Pot and Big Brother

There seems to be a push, at least in the leftish media, to promote the inevitability of legal marijuana.

At the same time, we have the revelations of Edward Snowden: the US is massively watching all of us, through virtually all our communications except face to face. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother could do even that. Scared yet?

But maybe marijuana is a plot, of the liberal/socialist government under the tyrant Obama…. Hold that thought.

The commercial possibilities of legal marijuana, already being experienced in the two states that made it legal as a recreational as well as medical drug--Washington and Colorado--seems very attractive, especially to cash-strapped state and local governments. Huffpo published a piece on how much money could be realized in taxes and reduced prison costs, would cut the price of pot dramatically, and yet increase legal employment and taxes collected, all based on those two states' early experiences.

I could attest to other advantages: anyone with a small plot of ground, or a closet, could grow their own! Wine and liquor stores might notice a falling off of demand for their drug of choice, however. That's where opposition to legalization may come from.

But think, for a moment, how the widespread availability of marijuana might affect the nation as a whole. Marijuana rarely causes violence; alcohol does, but marijuana does have an influence on how people think: most become more reflective, or passive and introspective, or creative, according to Bill Maher. You've seen giggling potheads? That's about the closest potheads get to violence, as far as I've seen--admittedly a small sample.

There's a precedent for the political use of drugs. The Inca used coca leaves to dull rebellious impulses among its subject peoples. They chewed and worked harder. After the Conquest, Spaniards used it to quiet rebellion and induce hard work by the subject Quechua. The USSR and so many other nations had cheap vodka, or gin, or….instead of rebellion.

So: would legal marijuana be a boon to the State, not just as a revenue raiser, and cost-cutter (as in prisons not needed), but also as a social control? The Feds can know where you are, whom you talk to and for how long, even if they don't eavesdrop, but marijuana might induce people not to care, i.e. be more easily controlled.

I'm no subscriber to the tyrant-socialist-Obama school, nor to conspiracy theory. But I do think there are powerful people, who want to be sure government does have control. They know, perhaps unconsciously, that the .001% holding so much wealth are vulnerable to popular outrage and worse--Emperor Maximus, the wealthiest Senator to wear the diadem, was literally ripped apart by the mob in 455.

So, marijuana might be seen by the super-elite as another way to "mellow out" the opposition, the way lotteries give the millions just a little hope. It bears thinking about.