Getting involved in people’s private lives
Bookworm on Jul 07 2006 at 2:36 pm | Filed under: Government
I don’t like marijuana. I think it smells bad and that it’s bad for people. I’ve tried it once (yes, I was curious and I did inhale) and hated, just hated, how it made me feel. I had no inclination to revisit it. Of course, I don’t like alcohol either. I don’t like anything that makes me feel out of control (except chocolate, of course).
Today, on the Michael Medved show, he interviewed the author of It’s Just a Plant, a book aimed at promoting marijuana to children. (Incidentally, despite Medved’s manifest hostility, as well as the hostility of many of the callers, the author, whose name I’ve forgotten, was pleasant and focused, which impressed me.) The book’s author has, as his main goal, decriminalizing marijuana. I can’t say that I disagree with him. I think marijuana ought to be treated in the same way as alcohol and cigarettes — it should be a controlled, not an illegal substance, because I really don’t see it as different from those other substances.
Also, because I’m something of a libertarian, I believe that people ought to be allowed to make stupid choices about what they put into their bodies. They should also have to abide by the consequences of those choices: losing their jobs if they break company drug rules, getting stupid if the drug causes bubbles in their brains, losing their children if they cannot care for them due to the drug, losing their money spending it on the drug, etc. I just don’t think they should suffer criminal consequences for using the drug itself.
Where I totally part ways with the book’s author is his plan to sell children on the drug. I think that’s just plain wrong. Libertarianism is based on freedom of choice. Children, even the brightest, have limited intellectual abilities, and have to be protected from their manifest inability to make safe, reasonable choices. Again, marijuana should be treated in the same way as alcohol and cigarettes, which are forbidden to children, and which are not promoted to children.
I was thinking about children and dangerous substances in a different context today too. Apparently some county is planning on making it illegal for people to smoke in their own homes if they have people in their homes working (housekeepers, contractors, etc). That got my hackles up. For the most part, people should be allowed to do whatever they want in their houses. If the housekeeper were kept prisoner in the house, one might have an argument for forbidding smoking but, if she were kept prisoner, you’d be going up to a whole different level of illegal acts, wouldn’t you? As it is, housekeepers and contractors don’t have to work in smoke-filled houses if that offends them.
But what about children? I grew up in a smoker’s house until I was 12, when my Dad quit. It was awful. Ignoring the health consequences, it was a stinky, unpleasant experience — and I loved my Dad very much. To this day, I can’t stand having the smell of smoke on my body, and will go to quite obsessive extremes to avoid it. The fact is that children, unlike those independent, adult housekeepers and contractors cannot get away from Mom’s or Dad’s cigarettes.
All of this got me asking myself whether it is anybody’s responsibility (read: “government’s responsibility”) to keep parents from smoking around their children. I do believe that the community has a responsibility to protect children. We all recognize this up to a point, because none of us would hesitate to withdraw a child from an untenable living situation. I bet most of us are okay with such things as mandatory car seats, too, because they make such a drastic difference in child safety. The government impact is fairly minimal compared to the benefit conferred on children.
On the other hand, letting the Government dictate who can, and cannot smoke, would be an appalling precedent in terms of government interference in private lives. I’ve therefore concluded that the best thing vis a vis children and their parent’s smoking is education, education, education. And indeed, my community is living proof that anti-smoking education works. I don’t know any smokers. Some, like me, never smoked. Others, however, while they could not stop for their own benefit, were able to do so with children as an incentive. And we’ve all done this without the government entering our houses and stealing our ashtrays.
Email This Post To A Friend
10 Responses to “Getting involved in people’s private lives”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I’ll go along with banning smoking, on one’s own property as soon as there’s a similar ban on drinking on one’s own property.
While second-hand smoke isn’t recommended, it has no where near the potential to kill that uncontrolled drinking has, yet none of the moonbats have mentioned doing anything about it largely because they are in the thrall of the beer industry.
Gephardt is almost single-handedly responsible for keep media attention away from his hometown sponsor, Budweiser Beer, and their mesmerizing and ubiquitous ads on television targeting adolescent males.
