This blog was started with the intention that it would function as a space where perspectives on the legalization of drugs could be presented, discussed, defended, or overturned. Over the past five weeks, a close adherence to this purpose has not only helped to develop my general awareness of the marijuana controversy in the States; I have also developed a close interest for, and a clear personal stance on, the issue at hand.
My first post was titled “Would you legalize drugs?”, and in the post I challenged myself and the online community of readers to question if there were legitimate and persuasive reasons to take the controversial stance of drug legalization, in light of the inadequacies of the country’s drug prohibition policy. I focused thematically on the broad arguments that there could be medical, social, economic, moral, and legal reasons for the legalization of marijuana, despite arguments to the contrary.
I acknowledged the fact that marijuana was – by conventional standards – harmful, but I disputed the argument that its “harm” was sufficient to warrant its outright criminalization by the law. I accepted that the federal government is right to outlaw all forms of marijuana smuggling, marijuana distribution, and illegal marijuana production, but I questioned if the same force of the law should be brought upon to bear on the personal use of marijuana. I conceded that a medical argument for the “non-harm” caused by marijuana would be contentious at best, but I qualified that its historical and contemporary acceptance as a drug of treatment by at least thirteen states in the country is at the minimum a concession that whatever harmful effects of marijuana are insufficient to warrant a complete rejection of its medicinal properties. I demonstrated the historically xenophobic and contentious circumstances surrounding the initial criminalization of marijuana which has persisted till today, and I challenged the usefulness and accuracy of thinking of marijuana as a form of vice in contemporary society. I raised the fact that a harsh drug policy has nonetheless not stopped America from being the one of the largest consumers of marijuana in the world, and argued that this should suffice to warrant a re-think, if not reversal, of contemporary laws governing marijuana use.
As I matured in my analysis, I focused my interrogation on how to achieve a satisfactory conclusion to the polarized debate, which I tried to achieve by proposing that the mechanics of a pro-choice or pro-criminalization position should not detract from a constructive re-examination of the law. In doing so, I argued that that it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the law to function as the sole arbiter of moral standards in society, and that people should be equipped with the ability to make an informed choice on their own. In my defence, I asserted that this is because to do otherwise would be to subordinate our unique human trait of agency to a convenient moral benchmark that reflects a lack of faith in our ability to make rational choices. In addition, to rely solely on the rule of law would also be to overlook the fact that the law is fundamentally still a representation of the values and beliefs of its writers, and not necessarily an aggregated representation of the values of society. This is especially crucial given how Harry Anslinger and his bureaucratic machine almost single-handedly dictated the country’s policy on marijuana – a policy that has remained largely unchanged for the past 80 years. In the final analysis, I reasoned that all things considered, the fundamental tipping point of the marijuana debate is couched in a question of values – to what extent is society willing and able to sacrifice the rule of law for an enlightened exercise of liberty?
Writing from the perspective of a foreign citizen where drug laws in my society would be considered repressive by American standards, this exercise was also for me a self-reflexive examination of the values underpinning the formation of law in my country. Even as I sought to uncover and challenge the normative assumptions and values that have guided the formation of drug policy in the US, there was concurrently a mirroring dialogue which made me question if my treatment of the subject here would be as applicable to my own country and its set of values. This writing process has, therefore, made me more invested in the topic-at-hand, and I have become more aware of how such an exercise can help us develop a deeper appreciation of the argumentative nuances surrounding complex real-world topics, which affect the way we think about the world we live in.
Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts
Monday, November 2, 2009
Values and Beliefs in the Marijuana Debate
Over the past few postings, I have frequently brought up the rule of law and its relationship to the marijuana question. In the last post, I further argued that it is neither attractive nor realistic to expect the law to function as the sole moral arbiter of what constitutes “good” and “evil” in society. I rounded up my argument by making the assertion that to do otherwise would be to surrender our distinctive ability to make choices – even ones on marijuana that are relatively morally-trivial in comparison to the less morally-ambivalent acts of murder and rape. Worse, it would serve as a tacit and faithless acceptance of an innate inability to make rational choices on our own.
