Another Familiar Pattern
Following up on the previous post, I wanted to say a few things about how the debate over drug policy offers a good example of how our political debates tend to function regardless of the policy in question. The lopsided nature of these debates is most pronounced when it comes to one of the various “wars” the government has declared against abstractions and nouns, but it is not limited to these. If the government declares a “war” on drugs, or poverty, or terrorism, skepticism about or outright opposition to the actual policies employed by the government in the “prosecution” of said “war” is treated as implicit support for the target of the “war.” This is the one part of all of these “wars” that can be deemed successful, namely its propaganda, which frames criticism of “war” policies, no matter how counterproductive, failed, illegal or even immoral, as something akin to collaboration with “the enemy” in the “war.” Likewise, to have doubts or raise red flags about invading Iraq was to be an apologist for despotism at best and pro-Saddam at worst. We see this pattern replicated again and again in debates over the war in Georgia last year or Gaza this year.
This framing works very well for defenders of the policy being criticized, as it forces the critics to operate at a double disadvantage. They are first of all reacting to bad policy, which makes their arguments necessarily negative and more easily dismissed for that reason as mere “naysaying,” and second the critics must qualify the beginning of all their arguments with some emphasis on how much they, too, loathe the official enemy in said “war.” This means the critics are reduced to pragmatic and frequently much more complicated critiques that lack the rhetorical and emotional power of the simplistic, ideological line that the government is pushing, and they are reduced to arguments from circumstance, which tend not to pack the same punch as arguments from definition even when the latter are founded on falsehoods or, more often, on far more destructive half-truths.
Not that I’m siding with the gov’t here but you appear to be objectively pro-pothead.
I think it would be irresponsible of not to point that out.
You don’t have to be a “stoner” to note that our “War on Drugs” has led to a real shooting war just south of the border. The war on drugs was supposedly okay as long as it stayed in South America or Afghanistan, but now that it’s threatening to spill across the Rio Grande maybe we should reconsider. But of course the government’s response-if any-to the chaos in Mexico will be to militarize the border and shoot everything that moves.
People would be better off arguing its not a federal issue rather than arguing legalization. Marijuana is rarely in practice adjudicated at the federal level. At the local level, no one really loses sleep over someone getting fined for marijuana use except for the potheads themselves. The way most pot heads argue would be like people arguing for the right to public intoxication during Prohibition, something that is illegal in most places.
I should point out my experience in Madison, Wisc., as well. Madison is a pretty friendly town for marijuana use. Even there though, it was treated more like a private vice. Yes, you may smell the stuff at large celebrations, but you wouldn’t just be left alone if sat on a corner on a weekday afternoon smoking the stuff. Whenever Madison would liberalize its treatment of marijuana it will inevidently start up enforcement again because it was an effective way to deal with undesirables.
@MZForrest
It’s hard to argue that most “potheads” are arguing for people simply smoking blunts down the street, or any place that isn’t already off-limits for smoking regular cigarettes. Every legalization ballot initiative I’ve seen makes it clear that they’re talking about smoking in their own home.
The argument that it is hardly an issue of federal concern seems belied by the constant myopic focus on drug war issues with Latin American countries. Hell, one could argue, rightly, that Latin American policy IS drug policy.
And I’m not quite sure how to take the statement that the only people concerned about the policy are the only one’s who are being prosecuted under it; it seems to me that those should be the exactly the people upset about it, or am I missing something? I thought complaining about stuff thats relevant to the individual was kind of the point of most politics.
The idea that our prisons are filled because of pot users is ludicrous. There are plenty of issues with our drug laws, don’t get me wrong, but it would do legalization advocates better not to argue what actually happens. It is very exceedingly rare for marijuana possession charges not to be referred to the state courts. If it is a federal case, there is some other factor pushing it. The feds aren’t interested in dime packs. On the local level, marijuna possession is typically charged as a municipal offense rather than a criminal one. That results in just a fine. If someone is going to jail – prison and jail are different things – they are habitual offenders or there is some other compelling circumstance. Certainly there are exceptions to what I said above, but you will find exceptions in everything.
