I fought the law and we all won

Well, I'll take the opportunity of comments being down to put up a pair of pretty unpopular opinions. Each of these opinions is unpopular separately with a different group; taken together, they annoy people all over the place. But hear me out, there is a certain internal logic to my position:

1. People should take cannabis if they want, without feeling guilty about doing so.
2. The possession of cannabis should remain aginst the law, with harsh penalties.

Basically, this is me once more using issues I don't care about to push a political agenda. I don't really have any personal interest in dope at all, so I can take an objective view of the problem, and the objective view is this:

If it wasn't for the illegality of cannabis, middle class white people wouldn't care about prison conditions at all

and indeed

If it wasn't for the illegality of cannabis, many white people would never have any dealings at all with black people on anything approaching an equal basis

So I think we can be agreed that the ongoing War on Drugs is probably the only thing which maintains any degree of genuine respect (as opposed to the patronising and/or self serving kind) between the races at the moment. Obviously there is a degree of collateral damage, but who cares about that these days?

The official political philosophy of D-squared Digest, if you haven't guessed by now, is Atheistic Antinomianism, the belief that if you're an all right bloke and you're doing things in the right spirit, you probably shouldn't feel too guilty about breaking the law (this is how we stayed onside for Clinton, for example). It's an entirely salutary thing in our view to have something like the War On Drugs, which makes criminals out of 75% of teenagers -- teenagers can be a bloody judgemental lot in our experience, and it's good to have them reminded from time to time that life is complicated, the world is a morally grey place and there isn't a fine moral dividing line between Us and Them.

So, kids, this is advice your ma and pa probably aren't going to give you, but cops are stupid, first-time offenders are treated leniently and prison rape is by no means as prevalent as the advertising industry might have you think. Strong Laws, Frequently Broken, is the campaign slogan by which we hope to ride to victory on an anarchist/conservative "broad church" ticket.

'Course, if I catch anyone near my kid with any of that shit, I'll tear their bloody arms off and hit 'em with the sticky end.