June 29, 2004
"Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be.
But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating.
General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana,
the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are
very difficult to defend.
Still,
there is the danger of arrest (as 700,000 people a year will tell you), of possible imprisonment, of blemish on one's record.
The obverse of this is increased cynicism about the law.
We're not going to find someone running for president who advocates reform of those laws. What is required is a genuine republican groundswell. It is happening, but ever so gradually.
Two of every five Americans, according to a 2003 Zogby poll cited by Dr. Nadelmann, believe "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children."
Such reforms would hugely increase the use of the drug?
Why? It is de facto legal in the Netherlands, and the percentage of users there is the same as here. The Dutch do odd things, but here
they teach us a lesson."