Marijuana, also known as MJ, Mary Jane, Pot, Cannabis, Skunk, Dope and Pakalolo where I come from, has been one of the most controversial issues for many states and for many people within those states. What I hope to do in this post is to share a much broader perspective of the multitude of issues or thoughts surrounding this issue, again, from my perspective.
From as much as I have studied on this issue and understanding people’s positions that I have spoken to on this issue, I share what I can here. Additionally, since I do have a love of freedom and law and understand those fragile boundaries, I do enjoy others not only taking the time to read and possibly consider what I write and to add support or opposition where I may be weak in my understanding or inconsistent in my arguments. Although this post is long, it is by no means inclusive of all of the perspectives and tentacles of the issue. By the end of this post or several posts, you may realize there is way more to the “Pot” issue than you ever considered. I know when I began to write, it sure became clear to me.
Some see "Pot" as a single issue and I hope they benefit from reading comments by me and others to see that "the issue is never the issue." Sadly, the decisions on this issue are based on who you are and how you feel or what you think something should be not what the law is and this is a very dangerous slope when people consider us a democracy and that we get our rights from government instead of us being a Constitutional republic and our Rights coming from God. Simply, I believe that any seemingly insignificant deviation from what the law should be makes applying law a mess and you might as well throw principle, or justice for that matter, out the window.
If you are a cop generally speaking, (please no disrespect intended) Pot is drugs and drugs should be or is illegal. I am not sure why they think it should be other than the fact that there was a statute passed which means it was a law that needs to be enforced. I don’t see Pot, itself as dangerous like I do Methamphetamine or Opioids for example If this is true, why then are Big Pharma meds not illegal?
Isn’t that position being inconsistent in your worldview and application of the law? Maybe you believing that if the government regulates something, somehow people should legally adhere to any and all of those regulations? Maybe you believe that corporations should have rights that are far and away above and beyond that of the individual? Or maybe you believe what you do is for the general good first and not for profit and control? The fact of the matter is if anything is unregulated or not controlled by Big Pharma, they will lobby to keep it illegal, at least until such time as they can control it too.
If you work for the government especially today, generally, they believe that rights don't come from God and that they come from them. They feel they are the final arbiter of the rights of man. Generally, rather than protecting a right, they will regulate it reducing it to a privilege. The irony here is that it is far more illegal and tragic to violate one's oath than it is to cite for Pot possession and yet possession charges are far steeper? Ever ask why no one even gets punished for committing treason or a violation of one's oath? It’s because people no longer have any understanding of what a sacred oath is or why they took it or just ignore it. There are many in government that know darn well what control is and so they use it. These also believe you are beneath them and to be honest when they are dealing with an ignorant electorate of whiners and complainers, who can blame them? The problem is that our Founder’s stated that if this were ever the case, the elected officials were to educate the people not control them.
If you are a Christian, you may not know what to believe- One, that drugs should be illegal because you believe in morality or Two, that God creates all things for a purpose and since God created it, it must be there for our use. First of all, if Christians tend to use their Christianity in a way to control others, they may use it to justify any decisions they make or they may even use it to hide from what they really think or there are some that just focus on what the word of God says. Christians should be the one entity that is consistent in the application of their worldview and any consistency, I argue by anyone for that matter is a deviation from the Scriptures and therefore a deviation from the proper application of the law. Case in point, using morality would be difficult in general considering that the church in the last few decades has become more like the world than apart from it. The divorce rate and abortions are a great examples.
If you are a "libertarian “how you define it? You may or not believe in God or that Rights come from God but do believe that everyone should be free to do anything they wish as long as it doesn't harm another, right? There are several problems with this. One, if God didn't grant you rights, you would have to justify where they came from and government may be that only other option. Second, just because an action has the appearance of not harming anyone else doesn't necessarily make it true. Short- and long-term consequences should be considered.
If you are a leftist, you probably don't know enough about how government should work to take a lawful position anyway so all you would be able to do is share your feelings on the issue. Most leftists in general are so hypocritical about most things they would probably confuse themselves when debating an issue on the merits of anything other than how they feel so although they support smoking pot, their support comes from a feeling that is subject to change so this perspective really shouldn't be considered. This worldview has catastrophic consequences for a peaceful and lawful society and evidence of current events today support ample proof of this.
If you are a “Conspiracy Factists” like myself, you should understand most of these perspectives in addition to one more...Conspiracy. In order to see the conspiratorial elements, you need to know about conspiracy and since few people teach about it, this aspect is relatively unknown. Would it be important in taking a position on an issue? I say it would be crucial.
From a moral standpoint, is smoking pot a moral or immoral issue? If moral is defined: "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character" I would say is it less about morality and more about what we have been taught or believe is moral? Is it just a tradition to believe a certain way and are those that smoke are bad people and does the reason they choose to smoke determine their badness or goodness?
From a constitutional standpoint, is it constitutional or unconstitutional to spoke pot? If Constitutions were created to protect the rights of people by setting forth limitations on the government and Constitutions were the only thing that defined what governments could do, could government even make law that violate the rights of the people when no such provision was included in those documents?
From the standpoint of Principle, Freedom Principles, is imposing sanctions upon people without even a commission of a crime consistent with principle? Should the government have the power without such delegated authority to determine what freedom is and what constitutes a crime? If man has such power, does he not desire to become God and final arbiter of man's rights?
From a legal and lawful standpoint, Ironically, we have already discussed the non-constitutionality of this issue so there is no point in placing it where it doesn't fit. So, Is Pot a crime? Some say yes even without a corresponding action. They believe that just the mere existence of the substance is a crime. Some say Pot isn't a crime but possession is. There are others that say possession in itself isn’t a crime but possession with intent to distribute is and some say one under the influence is a crime with or without possession. Confused yet?
In the following several posts, I will try to cover all areas I see that are affected by this issue and show the complications in my mind on navigating through issues like these.
Also something to consider for many people is that our Founder believed that not everything can be legislatable or should be. In my mind if something is that complicated it may very well should be left alone because imposing laws would only make the issues far more complicated than it already is.