November 10, 2015
Source: Shutterstock
Marijuana is the abortion of libertarians.
Small-government types, left and right, are unwholesomely obsessed with legalizing weed. Amusingly, both groups tend to stereotype so-con pro-lifers as hideous, crotchety, single-issue knuckle-draggers””Have you noticed that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn”t want to fuck in the first place?” But while antiabortion activists have gotten younger, more genial, and more media-savvy, pro-pot protesters haven”t evolved noticeably in my lifetime: They”re still scruffy, smelly, and likely contagious. More proof that “progressives” really do live in the past.
P.S. Why do pro-pot libertarians positively beam when explaining that legalization will “let the government tax and regulate” their favorite drug, when “taxes” and “regulations” are their greatest enemies when it comes to every other product or service?
Canada’s new prime minister, Justin Trudeau”yes, those words are still very hard to type”campaigned on a promise to legalize marijuana. Although in this widely passed-around video, his absentminded arm-scratching suggests he was under the influence of something stronger.
Instant conventional wisdom has it that it was that single vow that brought out the usually constipated youth vote and carried Trudeau 2: Electric Boogaloo across the threshold of 24 Sussex. (Or, rather, will carry: Trudeau insists that his childhood home undergo a multimillion-dollar taxpayer-funded reno before he deigns to move [back] in.)
During the campaign, Trudeau was cursorily asked about his own weed consumption. He copped to enjoying it occasionally, even after his election to public office. In America, battalions of conservative commentators would have condemned a sworn legislator’s blithe violation of the law of the land and wondered who sold him the drug (and just where his RCMP detail was at the time). But this is Canada, so only one guy harshed everybody’s mellow by bringing all that up. Obviously to no great effect.
So will Trudeau go through with legalization? Theoretically, and presuming sufficient party discipline, his Liberal majority government could push through legislation to, as he once put it, “rethink elements as basic as space and time” if they felt like it.
But as so often happens, Canadians voted for “change,” and that meant Trudeau (and his nice hair and handsome family and last name and youthful swagger)”but not necessarily Trudeau’s actual policies. And, with the obvious exception of the Jamaicans, my country’s sizable nonwhite immigrant population are about as approving of recreational drug use as they are of sex ed. Liberal MPs will hear from their “ethnic” constituents when pot legislation is tabled, and loudly.
Which goes to a larger point. Potheads try to be scientific (or, at least, actuarial) in their evangelization, citing “war on drugs” statistics and cancer rates. Meanwhile, Gavin McInnes (no prohibitionist) can shoot back that the stuff is stronger now than it was at Woodstock, and that more recent studies reveal greater ill effects than previously thought.
But let’s be honest: Few of us”particularly those minorities, above”genuinely care about total strangers” cataracts or prison terms, or what “science” says this week. No, one’s passion for marijuana boils down to the same “because I said so” visceral nub as one’s opponents” disdain.
Here’s Ann Coulter telling John Stossel that she”d be inclined to favor legalization if we took a wrecking ball to the welfare state first. Eventually, she runs out of studies and stats and fumbles toward what is, for me, the essential issue:
Pot is for losers.
Like most recovering addicts, I”m an insufferable snob about others” drugs of choice. As a teenager, I waved off marijuana as “for hippies.” Coke was “for yuppies,” and heroin the scuzziest, most pointless-looking thing ever.