As the exploration of this topic through this blog draws to a close, I guess whether or not marijuana ought to be legalized depends largely on the kinds of values we would like to adopt towards morality, liberty, and law. Is the use of marijuana moral? Insofar as marijuana use does not cause any form of harm or injury to anyone else other than the user, my sense is that the use of marijuana is amoral. Should people be allowed to decide if they want to use marijuana? To the extent that people are equipped with the knowledge for them to make an informed choice on marijuana use, and given further that any decision to use marijuana does not come at the expense of harm caused to any other individual, I believe that people should be allowed the freedom to exercise this choice. Should the law arbitrarily criminalize all forms of marijuana use? Yes, but if and only if the law can justify convincingly that the use of marijuana causes such great damage to its user and the surrounding community that the only possible, logical, recourse would be to outlaw marijuana altogether.
Legalization or not, what is nonetheless clear is that underpinning any support for either side is a set of values which help guide us towards a resolution of the marijuana question. A successful negotiation of the question of marijuana legalization would therefore need to pinpoint these value assumptions; more importantly, the product of the law should be the aggregated representation of the values held by the general society, and not a select representation of the views of the bureaucratic elite.
As the exploration of this topic through this blog draws to a close, I guess whether or not marijuana ought to be legalized depends largely on the kinds of values we would like to adopt towards morality, liberty, and law. Is the use of marijuana moral? Insofar as marijuana use does not cause any form of harm or injury to anyone else other than the user, my sense is that the use of marijuana is amoral. Should people be allowed to decide if they want to use marijuana? To the extent that people are equipped with the knowledge for them to make an informed choice on marijuana use, and given further that any decision to use marijuana does not come at the expense of harm caused to any other individual, I believe that people should be allowed the freedom to exercise this choice. Should the law arbitrarily criminalize all forms of marijuana use? Yes, but if and only if the law can justify convincingly that the use of marijuana causes such great damage to its user and the surrounding community that the only possible, logical, recourse would be to outlaw marijuana altogether.
Legalization or not, what is nonetheless clear is that underpinning any support for either side is a set of values which help guide us towards a resolution of the marijuana question. A successful negotiation of the question of marijuana legalization would therefore need to pinpoint these value assumptions; more importantly, the product of the law should be the aggregated representation of the values held by the general society, and not a select representation of the views of the bureaucratic elite.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Legalizing Marijuana Even As We Recognise Its Harm
“Do we want another substance that is harmful legalized in our society?”
This question was raised by fellow blogger, AW, in a response to my implications post, and I would like to use this entry to address this, particularly because AW’s point is especially pertinent in light of my stance supporting marijuana legalization.
One of the strongest arguments championed by supporters of legalization – and an argument this blog has frequently called upon – is that there is no reason why marijuana should not be legalized give that more “harmful” substances such as cigarettes or alcohol (especially alcohol) have legal status. The strength of this argument, as AW has rightly alluded to, lies not in the persuasiveness of marijuana as “non-harmful”, but in the fact that it is less “harmful”. This however, does not detract from the fact that marijuana is nonetheless a substance that – by conventional standards – causes more harm than good to the body.
If a case for marijuana legalization can, therefore, be made on the basis that is “less harmful”, the key question to ask next is whether an equally persuasive case can be made regardless of a recognition of its “harm”. While this seems at first glance to be a tall order given the near-impossibility of arguing for something harmful to be legalized, it is my contention that an argument for marijuana legalization can in fact be convincingly outlined.
A negotiation of the moral component implicit in AW’s comment involves an interrogation into the function of the law. What is the role of law in society? Is the law meant to protect and buffer society completely from an arbitrarily-defined set of ills and evils? Is it realistic to expect the law to carry out such a function effectively? Should the law be the sole arbiter of what constitutes “good” and “harmful” objects and practices in any given society?
My sense is that it would not be realistic for the law to be the sole arbiter of morality, for the simple reason that apart from universally-unacceptable acts such as the murder of a fellow human being, all other things exist in shades of moral gray. What is unacceptable to some, such as marijuana use, may in fact be acceptable to others. My sense is also that even if we assume the law ought to serve the function of bubble-wrapping society from all forms of moral-ill, this desire is couched more in idealism that reality. After all, the condemnation of the law nonetheless does not prevent the act of murder from being committed. Closer to the context of this debate, the law has certainly not prevented marijuana from continuing to be the most-abused drug in the country.
If the law therefore should not, and cannot, be the only mechanism by which “harm” and “good” is decided by society, what then can supplement and make up for the shortfalls of the law? I am of the opinion that people need to empowered to make choices on their own, and this would involve the trickier and often-misrepresented mechanism of education. It is true that the law should, to some extent, act as an aggregated representative for the general moral values of a society. But we are not talking here about the legalization of acts as contentious as euthanasia, abortion, or suicide which involve questions of life and death. We are talking here of the moral and legal acceptability of marijuana use, a question that is far less morally controversial than what it is often made out to be.