Smoking in one’s own home is a fig leaf. No dime pack user is having his door busted down unless he is deliberately drawing attention to himself. Police have better things to do.
So, you are clearly in favor appeasing the naked aggression of “abstractions and nouns.” Let’s hope the confirmation of your misguidedness doesn’t come in the form of grammatical mushroom cloud.
Seriously, the framing puts critics at a triple disadvantage. First, they are dismissed as naysayers. Second, they are forced to make convoluted and ineffective arguments. Third, this leaves the field open to radical crackpots, who are the only ones willing to offer vigorous criticism and who become the focus of mainstream media coverage of the opposition–even if they number only in the dozens versus the millions of more thoughtful critics.
Marijuana trafficking remains the bulk of revenue for criminal elements in Mexico. Decriminalization, regulation, etc., advocated by “potheads” is intended to defuse that industry by bringing it into the regular economy.
Forrest argues that marijuana isn’t a substantial reason for the negative effect of the war on drugs. It certainly is merely by its criminalized nature; and the level of revenue and profit to Mexican cartels from it, illustrates that.
And this summary, admittedly by an advocacy group from FBI data, seems to rebut Forrest’s assertion that there is little law enforcement activity related to marijuana and that such enforcement is not a diversion of resources. http://www.mpp.org/states/district-of-columbia/news/senate-committee-weighs-costs.html
What I claimed was there was little interest in the guy smoking his dime pack in his home. Gotta love conflation.
Oddly enough, despite your claims Forrest, police officers clearly do go out of their way to enforce drug laws on non-distributing users. Certainly they aren’t stuffing up the prison system with misdemeanors, but there is a significant number of them stuffing up the judicial system. And the user is the reason for the other, vast drug cartel apparatus to exist. A fact that should give people pause.
I think you also underestimate the ability of local police forces to go after the low hanging fruit of gang/cartel foot soldiers, minor pushers, prostitutes, or other low level criminal elements. Narcotics and Vice squads inflate their numbers, and exaggerate their importance, with small potato raids and other “busts” mostly to make up for their inability to properly target large scale criminal organizations. I think police forces DO waste a significant amount of effort and resources playing wanna-be Popeye Doyle’s on taxpayers dime.
Forrest,
Your distinction may be warranted for the NORML crowd who want to light up; but that’s not the basis of the discussion here. The discussion here is that the “War on Drugs” undermines liberty, expands the central gov’t and wastes resources, in addition to exacerbating violence here and abroad. The plight of the “dime pack”–persecuted or ignored–isn’t relevant.
A simple possession bust is quite enough to catch a parole violation case or to invoke a “three strikes” statute. In the latter instance, there are a few lucky guys pulling life sentences because they got nailed with some weed and met up with some Javert in the DA’s office
‘The feds aren’t interested in dime packs’
Dime packs? Where’d you learn that term, your bible group? It’s a dime bag and no one deals in them anymore because ten dollars worth of pot would fill a thimble. You’re too far out of touch to talk about this issue.
The Mexico drug issue is not about pot. It’s about cocaine, heroin and meth. Meth is new. It started when we put sudafed behind the counter and shut down the meth labs here. Siince then meth factories have popped up just south of the border. Most of the pot your kids are smoking is home grown from Kentucky or California or it’s hydro weed which is also grown in country and is ten times more pwerful than the stuff you learned about watching Reefer Madness at your Pastor’s house.
“We’re providing profits of about $25 billion to the drug cartels. That’s a lot of money.”
About 40 percent of the drug sales are marijuana, he said. “We imprison more people for marijuana than any other drug. What we have to do is change our policy and decriminalize marijuana. I don’t think we can do much unless we cut back on the money.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/03/12/MNSK16DEDP.DTL
When I sat on a grand jury in Cleveland, OH a couple of years ago~~70% of our cases were drug cases. The largest number of them were for traces of crack in crack pipes. It’s no wonder America has more prisoners than any other country. Or more prisons.