Conservatives need to get ahead on it.
One of the reasons that I’ve never been a conservative is their blind spot on the War on (Some) Drugs.
4 thoughts on “Marijuana”
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Conservatives need to get ahead on it.
One of the reasons that I’ve never been a conservative is their blind spot on the War on (Some) Drugs.
Comments are closed.
Rand sometimes talks about “preference cascades” in public opinion, and views on marijuana legalization seems to be one of them; after decades without much change, the dam seems to have suddenly broken. Support for gay marriage is another, even more dramatic example. Neither party championed these causes, but the Democrats have (belatedly) gotten behind gay marriage. Democrats’ reluctance to be labeled soft on crime may be holding them back from an all-out embrace of legal marijuana, and that could give the GOP an opening.
The GOP institutionally is as welded to a war on drugs as a war on gay rights.
The issue seems like a natural for the Tea Party wing of the Republican party. The government shouldn’t be in the business of telling citizens what they can or can not ingest or inhale. That it does is an affront to the idea of personal liberty.
As to why the Democrats might be reluctant to get behind the idea, it’s a question of control as much as anything else. A war on drugs is as good an excuse as any to limit what those pesky citizens do in their lives. Of course with the war on terrorism, they might not need the one on drugs, but the result is the same. The state needs to control you because you are engaging in dangerous behavior.
If you extend the ‘reduce governmental interference’ to -alcohol-, you would have non-stop whining from every facet of the Left – to the point that ‘teh youts’ might even notice. And vote.