California... what the fuck?

Proposition 19 has failed, marijuana remains illegal to cultivate and sell for recreational use. That's not to say it won't be done, drugs are not hard at all to come by in the United States. So the people who want to be smoking weed, will be smoking weed, the state will still be spending a fortune to find the people selling and growing, it will still be trying and incarcerating these people, and it'll still be broke. The black market will remain vibrant, healthy, and will continue to find funding in illicit drug sales.

Great.

Last night, I had a pretty stupid argument with someone on tumblr, about whether or not marijuana consumption was a fundamental right, or a human right--I think I used the terms interchangeably, but there's probably a contextual difference that I didn't bother meditating on. I don't think there's really a definitive list of natural human rights, or fundamental rights, since the whole notion of "rights" is an unnatural construct. But assuming there is, and I think most of us are compelled to say there ought to be, a set of such right, I would definitely say drug use qualifies.

A question I received on tumblr:

"HOW MUCH DOPE DO I HAVE TO SMOKE TO BE UNABLE TO COMPREHEND SIMPLE SHIT? I FIGURED YOU WOULD KNOW."

This question probably came from one of the followers of the person I was arguing with. The claim is, my probing of "why isn't drug use a fundamental right?" (answered with, to effect, "because it's a recreational desire," to which I further probed, "why is that sufficient to say it isn't a right?")was irrational, and the answer to the question is so obvious, I must be high to not intuit it.

Anyway, my response:

What simple shit?

I’m not a regular pot smoker, but I still think it’s a valuable right that people ought to have. And why not? Why should a person not have the right to determine what substances they want to consume, if they have knowledge of the risks and consequences? Isn’t that an assertion of our basic human right to autonomy?
Paternalistic legislation comes in two flavors (well maybe more, but two that I can think of right now), and that’s prohibitive and informative. Informative legislation is like putting warning labels on cigarettes or requiring calorie counts be posted next menu items in fast food joints—the information is available, but the government doesn’t believe we’re ever going to look it up. Fair. I don’t have a problem with this sort of thing because all that they’re doing is improving out decision-making power.

But then there’s prohibitive laws—the prohibition of alcohol, of transfats, of drugs in general, obscenity laws, etc.—where the government plainly asserts that we are incapable of making the right decision, and it will do so for us. I think this is bullshit, I think, as long as we’re not hurting other people, it ought to be our right to do what we please.

So by this argument, smoking pot is a fundamental right. Or a manifestation of a fundamental right. And I believe that.

Now what simple shit am I not comprehending?

The original argument was far more asinine, I won't delve into its details because they don't make any sense. The point is, I'm pretty disappointed this morning in the step Californians have decided to take and I'm confident this will set the nation back a good decade in the war against the War on Drugs.