It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.But here are the problems with NYT's call for repeal. First, NYT still believes that control of marijuana is a legitimate concern of state governments, which is an indication of how far we are from thinking in terms of a libertarian society:
That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.Second, there is no indication by NYT that the control of the manufacture and marketing of marijuana should be left to the free market:
Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex.This view is quite stunning as an indication of how MSM continues to view the necessity of government control over market operations and can't conceive of markets without government oversight.
In other words, the call for the repeal of federal laws with regard to marijuana is a small step on the road to freedom, but it is just that a small step, with no indication, at all, that this is called for by NYT in terms of an overall march toward freedom.
That said, it is an indication that perspectives can change. Check out the first 8 minutes of this Dragnet show, which absurdly equates marijuana with wild behavior.
I personally don't use marijuna or any other drugs, but people should be free to put anything they want into their body.
-RW
The Establishment decided some months ago to end mj prohibition. You could tell when various pols on the right, such a Corpulus Christie, started coming out in favor of it.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't beat em...tax em. Yup that's freedom
ReplyDeleteThe libertarian proposal would be decriminalization, not legalization. In fact, a black market in drugs is preferable to a "legal" market in that the profits earned are spent on goods and services which are desired and voluntarily traded, rather than a huge portion of capital (the new tax burden) flowing to State governments and crony political entrepreneurs. Due to government's insatiable appetite for taxes and heavy regulation at all levels of the market, the price of Cannabis at the licensed shops is predictably two to three times higher than in the well-established black market. Those who have connections right now are not buying at the state-sanctioned shops (except as a novelty) because they have absolutely no problem acquiring the product at much lower prices- with no loss in quality. On a brighter note, the criminality of ingesting this plant has been pretty much been made null and void in the states which have legalized; many fewer people will enter the criminal "justice" system and have their lives ruined for a non-crime.
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