Friday afternoon lesson (in?)activity: more power to the mob?

We all know lessons Friday after lunch are a necessary evil. But if this doesn’t get discussion going for students of politics…?

This November, it is widely expected that Americans will go to the polls to deliver a quasi-referendum on Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House. Though in many ways voters will equally be delivering a general anti-government protest given that the GOP is slightly more unpopular than the Democrats. But also on the same day Californians will go to the polls to deliver a verdict on whether Marijuana should effectively be decriminalised.

This is an excellent case study which can be used to toss around the for and against points in respect of direct democracy:

Are voters sufficiently well informed? Does it lead to the tyranny of the majority - or even the tyranny of the minority, if you don’t feel that Mill’s point had any validity (and some don’t) Can finance skew the issue? Can complex issues be reduced to simple binary options?

And if nothing else, what about a general discussion of the legality of cannabis use? Andrew Sullivan doesn’t think a vote in favour of Prop 19 would be the worst thing that west coasters have ever done.

This is his article (here is the link):

“Prohibition in America — the 18th amendment, making the sale and consumption of alcohol illegal anywhere in the United States — began in 1920. It’s hard to imagine now, but it wasn’t just a law; it was embedded in the actual constitution, along with free speech and voting rights for women. An amendment requires approval from two-thirds of the states and both houses of Congress.

The president, Woodrow Wilson, tried to veto the final congressional bill, but the support was so strong that his veto was overruled.

And prohibition did indeed reduce drastically the consumption of alcohol in the US. It was supported by the left-wing progressives, the Ku Klux Klan, religious groups, the majority of southerners and most African-Americans. The tea and soft-drinks industries also threw their weight behind it. It was popular throughout the Roaring Twenties.

What ended it? Two things: human beings being what we are, the black market in illegal alcohol became huge — and it was run by gangsters. And then the Great Depression hit and the leading cities had to cope not just with increasingly mafia-type crime but also with mass unemployment and collapsing tax revenues. By 1933 the need to combat gangsterism and revive and tax one part of the economy — alcohol — overwhelmed what had been an almost universal agreement that booze was un-American.

I can’t help but remember this history when looking at proposition 19, a ballot measure in California that seeks in effect to legalise marijuana this November. If it is passed, you still will not be able to smoke the drug in public but you will legally be able to possess up to an ounce of it in your home for personal use and grow it in your garden. Authorised businesses will also be able to sell you up to an ounce of marijuana in any single purchase.

You could still be penalised for being stoned on the job, or while driving, and there are strict provisions to prevent it from being sold or given to anyone under the age of 18. But that’s about it. If the proposition is approved, California, a state of close to 40m people, will treat cannabis like alcohol in almost all respects. The reward and incentive? An estimated $1.4 billion (£630m) of new revenue in a state with the largest budget deficit in America.

The bill’s passage would mark the biggest shift in social mores in America in a decade. The only thing rivalling it is the emergence of gay marriage, for which — for the first time — two national polls have just found majority support. In liberal California — whose governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was filmed in the camp 1977 bodybuilding classic Pumping Iron dragging deeply on a joint — it would be a return to a century ago, when cannabis was widely available and regarded as a useful medicine. But the gay marriage precedent also suggests that stereotypes can be misleading. California’s proposition 8, legalising gay marriage, narrowly failed to go through two years ago. Could proposition 19 suffer the same fate?

There have been eight recent polls on the marijuana issue. Only one has shown majority opposition. The latest poll shows 47% in favour and 38% against. But the same polling outfit, Public Policy Polling, found a 52%-36% majority two months ago. Perhaps most striking in the polls has been a sharp increase in the number of people undecided.

The bill’s passage would mark the biggest shift in social mores in America in a decade In April only 3% were not sure what they thought; now that number is 15%, suggesting that opponents have had some success in sowing doubts about the impact of the change. Men support the legalisation much more than women, and the generation gap — surprise — is huge: 74% of those under 34 are for it, compared with only 39% of the over-65s. African-Americans are the strongest supporters (but not that far ahead of whites); and the biggest backers by party are independents (followed closely by Democrats).

Some argue that a good rule of thumb for California initiatives is that if they don’t have more than 50% support in the polls leading up to the vote, they tend to fail.

On the other hand, the opponents of marriage equality for gays in California never polled above 50% — and they won.

Just as some people don’t want to tell pollsters they oppose gays getting married, so, perhaps, others don’t like telling strangers they favour legal cannabis. The biggest imponderable is how much money the alcohol industry will pour into the opposition campaign. The California Beer and Beverage Distributors is a big force that is afraid a rival form of intoxication could hurt its business.

The police representatives are also against it — the cops receive large federal funds for marijuana enforcement and get to keep any property seized in drug raids, a big funding source. Up against them is the Service Employees International Union, a huge public services alliance. And as The Huffington Post, the popular blog, reported, the prison guards’ organisation is staying neutral.

My own view is that legalisation is a no-brainer. Pot is far less addictive than alcohol and leads to far less antisocial behaviour, and its criminalisation is fuelling crime and violence through the black market. I find it absurd that government can make a plant that grows in the ground illegal. Some argue that pot is getting much stronger than it used to be (and it is) — but that simply means the user needs much less of it to get high.

No one has yet overdosed on marijuana alone. At this point, moreover, few dispute its powerful medicinal effects for nausea and glaucoma, among other conditions, and medical marijuana is already legal in California.

Yes, legalisation will almost certainly lead to more consumption — and I can see why the alcohol industry is scared. It will lose pub and bar customers as more people stay home on the couch and watch bad movies. Now, imagine the effect of that on central London on a Saturday night. The British government should seriously consider the California example.

After all, in a depression, revenues are sorely needed: $1.4 billion is only a dent in California’s deficit but it’s something. A measure that would reduce drunkenness, cut crime, help the sick, cut public disorder and keep people at home on Saturday night watching bad movies — what’s not to like? In these days of economic distress, would you rather cut an education budget for children or tax a joint for adults?”