Why does society tolerate and encourage booze consumption while obsessively banning marijuana?
Booze Culture vs. Pot Culture
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Oh, Ted. You ask so that you can answer. But here are my three replies:
1. I’ve seen mean drunks; I’ve never seen mean stoners. Mean people are better for the status quo. Copstapo can interfere in peoples’ lives when they go on a mean drunk. Additionally, while alcohol is a sedative, it doesn’t always have a sedative effect on behavior. So, you have someone whose judgment is impaired, but who is still “wide awake.” This is why drunks go driving or pull stunts that bring the cops along. Napoleon said something about never interrupting an enemy in the middle of making an error. Cops love drunks. They don’t love the mayhem and death and destruction (unless it’s hilarious in some way), but how it allows them to process another person into the system? That’s a copstapo’s 20-minute orgasm. A friend once described the justice system as someone in long sleeves standing near an active woodchipper. If your sleeve gets caught on a branch (you get arrested), you have a very small window of opportunity to extricate yourself before you get pulled in and your life changes for the very worse. Try to find a job after being found guilty of something. Try to make it through a prison sentence and then try to find a job. Welcome to the woodchipper. One slip, and in you go.
2. It’s much harder to tax marijuana than it is booze (or tobacco). Marijuana can be grown by anyone (it’s a weed, so it’s pretty hard to kill it), whereas booze and tobacco are far more difficult (watch out for those still fires, and good luck getting your neighbors to let you put up a curing shed). Also, there’s the added advantage (for the state) that booze and cigarettes will kill you sooner. One of the former Eastern bloc countries had an official who suggested that they encourage smoking and drinking to maximize this effect as a cost-cutting scheme.
3. Historically, pot was the drug of choice of black Americans. If blacks had been the only ones to drink coffee, Starbucks would be selling little cups of coffee on street corners. “I got it all, man. Espresso, cafe au lait. Shit, man, try this, it’s blown the top of your head away: a chocolate-covered coffee bean.” Head stores would sell filter paper. “No, officer. I’m not gonna make a cup of coffee. I’m using this in chemistry class for a chromatography separation. Honest.” “Look, son, it’s got a lot of names on the street: brew, sanka claus, flake, Ethiopian Gold, a visit from my friend Maxwell House, joe, but it’s poison. Caffeine’s a poison and those pourers — ” “They’re called Baristas, dad” “Those criminals in their green aprons know it. So you stay away from it. Have a nice cup of hot chicory. Only tasks like a liquified cat box until you get used to it. Then it’s almost palatable.”
The drug war is a cash cow for the prison industry, law enforcement, intelligent services, etc. They will do anything that they can to keep this plant illegal.
Also, the booze industry has an axe to grind, here, clearly. “Drink responsibly,” indeed.
err,,, “intelligence” services, I mean…
“Why does society tolerate and encourage booze consumption while obsessively banning marijuana?”
Because large international public industry profits on the consumption of booze, while only large international secret shadow industries profit on the consumption of various drugs such as marijuana. Legalize pot, ten to twenty years down the line you will see major public pot corporations. If not soon. Shortly after that you will see the same attitude for booze and pot.
My theory is that the capitalists like caffeine because it makes workers more productive, they don’t like MJ because it has the opposite effect.
We have to have productive drones, who after their 8 hrs on the job go to happy hour and booze it up. The effects of alcohol abuse can take years to accumulate, so capitalists don’t mind the workers coming in with a hangover once in a while, the alcoholic will collapse eventually, years later.
alex_the_tired,
I haven’t seen a mean stoner, but I have seen a paranoid stoner. That can be an ugly sight in itself. Never had an adverse reaction to weed, but I can’t see the appeal. Why pay money to have a dry mouth and feel disoriented?
Marijuana prohibition is a consequence of alcohol prohibition. Alcohol prohibition was social engineering run amok. It gave rise to bloated federal law enforcement agencies and organized crime. It also alienated most of the voting public, so it was repealed. There was nothing for g-men to do but try to stomp out a less popular vice. Likewise, the wiseguys were more than happy to profit from a newly created black market. The war on drugs is a make work project for both cops and robbers. We have our Puritan heritage and prohibition to blame for having way too many of both for the last four generations.
Hoorah, I’m with you on this one, but I have to correct you in one point: it’s not “society”, which seems to handle pot more or less OK, just like it does with alcohol, but government that has that attitude towards pot and other recreational chemicals (of course, it used to have the same attitude towards alcohol, and it barely moderated it). Across all branches and tentacles of government, you will rarely see dissent amongst the tax-feeders when it comes to the “war on drugs.”
Now, one pet-peeve of mine is this: what is it with you American leftniks and beer? In the Europe you purport to admire so much, beer is everybody’s festive drink, ranging from the pedestrian (say, Bitburger) to the sophisticated (say, Duvel). And BTW, Bur or Miller, light or not, are below pedestrian.
Weed causes plenty of problems with people, just like alcohol, its funny that people like to pretend that one of the two is something innocent and sweet, weee weed gives me super powers, oh yeah well alcohol makes life great after a rough day at work…. never mind that they both cause social issues.
Why? Well heck, its probably the same reason that while you might beat the heck out of someone you catch trying to break into your car, you’ll sit back, fat, dumb and happy while a bank or an investment firm steals, lies and cheats you out of your money! Out of sight, out of mind. If Americans ever woke up and did something about some of the shit that goes on around them, they’d be arrested too! Ever hear of a person high on marijuana going on a “drunken rampage”? Catch you trolls later – i’m gona write a song called “Fat, Dumb and Happy” – might win an oscar, you can never tell……..
All we need is a bunch of old movies and celebrities puffing away on some good buds to create a traditional image and culture that will support it? Maybe I’m right? Maybe I’m wrong?
I didn’t want to believe it, but I think that the so-called “culture war” is at the roots of this one. Even Republicans know that marijuana’s most dangerous side-effect is that it makes bad movies tolerable. They also know that legalizing it will bring a happy glint to a hippie’s tired eyes. See also: Solar Power.