Politicians here have not even figured out how yet to implement their new law requiring us to pay for everybody else’s health care, and already people are clamoring to legalize drugs that are, at the very least, hazardous to their health.
The good people of Colorado and Washington state can now buy and smoke pot without violating state laws. The movement to do so is spreading among other states like a hot tropical virus through a detention facility on the Mexican border.
I, for one, have never really cared one way or the other if people choose to smoke pot. My experience is that it appears to make most people dumber and slower. But it also seems to make some people happy and fall asleep, which I view as a real positive. Especially the part about putting them to sleep.
But I certainly don’t think that my long-developed and strongly held views against using drugs should be inflicted upon other people to whom I have no responsibility. Nor do I believe that someone else’s devotion to a weed pipe in any way impinges upon some high morals or precious views that I might hold.
I don’t like cats. But I don’t want to outlaw cats.
Here is the thing that really bothers me now. Go ahead and smoke all the dope you want to. But why is it that I have to now pay these people’s health care bills, which are going to be much higher now that it is legal for them and their children to suck dangerous carcinogens down their windpipes?
With all the caterwauling we have heard for years from the nanny state do-gooders over the dangers of smoking tobacco and eating crappy food, where is the outrage now? There may be plenty of debate about whether smoking marijuana is more dangerous than smoking tobacco. But nobody who isn’t a hopeless pothead is arguing it is less dangerous.
Already, studies show a rise in pot-related fatal car wrecks in Colorado.
Where are you, Michael Bloomberg? Why isn’t the first lady donning spandex and jumping up and down about this? Let’s move!
It is the same reason we are now forced to know all about this outfit called Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby is a small, arts and crafts chain store run by Christians who, shockingly, have religious views on such topics as when human life begins.
The Supreme Court has issued a very minor and limited ruling on an obscure issue saying that, no, the government cannot force Christian employers to pay for birth control that destroys human embryos — an act that, according to their religious beliefs, is murder.
War on women! How dare the Supreme Court and the federal government invade the bathrooms and bedrooms of American women!
Let us not forget that the only reason the Supreme Court and all the rest of us are in this predicament is because we got forced into the bathroom at knifepoint when politicians passed a law making us pay for everybody else’s health care!
It really is a vintage Washington compromise.
This ever-compromising lot of rotten politicians have once again managed to consider both sides of the political spectrum and pick the very worst aspects from both sides.
From the left, they picked endless spending and morally hazardous policies that encourage bad behavior. And from the right, they picked insufferable moralizing by forcing taxpayers into suddenly caring very deeply about what everybody else is doing behind closed doors in their bedrooms, bathrooms and basements.
It is just what happens when the government forces people to pay for everybody else’s health care. Taxpayers suddenly have a real investment in other people’s bad habits. Suddenly, we have to sully ourselves with the business of how other people flush their hot mistakes from their fetid wombs.
Now a jackass doing wheelies down the highway on his motorcycle with firecrackers hanging out of his pants and an infected nose ring dangling down over his greasy goatee is suddenly my business. I am forced to hope it is just a clean kill and the meat wagon carries him directly to the funeral home.
I am not moralizing here. It is just plain and simple mathematics, now that I am paying the bills.
Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com, and on Twitter @charleshurt.
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