The Young TurksI was just watching The Young Turks and—Quelle surprise!—I got pissed off. It was co-hosted by Cenk Uygur, Michael Shure, and Ben Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz brought up a podcast by Penn Jillette about the drug war. Jillette, who I've had plenty of problems with, nailed the issue. He pointed out that if Obama as a young drug-using man had been arrested for his "crimes" his life would have been over. There would have been no law school, no great wife, and certainly no presidency.

The young turks then began discussing cannabis. Ben Mankiewicz didn't believe that people were actually in jail for simple possession. He implied that somehow it was okay to use the drug, but not okay for someone to provide it. Cenk then noted that many people are in jail for simple possession, but only because they pleaded down from distribution charges. To say the least, this is hogwash.

The truth of the matter is that prosecutors load up on charges they know they can't prove to get people to plead to charges they normally wouldn't. I knew a woman who was charged with "intent to sell" for 5 $10 one-n-one bags. The fact of the matter is that someone caught with a quarter ounce of cannabis will likely get an "intent to sell" charge. That doesn't mean that person was dealing drugs.

The young turks showed themselves to be the ignorant whitebreads they are. (Ben Mankiewicz is the son of NPR President Frank and grandson of Academy Award winning screenwriter Herman—of course, we don't have classes in America!) Two of them claimed to never having tried cocaine. I'm not a fan of this drugs and I would never encourage anyone to do any drugs at all. But to be in their social class and to have never tried this drug shows a profound lack of curiosity and blind adherence to authority. This seems strange given they all seem to be regular users of cannabis. Be that as it may, what are these guys talking about a subject they are totally ignorant about?

In the end, the whole discussion came down to the usual, "Legalize cannabis, fuck all other drug users!" And this got me thinking: if cannabis is legalized, that will mean that the huge drug war apparatus that is used primarily against cannabis, because it is the most commonly used drug, will be trained on all the other drugs. Cannabis legalization is going to be a very bad thing for users of all other drugs.

I've long been against the legalization of cannabis because I don't buy the argument that people should be allowed their drugs as long as the society decides the drug is acceptable. But now I have another reason.