Seattle Police: Go Ahead and Smoke
World events are moving at a rate as never before. Civil wars are raging in the Middle East; Europe is in economic turmoil; America’s massive debt is impoverishing the nation. But what concerns the young people in America today? The legalization of pot. According to the White House, “marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, with nearly 17 million Americans 12 and older reporting past-month use ….” And now the push to legalize the widely used drug is growing.
On August 18, Seattle concluded its 22nd annual Hempfest. This “festival” lasted three days and brought in nearly 85,000 visitors each day.
The festival is a haven for pot smoking, weed brownies and cannabis paraphernalia. Vivian McPeak, founder of Seattle Hempfest, said that at fests in the 1990s police would conduct “undercover buy-and-bust operations, periodically slapping handcuffs on vendors of pot brownies and removing them from the premises.” But not anymore.
Last fall Washington State legalized the use of recreational marijuana. The law allows people to use the drug outside of the public eye. Marijuana is still illegal on the federal level and in Washington State it is illegal to smoke in public. But this did not hamper the jovial mood at this year’s Hempfest. Attendants celebrated the legalization of the popular drug by using it more than ever, even though it is against the law to smoke in a public park.
Perhaps the most shocking change at this year’s Hempfest was the role of the Seattle Police Department. Reuters reports that, “instead of writing tickets for public pot smoking—which remains forbidden in the state—police were handing out about 1,000 bags of Doritos tortilla chips bearing information on the state’s pot laws.” Rather than dealing with people who were breaking the law on a massive scale, and enforcing the law, police action condoned it.
The attitude at Seattle’s Hempfest is not isolated to that area; it pervades the minds of many people in America. They are tired of being told that they cannot have this so-called harmless drug. They feel as though their freedom is being denied. The sad reality behind this mindset is that they have actually become slaves to a destructive habit. In our booklet No Freedom Without Law editor in chief Gerald Flurry describes the reality behind this misconception of freedom:
How many of these people have gotten hooked on drugs and cannot stop? Even low levels of drug use can do irreparable damage to their minds. On top of that disastrous effect, how many of these people are injecting or sniffing away increasing portions of their incomes, at their families’ expense? How many are having to resort to ever more unsavory activities to fund their drug habits?
Many people would consider it freedom to destroy their lives with deadly drugs. That is not freedom! Instead they have become totally enslaved to drugs! For many years we have declared a war on drugs in America. What has been the result? Look at the facts and we must concede that we have lost that war!
When the police throw in the towel on enforcing the law, what sort of message does that send to the people, and more importantly what does that mean for the direction of the country? People believe they are fighting for freedom, but that dangerous mindset is leading this nation into unimaginable peril. A time of great destruction is coming due to lawlessness. All the while, many young people refuse to acknowledge the reality of the world they are living in. To understand more about where lawlessness is leading this country and to see the benefits of godly government, request the free booklet No Freedom Without Law.