Kennedy now stoked about legalized pot
Another great moment in Kennedy courage.
Two years after a majority of Massachusetts voters passed it, and with Gallup showing 66 percent of Americans agree, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III is “leading from behind,” announcing yesterday with great fanfare that he now supports legalizing pot.
“My concerns about the public health impact of marijuana remain. But it has become clear that prohibition has wholly failed to address them,” JPK III wrote in an op-ed for the medical journalism site statnews.com.
Exactly what is “clear” to Rep. Kennedy about the failure of pot prohibition today that wasn’t two years ago remains, well, unclear. Two years ago, the facts about pot were the same as they are today, namely that everyone in Massachusetts who wanted pot could get it. The only thing that’s changed today is that now there’s a new dealer on the street, named “Beacon Hill” and he wants his 20 percent cut.
Or else.
The most powerful argument for legalized pot has always been personal liberty. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman put it, “The government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth than it has to tell me what comes out.” And this is precisely the argument JPK III rejects. He wants the federal government to decriminalize pot so they can then tell everyone what they can and cannot do with it. The idea that adults shouldn’t get arrested for smoking a joint simply because “it’s none of your damn business” never occurs to him.
“Legalization would restore the federal government’s ability to regulate a powerful new industry thoroughly and thoughtfully,” Kennedy wrote. “It would allow us to set packaging and advertising rules. … It would help set labeling requirements … and it would create tax revenue.”
In other words, legalizing pot gives politicians more money, influence and power. So the real question for Lil’ Joe is — what took you so long?
And this is the irony all the libertarians lining up yesterday for legalized pot’s opening day in Leicester were missing. Before the state got in the bud business, the only thing dealers had to worry about were the cops making low-level busts for possession. Law enforcement didn’t really enforce and the courts didn’t really care.
Today, the recreationalpot retailers — the campus connection and neighborhood hook-up — are all dealing on Department of Revenue territory. And dude — you don’t want to cross the DOR.
The full weight of the state of Massachusetts is, for the first time, going to be used to fight illegal marijuana use, not because it’s any more self-destructive than it was before, but because now it’s taking money (as they say at the new Springfield casino) “from the house.”
The gambling analogy is an apt one. For decades, liberals fought against legalized gambling because it has a disproportionate negative effect on low-income/ education communities. Eventually, the state finally decided that “protecting people from themselves” wasn’t as important as the cash they could collect from Keno and the lottery. Today it’s pot heads and stoners, but the premise of liberal politicians is the same: “If someone’s going to make money off stupid and self-destructive behavior, then dammit, it’s gonna be US!”
The scene outside Cultivate Holdings, one of the two stores that opened yesterday, was classic Massachusetts: a thousand people — older, suburban and extremely white — waiting in line for permission to overpay for a product they could literally grow themselves. One of the Bernie Bros waiting for his government-approved pot brownie told a reporter he was happy to pay the 20 percent tax. “I like giving back. If it’s going to help the state or the community, then I’m all for it.”
And politicians like Rep. Kennedy are happy to take it.