You Can Take a Toke, but Don’t Do the Coke

In “One Toke Over the Line” [Over the Coals, June] Nathan Rabin does a commendable job of dumpster-diving beneath the surface of our government’s cesspool of anti-pot propaganda. However, I think Rabin may have gone one toke over the line himself. He writes that once kids see through the government’s lies about pot, “who’s to say they won’t wonder if genuinely destructive drugs like cocaine and speed aren’t as dangerous as advertised either?” Maybe I’ve misread his intentions, but this makes me a little queasy because it seems to make use of one of the oldest scare tactics in the prohibitionist’s own arsenal: the gateway myth. Multiple studies have concluded with certainty that pot simply does not lead to the use of other drugs. Even if he wasn’t intentionally soft-pedaling the dreaded gateway myth, Rabin still used tenuous reasoning to reach the sort of open ended “what if…” conclusion that prohibitionists often deploy to present a worst-possible scenario as the typical case. Pot’s crusaders often appear to be against prohibition, but in their eagerness to defend marijuana, they end up restating arguments for prohibition on their own terms. Of course alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, and speed are all more dangerous than marijuana—that’s why all these drugs need to share a level, legal playing field. Even tacit acknowledgement of drug-war hysteria surrounding other drugs gives a boost to the notion that we need this drug war, because society would collapse without it, what with all these crack babies, tweekers blowing themselves up in their “clandestine drug labs,” and pill-popping redneck Oxycontin freaks—or whatever drug panic is currently in vogue. When we contribute to the marginalization of other drugs and drug users, we take one step forward and two steps back on the way to our shared goal of humane, rational, and compassionate drug policies. While I may disagree on a few of the finer points of Rabin’s reasoning, I still thank him for an articulate article that takes a firm stand against the moralistic bastards in our government who wish us to wallow in paranoia and ignore the obvious.
Justin Teerlinck
St. Paul