Yesterday was a day that thoroughly confused me. Every year on April 20th in cities throughout the world people gather to celebrate, or protest, or generally just sit and think about marijuana. Personally, it is a day that I am thoroughly put off by for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I don't associate myself with pot culture and do my best to distance myself from it, that's just me. But the day raises some interesting questions about law and the so-called "War on Drugs."
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but if you live in Vancouver and were trying to get around yesterday it is pretty likely you ran into some obstacles. The festivities blocked city streets, held up buses, and brought things to a halt to the same extent that a city-sanctioned event would. I find that incredibly perplexing. Marijuana is supposed to be illegal but yesterday downtown Vancouver became a no-holds barred pot market. It is inconceivable that police didn't know what was going on and the lack of problems that arose seems to imply that nothing out of the ordinary took place. My question is, why do we bother to pretend that pot is some underground drug that only the seedy underbelly of society indulges in if it's clear that it's ubiquitous?
The fact of the matter is, no matter how much society attempts to ban the voluntary use of certain substances, certain things are never going to disappear. If people want to smoke the by-products of a plant that they can grow in their basements, they are going to. Now I don't claim to be overly familiar with the specific laws surrounding drug possession but, from what I have seen, the average police officer is more likely to turn his glance than reach for his cuffs when he sees people indulging. That creates an embarrassing situation for the police officer, the smoker, and anyone who expects him to act any differently. All we have done by outlawing marijuana is create the seedy subculture that we want to associate it with.
Stop and think how the world would change if you could buy pot at any place you can currently buy cigarettes. Instantly there would be no reason for people who enjoy the drug to seek out shady characters in dark alleys. Police wouldn't have to waste their time dealing with dopey kids when actual violent crimes are happening. Things would basically exist in the same way they do now. People who don't like pot would remain distant from it and people who do wouldn't need to block of city streets and shove the drug in everyone's faces once a year. Best of all (depending on your perspective) we could tax it like crazy. Legalizing marijuana would create an overnight revenue stream for federal and provincial governments that could be used to maintain infrastructure and pay for services.
People might call me a hypocrite for writing something like this because anyone who knows me understands that the last thing I want is to be around drug culture, but that is exactly why I have chosen to take this position. If we take a problem and turn it into an opportunity, not only will we benefit in terms of safety and fiscal fortitude, we won't have to hear about it as much. Nobody organizes imposing festivals to promote cigar smoking. The obvious counter to this is that every once in a while an event that is strongly based on alcohol imposes on the lives of people who decline to participate. To that, all I can say is that the stigma is nowhere near as strong because there is no onus on the police to put a stop to it.
All I'm saying is that we need to accept that marijuana isn't going anywhere. No matter how half-heartedly we attempt to enforce the laws surrounding it, advocates will continue to come out in force and argue for its general acceptance. The sooner we acknowledge that the current system represents a large scale failure, the sooner we can begin to reap the benefits of supply an demand. Eventually law makers are going to need to wake up and realize that all they have done is make this out to be a bigger issue than it ever should have been and created a situation of mutual annoyance for everyone involved.
That's about all I have to say on this.
Steve
Image courtesy of: http://imgur.com/gallery/1ovI9
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