It all began last Thursday, when a group of prospective jurors in Missoula were seated for a two-day trial of a repeat offender by the name of Teuray Cornell, whom the local police had arrested and charged with selling marijuana, a felony, and possession of a small amount of the drug, a misdemeanor.
To seat a 12-person jury, Judge Robert L. Deschamps III of Missoula County District Court had called a passel of Montanans to serve, and 27 had arrived at court on Dec. 16. So far, so good.
But after the charges were read, one of the jurors raised a hand.
“She said, ”˜I’ve got a real problem with these marijuana cases,’ ” Judge Deschamps recalled on Wednesday. “And after she got through, a couple more raised their hands.” All told, five jurors raised questions about marijuana prosecution.
This is what the times needs – jurors determining what the law will be and bargaining with the law to make sure thehy get what theh want. And all for marijuana. Why? Why has marijuana now become the next homosexuality, a patent vice become a virtue? Why do we fall for this again and again and again? :Larry
I’ve never had a single toke in my life, yet have long believed marijuana should be completely legal. It is, indeed, a “vice” as you described it, and I fundamentally reject the premise that government should be in the business of criminalising “vice” at all.
Pot’s illegality has never stopped some of my friends from using it on a regular basis. Its [i]legality[/i] would never induce me to begin using it. The pertinent laws, therefore, are demonstrably pointless and represent what I consider a highly inappropriate intrusion by government into the realm of personal activities deemed by some to be a “vice.”
Until the recent [i]Lawrence[/i] case a significant minority of states had “sodomy” laws on their books, including in two states a definition of “sodomy” as anything other than the missionary position. Most “sodomy” laws over the years have sought to criminalise hetero-sexual practices deemed by some to be a “vice.”
There are still some 25 to 30 percent of Americans who would re-instate Prohibition of alcohol, surveys have repeatedly shown, and they have a stronger case than that for marijuana because alcohol is demonstrably much more dangerous.
The Pharisaic mindset — that of promulgating what amount to ritual laws to control other people’s behaviour — is not limited to the Jerusalem of two millennia ago. Christ came into this world not to condemn it, but to save it (Jn 3:17), and one significant part of saving the world was to move our focus off the ritual law and on to the essentials of moral law.
When some poor schlub dealing half a pound of homegrown “bud” gets sent up for harder time than [i]ANY[/i] of the people responsible for clearly illegal and profoundly immoral activities in the upper echelons of several very large investment banks … something is very wrong.
Our criminal laws should focus on intentional harm, and our civil laws on negligent harm. Neither should have anything to do with “vice” or “virtue.” There are far too many laws and regulations addressing this, that, or some other group’s beliefs of what constitutes a “vice,” and in my opinion they should all be stricken, the sooner, the better.
Marijuana laws are a good place to begin.
[blockquote]Pot’s illegality has never stopped some of my friends from using it on a regular basis. Its [i]legality[/i] would never induce me to begin using it. The pertinent laws, therefore, are demonstrably pointless …[/blockquote]
[url=http://fireflydove.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/a-libertarian-view-of-gay-marriage/]This[/url] is easily the best thing I’ve read on the problems with this kind of argument (just the argument quoted, the other arguments offered by #2 people will draw their own conclusions depending on their views about the nature and role of law).
It’s a discussion of the same argument to do with gay marriage: recognising gay marriage won’t affect people’s willingness to undertake hetereosexual marriage (or just get married, for those of us who see that marriage is inherently hetereosexual) because it won’t affect me or those I know.
The author invokes the law of unintended consequence [i]and[/i] the law of the marginal case (one I hadn’t heard of until I read it) and gives three case studies over the last two centuries showing how the effect of a change in law was out of all proportion to even the critics most pessimistic jeremiading.
From that he doesn’t say, “Make no changes”. But he does say, “Stop running such a bad argument in favour of change.” I think everyone should read, mark, and inwardly digest it.
A hope to cling to on Christmas Eve. One toke over the line.
Mark, thanks for that piece; it IS a good read.
The weakness (not flaw) in applying the proffered examples of “marginal case” consequences to marijuana is that all three involve the [i]beginning[/i] of a social shift. Marijuana does not. In that respect marijuana has probably achieved just about all the “market penetration” it is likely to have.
In the late ’70s the sudden availability of “no-fault” divorce released a huge pent-up demand, and indeed for about five years the divorce rate more than doubled. It has since returned to something closer to its original levels. The ‘elephant’ for Christians then becomes the fact that divorce rates within the church are functionally indistinguishable from those in society at large. When Christ says “I hate divorce.” many of his followers do not wish to listen. That, though, is a different discussion.
No, Bart it hasn’t finished market penetration. It has just begun. See the latest poll on drug use among the young – 12 to 14. look at the sharp rise in use. This is the beginning.
