Marijuana laws kill.
I was discussing street drugs and drug laws with my teenager this week, sparked by the sad death of Mr. Hoffman. As a sprouting Liberal in Massachusetts, he's quite aware of the idiocy of Marijuana laws even without my having weighed in on it. But what about the other drugs bouncing around out there?
Here's what I'd like to tell him: "Thor, simply go by the law; if it's illegal, there's a good reason for it. Stay away." But obviously that's not true these days; the laws are out of whack with reality, and he knows it. So I did the best I could, and explained that the problem with street drugs is that they're quite fun at first, but they can trap us into addiction and other situations that end badly, and some drugs can kill or injure in larger amounts, and we never know for sure what we're actually getting in street drugs (they could be laced with God-knows-what) and so forth.
He's a smart kid and careful, so I expect he'll be OK. Lord, I hope so.
Then I thought back to when I was a teenager. I knew a number of people who were badly hurt by drug adventures. We all started by smoking pot, of course, which caused no problems. Then some went on to bigger and badder stuff, and the problems started. I strongly suspect that if our drug laws had been a reasonable guide to what was harmful and what was not, a lot of the trouble would have been avoided.
There are also the many lives that are ruined because of pot busts, and who knows how much suffering and death results? I'm thankful that in here in Massachusetts, the weather sucks but our law enforcers are OK. We have the lowest rate of pot busts in the country, by far, precisely because cops don't want to wreck lives over stupid #%^*. I look forward to the day when all of America comes together in rejecting the ruining of lives over stupid #%^*.