Framing Mary Jane

I realize that you will mostly disagree with me. But here’s the way I think:

The entire debate about marijuana/medical marijuana in this country is backward, and the intended solution of Pharma-controlled distribution only makes the problems I have mentioned before worse. Attempting to solve the drug crisis in this country by making legal vendors out of the criminals in the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t resolve anything.  Why are we letting pharmaceutical giants push into new markets this way?

And yes, this is a timely statement. There will again be a vote at some point, and it will run the wrong way whichever it goes. I’m hoping you’ll recall that there are more than two viewpoints possible.

The marijuana debate is incorrectly framed, and no one seems to notice.

It’s not #1 medical marijuana is good #2 medical marijuana is bad. What happened to the debate about simply ending prohibition?

I don’t do drugs, it’s not in my nature. But I’m all for ending prohibition, and instead prosecuting reckless or violent deeds committed under the influence. Exactly the way we do for alcohol. Currently we are prosecuting ownership or ingestion of substances, without any true crime being committed. We are not sending addicts to rehab, we’re sending them to jail. We’re putting people in jail for their entire lives because they had an herbal substance on their person.

Until a crime is committed, it shouldn’t be a crime. If I’m holding a knife, I’m not committing a crime. Until I become aggressive against someone or rob someone or threaten someone, I am not committing a crime. It is not thusly with drugs.

Removing prohibition would restore individual liberty, place the responsibility on the individual, and remove the black market, as well as resolve a BLM land grab epidemic. I’ve seen farming communities decimated by barely legal land grabs backed up by flimsy laws that shouldn’t hold water for a second in a constitutional republic.

These are rights that should never have been taken in the first place, ownership of property, rights against search and seizure.

Why are we asking the state to protect us from drugs? Isn’t that our own job? Where is independent responsibility going? Why is it acceptable to continue to make it the government’s job to accomplish your own tasks when you’ve all seen how poorly they accomplish the ones they already have been handed?

Stop handing your precious ideals to the government to enforce. No one is happy with that arrangement except the ones holding more and more power.