The Fiscal Spliff

By: Jeff_Berwick

Redmond Weissenberger writes: “My stock answer was that medical marijuana would start to be legalized in 10 years and that marijuana would start to be legalized in 20 years, probably during an economic crisis.” — Mark Thornton

Drug laws are probably the most inane (well maybe a close second to environmentalism in today’s world: San Diego Residents Face 6 Years In Prison For Washing Their Car) expression of the power of the state. Typically, the average person rationalizes laws in this way: “I am law abiding, and I respect the law as it is just, therefore I am not worried about the law applying to me.” Also, they generally buy into the state’s justifications of why a particular law has been put in place.

When the state oversteps its bounds and crosses into areas that are obviously the realm of personal choice, such as what substances one chooses to put into one's own body, even the average person starts to question the laws that have been laid down. And the first questioning of these arbitrary laws begins for many with the personal experience of an outlawed substance.

Marijuana in the eyes of the state is seen as a gateway drug. What they mean by that is that if you use marijuana, you will be open to using other, “more dangerous” drugs such as cocaine and heroin. And it is listed in the same “schedule” as those other mind altering substances.

I see marijuana as a gateway drug as well, a substance that opens the doors of perception. And what do you perceive? That the state has been lying to you since the day you were born. The seeds, as you will, of the state’s destruction lie in its own propaganda - in its desire to control behavior, it undermines its own authority. It is drilled into your head that drugs are a one-way ticket to hell, but when you have that first toke, or in the days of alcohol prohibition, that first beer, you wonder what all of the fuss was about. And it isn’t long before the gears start turning - “if they lied to me about this, what else are they lying to me about?”

The modern social democratic welfare state is caught in its own contradictions. On one hand it champions individual rights and justifies its own existence as a protector of these “rights”- on the other hand it does its best to undermine them and transform its subjects into children.

And so as we continue to be pessimistic about the continued descent of the federal government into tyranny, we can appreciate the green shoots of liberty arising in the form of marijuana decriminalization and legalization in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Detroit, MI., Flint, MI., Ypsilanti, MI., Grand Rapids, MI., Kalamazoo, MI., Burlington, VT., and Montana. Thank you for having the courage to say “Just Say No” to the state.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Redmond Weissenberger is the Managing Editor of The Dollar Vigilante and a Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the centre for the study of the Austrian School of Economics within Canada.

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