The libertarian magazine Reason will be featuring an excellent piece on drug paraphernalia laws in its February issue. I had never stopped to consider it, but laws against drug paraphernalia are like laws against pornography.
A few weeks before Barack Obama was elected president, Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, filed criminal charges against the makers of the Whizzinator, a fake penis used to deliver clean urine for drug tests. …
It was fitting that one of Buchanan’s last prosecutions before the election involved drug paraphernalia disguised as a penis. Taking up causes championed by the Bush administration in response to the demands of social conservatives, she has shown a conspicuous enthusiasm for attacking both paraphernalia and pornography, areas that were of little interest to the Clinton administration and are not likely to be high priorities under President Obama. …
It’s no coincidence that Buchanan and her former bosses, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, are known for worrying about pornography as well as drug devices. At bottom, both kinds of prosecutions aim to punish offensive speech. Just as pornography implicitly endorses recreational sex, drug paraphernalia implicitly endorses recreational drug use. Both are an affront to the moral values of the officials who choose to crack down on them.
Like obscenity prosecutions, paraphernalia cases often target people for conduct they believed was legal. The law in both areas is fuzzy, and drug paraphernalia, like obscenity, tends to be judged by the “I know it when I see it” method. When they go beyond gut reactions, police and prosecutors often focus on the expression of opinions about drug use or the drug laws: A pipe is more likely to be deemed illegal, for example, if it is sold next to High Times or a “Legalize It” T-shirt. It makes a kind of perverse sense that antiprohibitionist speech can earn you a conviction on paraphernalia charges, since it was the message sent by drug paraphernalia that led governments to ban it in the first place.
It is a long read, but very worthwhile.
In a world got mad shouldn’t the government have something better to do? I have an online head shop SunflowerPipes.com. I sell my products to regular citizens above the age of 18. I like what I do and I want to be left free to make an honest living. I have been this business for a few years in that time I have had many occasions were I was harassed by various law enforcement agencies. In a country with huge populations of inmates, homeless and poverty stricken people perhaps it is about time we learn to respect each others personal choices.
In this respect, the blanket prohibition of drug use is like the prohibition of “pornography:”
It is the government oppressing the people by intruding into the private matters of the citizens in a way in which it has no legitimate interest or authority. They were exercising their growing knowledge of propaganda to manipulate the masses of simple citizens who believed their government was trustworthy. Maybe they were testing the limits of their power with this tool. They succeeded with this one, and have deftly manipulated the media ever since, in order to keep the prohibition in place.
Over two hundred years congress has met, always adding new laws, chipping away at the freedoms many Americans still believe they have.
You can’t grow a plant. You can’t think in some particular way. You can’t sit out on your back porch and peacefully smoke a marijuana cigarette. And, of course, you can’t look at things that the government doesn’t want you to see.
Welcome to the land of the sheep and the home of the slaves.
Government is the enemy of freedom. Freedom is the enemy of government. To the extent that you are governed, you are not free. Government feeds off of the freedom of the governed. It grows its power by taking away the freedoms of the governed.
That government is best which is the least.
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re:
Drug paraphernalia does not necessarily endorse recreational drug use. These products could be implemented for medical marijuana use, or religious marijuana use, or smoking of materials that have no controlled substances in them. Well, that’s what I’ve heard, anyhow.
And regarding pornography, hey, what about all those high-brow articles and in-depth interviews in Playboy magazine? That’s what sells the magazines, isn’t it? Those pictures of hot, nekkid wimen aren’t necessarily there to endorse recreational sex. They might be endorsing medical sex (aerobics + stretching), or religious sex (you’ll have to think up your own funny comments for this one. Use your imagination.). Maybe they are just used for masturbation. That’s not even sex, is it? You can’t have sex with yourself, can you?
Unless you ever voted for Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Obama. Then, please do.
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