Prospects for the legalization of marijuana

One of my professors (Thomas Gould) pointed out that there is no law against sticking a pencil in your ear, because nobody wants to do that anyway. The government passes laws against things that people want to do. This came up in the context of the Oedipus myth. Why is patricide a crime? Because boys want to kill their fathers. If they didn't want to do it, there wouldn't be a law against it. Why is patricide a serious crime (in most societies), with draconian punishments? Because boys hate their fathers with a fierce hatred, and they have to try very hard to control themselves. The more people want to do something, the more stringent the law against it.

Why is pot illegal?

Because it is perceived as an addicting drug which makes people lose their will power -- and because a lot of people want to lose their will power. They would like nothing better than to stop working, let themselves go, and drift off into a kind of third-world lassitude. They have to make a great effort to resist this temptation. When they see someone doing what they want to do, but don't allow themselves to do, they get very angry.

Is this ever going to change?

Probably not. But what is changing is the perception of marijuana as a will-sapping drug. In fact, of course, it doesn't have to have that effect, and a lot of people know that. Pot doesn't have to be a third-world drug.

Some time ago I knew a young man who was just getting started on his career. He attended a junior college for a couple of years, served in the Navy, and got a little job as a technician. Then he got a better job at Texas Instruments, but he was still a technician. His wife introduced him to pot about this time. He signed up for a programming course at TI and became a programmer. He also went back to school and got a bachelor's degree in business, then an MBA. He was working full time and going to school full time, plus he was working on an invention and eventually got a patent on it. He smoked a lot of pot in those days.

This is not uncommon, and a lot of people are aware that it's not uncommon. Most people under the age of 50 don't need the government to tell them what pot is. They know from their own experience what it is. As the older generation dies off, and the baby boom generation passes through middle age, common sense will prevail.

Maybe.

Maybe, or maybe not.

The young man mentioned above is now middle aged. He has moved to a smaller company, where he is Vice President. I heard from him recently. He said he "stopped using illegal drugs" when he started dating the woman who is now his second wife. Instead of growing pot in his basement, he brews beer. Apparently he has forgotten those intense times when he got stoned and worked on his invention. Now pot is just an "illegal drug." As I said on another page, there is no loyalty among drug users.

Pot was legal in America, and in Europe, prior to the 20th century. But it wasn't widely used. As long as it was only used by a few poets like Baudelaire, no one cared. But in the 20th century, when it started spreading, a lot of people became very irate, and it was banned.

This seems to be a one-way street. In other words, once it is banned, it is never unbanned. Pot was legal for a while in Alaska -- growing your own was permitted -- but then a few years ago the voters made it illegal again.

Pot is semi-legal in Holland, and has been for two or three decades. How long this situation will last is impossible to say. But the thing is, the Dutch government doesn't approve of pot. They just tolerate it. They don't say it's a good thing, they just say that the war on drugs does more harm than good. They aren't trying to encourage drug use, they are trying to contain it, and they think their system is the best way to do that.

No one says pot is a good thing.

I saw an essay on the editorial page of the Daily Telegraph, an English paper, just a few weeks ago. A commission headed by Lady Runciman had recommended that drug use should be decriminalized -- only dealers should be imprisoned. Tom Utley, the author of the essay, said this doesn't make sense: if it's all right to buy something, then it must be all right to sell it. He said drugs should be legal, but regulated, like alcohol. But he didn't say pot was a good thing. Far from it. He said when he was younger he favored the decriminalizion of all drugs, but had second thoughts as he became older:

I suppose it was fatherhood that changed my mind about drugs. I knew in my heart that if there was one thing that I wanted for my children, it was that they should never become drug addicts. I decided that everything I had believed before was mere youthful posturing. If fear of the law helped to persuade my sons against dabbling in narcotics, then as far as I was concerned, drug-taking should remain illegal. That was how I felt until yesterday, when Lady Runciman came along with her report. Now she has made me feel that my youthful posturing was absolutely right.

So, he thinks pot is a narcotic, and would be horrified if he thought his sons were addicted, but, as a logical man, he thinks Lady Runciman's position is inconsistent. Most people don't care that much for logic. Most people agree with the position of his middle years, when he feared for his sons.

I saw another such essay in the Los Angeles Times. It was written by a federal judge. He said the War on Drugs isn't working, and it's time for a new approach. But he added that of course he doesn't condone drug abuse. He just thinks education would handle the problem better than the law can handle it.

Likewise, Gary Johnson, the governor of New Mexico, says the War on Drugs should be scrapped, but he too hastens to add that of course he doesn't approve of drugs.

So this is our situation: most people think pot should be illegal. There are a few lonely voices who disagree, but they only disagree about how to discourage drug use. They say pot is a narcotic, and pot use should be discouraged -- so far they agree with the general consensus -- but not by sending people to prison.

In other words everyone in public life agrees that pot is a bad thing. They disagree only on the question of what to do about it.

This situation can have only one outcome. The government is working on technological solutions to the drug problem. Either they will release fungi into the environment that will exterminate the cannabis plant, or they will put sensors everywhere that will detect the most minute trace of THC, so they will know exactly who has smoked pot (or handled it). Or both.

At that point it will be impossible to hide. The technology for this is almost ready. The only thing lacking is the political will to put such a solution into place.

The only thing protecting us at this point is the civil liberties argument, which really has no force. It makes no sense to say that pot is a debilitating drug, but we should be free to use it anyway, i.e. we should be free to destroy our health if we want to.

