MOST ADVICE ISN'T WORTH PAPER IT'S PRINTED ON

You can be opposed to the consumption of marijuana. Fine. But your
own moral code aside, you must consider facts and hard evidence. The
purposes of Jake DaSilva's recent column were very clear: to claim
that pot is bad and should never be smoked by anyone. However, there
was no real substance behind his anecdotal account of why drugs,
moreover marijuana, are bad.

His basic assertion is that marijuana is bad and wreaks havoc in the
lives of the users. He laments on the blight of sketchy drug dealers
peddling their goods on impressionable young children and adults who
consume marijuana.

The failure occurs when DaSilva does not grasp the causality behind
any of what he is discussing. Drugs and marijuana are not inherently
bad. They possess no qualities of good or evil - they are simply
inanimate consumer goods.

Since marijuana is not the cause of all the negative effects he
asserts it is responsible for, then what is? Consider the legality of
marijuana. Marijuana was deemed, by people assuredly very much like
DaSilva, to be not in the best interest of the public to consume.

Thus, the ability of illegal drugs to run amuck in one's life was not
because of marijuana itself but by its prohibition. Drug crimes never
existed until the government created them.

Prohibition did not work in the 1920s and early '30s with alcohol,
and it doesn't work now with marijuana. People, and their money,
demand it. DaSilva's own account of his story demonstrates the
availability of marijuana to consumers.

He recalls that he had a plethora of numbers to call and settled on a
dealer that was conveniently within bike-riding range. There is a
market for weed, a market comprised of low lives and thugs who deal
exclusively in cash, unrestricted by any laws, safeguards or morality.

During Prohibition, speakeasies and distilleries sprang up throughout
the country, fueled by a desire to fill a vacuum in the market that
was created by irresponsible legislation. Much like modern-day
Prohibition, anti-alcohol legislation turned the product's use
negative and created a violent and uncontrollable criminal element.

No inherent property of alcohol changed or caused the problem - it
was irresponsibility by lawmakers and the ill-reasoned supporters of
prohibition. Just as we no longer have unsavory elements on street
corners selling moonshine, the same will occur with the
de-prohibition of marijuana and there will be no need for what our
conception of a drug dealer is or does.

Second, DaSilva contends there is some sort of causality between his
friends' pot use and their (by his implications) pithy and wasted
lives. His reasoning behind their and his own decision-making was
some sort of unfounded and elitist view of marijuana, addressing how
the motive behind its use was a belief that he would be accepted
through smoking dope or some kind of escapism.

Either way, it is absurd he asserts to know the only true rationale
behind smoking pot and holds a monopoly on this infallible truth
since he first-handedly conquered the vaunted reefer demons and
escaped the ignoble fate that it casts on lesser humans.

He mentions this tirelessly through the piece, gloating about his own
success while his former friends were doomed to the indignation of
menial construction and factory work. How dare he pass judgment.

At least they work and contribute in the real world while he points
and snickers and condemns from his ivory tower of academia. An hour
of their work is exponentially more productive and meaningful than
however long it took him to write that one laughable piece.

Poor decision-making and a lack of personal responsibility led to the
alleged conditions these men now live in, not marijuana. It cannot
make itself be smoked. The whole situation that you described was not
caused by pot but by lack of thought and consideration on the part of
you and your friends, not to mention the failed American drug policy
which has caused the injustice these men now face for simply
exercising their right to liberty.

DaSilva should have been contending the war on drugs is bad and
victimized your friends. But he doesn't want that, does he?

What is liberty to him but an illusion for the ignorant pot-smoking
masses to grasp at while wrecking their lives? He thinks he knows
what is best for us all. But in reality, it is him and people like
him who have caused and perpetuated this whole debacle of a drug
policy we have in this country.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Obviously
not in the free speech zone.

Josh Hedrick is a freshman majoring in business.