Stop Arguing Marijuana Isn’t Harmful!
Attorney Marc J. Victor
I’ll admit I don’t know conclusively whether marijuana use is harmful. To some extent, virtually everything we consume is harmful in some way to our bodies. A strong case can be made that ingestion of dairy, red meat, soda pop, prescription medications, alcohol, and many other things we routinely consume are harmful. Even excessive clean water intake can be deadly. Wasting time arguing about whether marijuana use is harmful is missing, or even conceding, our best and most important argument for marijuana legalization.
Years ago, when I was younger and dumber, I recall engaging in discussions about whether being gay or lesbian was simply a voluntary choice or a matter of one’s nature. Today, it’s hard for me to conceive of a more irrelevant political or legal question. My simple response to that question today is, “Who cares?” To civilized people, this question is irrelevant because we respect the legal rights of competent adults to engage in consensual sex with other competent adults of their choosing regardless of any contrary personal moral judgments about that activity.
Thankfully, we no longer need to engage in discussions about whether homosexual sex is immoral, unhealthy, or unnatural. It matters not whether a competent adult chooses to engage in homosexual sex with another competent adult because of an intentional preference or whether it has been forced upon such a person by genetics or some other natural cause. That a competent adult prefers members of the same sex is all that matters. We have matured as a society to simply accept such a choice as a legally protected right.
Said another way, as a society, we have arrived at an important conclusion regarding homosexual sex; the competent adult person who owns the body gets to decide how his or her own body is used. I’ll admit this seems a rather obvious conclusion. Unfortunately, it seems this obvious conclusion is not so obvious to many.
Imagine how inappropriate and sad it would be to have to justify one’s right to engage in homosexual sex with another consenting adult on the basis of whether other people could be convinced such activity was “healthy” or “moral” or even a “good lifestyle choice.” Imagine being required to convince others to approve our sex-related value judgments before we were legally permitted to engage in consensual sex with other competent adults. Such a requirement would be deemed obviously wrong and immoral by all reasonable people. Yet, this is exactly what some well-intentioned people attempt to do in the case of marijuana.
Identical to the question of homosexual sex with consenting adults, the issue of marijuana use presents the same old critical question; who owns your body? The possible answers fall into two categories: 1. You; or 2. Some other person or group of people. Don’t you think you ought to own you? Duh! Hopefully, you will observe the obvious; the issue of homosexual sex and the issue of marijuana use are essentially the same questions.
Many of today’s hottest political topics are simply different versions of the same question. Who is in charge of your body? The seemingly unrelated issues of euthanasia, seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, forced vaccinations, experimental prescription drug use, unapproved medical procedures, and prostitution are all the exact same questions too. They all ought to be resolved the same way. Civilized people recognize the rights of competent adults to control their own bodies. In short, you own you.
Free competent adults not only recognize their absolute right to control their own bodies but also proudly assert their absolute right to control their own peacefully acquired property, money, and time. Either we seek to be free or we are content to be partial slaves. I realize freedom can be scary for some people, but we need to evolve to something more than symbolically singing songs about freedom. Let’s advocate peacefully, but aggressively, for freedom in all of its expressions!
To be fair, I’m not saying the hard-earned progress achieved in the medical marijuana area has been a waste of time. Indeed, there is no doubt the use of marijuana has helped many ill and suffering people. Encouragingly, at the time I’m writing this article, we now have twenty-eight states with medical marijuana programs. More states will surely follow soon. Additionally, we now have eight states that have moved towards legalized marijuana for recreational uses. The trend, even worldwide, is clearly moving towards a rejection of the utterly failed and totally idiotic drug war policies.
I concede arguments for the medicinal uses of marijuana have opened doors for the argument to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes as well. Many people, including myself, have advanced valid and persuasive economic-related arguments involving the real, substantial, and almost immediate benefits of ending the drug war generally. There are always different and effective avenues of attack to combat all forms of tyranny. Unfortunately, it seems no argument is as prevalent and currently fashionable as the issue of whether marijuana is harmful.
Undoubtedly, the argument is strong that, if marijuana is harmful at all, it isn’t nearly as harmful as many other legally available products and foods. However, the argument is also strong that monogamous or protected homosexual sex is not unhealthy. We don’t assert that argument because it is unnecessary and also demeans the dignity and sovereignty of those competent adults who would choose to engage in it. The same can and should be said about the marijuana issue.
We have a spectacular opportunity right now to shift the discussion surrounding marijuana from the argument that marijuana is not unhealthy to the much more important argument that marijuana should be legal because competent adults own themselves and therefore control their own bodies.
There are many valid arguments to justify legalizing marijuana or even ending the drug war. However, the argument that free people own themselves is not only the best argument for the legalization of marijuana, it is the only argument needed to cure our current ills and get us to the free society that all humans deserve. Let’s start aggressively advancing the argument that we own ourselves!
