Enough and more hands had been wrung over the question of marijuana legalization and its place in our society before Justin Trudeau waded into the fray, cribbing a phrase from Barack Obama claiming that his views on the legality of pot have “evolved” over time. Trudeau based this evolution in part on the fact that nicotine and alcohol have equivalent if not more significantly detrimental health effects to teens and adults as cannabis, an argument that has solid scientific backing.
However, as one (and Trudeau, indubitably) would expect, planting one’s flag in the pro-camp on this topic is publicly declaring yourself in political morass; in the wake of his comments, both Tories and New Democrats gleefully sharpened their knives and took pot shots at Trudeau’s presumed youthful narcissism and naiveté.
It’s easy to bury your head in the sand on either side of this argument, which is precisely why it has and continues to be so polarizing. Cannabis advocates are caricatured as anarchist hippies; opponents to legalization likewise sketched in crayon as stiff and inflexible moral zealots. It is a fine line to walk and one that is difficult to loan moral high ground to, but the argument over legalization is about so much more than just about pot; it betrays a deep-rooted crisis of our societal identity.
Perhaps the most telling moment in the condemnation of Trudeau’s new political direction occured during a brief interview Justice Minister Peter MacKay gave to the CBC in Halifax: “I find it quite strange frankly that Mr. Trudeau would be talking about legalization as a priority at this time” he clucked disapprovingly. MacKay then continued on, urging the young Liberal prince to “look at other areas in which we can end violence and drug use and end this societal ill.”
Most drug advocates argue for drug legalization on the basis of exceedingly harsh punitive measures for a comparably minor offense (regarding possession without intent to distribute). There is a logical fondness for equating marijuana and alcohol, the latter of which acts as a significant burden on the health care system and a strain on society at present. Alcohol is no angel, and may exacerbate a number of society’s lingering issues, however benign or malignant.
So it seems logical that if one evil is gleefully accepted, why not marijuana? Surely it couldn’t be worse? Advocates further hammer on numerous arguments encouraging pot production and distribution in a controlled manner as a governmental revenue stream, as though marijuana is in itself some sort of magic bullet to fix all that ails society and the economy. While many of their arguments are simply blowing smoke, it is without question that a number of their points are quite sound.
MacKay’s quote, however, is instructive in the way it illustrates the opposition camp’s fundamental stance towards marijuana. In that same interview, MacKay also fretted that pot acted as a gateway drug to far harder substances, and would encourage an escalating cycle of drug abuse that people would become indoctrinated into at a young age and become dependent on throughout their lifetimes. This, in turn, would exaggerate violence in society and act as a financial and social burden on law-abiding tax payers.
It’s a compelling argument. Once again, the parallels between pot and alcohol abuse and dependency are overt and impossible to dismiss as wholly different, but let’s put on MacKay’s glasses and ignore these similarities for the sake of this argument — attempting to catalog the mountains of criticisms against either stance would have us here all day.
Labeling pot legalization under the opaque banner of it being a ‘social ill’ is not a constructive argument.
Ultimately, MacKay, the Tory party and the entire opposition camp circles back to the same idea that drug use and abuse is a ‘societal ill’ that needs to be stamped out like so many un-extinguished cigarettes. This is where we enter morally fuzzy territory, which is nigh impossible to reasonably debate over one way or another.
I don’t personally smoke pot, nor have I ever; if that colours your perception of my argument, have at it. Coming to, and growing up, in Canada, I found the rampant use and abuse of pot as abhorrent. The entire lifestyle and culture that has sprouted around marijuana and its advocacy has been a general turn-off, and honestly, I don’t see a need or place for pot in our society, or any functional society.
But does a single individual’s perspective on a drug matter that much when set against the desires of a large group? Does it matter what my religious, cultural or socioeconomic background is? Not a jot. And this is the issue that marijuana advocates and antagonists miss entirely. Indeed, it’s a prevailing question in our society that draws far too inadequate attention — how much freedom is too much freedom, and where do we draw lines? More importantly, can we draw lines based on so-called ‘moral’ logic and reasoning that dictates suppression of diverse sets and groups?
There is no argument against pot that can be based on anything more than a presumptive outrage of our society’s presumed moral decay and decadence. Try it — it’s impossible. I’ve always considered myself relatively liberal from the aspect of social freedoms and have generally sought out similar company.
