I made it through the 1960's without being stoned or drunk. In fact, I've made it to 2018 in the same condition. I am not a fan of recreational drinking nor pot smoking. Fortunately I am a mostly optimistic person who believes in feeling the feelings I'm having and enjoying life as best I can each day. I'm not into judgy-preachy as to what I believe you should do, although I admit I do wonder why people feel a need to alter their reality with pot and drink, when there are other ways of escape that are less invasive. If you're reading a book, for example, or watching a movie, or taking a hike, or engaging in conversation with friends, you can stop, halt, change direction of how you are interacting with the world. If you're drunk or high, you are drunk or high until you are not, until your buzz fades. The buzz controls. I recognize some people like that aspect of drinking and toking, and truly, not trying to be judgy-preachy here, just wondering.
All of the above being said, I also think that if you want to drink or smoke pot and are of legal age to make such a decision, and are doing so in a responsible manner (not driving under the influence, for example), then no government should restrain you. The act of the drinking or the toking must be outside of the law, as is the purchase of the means to drink or toke. To prohibit drinking or smoking pot by law and concurrently prohibiting the sale, is to create an underground market for sale of these commodities. The government then requires itself to ferret out the players in the underground market of its own creation! How does this make sense, or lead to the political idea that government should be minimally involved ? Government in this way creates the problem to solve the problem. What?
Several sovereign states of the United States, by free electoral process guaranteed by the constitution, have declared that the sale of marijuana, like alcohol, is legal. Not only the sale and making of each, but the using of each is also legal, all subject to certain conditions. It's up to the states to determine the laws surround the legal use.
In the past couple of days the Attorney General of the United States has summarily decided that the states don't have that right. Why? Because he doesn't believe in smoking marijuana. This is not a good enough reason. We are talking states rights, individual freedoms, a couple of concepts that the AG should be upholding in his capacity as AG. But he speaks instead as an individual on a mission to uphold his belief that there is some moral depravity in smoking marijuana. There is a large body of evidence that informs how the medical use of marijuana is helpful in and of itself. No morally deprave judgment in the evidence. The AG has no such problem with guns. He upholds guns rights, even though mass shootings have occurred with too regular frequencies in the recent past. He picks and chooses the rights he wants to uphold. He is misguided and wrongheaded in confusing his personal beliefs with the rights of others.
There is so much work to be done in this world to further justice in race relations, peace between nations, the empowerment of women, minorities, marginalized citizens, homelessness, to name some areas. Focus, AG, on those areas. You are the head of the JUSTICE Department, not the prohibition police. Allow law enforcement to help with these crimes that exist, rather than trumping up new areas for overworked, overstretched police departments to change their focus. Keep your personal beliefs, and politics, out of the quest for unification, for justice. Stop the divisiveness.
Whether by jest or in an attempt to help me through a rough spot I was in over the holidays, my son-in-law wondered what I would be like if I got drunk. I told him we'd never know, because likely I would not get drunk if I haven't done so by the time I'm 70. Still, I'll keep that option open. Know that whether I do or not, my beliefs will not impinge upon your right to drink or smoke pot. Do you. I'll do me. But let's keep the government out of it!
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