I am with you on this. I favor the legalization of drugs as long as the profit motive is taken away from the people who would otherwise “push” the drug on weak people (and children). Make them cheap and easy to obtain and crime would diminish as the motive to dispense disappears. Perhaps the government needs to create a separate category of “sanctioned” substances that can be dispensed at minimum cost to the self-destructive among us.
I guess it’s the Mormon in me. I do admire the Mormon position on honoring one’s body.
It’s close to the Evangelical belief I grew up with. INdeed, why permit anything to distort the precious senses which are God’s gift? (One of my early children’s readers contains the Helen Keller story. I can surmise what her distress might be about today’s drug use.)
The horrific waste that drugs have taken on America makes me recoil sharply at the mention of legalizing. I could almost label it an “Islamic” plot, since I know of few more insidious ways to destroy the liberties of American life.
Almost all the youth crime in our state is connected in one way or another to drugs. One Christian counsellor reports that most of the prison (serious criminal) inmates she helps to recover, began with drugs. But those are simply personal facts.
We have been reading/listening to much about the Founding Fathers. Today’s revisionists have exposed all their foibles (Adams was a drunkard, Jefferson…etc.) Yet I think none of these Fathers could have reconciled the moral, thinking individual citizen–whose being was essential to their ideal of America–with hedonistic drug use.
I don’t like anything that makes me feel out of control (except chocolate, of course).
Seriously, what is up with women and chocolate. Neo NeoCon also wrote a post about adoring chocolate. If food is the path to a man’s heart, then I suppose chocolate is the path to a woman’s heart. Or some women.
The book’s author has, as his main goal, decriminalizing marijuana. I can’t say that I disagree with him. I think marijuana ought to be treated in the same way as alcohol and cigarettes — it should be a controlled, not an illegal substance, because I really don’t see it as different from those other substances.
Also, because I’m something of a libertarian, I believe that people ought to be allowed to make stupid choices about what they put into their bodies.
Now, I don’t like saying I agree with anybody. Not in the metaphorical sense, in the literal sense. I don’t like to write or say the words “I agree”, it seriously reminds me of an echo chamber. And those always freaked me out when I was young, that and the house of mirrors too.
So in light of this, I have to say that Book’s thinking in these quoted lines mysteriously match my own in very consistent lines. (except the chocolate)
I don’t like to lose control of my body. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I always try to keep a moderate situational awareness of my surroundings and my actions. It’s not easy to do, since you can’t get it unless you train yourself for it, which takes time and skill. I don’t like being out of control. Whether this is because of an innate discipline or because I don’t like people surprising me, is not known to me. I think one of the most elegant examples of my thinking is when a friend in High School asked me what I would do if I found a beautiful woman lying in my bed naked. I postulated that this was an assassination plan, so I would not get near her. He postulated that he would go get her and partake of the flesh. I didn’t tell him about the assassination idea, of course, because I was afraid I would be laughed at.
I was always more intelligent than the average person I knew. I was quite dissatisfied with that, intelligence is inborn, an aristocratic trait, and I always hated having something I didn’t earn myself. So I suppose I concentrated on trying to acquire wisdom, which is earned, while intelligence is a born trait. You can’t get rid of intelligence, other than to refuse to utilize it.
I think the example of the Jewish kid in France, who got lured by a sexy looking young Muslim women to a spot where her “friends” kidnapped the Jewish kid and then tortured/killed him is a good example that my efforts were not in vain. And that indeed, I had acquired an earned difference between me and others I knew.
My conclusions agree with Book in this case, almost perfectly. The moral dilemma between wanting to prevent people from doing drugs while at the same time respecting their free will, is solved by freedom of information. After all, it is the same principle as the First Ammendment. People govern themselves best and make the best choices, when they are given the most accurate and valid data. When people are lied to and they believe those lies, then they make the wrong choices. (Palestinians)
I’ve never tried drugs, cigarretes, nor have I ever indulged in a drinking contest. Reason’s simple. I’m a survival orientated person, with competition as a focus. Whenever I think about doping up, doing drugs (legal or illegal), and drinking myself to a stuppor, I always think this thought. “Wow, do you know how easy it would be for me to kill someone who was drunk or on drugs?” That stops thoughts of doing drugs pretty well.
