Pubdate: Fri, 10 Jan 2014
Source: Macon Telegraph (GA)
Copyright: 2014 The Macon Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.macontelegraph.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/667
Author: Erick Erickson

THE POLITICS OF POT

Perhaps I am more ambivalent than I should be about the legalization 
of marijuana. I lean toward letting the law remain as it is, but my 
hostility toward the nanny state pulls me in the direction of 
individual responsibility and letting the chips fall where they may.

Therein lies my concern, though. Letting the chips fall where they 
may could lead society to pick up the pieces of shattered lives. 
Largely, the same class of people now most invested in and vocal 
about drug legalization in the United States are the same who 
advocated the loosening of sexual mores during the sexual revolution 
of the late 1960s and early '70s. The white, upper income, educated 
elites had a lot invested in breaking down social mores in their 
pursuit of unchecked and unbridled hedonism.

On the superficial exterior of shattered souls marching progressively 
through the sexual revolution, it appears not to have turned out 
terribly. Now, years after doing drugs in the privacy of their homes, 
the same class of people want to be as open with it as with their 
bodies. In the never-ending hedonistic alliance between college 
stoners and adults who will not grow up, they've pooled dad's trust 
fund into a political campaign for pot legalization.

They tell us marijuana is not a gateway drug. They compare its 
prohibition to alcohol prohibition despite serious and significant 
historic differences. Ultimately, however, they rely on individual 
responsibility, choice and a war on drugs that has largely failed to 
do more than overpopulate prisons.

That is where they get many of us. Society has refused to exercise 
discretion. Instead of turning blind eyes toward transgressions, 
society has decided every transgression must be either punished or 
celebrated. Society has lost its moderation. So in a world where the 
progressive left wants to make pot legal and ban fast food, many of 
us decide it is better to have it all legal than to have it all banned.

In all of this, though, we ignore a critical point.

The sexual revolution may have not turned out too terrible for those 
who came from upper-income families of privilege and means. It may 
not have turned out terribly for those with access to higher 
education and connections. But the sexual revolution has helped ruin 
poor and middle class families.

The rise of single households in minority communities, the rise of 
teen pregnancy, the incentive for young men to go from one conquest 
to the next and the relaxing of attitudes and societal judgment have 
degraded the stability of the nuclear family. Combine that with the 
federal government's war on poverty and there is decay, collapse, 
crime and social breakdown in too many poor neighborhoods and a 
harder path for the poor to climb to the middle class.

Now add the legalization of drugs to the mix. Gone may be the crime 
and gangs funded on the drug trade. Maybe. That is not a given. But 
young men and women in loosened social mores now with more readily 
available drugs might not turn out so well beneath the upper incomes. 
Upstairs and downstairs in the American manor house may behave 
largely the same, but the upstairs lords and ladies will have a 
harder time ignoring the blight their pursuit of hedonism has caused 
downstairs.

Making it about personal responsibility is all well and good until 
those of us who were personally responsible must cover the cleanup 
costs of those who were not. Perhaps we should just wait a few years 
then re-examine Colorado before rushing on.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom