"It's Juvenile, Immoral, or Imperfect:" Cannabis and how the Authorities and the Media Shut Down the Discussion

Like most people who have attended a university in the United States (I don't know what classes everyone has to take in other countries but I wouldn't be shocked if the same is true elsewhere), I was required to take a communications class in order to receive a freshmen speech credit. That class, like most of its type, was pretty easy. We were only asked to give short presentations in various styles of speaking (informational, professional, and so on). The time came for us to start working on our persuasive speeches and I had already decided to cover the legalization of cannabis before I even signed up for the class so I was happy to know that I wouldn't need to spend a lot of time coming up with an idea. "The only topic that I don't allow is the legalization of marijuana because I think it's juvenile" the professor said, as he finished explaining our assignment.

As far as authorities go, that associate professor at a second rate state university is pretty inconsequential but the tactic that he used to end the discussion is a common one. When someone starts to make a good point or the authority is afraid that someone will make a good point, the authority will often try to diminish the importance of the topic (or the credibility of the person who is speaking about it) by labeling it as something that no moral, mature, or rational person would want to discuss. Unfortunately, this tactic works rather well. I suspect that my professor had heard and believed the message that weed is juvenile and not worth discussing in an academic setting, without really thinking about the lack of logic behind that idea. It isn't just him either. Large portions of the public have swallowed this sort propaganda and when cannabis comes up in the conversation, they picture pot heads and assume that anyone who would support such "deviant" and "childish" behavior is not worth listening to. However, while this argumentative technique might be an effective one, it says nothing about the validity or credibility of the topic or person that it is used against and, that being the case, it is important for us to understand how it works so that we can recognize when it is being used to mislead us, whether cannabis or anything else happens to be its target.

"Good people don't smoke marijuana" was famously said by the current attorney general of the United States and that is a message that has been repeated over and over again by the authorities, educators, and the media in an attempt to make the subject of legalization toxic to touch upon. In school they say that weed will make people neglect their kids and become violent. The media will be sure to mention any tiny amount of marijuana that is found in the general vicinity of crime scene or "in the system" of some person who smoked a joint a week before drinking a pint of whiskey and crashing his or her car into busload of school children because those things make cannabis sound like it is the cause of the unethical behavior. The message is that the issue (cannabis and its use, in this case) is immoral and anyone who defends it, is defending immorality. That scares people away from discussing the subject because they do not want to be perceived as being on the side of reckless driving and child neglect even if those claims are known to be false (and they are). Whether a person smokes weed or not has no bearing on his or her level of goodness. Neglectful people will be neglectful, regardless of the drugs that they choose to use (and many of the drugs that they use are legal and socially acceptable, by the way). Sadly, truth doesn't matter when people are more concerned with perception and, as a result, broadly calling a thing immoral effectively shuts the conversation down because few will want to be associated with it.

Obama once said that the legalization of cannabis "is not a panacea" ( which google defines thusly; "a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases") and because that is the case, it should not be a "priority." One would think that a person who was a professor at a prestigious institution would recognize how weak that argument is and he almost certainly does but his statement and others like it are not about making a strong case. "A thing won't fix all of the world's problems so it isn't worth doing" is the message I get from that line of reasoning. Those kinds of arguments are about changing the way that issues are framed in an attempt to make addressing them seem frivolous. A thing does not need to be a "panacea" to be important. Weed won't save the world but it is a useful medicine that is prohibited for no good reason. Legalizing it won't fix the broken criminal justice system in this country but it will keep a lot of people from needlessly being funneled into it. Cannabis won't make us all rich but it could help a lot of people earn a living. Again, the truth does not matter. The argument functions to raise the bar of importance to unrealistic levels which makes the issue seem silly to an unwary observer. The hope is (and sadly this works) that if those standards are presented as reasonable measures of importance, the public will stop caring about anything that is not said to live up to them. "Stop wasting your time trying to keep people from going to jail for treating their seizures or cancer and focus on the 'real' problems," the true believers will say as the discussion dies.

I was going to find another quote to illustrate the "it's juvenile" line of attack but, honestly, you can look at just about any portrayal of cannabis in the media to see that this is the image that is being pushed. It is the natural progression of the "it's not a panacea" argument. Because cannabis is "unimportant," those who would like to address the problems with prohibition are like children in their "meaningless" concerns, they say. This gives the false impression that people who advocate for cannabis are untrustworthy, unreliable, and lack the perspective that maturity brings. Just like the other claims that I mentioned, this is not accurate. Prohibition causes huge problems in our society. It is something mature people ought to be worried about, if they don't want to see increased power and potential for abuse in the hands of the government, the freedom of common people being trampled upon, the imprisonment of those people for possessing a plant, the needless restrictions on a profitable market, and the the theft of children from loving homes. If those things are not "adult" problems, I don't know what is.

Maybe you aren't very concerned with cannabis and that is fine but these methods of ending or suppressing discussions can be used by the media and the authorities elsewhere and that makes resisting them important regardless of how you might feel about weed. Chemical companies will say that their products are safe and that questioning them is irrational. The war mongers will say that opposing their war is emotional and childish. The media will say that their lies are truth and anyone who doesn't believe them is a "conspiracy theorist". Wanting to change an oppressive law is immoral because children exist and "just think about how them having more freedom when they become adults might hurt them now." It does not matter what the subject is, painting it in a way that makes discussing it unattractive can be done to keep people from thinking too deeply about it and that is a threat to anyone who is cares to know the truth about anything.

We can't stop sophists and propagandists from trying to mislead us, obscure the truth, or flat out lie but we can make efforts to not be affected by what they say. If the authorities or the media try to diminish the importance of a topic by attaching these sorts of labels to it, we should take that as a sign to investigate that topic more thoughtfully. If there is something there and particularly if It that something happens to be a fact, or argument, or truth that is inconvenient to the authority or the propagandist, we can disregard (or, at least, call into question) their claims. We can say, "this is not juvenile" (or whatever response would apply to a given situation) and force the discussion. Putting in that little bit of extra effort is no "panacea," of course, but it would make us a little harder to fool and, to me, that makes it worth doing.

Peace.

Here are links to stories that cover the quote that I referenced:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/18/trumps-pick-for-attorney-general-good-people-dont-smoke-marijuana/

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/legal-pot/obama-pot-legalization-should-not-be-youngs-first-priority-n324766

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.