When Will We Ever Learn?

Many years ago there was a song by Peter, Paul, and Mary that had a verse asking the salient question of the day, “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”  The significance of the question is still the rudimentary problem today, almost fifty years since first posed in that song.  It is a new century and a time to move forward from the narrow thinking of the past as it concerns marijuana.

“Reefer Madness” was a laughable movie made in the 1930’s, and as the rumor has it, the movie was funded by the cotton industry.  The cotton industry was afraid for its very existence, afraid that hemp would be an economical alternative to cotton for the manufacture of clothing.  The huge forestry companies too, have a vested interest in hemp not coming to market.  Hemp can replace wood in the manufacture of paper, and do so less expensively both financially, and ecologically speaking.

The real problem exists when politics mixes with religion.  Laws like those in the early 1930’s that turned the nation on its head with Prohibition, were a direct result of religious meddling in government.  It was never the founding fathers’ idea, when writing the Constitution, to make laws governing morals.  Those kinds of laws are held to a higher authority, and religions are free to practice their beliefs within the confines of their religious community.  The imposition of religious views, by making them the law of the land, was the very reason people fled from Europe to this country.

Fast forward to the present day and the United States is still mired in prejudice and fear.  Today our country has elected a President, who openly admits to smoking pot and experimenting with cocaine as a youth.  The drug czar he appointed to fight the impossible and expensive war on drugs was a police commissioner, who allowed his community to have a one-day annual “smoke-out”.  The police made no arrests at a large gathering of demonstrators, who smoked marijuana openly, for the legalization of marijuana laws in this country.   The logical assumption was men like these in office would change America’s drug laws.

The truth of the matter is such an assumption would be wrong.  The new drug czar has a strong campaign against marijuana, and has even said, “Marijuana has no medicinal use.”  The President of the United States, who put the drug czar in office, must believe the only people who should get ahead in life are the people who do not get caught.  The President hypocritically turned his back on his own experience as a child.  The President certainly would not have been elected to the highest office in the land, if he had a police record as an outcome of his admitted behavior.

Everything usually comes down to money in this country.  Maybe it is time to look at the cost of arcane laws.  A Harvard professor of economics and an admitted Libertarian Jeffrey Miron has some very interesting dollars and sense numbers on the illegality of marijuana.  The bottom line is the government campaign against pot costs in excess of 7.5 billion dollars.  If pot were legal and taxed like cigarettes and liquor, the government could raise over 6 billion dollars in tax revenue.  The financial toll is obvious.  Unfortunately, the toll on families, and young people with criminal records for mistakes made, are punitive and pervasive beyond statistical analysis.  “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”