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Sunday, June 15, 2003 |
Reefer Madness [Marijuana.Com]
This is a great editorial on the folly of drug laws by William F. Buckley. There's also a fantastic piece in today's San Francisco Chronicle, discussing Peter Lewis, founder and CEO of Progressive Insurance, a hugely successful company, and regular pot smoker. The gist of the Chronicle piece is anti-drug propaganda makes the negative -- burnouts, addicts, criminals -- stand in for all drug users, when there are literally millions of people in this country who regularly use all sorts of drugs (including, yes, those terrible horrors, crack and heroin) but continue to lead productive lives. Twisted drug policies lump the good with the bad and afflict millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens. It's madness. Both stories are must reading. Here's a key paragraph from the Chronicle piece:
The fact that responsible drug use is not only possible but typical has important implications for the drug policy debate. Honest supporters of the drug laws have to acknowledge that the case for prohibition rests on a morally questionable premise: that it's acceptable to punish one group of people for the sins of another -- in this case, that the majority of drug users, who do not harm others or even themselves, should suffer because of a minority's failure to exercise self-control. The drug laws can be defended only in the way that alcohol prohibition might have been defended by someone who acknowledged that the typical drinker was not an alcoholic: by claiming that the burden imposed on the innocent majority is justified by the harm that a minority would otherwise cause to themselves and others.
Such a policy will strike many people as fundamentally unjust. Certainly it seemed that way to Clarence Darrow. "Prohibition," the renowned attorney remarked, "is an outrageous and senseless invasion of the personal liberty of millions of intelligent and temperate persons who see nothing dangerous or immoral in the moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages."
7:33:15 PM Permalink
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Bush vs. God:. Via Jeff Jarvis, a well-argued piece that pointing that the flag-burning amendment--passed in the House of Representatives with White House... [Electrolite]
Terrific commentary on the whole flag-as-holy-symbol nonsense. Strange that the conservatives really want to raise the flag to a religious symbol, in defiance of the first commandment. But then, this isn't about the flag, or religion, or patriotism; it's really about having a tool with which to beat political opponents.
4:59:14 PM Permalink
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Graduations
It's been a busy week. Geneieve graduated from 8th grade on Thursday; she pulled straight As in the last quarter, a first, I think for our family. The ceremony was nice -- short and to the point which used to be a rarity for these things, but is now more common. For dinner we went to Ginger Island on 4th Street in Berkeley. The meal was OK, I had an antelope steak with wild mushrooms -- notable were the morels in the sauce. Lyal and I had Martinis made from Ginger Vodka, which were very tasty.
On Saturday, Lyal graduated from UC Santa Cruz. It was pretty special; last week we had gone down there for a ceremony where Lyal received a Dean's Award for his Oil Paintings examples are here and here; there's a piece about this exhibit here). That was a very nice ceremony, and a special award with not many gradautes getting them. The graduation ceremony was nice, too. After that, Genevieve and I spent a bunch of time at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, hitting the Giant Dipper and some other rides. A highlight was the new taste treat they have at the Boardwalk: deep fried Twinkies and deep-fried Snickers. Of course, this violates every tenet of sensible and healthy eating, but they were awful damned good. Now i'm going to have to do some special pennance to make up for that and make down for the weight loss.
Anyway, it's exciting to see your kids do well; makes for a good father's day. Lyal worked really hard at Santa Cruz, and Genevieve worked hard at her schoolwork.
9:42:44 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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