Robert Fulghum’s essay “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” lays out basic rules for living. These include:
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
This is some solid advice, assuming someone has taken the time to teach you what it means. Children learn by imitating what they see. Infants learn the language that we speak to them and the behavior, attitudes, and values we model. I hate the word “values” because it conjures for me the oxymoronic “family values” of conservative ideology fame, but it remains a concept worth pondering. What do you believe in? What do you live for? What values do you model?
In 2007, John Joseph Costa ran a 900-foot container ship into the San Francisco Bay Bridge. 53,000 gallons of oil ended up in the Bay, issuing a $60 million clean-up bill and a death sentence for resident wildlife, including about 2,000 species-protected birds. Costa pled guilty to violation of misdemeanor pollution laws because felony charges were dropped by the prosecution. Costa’s plea terms include 2 to 10 months in prison and fines of $3,000 to $30,000. Apparently environmental responsibility is not an important value of oil corporations or the judicial system.
Contrast Costa’s sentence with the federal penalties, for example, for cultivation of 50 kg or less of marijuana (a victimless crime) which earns a felony charge of 5 years imprisonment and $250,000 in fines. According to the logic of this sentencing, growing pot is 30 times worse than running a ship into a bridge and devastating an ecosystem. You could dump oil into San Francisco Bay 83 times and still pay less in fines than someone with a single marijuana cultivation charge.
The usual justification for anti-marijuana laws is the protection of the public from of the harmful effects of marijuana. Does this alleged value of public health match up with the actions of the courts? Yeah, not so much. The U. S. CDC reported that in 2000 tobacco killed 435,000 people, poor diet and physical inactivity killed 365,000, and alcohol killed 85,000. No deaths were reported in association with marijuana use. These statistics are not presented as an argument for marijuana being good for people—it isn’t—but notice that the top three causes of death in the United States (tobacco, unhealthy food, and alcohol) are perfectly legally and massive, heavily advertised industries. Meanwhile, 734,497 individuals were arrested the same year for marijuana offenses (646,042 for simple possession). Who are laws protecting?
It turns out that grownups are not really that great at apologizing when we hurt somebody, especially if our paycheck depends on that product. Fulghum wrote, “Think what a better world it would be…if all governments had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.” The delightful irony of a democratic nation is that ostensibly “we, the people” are responsible for the society, government, and courts that we love to bitch about. Basic responsibility begins when we start living according to our values. I do feel that it is ultimately impossible to prevent people from poisoning themselves in an informed manner by whatever vice they so wish, but I’m pretty sure nobody has asked the birds or our children whether they mind the unchecked destruction of their planet and the associated involuntary life-span reduction. That’s not really fair.