{"id":10191,"date":"2011-07-08T00:30:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T04:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10191"},"modified":"2011-07-07T17:35:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T21:35:19","slug":"shifting-in-the-general-direction-of-legalizing-marijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/07\/08\/shifting-in-the-general-direction-of-legalizing-marijuana\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting in the general direction of legalizing marijuana?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ace<\/a> is still not eager to see pot legalized, but he’s had a bit of a change of heart lately:<\/p>\n

\n

The liberty argument is a strong one.<\/p>\n

The counter-argument, and the one I have previously relied upon\/acceded to, was that the state has such a powerful<\/em> interest in protecting people from harming themselves that our Duty to Protect outweighs the case for liberty.<\/p>\n

But I don’t believe that any more. For one thing, I am becoming, little by little, and belatedly, very suspicious<\/em> of any argument that assigns liberty a lower priority than another value. And I’m becoming, again belatedly, very very suspicious<\/em> of the general claim that we can use the Coercive Power of the State to make people live better lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s not so much a slippery slope argument — of the type “If we say the state can do X to supposedly improve our lives, who’s to say they can’t do Y, as well, making the same claim?” — as it is an argument about that first step itself.<\/p>\n

I don’t think I want the state using its coercive power to lock people up any more for doing drugs.<\/p>\n

What business is it of mine? I do lots of things that others may look down upon but I wouldn’t be at all happy about having State Coercion brought to bear upon me for any of it.<\/p>\n

So, cut through all the stuff about medicinal marijuana and the like… it’s really just about respecting a citizens’ basic right to do as he pleases<\/em> without state coercion, so long as what he pleases does not produce direct harm for anyone else.<\/p>\n

And I just don’t buy the case for “direct harm” anymore.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ace is still not eager to see pot legalized, but he’s had a bit of a change of heart lately: The liberty argument is a strong one. The counter-argument, and the one I have previously relied upon\/acceded to, was that the state has such a powerful interest in protecting people from harming themselves that our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,9,10],"tags":[119,550,83],"class_list":["post-10191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-law","category-liberty","tag-drugs","tag-libertarianism","tag-marijuana"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2En","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10192,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10191\/revisions\/10192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}