I can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned the huge changes
that my state made in the last referendum vote yet.
In the last referendum vote, the people of Washington State
took some huge leaps in two currently controversial topics:
1.
We voted to legalize the personal, recreational use of marijuana, and set
up legal marijuana exchanges to supply the demand.
2.
We voted to legalize same-sex marriage.
5 Reasons That I
am Glad That My State Legalized Marijuana*
1.
Law enforcement officials throughout the state
have gone on record as saying that they will be happy to stop “busting” people
for marijuana possession, and many have chimed in to say that the only societal
damage caused by marijuana in our state has been problems springing from the
fact that it is illegal. Once legalized,
many LEOs feel like marijuana will be less troublesome than alcohol. Time will tell, but I’m tuning in to this
massive experiment with great interest.
2.
I don’t believe in punishing victimless
crimes. Any recreational drug use, no
matter how damaging to the individual using the drugs (meth, I’m looking in
your direction) is harmless to other people until the drug use starts causing
other problems that don’t necessarily need to be coupled to the use of the
drug. Case in point: use of drugs may
lead to violent episodes or thievery in order to finance the habit. The point is, those things are already
illegal, regardless of whether triggered by a drug or not, so let’s de-couple
the drugs from the crimes, punish the crimes, and get help for the user instead
of locking him up. If a meth-head hasn’t
hurt anyone or stolen anything, I don’t think we have a right to hurt him by
arresting him and throwing him in jail simply because he used a drug. This is a step in that direction.
3.
I’m tired of spending immense amounts of tax
dollars to fund our legal system prosecuting and incarcerating marijuana
users. There is no societal benefit to
this, whatsoever, and a huge societal cost as people’s lives are uprooted, and
their life choices narrowed by the shiny new criminal record that they now
carry around for smoking a little weed.
4.
I have close personal friends who use marijuana,
and every one of them is a highly productive member of society, and I love the
fact that they are no longer criminals in my state and we don’t have to worry
about the ramifications of a small business owner that employs 40 people
getting thrown in the slammer because he got pulled over with a bit of weed in
his ashtray.
5.
It is a huge step in the right direction as
regards personal freedoms. We’ve been
doing a good job of taking down laws recently that fly in the face of
self-determination and personal freedom.
It has only been in the last decade that many states removed their “sodomy”
laws from the books, making it legal in those states, for the first time in
history, to get a BJ. The more we can
get the government and its laws out of our personal lives, and instead focused
on capturing and punishing the harmful predators among us, the better. In item #1, the LEOs in my state almost
unanimously said that they are glad to now have more time and resources to go
after the real bad guys.
*Just to clarify, I
don’t have a dog in this hunt. The only
thing I smoke are cigars, occasionally.
I have no personal interest in smoking weed, and to boot, it is still
not legal for me to smoke weed because I have a commercial driver’s license,
and get randomly tested to keep it.
Also, the company that I work for has a “no drug” policy because we are
in heavy commercial construction and really don’t need stoned dudes running
around our jobsites.
4 Reasons that I’m
Glad My State Legalized Same-Sex Marriage
1.
See #5 above.
The point made there fits here as well.
Personal freedom is personal freedom, regardless of the issue.
2.
I’m still not sure how the hell the government
got involved in marriage at all. I’ve
posted on this point before, and still maintain that the people fighting for
the government’s permission to get married are fighting the wrong fight and
asking the wrong questions. Their
questions shouldn’t be “why can’t we get married?” and rather should be “Who
the hell gave you permission to say whether someone can get married or not in
the first place? Why is that any of your business, and why are you involved in
this at all?” That being said, this is a
positive step in the direction of getting people to ask those questions.
3.
On a completely selfish note, I’m sick to
fucking death of hearing about it, and I’m hoping that now that its legal here,
it won’t be “all gay marriage, all the time” on the TV news anymore.
4.
Consenting adults should be allowed to do
whatever the fuck they want as long as it doesn’t cause harm to another
individual. Our government needs to
figure that out, and this is a good step in that direction.
All that being said, I want to reiterate that none of this
is meant to be an endorsement of drug use, or of being gay, or any other thing
any more or less than it is meant to denigrate those lifestyle choices – I’m
not making judgment calls on whether any of these things are good, bad, or
neutral to each person’s individual situation.
I would be disappointed if my daughter decided to use pot, for instance,
and will do everything I can to keep her from doing so, regardless of its
legality. My points above all revolve
around the fact that these are personal decisions, which don’t harm any other
person, and so should be decisions left up to the people making them – the
individual.
That being said, if you want to see what my opinion is on
these things, I’ve written about them all at length in other postings.
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