Within the boundaries of this conceptual frame, I would accept that there can be a case made for the immorality of marijuana, because it does cause harm to one’s body. I would even go as far as to concede that the “harm” it causes is significant enough to warrant some form of moral consideration for its use. Yet, one needs to make a distinction between the moral acceptability and legal acceptability; they do not necessarily reinforce the other. Just because it may be immoral to lie or cheat does not mean that all forms of lying and cheating should be outlawed. In the same vein, while society can be taught that the use of marijuana, like alcohol and cigarettes, is undesirable and even immoral, people should nonetheless be given their right to exercise their choice on marijuana use - with some provisos – without fear of being unnecessarily punished by the law. If we surrender our ability to make choices altogether to the law (notwithstanding the fact that the law is, in the final analysis, an arbitrarily set of guidelines defined by the society’s elite), we lose the very thing that makes us unique as human beings – the ability to rationalize our own choices through a complex consideration of moral, legal, and personal perspectives.
This question was raised by fellow blogger, AW, in a response to my implications post, and I would like to use this entry to address this, particularly because AW’s point is especially pertinent in light of my stance supporting marijuana legalization.
One of the strongest arguments championed by supporters of legalization – and an argument this blog has frequently called upon – is that there is no reason why marijuana should not be legalized give that more “harmful” substances such as cigarettes or alcohol (especially alcohol) have legal status. The strength of this argument, as AW has rightly alluded to, lies not in the persuasiveness of marijuana as “non-harmful”, but in the fact that it is less “harmful”. This however, does not detract from the fact that marijuana is nonetheless a substance that – by conventional standards – causes more harm than good to the body.
If a case for marijuana legalization can, therefore, be made on the basis that is “less harmful”, the key question to ask next is whether an equally persuasive case can be made regardless of a recognition of its “harm”. While this seems at first glance to be a tall order given the near-impossibility of arguing for something harmful to be legalized, it is my contention that an argument for marijuana legalization can in fact be convincingly outlined.
A negotiation of the moral component implicit in AW’s comment involves an interrogation into the function of the law. What is the role of law in society? Is the law meant to protect and buffer society completely from an arbitrarily-defined set of ills and evils? Is it realistic to expect the law to carry out such a function effectively? Should the law be the sole arbiter of what constitutes “good” and “harmful” objects and practices in any given society?
My sense is that it would not be realistic for the law to be the sole arbiter of morality, for the simple reason that apart from universally-unacceptable acts such as the murder of a fellow human being, all other things exist in shades of moral gray. What is unacceptable to some, such as marijuana use, may in fact be acceptable to others. My sense is also that even if we assume the law ought to serve the function of bubble-wrapping society from all forms of moral-ill, this desire is couched more in idealism that reality. After all, the condemnation of the law nonetheless does not prevent the act of murder from being committed. Closer to the context of this debate, the law has certainly not prevented marijuana from continuing to be the most-abused drug in the country.
If the law therefore should not, and cannot, be the only mechanism by which “harm” and “good” is decided by society, what then can supplement and make up for the shortfalls of the law? I am of the opinion that people need to empowered to make choices on their own, and this would involve the trickier and often-misrepresented mechanism of education. It is true that the law should, to some extent, act as an aggregated representative for the general moral values of a society. But we are not talking here about the legalization of acts as contentious as euthanasia, abortion, or suicide which involve questions of life and death. We are talking here of the moral and legal acceptability of marijuana use, a question that is far less morally controversial than what it is often made out to be.
Within the boundaries of this conceptual frame, I would accept that there can be a case made for the immorality of marijuana, because it does cause harm to one’s body. I would even go as far as to concede that the “harm” it causes is significant enough to warrant some form of moral consideration for its use. Yet, one needs to make a distinction between the moral acceptability and legal acceptability; they do not necessarily reinforce the other. Just because it may be immoral to lie or cheat does not mean that all forms of lying and cheating should be outlawed. In the same vein, while society can be taught that the use of marijuana, like alcohol and cigarettes, is undesirable and even immoral, people should nonetheless be given their right to exercise their choice on marijuana use - with some provisos – without fear of being unnecessarily punished by the law. If we surrender our ability to make choices altogether to the law (notwithstanding the fact that the law is, in the final analysis, an arbitrarily set of guidelines defined by the society’s elite), we lose the very thing that makes us unique as human beings – the ability to rationalize our own choices through a complex consideration of moral, legal, and personal perspectives.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Theory Post
In this post, I attempt to present a schema by which a satisfactory solution to the marijuana question can be made. But before such a schema can be convincingly outlined, it may be useful to revisit the main points of contention that have polarised the debate surrounding marijuana legalization.