However, in my own conversations with friends who are casual users or supporters of marijuana legalization, the crux of my arguments hinged on the classic conservative scare-mongering gambit — hysterical terror that young children would indulge in pot as the all-terrible gateway drug, abrogating all future life choices and dimming their potential going forward.
My reasoning hinged on a hazy assumption of individual decisions that I had no basis for predicting and postiioned me on a higher moral ground, one that I didn’t deserve.
The predilection towards ‘judgmentalism’ is extremely troublesome; it enables dominating social perceptions of what is ‘moral’ and ‘just’ to inform debates and prevailing public policy. This is a slippery slope — most of these attitudes tend to be influenced or rooted in religious or established cultural attitudes, which may not lend to growth, modification, or evolution, entrenching inequalities that may suppress sects of the population. How can we identify what values form the cornerstone of a state, especially when the state is divorced of religious influence?
It may shock you but Canada is not, in absolute terms, a secular state. While accepting that Canada is founded upon “principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of Law” as stated in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this state is one of the more accommodating and accepting nations on the planet when it comes to protections on multi-ethnicism and guaranteeing religious and social expression. In everything but actual designation, Canada is a secular nation.
To be truly secular, however, is to divorce the social sphere from the religious. To prevent religious codes of conduct from dictating law, or lassitude and concessions made socially from coercing religious principles. To truly turn the State over to the people demands the elimination of so-called ‘morals’ and ‘values’ when dictating public policy, and by extension, establishing guidelines for public behaviour. This does not happen in Canada or, truly, anywhere else in the world.
The process of recognizing the rule of law is simple and can be compartmentalized. The State exists to provide service to and protect its citizens. We can all agree very quickly that rape is a moral affront. So is armed robbery and murder. These are obvious limitations we enforce on individuals for the protection of the overwhelming public interest.
However, attempting to arbitrarily legislate behaviour by restricting access to a substance is not in the overwhelming public interest, at least not when an alternative substance that is equally if not more harmful is freely available for access and consumption. Instead, this breeds an environment where the government is given the freedom to arbitrarily designate what is ‘good’ and ‘fair’ and, conversely, what isn’t.
This is a thread of the argument that is repetitively and exhaustively fought in the US every time an individual on society’s fringe picks up a gun and heads out the door with malignant intentions. How do they, in a truly secular state, aim to limit actual social and individual freedoms? The fight isn’t over whether we restrict access to weapons with a higher-than-prescribed cartridge count, or firing rate, or range of accuracy; it’s that we restrict access at all. The idea has been held untenable by gun owners, with the vague and obviously outdated protections afforded them in the Constitution.
The argument over marijuana legalization betrays a deep-rooted crisis of our societal identity.
Ignoring America’s decade-long slide into totalitarianism and elevation of individuals above the law, the idea of restricting public goods in the name of the public interest violates the desires of a significant subset of the population and therefore, runs in countenance to the founding principles of secular democracy. So we are left with a conundrum — do we enforce unpopular legislation against public will that limits freedoms and dash to pieces the concepts that define secularism, or do we open up the doors and restrict only the most heinous expressions that directly impact public safety and functionality?
After all, homosexuality was once deemed by the overwhelmingly (vocal) section of the populace to be a potent moral and societal ill, and was banned with the full force of the law — despite this being an absolute violation of basic individual freedoms afforded by constitutional protection. This is the same puzzle being combated on the streets of Québec as xenophobic-tinted government policies attempt to enforce standards of behaviour that do not march in lockstep with the totality of its (already isolated) society, but simply the collective will of a small, yet exceedingly empowered, demographic.
Simply put, we cannot have it both ways or in parts, not if we are to be a truly fair and secular nation based on democratic participation. There is no grey line; we cannot elect to validate certain freedoms while disregarding others flippantly. To label pot legalization under the opaque banner of it being a ‘social ill’ is not a constructive argument — it’s a stance that demeans and undercuts the functional definition of an argument.
If we are to ban such ills in the name of the public good, then free access to alcohol should be eliminated as well, and promptly. This is the choice we make, to either live in a country that values competing interests individually and on their own merits, or one that functions (as we do now) on hazily religious moralizing and idealistic totalitarianism.
I choose freedom.
