Gov. Chris Christie and His Prohibition Proclivity

New Jersey Governor and potential 2016 Presidential candidate, Chris Christie, recently took some air time to throw cannabis under the proverbial bus and take shots at the states who have legalized cannabis. He gassed on for a good while, but I have segmented his comments into the two main points he’s trying to make.

Bullshit gripe 1:

“Every bit of objective data tells us that it’s a gateway drug to other drugs. And it is not an excuse in our society to say that alcohol is legal so why not make marijuana legal. … Well, why not make heroin legal? Why not make cocaine legal?”

I’m not sure what “objective data” Christie is referring to. This is typical anachronistic, propagandist fodder. Far from being the gateway drug that lures hapless youth to dereliction, cannabis has actually been theorized to be more of an exit drug, helping people kick serious drug problems.

The danger is in the misinformation campaign that has successfully categorized cannabis on the same schedule as hard drugs. People have been told pot is just as bad as heroin, so when they try weed and realize it’s safer than alcohol, they think that, perhaps, the hard drugs to which it has long been compared are also less dangerous than they have been told.

As to Christie’s statement regarding alcohol’s legality, he’s employing rhetorical misdirection. For someone who harps so strongly on “objective data,” he sure seems content to ignore that alcohol kills far more people each year than every other drug combined.

No one is arguing that cocaine and heroin should be legal, because they are universally viewed (and rightfully so) as extremely dangerous. But cannabis that has never killed a single person? Yeah, governor, it should be legal, more so than alcohol. I can’t be certain, but if you look close enough, you might see Christie has a “Jim Beam” patch sewn into his jacket like a Nascar sponsor.

Bullshit gripe 2:

“I’ve had many taxpayers at town hall meetings who will ask me about, why not legalize marijuana to make the taxes go a little higher? To me, that’s blood money. I’m not going to put the lives of children and citizens at risk to put a little more money into the state coffers, at least not on my watch.”

So, he doesn’t want to put people at risk, yet, New Jersey has some of the most lenient alcohol laws in the country. For instance, in New Jersey, drunk driving is not even considered a crime, it’s viewed as a simple traffic offense. Also, the state allows for each municipality to define its own underage drinking laws.

Let’s do a quick national poll of how many parents have lost their children to underage drinking (from overdose or accident) versus how many have lost a child to cannabis. I can tell you the numbers without even doing the research. Cannabis has killed no one. Not a child, a grandparent, a teacher, or anyone else.

While New Jersey can feel good that is has the lowest alcohol-related death rate, there are still over 1,700 people killed per year in the state. Compare that to cannabis with its ever-present goose egg and this “data” upon which Christie has hung his hat seems to unravel his argument as fast as the words fall from his lips.

To clarify, Christie wants you to believe the some 1,700 New Jersey citizens that lose their lives each year to alcohol is an acceptable loss to the state. However, the tax revenues from a far more harmless legal cannabis system (that could fund schools and science-based drug education programs) is brushed off as blood money and not worth the risk?

I call bullshit, governor. If safety is your concern, then let’s see a billboard festooned with your face calling for the immediate prohibition of alcohol. But don’t worry, if you get piss-drunk after a political rally and drive into that billboard, you’ll only get a traffic ticket since drunkenly piloting a weapon is not a crime in New Jersey!