On the one hand, opponents of marijuana legalization commonly assert the ill-effects of marijuana on health and society. They further assert that legalization of marijuana would be tantamount to the tacit promotion of its use by the law. Worse, the legalization of marijuana could signal the start of a slippery slope for general drug legalization.
Contrastively, proponents of marijuana legalization dispute the ill-effects of marijuana, by arguing that the “harm” it causes is relatively less than the already-legalized entities of alcohol and tobacco. An economic argument is also put forth given that state budgets are used excessively for the arrests of petty cases of marijuana possession, which detracts from the larger issues of tackling drug distribution and marijuana trafficking by foreign cartels. In addition, a re-examination of the historical circumstances that led to the criminalization of marijuana further reveals how this was couched more in bureaucratic xenophobia and paranoia, than to any rational scientific basis. More crucially, the strong arm of the law all these years has neither halted the trend of marijuana usage in society, nor stopped the country from being the third biggest consumer of marijuana in the world.
In balance, it is clear that an argument can certainly be made over why marijuana legalization is superior to marijuana criminalization or vice-versa. It is also clear that this argumentative schema is further complexified by the fluid, and at times juxtaposed, application of a common body of evidence to support one stance against the other – which gives the debate its contentious quality. However, and given the near-impossibility of using a limited blog entry to outline how such a deeply-entrenched schism can be reasonably resolved, it is not the intention of this theory post to put forth an outline that promises to change the status quo of the marijuana debate. Rather, this post aims to at least outline how a constructive approach can be taken towards a reconsideration of the marijuana question; specifically, this involves a reconsideration of the effectiveness of the law.
While the dichotomous structure of this argument is evident from the almost diametrically-opposed viewpoints taken by both sides of the debate, what is nonetheless common is that there needs to be at the minimum a re-examination of the role of law in the marijuana debate. What I am saying here is that the solution to the inadequacies of the law in tackling marijuana usage in society need not necessarily require a convenient and intuitive swing to the side of legalization, as thinking through the lens of polarization within the marijuana debate may tend to make one do. But this does not mean that the laws governing marijuana use should be exempt from a critical review and, if found necessary, be further subject to alteration. What is therefore crucial, in my opinion, is that the polarised mechanics of the debate must not divert attention from, or worse, supplant the practical exigencies of the issue at hand, which would go against any constructive approach to resolving the marijuana question.
On the one hand, opponents of marijuana legalization commonly assert the ill-effects of marijuana on health and society. They further assert that legalization of marijuana would be tantamount to the tacit promotion of its use by the law. Worse, the legalization of marijuana could signal the start of a slippery slope for general drug legalization.
Contrastively, proponents of marijuana legalization dispute the ill-effects of marijuana, by arguing that the “harm” it causes is relatively less than the already-legalized entities of alcohol and tobacco. An economic argument is also put forth given that state budgets are used excessively for the arrests of petty cases of marijuana possession, which detracts from the larger issues of tackling drug distribution and marijuana trafficking by foreign cartels. In addition, a re-examination of the historical circumstances that led to the criminalization of marijuana further reveals how this was couched more in bureaucratic xenophobia and paranoia, than to any rational scientific basis. More crucially, the strong arm of the law all these years has neither halted the trend of marijuana usage in society, nor stopped the country from being the third biggest consumer of marijuana in the world.
In balance, it is clear that an argument can certainly be made over why marijuana legalization is superior to marijuana criminalization or vice-versa. It is also clear that this argumentative schema is further complexified by the fluid, and at times juxtaposed, application of a common body of evidence to support one stance against the other – which gives the debate its contentious quality. However, and given the near-impossibility of using a limited blog entry to outline how such a deeply-entrenched schism can be reasonably resolved, it is not the intention of this theory post to put forth an outline that promises to change the status quo of the marijuana debate. Rather, this post aims to at least outline how a constructive approach can be taken towards a reconsideration of the marijuana question; specifically, this involves a reconsideration of the effectiveness of the law.
