Letter: She's half right
Mike Gorman
April 28, 2008
Concord Monitor
Karin Eckel of the state attorney general's office says that drug abuse is the problem, not drug laws. If drug laws are absurdly harsh for very minor and first-time marijuana possession, then she is half right and half wrong.
Can it possibly be right to think that jail time, with all of its awful consequences for individuals and for society, is an appropriate application of moral governmental force upon otherwise innocent carriers of very small, personal-use amounts of a substance so benign that 11 other states have decriminalized it?
John Stuart Mill's relevant delineation of proper moral force (from On Liberty, 1869) echoes so urgently now: "[An individual] cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do otherwise."
MIKE GORMAN, Andover |
