by robertdreed » Sat Sep 24, 2005 5:09 pm
I think it's ridiculous to model the drug law reform movement simply as an "elite plot", simply because it's found a few financial angels. <br><br>(I'm not sold on the idea that all billionaires are in cahoots in a unified plot to keep the masses oppressed, either. But that's a topic for another discussion.)<br><br>I do think that the progress of the movement has to be carefully monitored, lest it get hi-jacked by Big Pharma medicalizers seeking monopoly and continued control over individuals.<br><br>But I think it's instructive to consider the present Status Quo in regard to the legal substances tobacco and alcohol. <br><br>Here's how it is, in the USA- anyone who wants to cultivate their own personal patch of tobacco in a home garden can do so. No one is forcing tobacco consumers in this country to buy the commodity in a retail store. The can grow an annual supply in their own garden, or form an informal habitue's cooperative, and get it from a friend with a garden. <br><br>Despite this, the overwhelming number of tobacco consumers in this country buy it retail. ( I often shake my head over the numbers of tobacco smokers in the USA who hold liberal political opinions, meanwhile reliably forking over more money to the tobacco companies every year than they do in contributions to their favored political causes. The tobacco companies are well-known to have used a portion of their profits to support <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>their</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> favored political causes- like getting Jesse Helms elected, and re-elected, ad nauseum. )<br><br>As for alcohol- it's illegal to distill ethyl alcohol in the USA without a license from the ATF, which excludes ordinary citizens from doing so for their own personal use. (That said, the chances of someone being busted for setting up a stovetop moonshine still to distill a few liters of moonshine are virtually nil. As a chemical process, the distillation of small quantities of ethyl alcohol is ridiculously easy. For that matter, books how-to books are available at many public libraries. ) However, it is legal for private citizens to brew up to 200 gallons of beer or wine every year, for their own personal use- and as gifts, not for profit.<br><br>So the fact is that the tobacco and alcohol companies do not have an ironclad monopoly on an American citizen's access to tobacco and alcohol. <br><br>I have zero problem transferring this model to marijuana. As long as the right of private citizens to cultivate their own crop in small amounts for personal use is ensured, I don't care who retails it commercially. But I wonder about the commercial market potential of legalized cannabis. It's by no means that large or lucrative a market. <br><br>One of the ironic things about cannabis smoking is that for many people, even regular users, the amounts consumed annually are insignificant compared to tobacco. Consider the average weight of a tobacco cigarette- 800mg, 4/5 of a gram. That means that most users consume between 8-24 grams of tobacco per day. By contrast, even at my heaviest level of smoking pot, my personally consuming more than 7 grams a day was pretty much out of the question. And that was in the 1970s, before the advent of widespread availablity of super-strong cultivars. Between the high-test content of today's bud and my own moderation, 7 grams represents more like 3-6 months worth of use for me nowadays. The point I'm trying to make is that there simply isn't that much profit to be be made in cannabis as compared to tobacco. I think that in order to extract huge corporate profits out of it, personal cultivation would have to remain illegal in order to attempt to retain some semblance of a monopoly on supply. That's bogus legalization as far as I'm concerned, and I would never support that. <br><br>The widest economic free-choice scenario would have cannabis commerically available in specialty shops, along the lines of the connosseiur cigar trade...but even then, I think it would be difficult to turn a consistent profit, due to the informal competition from home gardeners. Cannabis is easy to grow, cure, and produce a high-quality product, compared to tobacco. ( Tobacco is actually sort of a scary plant to grow and handle- the raw leaves are potentially lethally poisonous. It isn't anything to allow your toddler to chew on- unlike cannabis, where the toxic effects are negligible. ) It's also less effort and trouble than home brewing/bottling of beer or wine. <br><br>I'm relatively uninterested in commercial legalization of cannabis. As long as it's legal to privately use, possess, carry on public transportation, and grow small quantities for personal uses and non-profit transfer, I consider that my rights aren't violated. The US Congress has the right to regulate and prohibit interstate trade, and the states and localities have the right to regulate and prohibit economic activity within their borders. Some of the States and localities in the USA maintain total prohibition of alcohol. Others regulate it to the point where only 3.2 percentage alcoholic beverages are commercially available. That's the right of those localities. I have no comment about that, as long as personal possession of liquor by adults isn't a criminal offense, leaving the miscreants subject to having their car tossed for contraband at an internal State roadblock checkpoint- which is the present unfortunate status of people who possess even minute quntities of cannabis, in many places in these United States. <br><br>I think that it's a mistake to view the present Zero Tolerance Drug War in exclusively economic terms. There's also a Culture War going on here- a culture war with political overtones. For cultural conservatives, there are clear benefits to maintaining a cultural regime that insists that the wide spectrum covered by the term "illegal drug use" is all of a piece, from one-time psychedelic experimentation to occasional cannabis use to heroin addiction. These political benefits have little to do with protection of economic profit, at least in a direct sense. It's much more about Machiavellian hypocrisy maintaining power and selective privilege- demonizing a scapegoat minority in the general population, while discreetly granting impunity for the exact same conduct to the wealthy, the politically useful, and as blackmail opportunity. Individuals who are more interested in experimenting with their minds than with following the letter of the law as handed down by State authority are prima facie political threats to Hobbseans and cultural reactionaries who view themselves as the sole defenders of traditional social values. <br><br>Illegal drug users are also troubling to the mentalities of the politically ambitious, who make a point of eschewing and disdaining any sort of behavior that might hinder their personal career path- or, if it's the case that they once "succumbed to temptation", they can be reliably counted on to issue unctuous mea culpas regretting their "youthful indiscretions." Such people- no matter how much political success they achieve, even if they get to be President or Prime Minister- can seldom if ever be counted on to champion the rights of the powerless and marginalized, until it becomes politically fashionable. Their value systems lack the needed integrity.<br><br>At this point in history, I can think of only two exceptions to the rule that politicians are forbidden to speak openly and without regret about their history of forbidden mind-altering drugs: Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, who's gone so far as to appear on the cover of <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> magazine as an open supporter of cannabis and hemp legalization; and Tom Hayden of California, who has openly spoken of his experimentation withthe psychedelic brew Ayahuasca as an enlightening and educational experience. ( Hayden used ayahuasca a few years back on a trip to the Amazon rain forest, with his son. )<br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/24/05 8:08 pm<br></i>