While the dichotomous structure of this argument is evident from the almost diametrically-opposed viewpoints taken by both sides of the debate, what is nonetheless common is that there needs to be at the minimum a re-examination of the role of law in the marijuana debate. What I am saying here is that the solution to the inadequacies of the law in tackling marijuana usage in society need not necessarily require a convenient and intuitive swing to the side of legalization, as thinking through the lens of polarization within the marijuana debate may tend to make one do. But this does not mean that the laws governing marijuana use should be exempt from a critical review and, if found necessary, be further subject to alteration. What is therefore crucial, in my opinion, is that the polarised mechanics of the debate must not divert attention from, or worse, supplant the practical exigencies of the issue at hand, which would go against any constructive approach to resolving the marijuana question.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Human Agency in the Marijuana Debate
I would like to devote this post to addressing the slippery slope argument commonly raised by opponents of marijuana legalization. My reason for doing so is because most of the objections to marijuana legalization revolve around this sort of logic, which I will contend to be fallacious.
One of the strongest variants of this form of argumentation is that marijuana legalization would open the floodgates to widespread drug abuse, and that the social undesirability of widespread drug abuse should therefore suffice to prevent its legalization. Yet notice how the logic of this argument works - by claiming that marijuana legalization would result in widespread abuse, the assumption is that the former is inversely and directly related to the latter in a simplistic two-model relationship. This sort of reasoning is fallacious because there is no reason to suggest that marijuana legalization would inevitably result in widespread drug abuse; it holds no more weight than the converse argument that marijuana legalization would inevitably not result in widespread drug abuse.
Of course, to dismiss the slippery slope argument is not to deny the possibility that the picture painted by the slippery slope may in fact, come into being. But how much cogency might this view possess? While there is certainly some justification for the argument that a more liberalized law might encourage a more liberalized attitude to marijuana use, to extrapolate this to encompass a slippery slope of moral decadence in society would be to assume that social norms and attitudes are wholly dependent on the rule of law. By the very same logic, relaxed gun laws would inevitably result in cases of more people shooting one another, as would relaxed cigarette laws on more people smoking.
What seems to be overlooked in all these is the factor of human agency. People nonetheless still possess the inherent ability to make choices, and not all choices are – even though it is attractive to think so – necessarily bad ones. To treat the rule of law simply as the sole arbiter of social behaviour like the slippery slope argument does is convenient, but unpersuasive. Worse, underpinning this sort of reasoning is the idea that human beings are wholly dependent on the rule of law to decide what is beneficial and harmful to us. I would instead like to think that most of us have the ability to decide these on our own.
One of the strongest variants of this form of argumentation is that marijuana legalization would open the floodgates to widespread drug abuse, and that the social undesirability of widespread drug abuse should therefore suffice to prevent its legalization. Yet notice how the logic of this argument works - by claiming that marijuana legalization would result in widespread abuse, the assumption is that the former is inversely and directly related to the latter in a simplistic two-model relationship. This sort of reasoning is fallacious because there is no reason to suggest that marijuana legalization would inevitably result in widespread drug abuse; it holds no more weight than the converse argument that marijuana legalization would inevitably not result in widespread drug abuse.
Of course, to dismiss the slippery slope argument is not to deny the possibility that the picture painted by the slippery slope may in fact, come into being. But how much cogency might this view possess? While there is certainly some justification for the argument that a more liberalized law might encourage a more liberalized attitude to marijuana use, to extrapolate this to encompass a slippery slope of moral decadence in society would be to assume that social norms and attitudes are wholly dependent on the rule of law. By the very same logic, relaxed gun laws would inevitably result in cases of more people shooting one another, as would relaxed cigarette laws on more people smoking.
What seems to be overlooked in all these is the factor of human agency. People nonetheless still possess the inherent ability to make choices, and not all choices are – even though it is attractive to think so – necessarily bad ones. To treat the rule of law simply as the sole arbiter of social behaviour like the slippery slope argument does is convenient, but unpersuasive. Worse, underpinning this sort of reasoning is the idea that human beings are wholly dependent on the rule of law to decide what is beneficial and harmful to us. I would instead like to think that most of us have the ability to decide these on our own.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Rethinking Marijuana-as-Vice
I mentioned in my last post that there perhaps needs to be a re-think of the “drug-as-vice” value judgment which has come to govern the federal government’s general stance on drugs, at least in the case of marijuana. I made this claim because I wanted to draw attention to the idea that the values which we ascribe to certain objects or phenomena are, in their elemental forms, essentially constructed notions. Without having to digress into a non-immediate discussion of the moral theories underpinning this process, it is suffice to understand that we label things as “good” or “bad” according to a certain moral base which we evaluate our moral judgments against. Through a deconstruction of the historical events that have come to define the entrenchment of the “drug-as-vice” value judgment in American society, I hope to challenge these normative forms of thinking.
