Imagine if restaurants were illegal.
Because people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, they elect other people to make decisions for them.
Never-mind the circular reasoning.
Fact is: eating out at a restaurant endangers public health and safety. What if you eat at three restaurants in one day and then get sick? Who got you sick? What dish was it? Was it the appetizer at restaurant A? Or the dessert from restaurant C?
How could the government ever rationally regulate something so complex?
And what about the children?
Throw alcohol into the mix and now things are even more complex. If a waiter serves you a bottle of wine and then you drive home, hit and kill someone, are you at fault or do we blame the waiter for serving you booze? Is the restaurant liable for ensuring you don’t drive drunk?
All these questions, it’s making my head hurt. Let’s just ban restaurants. Besides, look at the major demographic of restaurant goers. Harry Anslinger has some wise words here:
“There are 100,000 total restaurant goers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from going to restaurants. Restaurants cause white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
Of course, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics didn’t actually say that. Not the racist stuff — he totally said that, but the restaurant stuff.
Replace the word restaurant with “marijuana” or cannabis and I think you get my point.
But let’s keep following this analogy. What if restaurants were banned for “public health and safety” reasons?
What if people started going over to each other’s for dinner and then paying for the meal? What if some houses became known as “underground” restaurants?
Perhaps some of these places would serve booze, a mind-altering drug, causing tension and worry among the nation’s less educated and pseudo-intellectuals?
Perhaps some powerful figures behind the scenes would start lobbying the government for the legalization of restaurants.
Despite what legislative agencies ruled, an underground market of activists willing to break the law and face imprisonment would mean a booming restaurant industry.
Now, imagine, the people who had opened restaurants in their house, engaging in civil disobedience, being barred from entry into the new legal industry.
Because they went ahead and opened restaurants when doing so was against the law, they’ve invalidated their application. They’ve shown little respect for the law, and for public health and safety.
Never-mind that, “the law,” isn’t some objective thing out there, but merely interpretive language either discovered through customary and common law or created by politicians in the legislature.
Or that “public health and safety” is a new term used by governments to justify centralization and social engineering.
And never-mind why these illegal restaurant owners would be shocked and appalled to discover that they can’t participate in the new legal industry.
Meanwhile, businesses that had no experience in restaurant management, nor contributed to historic legal cases that helped legitimize the industry, would attack their “illegal” competition, missing the point behind civil disobedience.
But, they would argue, there is no more need for civil disobedience. The government has put forth a considerable amount of rules and regulations one must follow.
The time for juvenile law-breaking is over. Don’t you have any respect for the law?
The same law that banned restaurants based on racist arguments? And then sought to legalize by over regulating and barring an entire group of people who love restaurants the most?
When you remove the word “cannabis” and all the emotional responses it creates, the situation Canadian cannabis connoisseurs find themselves in is laid bare.
Canada’s cannabis laws are disastrous and the only way it’s going to change is by lobbying politicians for a free market and by breaking the rules the federal government has no business writing.