Now consider Amersterdam, which started wide open, and which has, year by year, tried to control the substantial social evils drug use has brought with it. Indeed it has just ruled that the pot shops can no longer ell marijuana to non residents. The wide open system has made Amesterdam the center of the drug grade and tourist druggies, but it ALSO b become the center for the human slave traffic. Then look at what needle park used to be.
Now tell me again that the government has not legitimate interest in mind altering drugs and the social vices that such self indulgence inevitably engenders. This is not a “morality” issue in the usual sense, but an issue is medical health, prevention of illness, crime of all sorts, social costs (in the literal sense) and the destruction of familiies. Drug use is intertwined with all of these and more – such as the inability of adolescents to mature when they spend their high school years stoned.
The vices are what they are because their indulgence creates habits which are individually and social destructive.
Of course the government has a legitimate interest in the drug trade. And making drugs legal will not alter their power to destroy individuals and social structure. The evidence is overwhelming. Go to China and study the effects of the Opium trade and what China had to do to alter the damage.
Moreover the selling of habituating or addictive drugs IS intentional harm – legal or not. Incidentally, there is no connection between the sodomy laws and drug use and sales. By calling them both “morality” laws is a false classification intended to take the patentcy of one and ascribe it without justification to another. This is what happens when you go up the ladder of abstraction in an attempt to obscure distinctions.
You have written exceedingly when on many subjects, but on this one your biases are simply too strong to correctly assess contrary evidence. Larry
Larry, much of the drug issue is at heart a spiritual issue, which is where we come in. It will not be easy, and at best the function of our generation will be to [i]begin[/i] to remove the barriers preventing people from hearing first the Gospel and second, God’s healthy plan for their lives.
[i]medical health, prevention of illness, crime of all sorts, social costs (in the literal sense) and the destruction of families.[/i]
With the exception of crime prevention and [i]COMMUNICABLE[/i] diseases government should not have a role in any of this. The crime associated with marijuana is almost totally related to its illegality and no other factor.
If you truly believe your excerpted comment, then you must advocate for the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine ahead of marijuana, for both are demonstrably FAR more destructive on all counts. You might have noticed I mentioned nothing about open market in narcotics.
I’ll also tell you that I assisted materially in busting up two meth labs around here, and if there’s a more harmful drug, I’m not aware of it. Crack cocaine is quite literally “candy” in comparison.
Again, this is overwhelmingly a spiritual issue, and should not be a legal one.
The evidence that Marijuana is harmful is built on a confusion between the specific and the general. The evidence indicates that alcohol is much more dangerous. The idea that marijuana is addictive is simply not true. It is less addictive than sugar (try giving up sugar for a week. Most people can’t do it).
Juries are one of the few places citizens – average citizens – can make their conscience known. It is historically one of the few places where small bands of people – through independent reason – can challenge the government’s heavy hand.
As Bart remarked, wisely “The crime associated with marijuana is almost totally related to its illegality and no other factor.” this is the truth.
Larry didn’t actually provide any evidence. What the evidence indicates is that the Dutch, by and large, do not suffer themselves. It is because of the illegality of other countries that the dutch have to deal with these problems. Our intransigence makes holland a destination for people who would break the law. They’re paying for our hypocrisy. And they’re probably tired of it.
Dutch violent crime rates are much lower than in the US.
Bart, Maine has a serious meth problem. It is as destructive as cocaine, heroin, ecstacy and their ilk. How can you say then that the government has no legitimate interest in its effects? A crucial matter that you will not see is that marijuana is part and parcel with these more deadly compatriots; they make up a single culture of abuse. Yes I favor government control of tobacco for precisely the same reason as the government has a vital interest in marijuana and its more lethal kin. The legality of marijuana is not an issue in this context, for the crime connected to it is the corrosion of personal values which, taken in the large, preclude a rational and governable society; it is the VALENCE of the drug culture that makes it so dangerous. See John’s entry above. He has missed the obvious though he cites it himself: The drug culture – not this drug nor that one, but altogether – create a society wherein every vice gives aid and support to every other one. This is the clear lesson from Holland; nor will the Dutch gain control of these serious social evils until they clear their own stables. Chaucer puts it rightly: Whoever saw a shitten shepherd and a clene sheepe?
Is it a spiritual issue? Of course. I never denied it. But Marijuana is habituating, and is the great gateway drug. Those who use it create the very mental climate that suggests that another drug, more powerful, can yield greater pleasures still. What will become of a society that gives the crown and throne to personal pleasures, whether drugs or some other vice? Once again see the date on the latest poll on the spread of marijuana use ( and the more serious drugs) among the very young. What makes you think that legalizing marijuana will rob it of its power to seduce? It that were even faintly so, neither tobacco not alcohol, both long time legal, would be a source of disease, misery, abuse,social dislocation and disorder, and death itself. To make a vice legal is to sanction its worst practices, as Holland is finding out. And you think the state has no legitimate business with this? Larry