How did the conception of “marijuana-as-vice” take root in the country? While it is at first glance tempting to think of this view of marijuana to be the aggregated result of a static, moral compass intrinsically common to all members of society, the historical fact that marijuana was actually – albeit ironically – mandated to be grown by the government in the 17th century gives the lie to this claim. Moving forward slightly to the 19th century, one would be more astonished to find that marijuana was, at a time, in fact legally sanctioned by the government to be sold off the counter as a cure for ailments such as migraine and rheumatism. From 1840 to 1942, the pedestal status of marijuana as a drug with full legality is further evident from its membership in the United States pharmacopoeia.
Why and how then, did the shift in marijuana’s legal status come about? A close historical analysis reveals that the turn in all these strikingly came as a result of a lethal combination of local xenophobia and bureaucratic endorsement of these sentiments. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, there was an unprecedented wave of immigration into Southwest America, most notably in Texas and California. The local xenophobia felt towards these newly-arrived Mexicans translated itself into established cultures of prejudice, and the unfortunate habit of “marijuana smoking” practiced by these Mexicans became a convenient metonymy for the “bad” values held by foreign immigrants. Nor was this confined to the Mexicans – similar circumstances evolved out of the case of West Indians who introduced marijuana to the Deep South.
Popular sentiment couched in xenophobic and racist mindsets then translated itself into bureaucratic endorsement, completing the value entrenchment of marijuana-as-vice in the common American psyche. At the centre of this transformation was one Harry Jacob Anslinger, the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics. While history often downplays the role of the individual, Anslinger is particularly important to this discussion because he held the afore-mentioned post for an uninterrupted term of 32 years, from 1930 to 1962. Under his watch, the status of marijuana underwent nothing short of a revolution. Hitherto it was a drug valued for its medicinal properties; now, the federal government denied the existence of these properties and went further to classify the drug as a mortal threat to health. Worse, marijuana was conflated along with the jazz scene of the Roaring Twenties as products of counterculture and moral decadence – products which Anslinger took it upon himself to “protect” the people from. What was at play here, therefore, was not so much as a universal condemnation of marijuana by society, but the entrenchment of this view by a select group of bureaucratic opinion leaders into national policy.
Hence, the constructed nature of the “marijuana-as-vice” value judgment is apparent in the final analysis. Marijuana has not necessarily been anathema to society throughout its history in the States, and the fact that it was once embraced as a form of medication by the law is at the minimum a concession of its relative lack of harm to the individual. More importantly, it may be pertinent to question the contemporary relevance of adhering to the afore-mentioned value judgment, given the historical circumstances which preceded the entrenchment of “marijuana-as-vice” into popular consciousness.
How did the conception of “marijuana-as-vice” take root in the country? While it is at first glance tempting to think of this view of marijuana to be the aggregated result of a static, moral compass intrinsically common to all members of society, the historical fact that marijuana was actually – albeit ironically – mandated to be grown by the government in the 17th century gives the lie to this claim. Moving forward slightly to the 19th century, one would be more astonished to find that marijuana was, at a time, in fact legally sanctioned by the government to be sold off the counter as a cure for ailments such as migraine and rheumatism. From 1840 to 1942, the pedestal status of marijuana as a drug with full legality is further evident from its membership in the United States pharmacopoeia.
Why and how then, did the shift in marijuana’s legal status come about? A close historical analysis reveals that the turn in all these strikingly came as a result of a lethal combination of local xenophobia and bureaucratic endorsement of these sentiments. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, there was an unprecedented wave of immigration into Southwest America, most notably in Texas and California. The local xenophobia felt towards these newly-arrived Mexicans translated itself into established cultures of prejudice, and the unfortunate habit of “marijuana smoking” practiced by these Mexicans became a convenient metonymy for the “bad” values held by foreign immigrants. Nor was this confined to the Mexicans – similar circumstances evolved out of the case of West Indians who introduced marijuana to the Deep South.
