. . . and damn, are they ever right.

I mean, if you get involved with marijuana, and the cops catch you with a small amount, they may bully you into cooperating with one of their drug investigations — which can get you killed.

Or, if you use marijuana, and have a small amount of marijuana in your home, you may get shot to death by police during a raid. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that police may shoot you when they raid your home if they just think you may have it. And it goes without saying that marijuana is dangerous to your dog, who may get shot during a raid.

And I need not remind you that if you have preexisting health condition, marijuana can kill you. For instance, if you are a paraplegic who requires adequate medical care to live, if you get caught with marijuana a sociopathically indifferent judge may condemn you to death by sending you to a jail that cannot care for you.

But that's not all. Marijuana encourages lawlessness — by encouraging law enforcement to disregard laws. It turns parents against children — through state-run programs encouraging children to inform on their parents. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that merely speaking of it in less than condemning tones can lead to you losing your job . . . with the government.

If you were a hand-wringing soft-on-crime looney liberal, a damned dirty hippie, you might say that the thread running through all of this is that the War on Drugs is dangerous, not marijuana. If you were a wild-eyed Paulbot glibertarian, you might conclude the common thread is that government is dangerous.

But of course good Americans have listened to Nancy Reagan, listened to the nice DARE officers, listened to the decades of public officials exhorting us to win the War on Drugs, and they know the truth: it's marijuana that's dangerous.

Hat tip: Jacob Sullum.

Last 5 posts by Ken White