Isn't the move toward
legalizing marijuana just an elitist cop-out that disregards the impact that this would
have on the poor in the inner cities?
Two young reporters who had
returned from a week at a conference on "journalism and drugs," to which only
one anti-prohibitionist speaker was invited, once asked me this question. To their credit
they said that they saw through most of the week's prohibitionist propaganda, but they
were concerned by that question. Similarly, whenever William F.
Buckley, Jr. writes a column criticizing marijuana prohibition, a retired DEA propaganda
officer writes every paper that carries his column and accuses him of "elitism."
It is tempting to simply dismiss such an argument as ad hominem,
which it is. After all there are poor people and people of color who oppose marijuana
prohibition. Are they somehow crypto-elitists? It is also a bit ironic, in that the
origins of marijuana prohibition were so blatantly racist. The laws that were passed as
attacks on blacks and Mexican migrants are now defended as protecting them from
themselves.
However, the substantive point remains that the poorest and least
educated members of any society are the most vulnerable to whatever hazards there may be
in marijuana, or anything else. This point would seem to lend support at least to the view
that legalizing marijuana would hurt the most vulnerable, if one grants the premise that
marijuana is somehow particularly dangerous.
However, what this line of argument overlooks is that the poor and
uneducated are also most vulnerable to both the intended and unintended consequences of
marijuana prohibition. Poor people, and especially racial minorities, are less able to
defend their rights when they are arrested. They are also most vulnerable to the
violence associated with the contraband markets of prohibition. They also suffer from
higher rates of addiction to alcohol and other drugs that have far worse social and health
consequences than marijuana.
The suppression of marijuana in the 1980's, undertaken in response to
the middle class anti-marijuana constituencies supported by the DEA and its front groups,
was immediately followed by the crack epidemic in the inner cities. This suggests
marijuana prohibition is actually the "elitist" policy that hurts the poor.
The medical marijuana issue may also seem to be an "elitist"
issue, but the fact is that, given America's lack of public health insurance, the poor
have the greatest need for medical marijuana. The elderly poor and chronically ill who
do not have insurance to pay for expensive pharmaceuticals need medical marijuana far more
than those in the middle class, and certainly far more than doctors, who know that they
can get whatever they or their families need. Yes, the poor have problems coping with
freedom, but they have even greater problems coping without it.
Supported