Popular sentiment couched in xenophobic and racist mindsets then translated itself into bureaucratic endorsement, completing the value entrenchment of marijuana-as-vice in the common American psyche. At the centre of this transformation was one Harry Jacob Anslinger, the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics. While history often downplays the role of the individual, Anslinger is particularly important to this discussion because he held the afore-mentioned post for an uninterrupted term of 32 years, from 1930 to 1962. Under his watch, the status of marijuana underwent nothing short of a revolution. Hitherto it was a drug valued for its medicinal properties; now, the federal government denied the existence of these properties and went further to classify the drug as a mortal threat to health. Worse, marijuana was conflated along with the jazz scene of the Roaring Twenties as products of counterculture and moral decadence – products which Anslinger took it upon himself to “protect” the people from. What was at play here, therefore, was not so much as a universal condemnation of marijuana by society, but the entrenchment of this view by a select group of bureaucratic opinion leaders into national policy.
Hence, the constructed nature of the “marijuana-as-vice” value judgment is apparent in the final analysis. Marijuana has not necessarily been anathema to society throughout its history in the States, and the fact that it was once embraced as a form of medication by the law is at the minimum a concession of its relative lack of harm to the individual. More importantly, it may be pertinent to question the contemporary relevance of adhering to the afore-mentioned value judgment, given the historical circumstances which preceded the entrenchment of “marijuana-as-vice” into popular consciousness.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Marijuana should, and can be, legalized
In an earlier post, I tried to problematize the general issue of drug legalization by introducing the case of prison overcrowding as an example of an undesirable social cost arising out of excessive judicial intervention. In this post and for subsequent discussions, I look specifically at marijuana(otherwise known euphemistically as weed, pot, or grass), and I will argue that – all things considered – a cogent case can be made for its legalization.
Of all drugs, why marijuana? The reason is simple, but compelling. Marijuana is the drug most commonly abused in the country. According to the US Department of Justice, not only is the abuse of marijuana higher in the United States than for any other drug, it is also the most easily grown and hence most commonly accessible. More significantly, the high demand for marijuana coupled by the relative ease by which it is grown has made it the drug of choice for illegal cartels run from Mexico to China, who are drawn by the high profits to be made from supplying the United States with weed. Marijuana legalization is therefore not only a domestic problem of morality, but an international one encompassing cross-state interests.
Given the above problems, my stance to advance drug legalization as a solution to combat these problems may seem unusual, and at worst, even untenable. Wouldn’t doing so encourage marijuana consumption and exacerbate current trends of marijuana abuse?
While this may at first glance seem to be the case, to understand otherwise requires an understanding of the complexities of the issue. We are essentially dealing with two sub-areas in this debate – one, how to address attendant problems arising out of excessive drug legalization by specifically considering if the reverse course of legalization would be useful to this end; and two, if the assumed value judgment of “drug-as vice” that has underpinned the government’s anti-drug campaign over the past 40 years has the same scientific thrust as its moral one.
With regards to the former, the social costs of excessive legalization have included border smuggling from Mexico and Canada, as well as prison-overcrowding as a result of jailing an improportionate number of “petty” marijuana offenders. These have resulted in the government having to counterintuitively set aside more state funds to tackle international criminal groups, and to upkeep larger numbers of prisoners. Through legalization with the appropriate duties taxation (as with liquor and cigarettes), the government would thence be able to focus its energy appropriately on drug cartels, vis-a-vis the relatively harmless individual drug-user who smokes a joint on occasion. In addition, allowing for the legal growing of marijuana within the United States (under select controls of course) could eliminate the existence of illegal border smuggling. The issue of illegality thence becomes an issue of the law, arbitrated by the mechanism of governmental regulation.
With regards to the latter, it is my contention that the “drug-as-vice” value judgment is couched more on moral grounds, than on scientific ones. No doubt, marijuana does pose harmful health effects, but these are comparable to those of cigarettes and liquor. To permit cigarettes and liquor but not marijuana on the basis of “health-risks” would therefore be tantamount to illogical discrimination. Unless one is prepared to accept the adbsurdist reductio that in the same vein, cigarettes and liquor should be equally outlawed on the basis of their potential health risks, there ought to be no reason on scientific grounds to treat the legalization of marijuana any differently from the treatment of alcohol and tobacco.
