THE FREEDOM TO SMOKE POT

In his seminal work, "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley predicted we
would lose our freedoms not because of fellow dystopian novelist
George Orwell's Big Brother, but because of our own blithe
acquiescence to societal and regulatory shifts.

Some of you know me. I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories.
That's why Huxley's hypothesis rings more true than that of Orwell,
who said in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" that freedoms would be taken away
by an imposing government.

I think when we are all too happy to surrender our freedoms ourselves
in the name of progress, it's more of a threat. It's like those polls
that say a majority of Americans would gladly give up freedom of
speech or the press to protect their own privacy.

The other night a group of rowdy college-aged men and women took over
a row of seats in front of me at Angel Stadium during a game between
the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Toronto Blue Jays. A
Japanese-American family had left early, making way for the illegal
occupation. They came with beers in hand and rebellious attitudes in
tow, the young women flipping their hair like a Britney Spears dance
move, their male dates too blitzed out of their minds to notice.

After the seventh inning stretch, the blonde in front of me reached
into her purse and pulled out a marijuana cigarette. I watched in
shock as she lit the chubby, hand-rolled joint and began passing it
around. The billow of cannabis smoke quickly filled the section like
the cloudy remains of a fireworks show.

The smell was unmistakable. The families in our section reacted from
surprise to outrage. I'll always remember the look on the little
boy's face seated in front of me - one of confusion. His mother
shouted "kick 'em out" just as the security team arrived and escorted
them out. Others in the section marveled at the brazen act: Smoking
pot in the middle of 42,000 baseball fans, mostly well-behaved
families. This is Angel Stadium after all, hardly home of the rowdy crowd.

I have attended many baseball games in my lifetime, in New York where
I grew up, in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Oakland and San
Francisco, and never once did I see someone smoke marijuana. I can
remember smelling the pungent herb in the parking lot of old Yankee
Stadium in the Bronx, but never such a bold act as I witnessed Tuesday night.

Then it dawned on me: Could this be brought on by the political
movement to legalize the drug? Could young people figure enough
people signed a petition (about 700,000 signatures were submitted)
that heck, it will be legal in November, so why not partake now, in
public? Could society's walls have come down just a little bit over
the use of the hallucinogenic weed?

I think the answer is yes.

Changes like this are subtle. We've already approved one ballot
measure making medical marijuana legal. And we've seen more marijuana
shops pop up in La Puente than new stores or restaurants. This stuff
is just one majority vote away from being legal.

It's a scenario I had not thought much about until that Tuesday night
in Anaheim. I haven't thought much about what effect legalization
will have on my sons, my neighborhood, on my future grandchildren -
until I saw the look of confusion, even of fear, on that boy's face
when he saw the young woman smoking pot.

Would our society gain freedom to smoke pot? Yes. But what freedoms
would we give up? The answer is many, many more: the freedom to feel
safe, to raise children the right way, to go to a ballgame or any
other public event and not encounter someone high on drugs.

Yet, we casually vote "yes" on ballot initiatives, or sign petitions
at grocery stores, without thinking things through to their
conclusion. And we call that freedom?