RIGHTS ARE IMPORTANT, EVEN IF THEY AREN'T POPULAR

We are starting to see a lot of stuff about the upcoming marijuana
decriminalization question set to be on this November's ballot.

Nevada, with its penchant for allowing its citizens to pretty much live and
let live without too much government interference, must have seemed like the
perfect test case for forces hoping to make pot legal. After all, it would
be pretty hard to tell people they can engage in prostitution but they can't
get high.

Ask yourself, if you had to choose, would you rather find out your daughter
smokes pot, or that she works weekends at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch?

I think this could make for an interesting election season. Our friends in
Washington will no doubt be very active in fighting against the initiative,
since it blows a big hole in their mostly failed drug policy. We've had a
major War on Drugs going on since the psychedelic 60s, and it hasn't done
much to stop drug use.

The Feds will be helping support local and state police agencies, who have
seen their budgets increase dramatically over the last 30 years as they
spend a large percentage of their resources fighting drugs. And if you
understand government agencies, you will know that size matters. Take away
marijuana, and you take away one of the reasons they need all those tax
dollars. It also could cut into a very lucrative income stream from property
seizures they make from drug dealers.

If they really want to win the drug war, the only way I can think of to do
it would be to get rid of the fourth, fifth, sixth and eight amendments to
the Constitution.

How many of us really use those rights anyway? I'm not worried all that much
about the authorities searching my house (fourth amendment) or about
testifying against myself or being put on trial twice for the same crime
(fifth amendment) or about cruel and unusual punishment (eighth amendment).

Just think of how we could battle crime, not to mention terrorism, if we
could search people's houses without warrants, force them to testify, put
them on trial as many times as it takes to get a conviction and torture them
until they confess. We could be as crime free as, say, the old Soviet Union.
Now there is something to strive for.

But of course, most people realize that even if a majority of people don't
have the need to exercise some of their constitutional rights, it doesn't
mean we should get rid of them. Just because we have a few problems in this
society and some people get away with crimes doesn't mean we should throw
out the Constitution.

It's about freedom, the freedom to live our lives without the government
telling us how to live.

The Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."

That sums up why the War on Drugs will never be successful, and is probably
the only reason I can name that would lead me to support the marijuana
initiative.

Oh, they can trot out the statistics on how alcohol and tobacco kill many,
many times more people than pot, and how hypocritical it is to have some
drugs legal an other illegal.

But the real issue is not whether you or I want to smoke the stuff, but
whether the government should restrict our freedoms in such a way. I mean,
if they can tell someone they can't use marijuana in the privacy of their
own home, what's next? Will they tell us we have to wear our seat belts?
Oops, to late on that one.

You would think these anti-drug people would have learned a lesson from
Prohibition. Guess history isn't one of their strong suits. Well, as they
say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

What is interesting about Prohibition is that they passed an amendment to
the Constitution to implement it. To me, that means that to infringe on a
personal freedom in such a way, someone felt it necessary to change the
Constitution to do it, which has only been done 17 times in history. This
includes the 18th amendment that began Prohibition, and the 21st amendment
that repealed it.

Whatever the rationale, the marijuana initiative will probably go down to
defeat anyway. People in this country are too used to looking to government
to fix all things that are wrong in society, and the government is all too
willing to undertake any task that will increase its power.

Maybe it's time government went on a power diet.