Ms. Universe and Marijuana

I saw Olivia Culpo on Fox and Friends this morning. She's the new Ms. Universe. (I wonder how other sentient beings in the universe feel about that title.)

The thing I want to comment on is that she holds a position against legalized marijuana. She claims that there were serious consequences to its use.

Really? Are they as serious as the consequences to the use of alcohol? Alcohol, a true narcotic drug, is the number one violence-causing drug in America, probably the world, merely from it's use. Alcohol is the third leading cause of premature death in the world according to this article. Of course, smoking is worse, but I'm pretty sure Ms. Culpo is against smoking, too, but would she want Congress to pass laws making it illegal like marijuana?

Can a fifteen-year-old walk into a liquor store or grocery store and by alcohol? Of course not. Yet that same fifteen-year-old can, if he or she wants to, find someone to sell them marijuana. Like Pauline Sabine said when she testified before Congress about the harmful effects of alcohol prohibition:

"In pre-prohibition days, mothers had little fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon-keeper's license was revoked if he were caught selling liquor to minors. Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children."


If marijuana, and other presently illegal drugs, were sold legally in drug/liquor stores to adults upon proof of age, it would be harder for teenagers to get access to those drugs. As to adults, we don't jail them for drinking or smoking, even though alcohol and tobacco are dangerous and addictive substances. It's the right of an adult to decide if he or she wants to use one or both of those substances. It should be the same for the presently illegal drugs.

That is, it would be if we actually believed in the myth of inalienable rights, which obviously, we don't. The principle of inalienable rights states that some things cannot be voted on, that a majority has no legitimate power to negate a person's actions in certain situations. Under the principle of real and true inalienable rights then, an adult whose behavior does not violate the rights of others and does not threaten or endanger the rights of other, has an inalienable right to that behavior even if you or everyone else in the country believes that the behavior in question is immoral.

Immorality is a religious concept and religion should not control our laws. By advocating the illegality of marijuana, Ms. Culpo, you are advocating the imposition of religion into our secular laws. You are following in the footsteps of the relgious groups who lobbied Congress to make certain drugs illegal because they were immoral. That led to the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, which, to me, was a violation of the First Amendment's "establishment of religion" clause of the United States Constitution. The diminishment of inalienable rights has only gotten worse since then.

By all objective evidence, from the prohibition of alcohol to the prohibition of other drugs today, making those drugs illegal only creates more real crime and violence and allows them to be more available to minors.  I strongly suggest, Ms. Culpo, that you study this issue more and, hopefully, come down on the side of inalienable rights, the right of all consenting adults to use the property of their bodies and minds as they wish, just so long as they do not violate the rights of others in so doing. The legalization of marijuana would be a good first step.