Sex, Drugs, and...

May 21th, 1998
[Auntie wrote this a week ago, then made the mistake of showing it to someone before it was completed, and her brain tricked her into thinking she'd published it. Elle culpa.]
It's days like this, when my cat has brought me garter snake number seven as some kind of live offering to the Saint Dynamite cause, provoking me to carry the stupid thing on a stick across the road and throw it into a bush where hopefully, it will lead as natural a life as a garter snake is wont to, that I really wonder why I give a damn.

I had it wrapped around a stick, because although I have no particular problems with snakes, I'd prefer not to carry one that's dazed, confused, and figuring whatever has it in those jaws of death is probably evil. It tried to unwrap itself as I was in the middle of the road dodging traffic and I thought, "God on high, snakes and people aren't that different."

We all react on instinct a great deal more than we should, and I'm surely doing the same now, so let's settle in for a hash over one of my favorite topics. Legalizing vice.

We've had temple prostitutes and recreational drug use since way before the days when people were kowtowing to Inanna in Babylon. It's all too likely that the first use of fire wasn't to smoke a mastodon, it was to smoke some primitive joint that our educated lungs are now too fragile to snort. But with our modern ideas, we figure that we've outgrown the right to control our loss of control, and so selling salvation is legal, but selling relaxation ain't.

I can only speak as to my own experience here, and I know that others have had far worse, but the only drug with its hooks deep into my system is the demon nicotine. I've tried a reasonable sample of other types, licit and otherwise, and while caffeine gave RJR a run for its money, today I'm drinking some foul fruit soda, mostly because I can't face seeing it in the fridge anymore but am too practical to throw it out, and still sucking toxic smoke down into my beating red insides, despite strong health reasons not to. What are they putting in these goddamn things?

I'm not a big fan of "ends justify the means" but I have to wonder about a culture that legalizes gambling at odds that would make a Vegas croupier blush, in order to fund schools and equally noble causes, but blanches at the idea of a toke tax. In fact, the government is spending money to get rid of pot, smack, coke, crack, hash and acid. I'm always curious as to why somebody chooses to waste what they could benefit from conserving.

That wrecker of lives, homes and sanity, alcohol, is already legal, and I find it astonishing that people who probably take half a bottle of wine at dinner dare object to the notion of a hash cigar afterward. I also can't begin to understand a government that experienced Prohibition but didn't learn that they couldn't control dope any more than they could booze.

In short, the moral grounds for dumping drugs are pretty shallow, the legal arguments specious -- if you're worried that more drugs will create more criminals, how about considering the fact that it'll put a whole huge class of them out of work? -- and the economic reasons compellingly in favor of legalizing most of it.

But back in the real world, where Auntie doesn't exist, largely because it's far too foul for her puritan tastes, there are other considerations. Some of these were raised in email exchanges between myself and Garry Turkington:

On one hand, I believe that pot is a considerably less dangerous drug than alcohol, and in those basic terms the difference in treatment of both from a legal standpoint is insane. I remain to be convinced though what legalizing (or decriminalizing) it would achieve. Take it out of the hands of the dealers? Maybe, maybe not. I've seen incredibly strong willed people being vociferous advocates of legalization, claiming with great zeal that pot use in no way lead to use of anything 'harder' and re-evaluating after the bad trip on speed a year later. I've also visited Holland, with its allowance for a certain weight for personal use, and all it seems to have done is attract more of Europe's drug users and pushers per square foot than anywhere else. Only pot is legal, but it's the only place in the world where I've seen heroin openly on sale, and been warned about having cocaine packets slipped into my pockets. You can blame a lot of this on the Dutch authorities and how they apply their laws, I do since I hate the Dutch more than the French :), but it also gives me very bad feelings about the advisability of such a course of action, both in general plus it also seems to show that unilateral action is not a wise move.

Basically, the only way I could see it ever work is in a world-wide treaty legalizing all forms of drugs, but that is hardly going to happen. The World Crack Exchange? Futures for opium for April delivery? I think not. The problem though? Our current efforts to tackle drugs are failing miserably, and we probably need radical approaches. I'm very unconvinced legalization of pot is that approach.

We exchanged comments on legalizing prostitution at the same time, and rather than rephrase myself, I'll simply repeat Garry's comments...

I'm generally against anything that looks like the legislation of morality, not because I'm a decadent pervert, my standards are usually pretty high, but rather from a belief that there's some areas that are for individual choice.

Who we choose to sleep with and for what reason seems to me to be one of those choices. If someone wishes to make a monetary transaction the cause for that choice, that's fine by me. It's probably not something I'd ever indulge myself (the buying that is *grin*), but I'm not going to condemn others either. I don't think though that legalization would immediately see the end of the shady side of prostitution, the proponents of legalization who claim so seem to be in a dream world to me, but regulated brothels a la Nevada? Sure.

...and my response:

Much like Carlin, who said, "Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn't selling fucking legal?!" But I have very mixed feelings on this for non-moral related reasons. I think if it is done, it should be done properly: fund all the certification centers and training facilities and disease control centers with money set aside from the taxes it generates. Make it free to get a permit and make the government cover all illness and work related injuries (isn't that a nice way to put it? if your client beats the shit out of you, you can go on unemployment insurance). It's necessary for them to have a "license", which has to be renewed often, so that the client can be sure of how recently you've been screened for VD. Disease control needs to be government funded to ensure that the hookers get themselves checked regularly and have at least subsistence income while they're recovering from syphilis or whatever.

Without some overseeing body, we'd see disease all over the place. Not to mention the back alley abortions. It needs to be free so that the hookers that aren't doing as well, or that have bills to meet, or whatever, will still get themselves taken care of. Or at least extremely cheap, cheap enough to discourage people from doing it without a license.

Ah, but regulation throttles, doesn't it. That way lies the ugly square buildings with cubicles that have pull down bondage gear or holograms of poolsides or as you said, the neighbor nymphets, with standard multimedia packages for exactly what you had in mind, or close enough if you're not that rich, where it becomes a purely mechanistic act without any romance, soul, or significance. As Aphra Behn said, "take back your gold and give me current love / the treasures of your heart, not of your purse."

Obviously I'm a romantic, and as such, the idea of legalized prostitution bothers me. I think it's ultimately necessary, if only to control the violence, disease, and simple hopelessness that go with it. It's a job now, like fast food or retail, that women get into because they need the money and don't care about being degraded. It needs to be regulated like a job. But that doesn't mean it's good to regulate sex or love... just better than the alternatives.