Why Medical Marijuana is Wrong But Smoking it is a Right

Is medical marijuana the newest oxymoron? I mean, can anyone with a straight face honestly tell me that 40,000 people (so far) in Colorado are in such pain or are so depressed that they need this alternative medication to cope? Are there really studies that prove its effectiveness? And seriously, how can smoking something actually be healthy?

But the most important question we should be asking is why do we have to ask for permission in the first place?

This is simply a prime example of yet another political debate not focusing on the most important issue, and that issue is property rights. Without property rights, freedom is logically impossible. You may ask, “How can that be?” Well, plain and simple, most people would agree that our most important property is our bodies. We make our living by trading our bodies, in the form of production, for money and other goods, such as food, cars, a roof over our heads, etc. I could get into the entire taxation thing being a hideous violation of our property rights, but I too need to focus. The fact that we are not allowed to put whatever we want into our own bodies proves the fact that we are not as free as we think we are. Why do we need to get permission from government (and pay for that permission to boot) to grow, smoke, eat or somehow digest marijuana?

I’ve heard the many arguments for outlawing it, and none of them make any sense if one were to actually look below the surface. “People who do drugs drive and cause accidents, or druggies rob others to support their habit.” In addition to the obvious delusion – that not all people who do drugs commit those crimes – how about the less obvious one, that those things are already crimes! If someone violates another person’s property rights, whether that is via fraud, robbery, rape, murder, or a physical beating, then they should be punished accordingly. I mean, should someone feel less violated if the mugger is not high?

It should be noted that property rights were the most important issue for the Founding Fathers. It wasn’t freedom of religion or freedom of speech or the right to carry a gun, because those are all subsets of property rights.

And what also seems to be lost in today’s America, we do not get property rights from politicians, but rather we were born, some even say conceived, with these natural rights from God, or a higher power. So how about we stop pretending we are sick or depressed and begging for permission, and start focusing on what is important, and that is the freedom to make our own decisions.