Kozlowski: Stop bashing hash

Quantum mechanics is the science of the truly bizarre. All particles are waves at the same time,… Quantum mechanics is the science of the truly bizarre. All particles are waves at the same time, but whether we perceive one as a wave or a particle is entirely dependent on the experiment being done. Even weirder, things can exist in multiple states at the same time, and they only become one state when they are observed. Oh yeah, and this is the “easy” introductory material gone over in the first two lectures. I maintain that people who attempt to understand quantum mechanics are either really good at math or have a strong desire to do lots of pot. Unfortunately, the latter is illegal in many places.

So I ask, is it just coincidence that California has produced many of the breakthroughs in quantum mechanics and is also trying to legalize marijuana? I think not. Proposition 19, a California ballot initiative, seeks to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana. Polls are all over the place. The Christian Science Monitor reported 53 percent against on Oct. 6, but others say these polls are off, and the initiative is likely to win. It’s about time that some state takes the step of legalization, and that the United States makes marijuana legal at a federal level.

Some arguments against Prop. 19 say that the plan will create a regulatory nightmare because it allows individual counties to set individual policies about marijuana. But, this isn’t an unusual situation: Section 2 of the 21st Amendment, which repeals Prohibition, explicitly allows local municipalities to ban or regulate alcohol as they see fit. Indeed, there still are “dry” counties and cities, counties where you can’t buy booze on Sunday and states where alcohol can only be bought from state stores. We have somehow managed to muddle through with a patchwork of alcohol regulations. Why should pot be any different?

Other arguments against marijuana revolve around the ill effects of the drug like addiction and impairment. Essentially, the drug is bad for your health. But then again, so is excessive coffee, which is addictive, causes high blood pressure and creates a dependency; when a brain becomes accustomed to a certain level of caffeine, it doesn’t function normally unless that amount is present. The ill effects of tobacco are well known. Alcohol can be addictive, with sometimes fatal withdrawal symptoms, and leads to bad health effects ranging from getting burned by flaming couches in the streets of Oakland to cirrhosis of the liver. In fact, the bad health effects and lost productivity caused by the ravishes of alcohol led to an experiment with Prohibition, and we know how that one turned out. Sex transmits STDs. Listening to rap music was “strongly linked” to increased drug and alcohol abuse, as well as violence, according to NPR. Yet these aren’t illegal. Why?

Even if we concede marijuana is the worst drug in the world — which it isn’t — is it really the government’s business to punish its recreational use? I’m not arguing that driving under the influence of marijuana should be legal. If a corporation doesn’t want to hire people that smoke marijuana, that’s their business. If the government wants to enforce sobriety among its own workers, so be it. But why should the government prosecute a guy who smokes a joint in the comfort of his own home, then eats all the peanut butter in his house while staring at his fingernails, pondering the meaning of the universe?

The government should not concern itself with matters that almost never affect any one but the person performing the act. The government is here to prevent people from harming each other and securing the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If the government were to concern itself with protecting people from the consequences of their own actions, we would no longer be free. Freedom is partly the right to do things others might consider stupid and should only be limited to the extent that the actions interfere with others.

There is another problem. Marijuana laws, as they are currently enforced, are kind of a joke. I’d either be a liar or a very strange college student to say I haven’t seen somebody who was high. Ann Arbor, Mich., hosts an annual “hash bash” where you can buy joints, bongs and so forth from people doing business on a public street in broad daylight several blocks from the county courthouse. Get cited on city property and the fine is a whopping 25 bucks. Heck, we’ve even had two presidents who have admitted to experimenting with marijuana in front of video cameras, with Bill Clinton famously “not inhaling” and President Obama “inhaling frequently, that was the point.”

So there you have it. Doing something illegal doesn’t always disqualify you from holding an office of public trust if that illegal something is using marijuana. This encourages disrespect for the rule of law.

Remove the illegality, and you remove some of the cachet of doing drugs, as well as the contempt for the law resulting from getting away with lawbreaking.

True, one could say the same thing about shoplifting, in that not all shoplifters are caught, and it isn’t taken as seriously. This doesn’t mean we should make theft legal. But there’s a big difference: There is a lot of social opprobrium attached to stealing, in pretty much every religion, culture, time and place. Pot, however, hardly has the same stigma.

We haven’t even considered practical, economic reasons for legalization of marijuana. Stay tuned for a column yet to come.

Did you ever really look at your fingers? Are they writing kozthought@gmail.com?