Let’s Legalize Drugs!

Grasping for any excuse to tie this topic to atheism, and in view of the season, I conjure up the wit and wisdom of the Irish immigrant bartender Martin J. Dooley (actually early 20th Century journalist Finley Peter Dunne) about Thanksgiving: “’Twas founded be th’ Puritans to give thanks f’r bein’ presarved fr’m th’ Indyans, an’ ... we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr’m the Puritans.”

Another American writer, H. L. Mencken, cynically supplied the definition: “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Despite springboarding off this underlying religious motivation, this month’s program will feature mainly skeptical, objective analysis of the USA’s catastrophic failure in our misnamed War on Drugs. Why misnamed? Well, who’s the “enemy” in this war? Not what the title tells you: it’s not the drugs themselves. They’re simply brainless, motiveless chemicals. They’ve never paid a penny in fines, served a second in jail, or had so much as a twinge in the tummy. No, the victims of these senseless laws are us. People. Americans. Citizens. Voters! Our nation’s insane, expensive, ineffective, wasteful, and counterproductive policies deserve to be called what they really are: a War on Drug-Using Americans.

Our nation has gone way too far down the wrong road here. We’ve come up with a “cure” that’s way worse than the supposed “disease” it purports to fix. In demonstrable fact, our anti-drug laws have made almost everything terribly worse than they would’ve been otherwise. It’s time to do away with them altogether. Let’s legalize drugs! Not just alcohol (already did that). Not just marijuana (should’ve done that ages ago but still haven’t). All of them. Top to bottom. The whole magilla.

This will be a virtual meeting conducted via Zoom. A link will be sent out at 6 PM on the day of the event to people who’ve RSVPed.