Pax et Kat

The Prohibition Section of Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined (2011)

It starts,

Prohibition is not compatible with a free society. Prohibiting acts of violence is one thing, but laws that prohibit the use of certain substances—food, drugs, or alcohol—by adults is a dangerous intrusion on personal liberty.

That’s an opinion a college kid who smokes a lot of weed would have. The “I’m an ADULT now and I do what I want” mentality.

But I already knew he’s against the drug war, and I actually agree that the war on drugs is at best poorly executed. So I agree with him when he argues that prohibition increases organized crime. I agree that the war on drugs is expensive, ineffective, and it frequently targets only certain drugs and certain minorities (not that Ron Paul mentions that). 

We agree on some stuff! Still, there’s something wrong here. Let’s see.

Responsibility for teaching about the dangers of drugs falls principally on parents. Parents teach children about the dangers of highways, high places, stoves, household poisons, swimming pools, etc. It’s their responsibility to warn about all dangers, including alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and bad diets.

1. Not every parent has time, knowledge, ability, or interest. 
2. If your mother or father is a drug addict, are you shit out of luck?
3. As a college student, I think it’s fair to say that many freshman drink their entire dorm’s weight in alcohol. Many times, it does not matter what your parents taught you. Suddenly being ABLE to do something means that many people WILL do it.
4. If you’re a teenager surrounded by drugs, and maybe JUST ONCE, you think, just this one time, and then that becomes every day for the next year or two or so, and suddenly the rest of your life might not even get to happen, then what?

Don’t worry though, Ron Paul gives the solution in this essay.

People who, unwisely, buy drugs would hardly opt for the back alley criminal dealer as a source, if a coffeehouse-style dispensary was an option. Moreover, a law-abiding dispensary is likely to check IDs and refuse sale to minors, as bars and ABC stores tend to do very diligently. Think of all the time and resources law enforcement could save if they could instead focus on violent crimes, instead of this impossible nanny-state mandate of saving people from themselves!

So, I’m telling myself, as I read this, “Hey, calm down, he’ll never actually be president.” But he fucking matters if only because there are people who agree with him. Because there are other people who say the same bullshit.

Look. I haven’t:

1. smoked marijuana in over a year.
2. thrown up, blacked out, or forgotten last night in three years.
3. abused medications in about three and a half years.
4. used my drug of choice in four years and four and a half months.

Nonetheless, if drugs were legal, if they sold cocaine in bars and over counters. My life would be over. I know that about myself, and I have no delusions about that. And I am sure it is true for most other recovering addicts, if not every single one. 

I’m also pretty sure people like Ron Paul don’t think about people like me. They just spout off about freedom. Like this:

It is time to try freedom instead.

And they NEVER seem to consider what the effects of the policies they want to put in place would be. They just think there’d be more liberty. But they don’t realize how many lives would be destroyed.

In 2010, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 22.6 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (last month) users of an illicit drug. That was 8.9% of the population of the United States in 2010. Also in 2010, 10.1% of youths aged 12-17 were current users. And 21.5% of young adults aged 18-25 were using. The percentages go down after that. Of adults aged 26 or older, 6.6% reports that they had used drugs in the last month. 5.8% of older adults aged 50-59 were drug users.

AND in 2010, there were 2.4 million persons aged 12 or older who had used marijuana for the first time within the past 12 months; this averages to about 6,600 new users each day.

Obviously not all of these people were addicts. However, an estimated 15.7 percent of past year marijuana users aged 12 or older used marijuana on 300 or more days within the past 12 months. This translates into 4.6 million persons using marijuana on a daily or almost daily basis over a 12-month period. There isn’t any data on how often other drugs were used, but it’s safe to assume that there are a whole bunch of drug users in the United States who can be called addicts.

OK. Now imagine that all the people who were addicts in 2010 are now clean. Imagine that they are struggling every day to get back what they’ve lost. And every single day they have to deal with people who don’t understand, they have to avoid situations they once enjoyed, they have to stop speaking to friends that they love. It’s pretty shitty, but it’s worth it.

Now imagine that in 2012 suddenly drugs are legal because some shithead thought people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, other people be damned. Tell me about how great it would be.