking marijuana is “screw[ing] up [your] brains with dope”, why would you oppose someone’s freedom to do with their brains as they choose? You cannot demonstrate any societal harm from our marijuana smoking, so why do you need a law against someone else feeling good with a non-toxic herb?