From last Monday’s national Libertarian Party message, there’s a proposal to regulate marijuana like wine. Whether it’s regulated like wine or more strictly, the trend against outright prohibition is unmistakable. See, Gallup Reports Record Number in Favor of Legalizing Marijuana Use.
Of those who favor a complete prohibition, two things may be said: they often cannot imagine a change from current policies, yet they’re simultaneously dense to the shifting social views all around them.
Changing views toward medical marijuana are the foundation of a broader change in views toward marijuana:
The United States government has just declared war on medical cannabis, throwing patients and dispensaries into a panic and with good reason. Even those with years of unblemished operations, including some of our finest and most respected MCDs, are being targeted….
Many Libertarians saw this coming when President Bush holdover, Michele Leonhart, boasted she would ignore the administration’s formal medical marijuana guidelines, yet was still appointed to head the DEA….
As a result, our campaign team carefully crafted a revolutionary new voter initiative that will legally allow California to Opt Out of the Controlled Substances Act.
I doubt California will be able to opt out, but I see the political merit in a battle over medical marijuana in America’s largest state. It’s not a battle to win over prohibitionists – that won’t happen. They’ll pass away before they’ll change their views.
There’s a reply to those favoring liberalization that holds that prohibition isn’t just a matter of law and order, but of health and safety. In cases of chronic illness and pain, the health and safety calculus is different and unfavorable to prohibitionists, as sympathy for suffering patients’ actual desires will trump a third party’s insistence on a comprehensive ban.
The California effort is to one to win over those many people who lack strong views on the topic, but have grown tired of wild sums spent on restrictions that seem ineffective, intrusive, and vindictive to medical patients.
Regulations like that for wine, by the way, would assure a safer and better-controlled experience than the actual, futile prohibition now imposed.
I don’t smoke, and I’m not about to start. Yet, in a debate on this subject, there’s neither need nor possibility of winning everyone over. It’s a leg up to see that the dynamic favors liberalization, and that prohibitionists look ever-more strident and unpersuasive to the broader community.