It Is Immoral to Cage Humans for Smoking Marijuana

It Is Immoral to Cage Humans for Smoking Marijuana

That's why Colorado and Washington have the most moral drug laws in America right now.


Under the law in 48 states, here's what can happen when an adult is thought to possess marijuana: Men with guns can go to his home, kick down his door, force him to lay face down on the floor, restrain him with handcuffs, drive him to a police station, and lock him in a cage. If he is then convicted of possessing marijuana, a judge can order that he be locked in a different cage, perhaps for years.

There are times when locking human beings in cages is morally defensible. If, for example, a person commits murder, rape, or assault, transgressing against the rights of others, then forcibly removing him from society is the most just course of action. In contrast, it is immoral to lock people in cages for possessing or ingesting a plant that is smoked by millions every year with no significant harm done, especially when the vast majority of any harm actually done is borne by the smoker.

That there are racial disparities in who is sent to prison on marijuana charges is an added injustice that deserves attention. But if blacks and whites were sent to prison on marijuana charges in equal proportion, jail for marijuana would still be immoral.

If blacks and whites were sent to prison on marijuana charges in equal proportion, jail for marijuana would still be immoral.
America has used marijuana charges to cage people for so long that it seems unremarkable. The time has come to see the status quo for what it is. A draconian punishment for a victimless crime has been institutionalized and normalized, so much so that even proponents of the policy are blind to its consequences. Commentators are criticizing marijuana policy in Washington and Colorado, where the drug was recently legalized. These commentators aren't willing to put their names on an article stating that human beings who possess or smoke marijuana should be locked in cages among child molesters, gang members, and muggers. Yet they reserve their criticism for states that don't do that.

Status quo bias has mangled their priorities.

Present the American people at large with an individual who admits to having used marijuana and they are more likely to elect him president or to send him to Congress than to suggest that he ought to have been arrested and jailed for his crimes. But a majority of voters in most states, and even a majority of elected officials who've smoked marijuana, continue supporting laws that permit locking various marijuana users in prison among perpetrators of hate crimes and elder abuse.

In his recent column on marijuana policy, David Brooks wrote that "many people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of drug use because that would imply that one sort of life you might choose is better than another sort of life." I submit that a more urgent problem is Americans who shy away from talk about the dubious moral status of marijuana prohibition. It is, at its core, an exercise in using people as means to an end. The end is maintaining a stigma against marijuana use. And the means is locking humans in cages with dangerous people.

One day, we will look back at that tradeoff in moral horror.


Is Colorado Pot Overtaxed and Over-Regulated Already?
4,919 views 16 hours ago
On New Year's Day, 2014, Coloradans lined up to purchase marijuana for recreational use. Legally.

While drug reformers across the nation are celebrating the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition (Washington state also has legalized recreational marijuana and several other states are likely to legalize weed in the next few years), Coloradans are working out how exactly to tax and regulate marijuana.

Politicians, of course, want to generate as much revenue from pot sales as they can. And others argue that marijuana sales must, at the very least, generate enough taxes to pay for regulating the industry. But how much taxation is too much taxation?

Colorado medical marijuana dispensaries get first crack at opening retail shops. They've been taking risks for several years, after all, so perhaps that makes sense. But how much regulation is necessary? At what point do regulations become protectionism? Should people outside the state, for example, be able to invest in the Colorado recreational pot industry?

Because it's illegal to smoke marijuana in public and most hotels don't allow smoking, where exactly are pot tourists supposed to enjoy their constitutional rights?

Christian Sederberg and Rob Corry are two attorneys in Denver who specialize in marijuana cases and both were instrumental in getting pot legalized in Colorado. Reason TV sat down with Sederberg and Corry recently to learn more about the debate surrounding the taxing and regulating of recreational weed in the Centennial State.

Approximately 8.5 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/... for downloadable versions, links, and more resources about this video