WND READERS WANT POT LEGALIZED

WorldNetDaily's poll last Saturday concerned whether pot should be legalized.

The final tally of respondents was 56 percent pro and 43 percent con with
variation among those answers. An unqualified yes hit the charts at 32
percent. One percent answered "other."

While not scientific and prone to problems, the response didn't surprise me
much. There has always seemed a receptive attitude regarding changes to our
current drug policies among WND readers. Since my first column on the
subject, I've received overwhelmingly positive feedback to criticism of
current policies and recommendations for change.

But it's not all whistles and roses.

Reader Joel I. Hunt, for instance, fired off this missive to WND when he
saw the results of the poll:

I was shocked when I voted on the poll then saw that most people voted in
favor of legalization. What really shocked me was the fact that the readers
of WND voted this way. I thought that WND readers for the most part are
Christian, conservative, reasonably intelligent people. This may not mellow
Hunt's shock, but there is nothing incongruous with wishing drugs legalized
and one's Christian confession, being conservative or reasonably
intelligent. In fact, I think the opposite is closer to true - a fact about
which a majority of WND readers seem savvy.

Christianity

There is nothing in Scripture, for instance, that particularly plugs
prohibition. While it says nothing specific about narcotics, Holy Writ is
adamantly against drunkenness and dissipative abuse of alcohol. If we want
a biblical approach to drugs, we must apply Scripture's cautions about
booze to other brain-meddlers, as alcohol is but one of many psychoactive
substances around.

If we do this, we will see that the Bible distinguishes between sin and
crime here. While strongly condemning drunkenness and dissipation, God
doesn't provide a lot of support in Scripture for criminalizing them. Like
lying, jealousy, refusing to help widows and orphans, these are sins, yes,
but not crimes. If the concern is about some of the ill effects stemming
from some drug abuse (property theft, abusive behavior, etc.), legislation
actually sanctioned by Scripture already has those bases covered.

If not supporting draconian drug laws is the mark of a non-Christian, then
the Bible isn't very Christian.

Conservative

The American right seems very confused on this one at times. Conservatives
are opposed to big government, are in favor of states' rights, and laud the
Constitution. But perhaps no single set of policies since the New Deal have
so totally undermined these things as the drug war.

Antidrug legislation has drastically inflated federal police powers.
Federal drug laws - for which there is no provision in the Constitution -
have run roughshod over the rights of states to set their own policies
regarding matters left unspecified in the Constitution. And drug-war
tactics have brutalized the Bill of Rights' protections of life, home and
property.

Further, by its constant escalation, the drug war has pushed drug
traffickers to trump police in firepower, the resultant gun crime providing
ammunition in the ongoing liberal war on the Second Amendment.

Intelligence

Besides being a low blow, any charge that holding a position unfriendly to
drug prohibition is a sign of unintelligence is simply stupid. Thomas
Sowell, Charles Murray, Milton Friedman, Walter Williams - these men aren't
"reasonably intelligent"?

Ponder instead how support of the drug war measures a man's intelligence:

a.. Drug prohibition hasn't eliminated drug use. It's pretty hard to
measure if it's had much effect at all on curbing use. I think it has, but
I don't consider all use damaging to society, so I'm not wetting myself
over the prospect of slightly higher drug intake if dope were legalized.
Regardless of the law, millions of Americans regularly use drugs,
especially pot.

b.. Drug prohibition hasn't helped stem crime. By pushing the market
underground, it has in fact helped encourage crime - and more violent
crime, to boot.

c.. Drug prohibition hasn't boosted the nation's morals. The opposite might
be true, since instead of promoting and persuading correct moral decisions
in people we use the wrench of the state to force it. This is just
bandaging cancer. Using government as the main inculcator of virtue instead
of churches, families and communities is a monstrous mistake. On the other
hand:

a.. Drug prohibition has given the U.S. the free world's biggest prison
population - many of those behind bars being nonviolent drug offenders.
Spending on prisons is up, up, up.

b.. Drug prohibition has provided terrorists with the necessary economic
conditions to pad their purses with aims of attacking American citizens.

c.. Drug prohibition has led to obscene corruption of law enforcement.

d.. Drug prohibition has - and this is perhaps more damaging to the country
than much of the above - harmed the legal and constitutional system in the
country, as it has permitted police tactics that spit in the founders'
faces. The Bill of Rights has become void where prohibited by drug laws,
which means the constitutional shield used to shelter the assumed innocent
has become a battering ram to assault the assumed guilty. Supporting such a
policy seems a much better mark of the lack of reasonable intelligence,
rather than vice versa. Unless, of course, all those things are the actual
intent of drug warriors. If so, they're not unintelligent - just evil.

Contra Mr. Hunt, the fact that WND readers so strongly oppose this terrible
policy shouldn't be shocking. It should be encouraging, if not outright
refreshing.