As long as most people are horrified at the prospect of their precious children becoming addicted to drugs, they aren't going to object to using sensors to find drugs. Sooner or later they are going to lose patience with the invasion-of-privacy argument. They are going to decide that if it's all right to catch drug users one way, it's all right to catch them another way. If sensors invade their privacy, that's too bad.

There is only one way out of this.

Somebody has to stand up and say that pot is a good thing. It isn't a narcotic, and pot smokers are not drug addicts or drug abusers. Smoking pot isn't something to be ashamed of, it's something to be proud of. Somebody has to stand up and say that. As I pointed out in the first section above, a lot of people already know what pot is, but that knowledge has to be articulated. It has to be asserted in public.

That is the only way to end the war on marijuana.

In the long run, that is the only approach that could possibly work. There is no use arguing about how to discourage drug abuse. We have to shift the argument back to the premise. We have to challenge the idea that smoking pot is "drug abuse."

We have to create a culture in which people are proud to smoke pot, and pleased when they discover that their teenage children smoke it.

Is that possible? I don't know. Society does change. A lot can happen in thirty or forty years.

I do know that it's not possible for our present situation to go on indefinitely, i.e. a situation in which pot is illegal but many people smoke it anyway. As long as we live in a culture in which parents are horrified at the thought of their children becoming pot addicts, we are going to lose. They will find some way to enforce the law, civil liberties or no civil liberties.

Somebody has to stand up and say that pot is a good thing. Somebody, but not just anybody. I'm saying it right now: When I discovered pot in 1982, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. That was when my life started coming together. I wouldn't be where I am today without it. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't a narcotic, it's an elixir.

I'm saying it, but my statement has no force, because I have no standing in society. My name is known in some circles, but it isn't known to the public.

To have any force, the statement would have to be made by someone who has enough stature to pull it off. Tiger Woods could say that pot is a good thing. Oprah Winfrey might be able to do it. A couple of years ago, when he had just set a new home run record, Mark MacGuire could have done it. Right after the Gulf War, General Colin Powell could have done it. Bill Gates could do it. Fifty years ago Albert Einstein could have done it, but I don't think any scientist today occupies the same position in the public imagination. Thirty years ago Billy Graham could have done it. Today I don't think we have a religious figure who commands that much respect.

I'm not suggesting that any of those people would do it. Obviously, they wouldn't. Nor am I suggesting that any of them smoke pot. As far as I know, they don't. (Bill Gates dropped acid when he was a student at Harvard, but I imagine he left all that behind many years ago.) I'm just speculating about what kind of persona would be required to challenge the accepted belief system. Who could stand up and say that the emperor is naked? It would have to be someone who had become famous for some other reason, not someone like Timothy Leary, who made a career out of advocating psychedelics.

It would have to be someone who would not destroy his own credibility by speaking out. Alan Greenspan's words certainly carry weight, but if he said marijuana is a good thing, he would lose his reputation overnight. He isn't in a position to say that. Not many people are. I'm not sure anyone is. Not even Tiger Woods. Not even Oprah.

If a scientist made a stunning discovery, and became as famous as Einstein, and if he went to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize and said "I was stoned when I thought of this idea," that would be a turning point. A scientist could say that, because in his case it would be self-validating. But even then, it wouldn't stick, if he were a lone voice.

If a famous billionaire stood up and said "I wouldn't be where I am today without pot," people would have to listen. The statement would be self-validating in his case too. But if he were a lone voice with no one backing him up, his statement wouldn't have enough force to turn things around.

Conceivably a religious leader could emerge with enough stature to say that the war on marijuana is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. This would be very, very difficult to pull off, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility.

What it would take is for more than one prominent person to say "I'm stoned and I'm proud." If a famous athlete said that, and then a famous entertainer spoke up and said "Yes, I agree, and it's high time somebody said that," and then if a famous scientist and a billionaire chimed in and said the same thing, then everybody would have to pay attention. No single individual could do it. It would have to be several speaking up at once.

I don't know if that will ever happen.

Another possibility would be a bottom up approach: not famous people speaking up in public, but ordinary people speaking up among their friends and neighbors.

One time I went to a lecture in the math department at Stanford. The lecturer was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a marijuana bud -- a beautiful bud, like a High Times centerfold -- and the caption said "This bud's for you."

This young man isn't known to the public, but he does have credibility in his own community, the mathematical community. He stood up in front of the group and made a statement. If thousands of people would do that, in every walk of life, then it would make a difference. What we have to do is just be ourselves, whoever we are, wherever we are.

Everybody is supposed to maintain the pretense of unanimity about drugs. All we have to do is challenge that unanimity. Just stop hiding. When somebody says pot is a bad thing, speak up. I don't mean speak up in public, I mean speak up in our own neighborhoods.

A couple of years ago, one of my neighbors said something about his drinking problem. I said, jokingly, that he would be better off to smoke pot. He said that would be even worse. I said, more seriously now, pointing to myself, "This is what a pot smoker looks like." Since I was the very picture of exuberant, glowing health, my statement was self-validating. He looked at me in surprise and didn't say anything.

"Drugs sweep away a woman's natural reluctance to behave like a barnyard goat"

Closing on a lighter note... I just saw this item about the real reason why pot is illegal. It's funny, but there is some truth to it. Not much, but some. Yes, marijuana does put us in touch with ourselves, our physical selves, our sexual selves. It tends to dissolve our "character armor," as Wilhelm Reich would say, and orgasms become a lot more accessible. Most people don't want that. It's the same principle I started with at the top of the page. People are afraid of sexual energy. They try very hard to control themselves, and they expect everybody else to do the same. This isn't going to change. Pot will be legal when it's legal for women to go topless in public, in other words never.