Make it Legal

James Edmonds | Contributing Writer

You remember that time you were grounded right before that party that you were supposed to go to with that cute girl you were crushing on too hard to effectively interact with in high school? Yeah, me too. I snuck out, and I’m guessing you did as well. Rules are sort of like that. When you’re told you can’t do something that you’re really keen on doing, you usually find a way to get it done anyway.

That’s the exact reason why we need to stop viewing the creation of laws as an effective restriction on actions. The sale and use of narcotics have been banned for much longer than my lifespan in the United States, and oddly enough, for the same amount of time, these laws have widely been ignored.

The same thing generally happens with prostitution. It’s illegal everywhere in the United States except for Nevada, but any state you select on Craigslist.com or backpages.com can help you find adult services ads.

The issue with these things being illegal is that when a government makes something illegitimate, it forfeits all right to regulate what goes on in the trade or industry. The United States government can’t very well say cocaine is illegal to buy or sell, but if you intend on purchasing large amounts to later sell please use more reputable distributors than the Mexican drug lords who are currently causing huge uprisings. Similarly, they can’t ask pimps and adult service moguls not to purchase illegally trafficked Nepali children with the intent of using them as sex slaves for rent or sale.

If your morals include that stoners are a bigger issue than the drug lords controlling entire cities in Mexico and that people should not be allowed to live without feeling constantly threatened, then by all means we should continue to keep drugs illegal. We’ll make sure that drugs are only available to anyone who has ever set foot in a high school or college party, or is willing to make shady connections. Along the same lines, if you find prostitution to be more repulsive than the routine kidnapping of young children, involving removal from their homelands and sale into bondage where they will be used as a sex toy until they are too old to be found attractive by their master, then we should definitely keep prostitution illegal.