What We Put in Our Bodies Shouldn't Be Up to the Government

Dear Editor,
    This is a reply to the letter by Rich Newman [“Postmarks,” June 15] telling pot users to obey the law and drop marijuana use. He says how much good would result if people defending marijuana use poured their effort into “our social programs.” I think preventing people from being unjustly jailed and stopping the waste of taxpayer dollars used to fight marijuana use are actions beneficial to society. Rich Newman says he would quit drinking if alcohol were made illegal because that would be the law. Millions of people did not stop drinking during Prohibition. For various reasons, so many people needed or wanted alcohol that the law was impractical, just like the current impractical and cruel laws persecuting marijuana users. Bad laws need to be changed by speaking and acting against them.
    In the mid-1800s John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, wrote an idea which resonated clearly before our personal freedoms and privacy rights became so diluted. I wish he had mentioned protection of the environment, but during his time that wasn’t a concern. He said: “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” Freedom to do what makes you happy as long as you aren’t harming others (or the environment) seems to me an idea well worth defending with time and energy whether or not you smoke pot. What we put into our bodies should be our choice, not the government’s.