Even if we overlook the argument above, many scientific studies have cited marijuana as being one of the safest (health-wise) recreational drugs available. This explains why 36 states of the nation actually permit marijuana to be used on therapeutic grounds. The fact that it is actually permitted by healthcare authorities – the ultimate judges (pardon the legal pun) of what constitutes “good” or “bad” drugs – 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. If scientific evidence therefore cannot seem to convincingly suggest that marijuana is as “bad” as what it is morally made out to be, there perhaps needs to be a rethink of the “drug-as-vice” value judgment, at least in the case of marijuana.
The analysis thus far has, of course, assumed a simplistic cause-effect framework. My intention for doing so is not to compromise rigour, but to at least present a fertile basis for further discussion and debate by listing down the markers for my stance. To this end, I invite responses that can help refine, or even reconstruct my assertions in a different light. In the meantime, however, it is for the reasons outlined above that lead me to provisionally argue that there can be a persuasive case made for the legalization of marijuana.
Of all drugs, why marijuana? The reason is simple, but compelling. Marijuana is the drug most commonly abused in the country. According to the US Department of Justice, not only is the abuse of marijuana higher in the United States than for any other drug, it is also the most easily grown and hence most commonly accessible. More significantly, the high demand for marijuana coupled by the relative ease by which it is grown has made it the drug of choice for illegal cartels run from Mexico to China, who are drawn by the high profits to be made from supplying the United States with weed. Marijuana legalization is therefore not only a domestic problem of morality, but an international one encompassing cross-state interests.
Given the above problems, my stance to advance drug legalization as a solution to combat these problems may seem unusual, and at worst, even untenable. Wouldn’t doing so encourage marijuana consumption and exacerbate current trends of marijuana abuse?
While this may at first glance seem to be the case, to understand otherwise requires an understanding of the complexities of the issue. We are essentially dealing with two sub-areas in this debate – one, how to address attendant problems arising out of excessive drug legalization by specifically considering if the reverse course of legalization would be useful to this end; and two, if the assumed value judgment of “drug-as vice” that has underpinned the government’s anti-drug campaign over the past 40 years has the same scientific thrust as its moral one.
With regards to the former, the social costs of excessive legalization have included border smuggling from Mexico and Canada, as well as prison-overcrowding as a result of jailing an improportionate number of “petty” marijuana offenders. These have resulted in the government having to counterintuitively set aside more state funds to tackle international criminal groups, and to upkeep larger numbers of prisoners. Through legalization with the appropriate duties taxation (as with liquor and cigarettes), the government would thence be able to focus its energy appropriately on drug cartels, vis-a-vis the relatively harmless individual drug-user who smokes a joint on occasion. In addition, allowing for the legal growing of marijuana within the United States (under select controls of course) could eliminate the existence of illegal border smuggling. The issue of illegality thence becomes an issue of the law, arbitrated by the mechanism of governmental regulation.
With regards to the latter, it is my contention that the “drug-as-vice” value judgment is couched more on moral grounds, than on scientific ones. No doubt, marijuana does pose harmful health effects, but these are comparable to those of cigarettes and liquor. To permit cigarettes and liquor but not marijuana on the basis of “health-risks” would therefore be tantamount to illogical discrimination. Unless one is prepared to accept the adbsurdist reductio that in the same vein, cigarettes and liquor should be equally outlawed on the basis of their potential health risks, there ought to be no reason on scientific grounds to treat the legalization of marijuana any differently from the treatment of alcohol and tobacco.
Even if we overlook the argument above, many scientific studies have cited marijuana as being one of the safest (health-wise) recreational drugs available. This explains why 36 states of the nation actually permit marijuana to be used on therapeutic grounds. The fact that it is actually permitted by healthcare authorities – the ultimate judges (pardon the legal pun) of what constitutes “good” or “bad” drugs – 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. If scientific evidence therefore cannot seem to convincingly suggest that marijuana is as “bad” as what it is morally made out to be, there perhaps needs to be a rethink of the “drug-as-vice” value judgment, at least in the case of marijuana.
The analysis thus far has, of course, assumed a simplistic cause-effect framework. My intention for doing so is not to compromise rigour, but to at least present a fertile basis for further discussion and debate by listing down the markers for my stance. To this end, I invite responses that can help refine, or even reconstruct my assertions in a different light. In the meantime, however, it is for the reasons outlined above that lead me to provisionally argue that there can be a persuasive case made for the legalization of marijuana.
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