Isn’t it odd that a freely-occurring, natural substance can be declared illegal? Does that presume immoral, too? If cannabis is deemed illicit, what about sycamore trees, or the sky? If natural does not mean good, please, Uncle Sam, help me see why. Are you illegal? Or, am I? Does this suggest that God’s creation harbors innate flaws? Or is it The Devil who authors our need to believe that we must have laws?
It’s true, of course, that weed intoxicates. Many—even open-minded—public-safety officials would rather not add to the number of stupefied drivers out there on the road. You can’t even raise this topic, though, among dopesmokers without getting an angry earful on alcohol’s harmful effects. “And, alcohol’s legal!” they snort. If you had to decide between ethanol and cannabis in terms of impaired competence or violent behavior, it’s not the hemp that would be nixed. The alcohol should be deep-sixed. But trying to prohibit anything that humans want has always been a dismal flop. If conscience won’t prohibit something, what chance is there, really, for a cop? Them smarmy, “decent” types, over the years, have campaigned against booze and drugs and lust; to no avail. The rum, the bong, the bit o’ tail, is clearly worth the time in jail, or so statistics seem to say.
In addition to concern with safety, another factor prompting prohibition is mootly called “morality,” which springs from learned mistrust of pleasure. The world is a huge and mysterious place; the lengths to which humans will go to believe that they know what is good (and what’s bad) cannot be overstated. As a matter of course we are willing to die and, routinely, to kill, just to safeguard some set of beliefs. Too bad that dude across the street will shoot you to ensure some other set. We’re even willing to believe in fictions such as “sin” and brittle codes of moral “laws” which promise Hell as punishment for all our favorite flaws, if that’s the only hope we have of certainty at all.
The U.S. is bipolar, or is schizoid, at the least. The libertine and puritan, the angel and the beast, live side by side in mutual, perpetual mistrust. They fear and feed on one another: yin/yang kid and yin/yang mother. Societies are organisms. Normative values are their immune system. That which is tried and familiar is grandfathered in, and is favored, of course. Anything less moderate is likely feared or banned. The farther your appearance or behavior from the norm, the more your fragile frigate will be battered by the storm; the more attention (much of it adverse) you’re gonna get. But I digress.
And, while we’re on the subject of mistrusting Mother Earth, let’s pause and think of nudity, for what that may be worth. In paradise they ran around with neither bras nor britches, and everyone was happy as a Howard Johnson clam. But then they ate “forbidden fruit”, resulting in self-consciousness of nakedness, and shame. They covered up, and found out that your formal figleaf itches. Among the so-called “moral” folks, if there is grief or pain, then bet your bottom dollar they’ll decide that sin’s to blame. Your sin or mine? Well, hell, it hardly matters. The good news is: we’ve got someone to blame! (Cause and Effect.) Seismologists misunderstood the San Francisco quake. They blamed it on the movement of immense tectonic shelves. But Jerry Falwell knew the truth: that San Francisco’s sodomites had brought it on themselves, as punishment for looking at the other fellows’ butts. While Jerry’s hopeless homophobes stood tall and raised their glasses, the rest of us knew they were totally nuts; an exceptional caucus of asses.
Hey, I was born naked. How about you? Yet, nudity is almost universally taboo; a subject for embarrassment and jokes. The loss of self-acceptance is immense — it’s called The Fall. What hope is there of sanity at all, for a species which thinks we are flawed in our natural state? “If somethin’ isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it.” Epicurus, ipse dixit.