Maybe it was watching too much Hollywood violence, but I learned how to recognize death and avoid him. I’ve had my brushes with death, and cases where I believed that I was going to die. Control and Discipline helped me, and they help me still. I pity those without control over their emotions and bodies. They are wasting their human potential, allowing their genetic inborn traits to take the lead. Humans do not become fully manifest until we learn how to control our environment with our will, much as animals do not become self-aware until they learn how to control their environment with tools.
It is almost like a second stage of evolution, but still, only a few people have even come close to touching it. Religion matters, not because I’m a Christian, but because there are more religions than the ones from Christianity.
It is funny. If people didn’t know me well or my beliefs well, they might believe me to be a Total Puritan and teetotaler in how I live my life. But compared to real Puritans on the Left, I am not afraid to wash my hands in blood. It’s good to have a state of balance, to be neither too afraid of impurity nor too intolerant of differences. Some people just don’t understand that moral purity comes from centering oneself amidst the sea of desires. The wind blows in whichever direction desire, desires, but only the bedrock of your roots, centered in yourself, can withstand the hurricane of disbelief.
I fully believe that marijuana should be legalized with the same restrictions as alcohol (age, driving, etc;) however, I have no doubt that the individuals making the lion’s share of the profits from its artificially high price (due to its illegality) have more than a small hand in maintaining the status quo. Legalization would also free up an incredible amount of police man-hours, enabling them to spend more time tracking down violent offenders.
I don’t think marijuana should be legal. It makes people into stoners, who are some of the most annoying people in the world. Marijuana smokers simply _will not shut up_ about how you can make paper and cloth and affordable housing out of hemp, and how Hearst and Hitler and Halliburton conspired to make it illegal, and how it’s a sacred herb, and it’s healthier than nicotine, and, and, and…
I want harsh marijuana laws so I don’t have to listen to stoners. First offence: execution. Second offense, execution _again_ by a really ugly executioner who smells bad.
Ah, but they’re just trying to get it legalized by framing the debate into one of how useful a material it is or how it’s not a health risk–as opposed to it’s only an intoxicant. If it were legalized, you would no longer hear them; I would suggest a trip to the Netherlands or Germany to see this first-hand.
Actually, marijuana laws can be predominantly attributed to Harry J. Anslinger–the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
I still say legalize marijuana and tax it–why should an industry that generates billions of dollars support the real criminals while avoiding taxation? Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol–and was the impetus for organized crime groups that still exist today, what makes you think it’s working any better for marijuana? Benjamin Franklin’s definition for insanity was “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Sounds like prohibition falls into this category to me.
Kevin:
I did go to the Netherlands, and the stoners there kept asking to “borrow some money.” It was hardly an improvement. I know of no other vice which makes its practicioners so evangelical.
OK, requesting a handout is expanding upon your initial observation and while I agree it’s irritating, I would humbly offer welfare (both receivers and the bureaucracy necessary to administer it) and trade unions as even more onerous vices which produce (even more irritating?) evangelical practitioners; at least when people ask me personally for a handout, I can (and do) say no but when they use the government to perform the shakedown, I have no say in the matter. Suggest conservative changes to labor or welfare laws, however, and prepare for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’ve known many people who smoked marijuana and were still contributing members of society just as I’ve know many people who drink alcohol without becoming societal drop-outs. Moderation is the key–anything to extreme is when things go wrong. I think the number of non-violent offenders in jail for minor marijuana offenses is wrong. Many had jobs–now instead of paying taxes, they’ve become a tax burden (at no small cost I might add,) we receive no income taxes from the underground marijuana economy, enforcing marijuana laws is an inefficient use of a scarce resource which has alternate uses (police time), etc. When everything is taken into account, I believe that the negatives outweigh the positives with regards to our current marijuana law policy.
We do agree on one thing; however, just not the particular subject–I really want harsh laws outlawing liberal ideology so I don’t have to listen to their incessant whining–it really gives me a headache.
i think a good compromise is if you make mari illegal and still tax it.