By
Leif M. Wright
Weekend Editor
Muskogee Phoenix
— Imagine two people get
together to do what adults
sometimes do when they’re
alone together.
They’re responsible people.
They take all the
appropriate precautions to
avoid negative repercussions
of their actions.
When they’re about to
part ways, a stream of cops
bust down the door, slam the
couple to the ground,
handcuff them and cart them
away to jail. Their crime?
Having consensual sex.
Or try this one on for size:
A couple of friends, all over 21, get together, put Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” on iTunes, crack open a case of Budweiser or Coors, sit back and get a little drunk. It’s OK, though, because none of them plans to leave tonight. They’re all going to crash here and listen to some more good tunes later.
Just in the middle of “Is There Anybody Out There?” cops bust down the door and arrest everyone, confiscating the beer, the stereo and any cash the guys have on them. The crime? Possession of alcohol with the intent to distribute.
Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Outrageous, even. How dare the government arrest two people for having consensual sex, or for enjoying an intoxicating beverage in the privacy of their own home?
It goes against everything America stands for, if you think about it. The whole idea behind the Bill of Rights, after all, was to keep the government out of our private lives, out of the things we do behind closed doors, as long as they don’t infringe on other people’s rights.
But take it one step further and that’s exactly what this country’s doing.
In the first scenario, if the two exchange money, we arrest them both and throw them in jail.
In the second scenario, if they are smoking marijuana instead of drinking beer, we lock them up.
Now, think about it for a second. Two adults have sex in the privacy of a motel room or something. They’ve both agreed that they want to have sex with each other. They went to a private place.
The only difference between them and any other couple is that one of them will give money to the other one. And as far as the law is concerned, that’s a crime.
It’s one of the oldest transactions in history. The early Christian church supported and in some cases even institutionalized prostitution until the sixteenth century, when puritanicalism started taking hold.
In England, Australia, Greece, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, New Zealand, Rhode Island and some places in Nevada, prostitution in one form or another is completely legal with some restrictions.
Most who oppose prostitution do so on moral grounds, but those moral grounds are really pretty slippery. It’s fairly difficult to justify consensual sex being legal and then somehow say the exchange of money for the same thing that was happening for free makes the act illegal.
Keeping prostitution illegal empowers those who oppress prostitutes to do so with relative impunity.
When prostitution is legal and regulated, prostitutes can have health insurance, retirement benefits and most importantly, they can have a way to legally complain if they’re mistreated. Currently, if someone mistreats a prostitute, the prostitute can’t very well go to the police and complain about it, so by the very fact that it’s illegal, the law empowers people to abuse prostitutes.
Legalized and regulated prostitution also would immediately put pimps out of business, because if a prostitute has protection of the law, she doesn’t need some guy in a big, fuzzy hat doing the protecting for her.
In addition, because of legal regulation, Nevada’s legal prostitution has never resulted in even one case of HIV, which is one argument people use to say prostitution should remain illegal.
Every argument put forth to keep prostitution illegal can easily be shot down using one phrase: it’s legal as long as it’s free.
It seems to me the only reason to keep prostitution illegal is to prevent people from making money doing something they enjoy doing for free.
And what about marijuana? Well, it’s kind of hard to justify alcohol being legal while marijuana isn’t. Try this for a fun experiment. Go to a coroner and ask how many people have ever had “marijuana poisoning” listed as a cause of death. Then ask how many had “alcohol poisoning” listed.
Alcohol is an amazingly toxic substance that also happens to get people drunk. Marijuana certainly doesn’t intoxicate anyone more than alcohol does, yet it is — rather inexplicably — illegal. Arbitrarily illegal, one might say.
The argument most often put forth against legalizing marijuana is that it’s a “gateway drug” that leads its users to do harder drugs.
It’s an illogical argument, actually. I’ve known quite a few marijuana users in my day, and I can’t think of a single one who smoked marijuana before trying alcohol. I’ve known a few “hard drug” users in my day, too, and I know quite a few who tried “hard drugs” without ever having smoked marijuana, but none who did “hard drugs” without first having done alcohol.
I’ve also known quite a few marijuana users who never went on to do “hard drugs.” It seems to me in my informal polling of people I’ve known that 100 percent of “hard drug” users are also alcohol users, while only around half of “hard drug” users are also marijuana users.
If there’s any “gateway drug,” surely it’s alcohol, not marijuana.
According to DrugWatch International, “Alcohol and tobacco kill more people annually than all other drugs combined. Alcohol alone is associated with at least one-fourth of all hospital visits in the United States. Nicotine is one of the most addictive and harmful of all drugs.”
Every argument put forth to keep marijuana illegal can easily be shot down using two words: alcohol and tobacco. As long as they’re legal, there’s no reason to keep marijuana illegal except to continue to fill jails with nonviolent people who otherwise would be paying taxes and being productive members of society.
So why do I bring all this up? Because our society is sick. Seriously. We care so much about what people do in the privacy of their own homes that we invade their most private moments and arrest them for behavior that isn’t hurting anyone and really isn’t our business.
Who does it help when we jail people for those “crimes”? Society? No. It just adds a burden on society to support people in jail who were supporting themselves before we intruded on their private lives. Instead, it makes us feel better for being a “moral” society, when the reality is the exact opposite.
Finally, I know people reading this will go, “this guy. He just wants to go find a hooker while he’s taking a monster bong hit.”
Because it’s easier for them to say that than consider the merits of the argument.
You can reach Leif M. Wright at 684-2906 or lmwright@muskogeephoenix.com. And no, he’s not on the look out for a big, fat sack or a “date” for the night.
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