IT'S WEED, GET OVER IT

It's doubtful you missed it; the president's son caught smoking weed
made big headlines on campus last week. I can't really remember what
our first reaction was upon hearing the news.

We at the Opinion desk thought about which angle we wanted to take on
the matter, addressing whether or not it was newsworthy, if he'd get
the same treatment as any other student, etc. But I immediately
reacted differently.

Oddly, considering how much I like to poke fun at the news, none of
that came to mind. Instead, I thought, "God, weed is still bad?"

No doubt college newspapers around the country perennially write a
"legalize it" column. And every now and then, between those desperate
cries, we'll see cliche caricatures of hippies on TV making the case,
usually with poor rhetoric and without much empathy from the audience.

But isn't there something to the argument nonetheless? Isn't
criminalizing marijuana hypocritical considering the drugs we do allow?

The only justifications for its criminalization I've ever heard have
always been from the same group of people about the same two things:
from social conservatives, saying that it's harmful to your health
and that it impairs your judgment. However, we allow other drugs that
do one or both of those things in magnitudes equal to or greater than
weed does.

Well, when I brought up the point the other day to a staunchly
conservative friend of mine, he replied, "So you liberals want to
exclude cigarette smoking while permitting marijuana smoking. That's
hypocritical."

Actually, the reasoning only seems hypocritical on a very superficial
level. Smoking negatively affects the entire public, and others will
be affected by the smoker's decision to light up. So, if marijuana
were legal, then smoking it in public would still be illegal, too.
But, in the privacy of one's own home, it could be consumed.

Of course he replied, "Well, what right do they have to smoke it in
the first place?" But what right does the government have to say you
can't do something that doesn't hurt anyone else?

I believe President Ronald Reagan would say that decisions like these
should be left up to "personal responsibility." If we can trust
people to drink responsibly, how can we not trust them to consume
equally impairing marijuana responsibly, too?

Smoking marijuana certainly poses a health risk. However, to consume
it, you don't have to smoke it. And long-term risks posed by smoking
it are about equal to smoking in general, which the government
allows. As for short-term risks, it's actually very safe, and unlike
alcohol, nobody has ever overdosed on it.

To look at it another way, alcohol has detrimental health affects
associated with it, and it obviously impairs your ability to make
judgments in a similar manner. So if these two justifications are
sufficient to criminalize marijuana, shouldn't alcohol be illegal too?

Maybe lurking beneath my clean-cut image is a tie-dye-wearing hippie
waiting to burst out, but I find it ridiculous that a student might
be demonized just for smoking weed.