Many polls show that people are in favor of marijuana legalization more and more as time goes on. This is a good thing, since those voters will be needed to reverse cannabis prohibition in many states. But we must not forget that is should be no one’s business what others do in their own home as long as they are not infringing on the rights of anyone else.
Think about it: We have to take polls to see if people agree with the premise that as long as someone is not infringing on the rights of someone else, they are not committing a crime. This should be a given, yet people are jailed every day for just that: doing something that doesn’t violate the rights of someone else.
In so many ways we have to have permission from someone else to live our lives. Even if we don’t bother anyone else, and not another person knows what we are doing, we can still be breaking the law. If those in authority were to learn of our actions, repercussions could follow.
So a ton of effort must be put forth over decades to overturn a prohibition that had no need to be enacted in the first place; a prohibition that has done incalculable harm.
Some would argue that if we can stop people from smoking weed, we can prevent future crime. This is a specious argument at best, and opens the door for all sorts of tyranny predicated on the idea of predicting future crimes. This notion also supposes that those who use cannabis are more likely to go out and break the law; something just about anyone who has ever tried cannabis knows to be false.
We need good poll numbers and as many votes as we can get; but it’s a discussion we shouldn’t even be having.
Polls Are Great, But Shouldn't Determine Marijuana Legalization
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