What are you going to do with your life?

After the recent elections and the (surprising?) results in the three “major” contests watched by the national media, I was intending to write on the “Obama effect” and whether or not it was wrong to discount the opposition’s portrayal of him as a “celebrity.” I’ll just point out quickly (since another, more riveting topic has arisen) that in the 2008 presidential election, the under 30 vote represented 20% of the total, in the 2009 elections, in which Obama actively campaigned for both Democratic gubernatorial candidates in NJ and VA, that statistics dropped to 6%. I don’t know what this signifies, to be honest. Yes, overall vote counts tend to drop in non-presidential election years, but would we expect this large of a shift in voter demographic? One has to question that the absence of a “rockstar” (yes, I said it) candidate had to lose some younger voters, even if Obama did participate in the campaigns. This begs the questions of whether or not the under 30 crowd (of which I am a part of) is actually involved enough to be trusted with voting. I have been removed form Virginia politics for the most part since I left the state after college, but in NJ we have serious budget issues that certainly affect the future of my chronological peers. Yet so few have deemed it necessary to participate this go around. During the ’08 presidential race, I once had to endure watching an interview where a 9 year old said he would vote for Obama if he could because he “thinks he is cool.” I can’t help but wonder if many of my contemporaries took the same approach to politics and we elected someone on the back of such faulty sentiment. One would hope that if my generation truly wanted to bring about change, they could get themselves to the polling place for every election and participate in how this country and states are run, but the data just doesn’t back that up.

Now that I had gone on longer than I had anticipated on that subject, on to another matter. This past week it became known that 2008 NL Cy Young Winner Tim Lincecum was detained when during a routine traffic stop in his home state of Washington, 3.3 grams of marijuana was found in his car. Taking one look at Lincecum, I am shocked, SHOCKED, that he would smoke marijuana. (See picture here if you don't sense the sarcasm) Yes, 3.3 grams is not much, he was only charged with a misdemeanor and worked out a deal with the prosecutor where he will only pay a $250 fine (like that matters to any professional baseball player, much less one of the best pitchers in baseball) for possession of drug paraphernalia. While I like to point out the insignificance of the fine to Lincecum, credit the prosecutor for treating his case like any other case of the same nature (read: the exact opposite of the pros. In Plexico Burress’ case.) Lincecum did not receive preferential treatment, nor was an example tried to be made of him, because of his high profile. Kudos, Grant Hansen.

I titled this post “What are you going to do with your life?” The after school special-esque nature of the title serves a purpose. This is now the second very high profile, very young, and very successful athlete to be caught using marijuana in the past year or so. (I’m not going to count Andre Agassi since I actually believe Crystal Meth to be a pretty bad thing). But here is the point, you find a joint or something in your kid’s room, you ask him the proverbial after school special question, he now answers you “I can be a Cy Young winner or a record breaking 7 time gold medal Olympian.” (The best he could come up with before was “I could be mayor.” Thank you Chris Rock and Washington, DC.)

Should we feign condescension towards Phelps and Lincecum because as athletes they should be better role models? Or is it time we begin to take a sensible approach toward marijuana in this country? For a minute we are going to forgo the standard health issue arguments towards legalization. (Marijuana can be addictive and dangerous, as much so as alcohol and tobacco. But yes it is senseless to allow those two to kill tens of thousands every year and put people in jail for marijuana.) We can also all agree that the taxes paid on legal marijuana would likely end our national deficit problem, and maybe the national debt problem shortly thereafter. And yes, marijuana is now the number one cash crop in a startling number of states, and contributes to the strength of borderline terrorist Mexican gangs, largely because of the illegality and therefore necessary underground nature of the drug trade.

So, if we all agree on the upside of legalizing marijuana, why is it not done? Or at least considered as plausible by more than just fringe groups? The fact is while many claims have been made about the safety of marijuana compared to alcohol and tobacco, no large studies (both short and long term) have been done to the scale that anything can be considered indisputable scientific fact on the issue. It’s been over 70 years since the first federal laws were passed seeking to regulate, then later to out and out outlaw, marijuana, and no one can dispute science has come a long way since then. One of the constant mantras during the current economic downturn has been that America needs to get back to “making things”, however the single largest money producer we have is currently illegal and thus not really factored into the overall picture. Coherent arguments that do not rest upon sentimentality and an insistence on legalization as a disruption of the “moral fabric” of our nation are hard to come by. Facts and figures are easily upstaged by those related to substances we have sheepishly acquiesced to over the years. I would hate to think the potential of the next Phelps or Lincecum is washed away not by the physiological effects of marijuana, but by the societal effects caused by a senseless government policy that has had little outcome on getting rid of the one thing it was trying to control.