cannabisnews.com: Do It, But Don't Get Caught? 





Do It, But Don't Get Caught? 
Posted by CN Staff on July 15, 2003 at 08:18:15 PT
By Robert Eisinger
Source: Portland Tribune 
The worst-kept secret in town is that the annual Fourth of July blues festival down at Waterfront Park brings out the potheads. Listening to Etta James this year, I saw several seniors lighting joints, enjoying the wonderful music and the spectacular scenery that, arguably, makes Portland the best place in the nation to spend the summer. Even as I left, the marijuana legalization advocates were seeking signatures, and getting them.
Weed is no big deal here in Oregon. When I first arrived about eight years ago, I recall a colleague telling me that she had received a marijuana plant as a housewarming gift. Unbelievable? Not to many young people who think of an occasional toke as nothing more significant than a swig of a beer or a friendly back rub. It makes you feel good, so one can, to use the local saying, just do it.  Yet the latest Damon Stoudamire scandal has confounded even the locals. Stoudamire's most recent run-in with the law reveals a growing trend in American politics: Some people do not consider rules, laws and authority as important. They appear to be embracing a laissez-faire moralism in which privacy rules supreme, and right and wrong are considered both relative and dubiously defined.  To many of us, I suspect that Stoudamire is considered a fool for having been caught. Why smoke weed while riding in a bright yellow Hummer, and why drive beyond the speed limit? Why carry pot to the airport? Why wrap it in aluminum foil, knowing that one must pass through a metal detector?  Smoking weed -- that is, committing a crime -- is not the issue. The conventional wisdom here seems to be that what Stoudamire does is his business, but he should know how to circumvent the law, or how to keep his private world private.  This ostensible disregard for the law has nothing to do with Stoudamire as a role model. I sense that it has to do with appreciating the role of the government as a legal authority.  When asked if they would turn in a fellow student who was caught stealing from a store, many students anecdotally respond in the negative, stating quite candidly that "ratting out" is unacceptable behavior or that the store management should be in charge of enforcement, not an accidental bystander.  Even when they are asked if they would contact the police if they knew a neighbor was dealing hard drugs to minors, many bright, intelligent students answer that they would not. While inflicting harm to others is wrong, so, too, they believe, is the act of playing moral cop.  Repeatedly, my college students speak about a variety of moral misdemeanors as "victimless acts." Infidelity, for example, is not a crime, so it is therefore "none of your business what someone does in the bedroom."  The wisdom underlying this remark and others like it should be good news to civil libertarians, who have made privacy a paramount right. Simultaneously, we should be a bit weary of living in a civil society in which interaction is never confrontational, and in which right and wrong are never debated or discussed.  One should not limit this worldview of not wanting to engage in others' wrongful behavior to college students. Preliminary research among senior citizens indicates that the reluctance to confront, implicate or contact the authorities is real and pervasive among that sector of the population too.  Perhaps the hoopla about Damon Stoudamire tells us more about ourselves than we realize. Once someone gets caught, we ridicule his stupidity or reckless behavior. Until he does, we quietly and strategically decide when to get involved and when to look the other way.  Robert Eisinger is chairman of the political science department at Lewis & Clark College; he also works as a political analyst for KPAM (860 AM). He lives in Lake Oswego. My View: A 'whatever' approach to morals renders right, wrong irrelevant. Source: Portland Tribune (OR)Author: Robert EisingerPublished: July 15, 2003Copyright: 2003 Portland TribuneContact: letters portlandtribune.comWebsite: http://www.portlandtribune.com/CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by afterburner on July 15, 2003 at 14:19:38 PT:
Laws and Law-Breakers.
My dad was particularly offended by the 55 MPH speed limit put in place during the energy crisis even on Interstates engineered for 70 MPH, supposedly to save fuel and then maintained for many years by the insurance lobby, which claimed it reduced accidents, a claim which was later refuted by statistics. He said that unreasonable laws force people into becoming law-breakers, which he did not like being considered.In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tsu said that the more laws the more law breakers.In the United Kingdom they call this the Nanny State. In North America we call this type of government Big Brother, and in business we call it Micro-management. No matter where we are in the world this type of paternalism is contrary to the spirit of true democracy, "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal... -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." --Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.ego transcendence honors people and builds trust, ego destruction demeans people and destroys trust.
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Comment #1 posted by CorvallisEric on July 15, 2003 at 12:06:04 PT
Privacy and moral relativism
Some people do not consider rules, laws and authority as important. They appear to be embracing a laissez-faire moralism in which privacy rules supreme, and right and wrong are considered both relative and dubiously defined.The real importance of privacy is that it's both the first and last line of defense against bad government.Government creates and enforces laws against consensual crimes with the stated intent of "reflecting social norms" and "sending a message." Of course, if you read the law books, you'll find penalties similar to those for real crimes. Most people violate one or more of these laws - often felonies - some time in their lives. They face years of imprisonment if it weren't for privacy, lax enforcement (widely perceived as common sense), and judicial discretion.The unintended consequence of this state of affairs is that the overall moral structure of society is debased. The defenses needed for a genuinely decent and self-fulfilling life become confused with excuses for doing wrong unto others. Most people see law, as a whole, being either meaningful or meaningless, and they involve themselves accordingly. Corruption is directly related to the extent they see it as meaningless. 
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