Placing the Debate Thus Far

In this analysis post, I attempt to synthesize what has been discussed with regards to marijuana legalization thus far with the aim of demarcating a defined space for further argumentation.

Past and Present Contexts

Since the xenophobic and hysteric circumstances of its illegalization in 1937, of which biased media reporting and irrational endorsement by bureaucratic personalities such as Harry Anslinger played a crucial role in entrenching the “marijuana-as-vice” value judgment, social attitudes towards marijuana have slowly but surely changed over the past sixty years. In a CBS news poll conducted in July this year, 41% of the respondents gave their approval for marijuana legalization, a striking increase from the 15% figure 40 years earlier. Hitherto the Narcotic Control Act of 1956 had put marijuana in the same punishable bracket as “hard” drugs such as heroin; today, the use of marijuana for medicinal use has been enacted into law in at least 13 states. This changing zeitgeist has also been politically reflected by the new Obama administration, whose non-desire to criminalize distributors of medical marijuana is in huge contrast to the hard-line position taken by the George W. Bush.

In addition, the question of legalization has gained further pace with the onset of global recession, with an increasing number of policymakers arguing for taxation on controlled use of marijuana because of the high costs of marijuana prohibition and enforcement that continue to stretch their already-thinned budgets. According to a study conducted by marijuana reform activist, Dr. Jon Gettman, it is estimated that the fiscal costs of marijuana prohibition alone amount to a yearly bill of $42 billion. Most of this goes into the arrests of more than 800 000 Americans each year. This is over and above the costs required to deter illegal Mexican cartels from growing marijuana on US soil and border smuggling of marijuana from Canada, which support a lucrative black market demand.

Argumentative Focus

The question of marijuana legalization is therefore now at a crossroads, made muddied by a conflation of changing moral, political, and economic considerations. It is with regards to the moral dimension which I turn my attention to; specifically, I consider if there is a case for the continued illegalization of marijuana on moral grounds. In doing so, I question if the focus of the marijuana debate has put an unnecessary focus on the rule of law as a convenient arbiter for the complexity of the issue.

Analysis

No discussion on the moral permissibility of marijuana is complete without a discussion of its effects on health and well-being. It is true that smoking marijuana, like consuming alcohol, increases one’s heartbeat and lowers blood pressure. It is also true that marijuana use may result in undesirable side-effects such as panic attacks, or foster long term-dependency. Yet, notice I have been careful to qualify the afore-mentioned claim with “may”, rather than the definitive article “will”. This is because there has, as yet, been no clear indication by medical studies for this to be necessarily the case, and to conclude thus would be to fall into the trap of a hasty generalization. The argument that marijuana is immoral because of its potential threats to health therefore only has as much force as the claim that the consumption of fast-food is immoral because it could result in coronary heart disease. In fact, and by this standard, the consumption of alcohol should be banned across the country, because studies have found alcohol to have more harmful effects than marijuana. Most strikingly, studies have additionally shown that the alcohol consumption is more likely to result in a larger threat to the community – in terms of drunken violence – than marijuana consumption.

Even if one is unconvinced by the above argument, the fact that marijuana is nonetheless permitted by some states for use as a treatment drug is at the minimum a concession that whatever harmful effects of marijuana are insufficient to warrant a complete rejection of its medicinal properties. In the light of this, there perhaps needs to be a rethink of the “marijuana-as-vice” value judgment which has underpinned state laws and bureaucratic attitudes towards marijuana use.

Is marijuana legalization therefore the way forward, if it is indeed the case that the scientific evidence behind the constructed notion of “marijuana-as-vice” does not stand up to scrutiny? At this juncture, it is suffice to say that it would not be unreasonable to put forth the contrarian assertion as a viable solution to the stated problem. While it could be argued that marijuana legalization would result in more cases of drug addiction, the problem is that this sort of reasoning often falls into the logical trap of becoming a slippery slope. One such example of this claims, without justification, that marijuana legalization would eventually result in the legalization of “hard” drugs such as cocaine and LSD. Yet, notice how this is done through a deliberate omission of the differences between one drug and the other, which is strikingly crucial for a fair evaluation of the slippery slope’s potentiality. By collectively lumping marijuana under the general basket of “drugs” and by taking a face-value assumption of the universal harm caused by all types of drugs to conclude that the same recourse granted to marijuana would eventually extend to its basket of related “drugs”, the argument becomes at best, a hasty generalization.

Nevertheless, even as I have devoted a substantial amount of support to marijuana use, it would be wrong to characterize my approach to the problem as excessively libertarian. My call for marijuana legalisation should be qualified – I am not making a bugle call for the indiscriminate legalization of marijuana. What I am simply doing is drawing attention to the fact that current reasons for criminalising marijuana – at least on moral and health grounds – are archaic and unconvincing. The law therefore has to change itself to be more current with these considerations.

However, that is not to say that one of the dangers behind this sort of reasoning is that it takes the law to be a convenient arbiter of social norms and behaviour. It is tempting to think of it as so because the development of marijuana use in the country can, in large part, be attributed to early laws that were far-removed from reality. Yet, a question which I will further consider in my development of this topic is the role of law in shaping our attitudes and beliefs. The implication of this on marijuana legalization is crucial – if laws do not convincingly function as a moderating mechanism of social behaviour, then perhaps the tool of legalization – in its simplest conception – may need to be further refined to maximize its intended goal of resolving the marijuana problem.