It has been nearly 82 years since marijuana was first officially banned as an illicit substance in the United States. Over that time, we have seen incredible changes across our nation. We have survived a world war and the Cold War, seen the sexual revolution and legalization of abortion, impeached a president, and suffered the rise of reality TV. But somehow, marijuana remains taboo as thousands are unjustly imprisoned through an ill-advised and ill-fated war on drugs. After decades of such folly, the choice is clear: We must legalize marijuana as the next step on our path to the breakdown of all laws and societal norms. If we someday want to live in a world where heroin, sex trafficking, and murder are all permitted, we need to start by legalizing pot.
For years, critics have warned that marijuana is a slippery slope to more dangerous drugs and activities—they are correct, and that is exactly why it should be legalized. Ending the prohibition on cannabis will send a clear message that we are a society on the verge of collapse, and hopefully inspire the citizens of this nation to make the final push over the edge. The Onion’s editorial board dreams of a day when stabbing someone in the spinal column and eating them in the street is perfectly legal. We’ve been fighting since day one against restrictions on human freedom, and a world in which marijuana is legal is a world not far from legalizing assault or bestiality. We will break the stifling bonds of human morality once and for all.
Ever since our auspicious founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel fled the Prussian government’s attempts to prosecute him for “selling potatoes black with rot and herring of a most foul composition” and crossed the Atlantic to find freedom in America, we have stood against the tyranny of government control. America’s Finest News Source was at the forefront of the fight against prohibition and authoritarian workplace safety laws. We have worked tirelessly to dismantle all the corrupt institutions that seek to impose limits on human behavior. Thousands in America are unjustly imprisoned on marijuana-related offenses, and millions more are unjustly imprisoned for theft, arms smuggling, and vehicular homicide. This is a crime against nature. No man’s hands should be bound, none of his thirsts should remain unquenched, no child should remain unemployed.
Some have criticized the marijuana legalization process as too slow, decrying incrementalism in place of a full-fledged leap into anarchy. While there is merit in the desire to maim and burn and copulate in the streets as soon as possible, we feel this is unrealistic. Man is a timid beast at times, and The Onion knows we must hold it by the hand and lead it toward enlightenment. Legalizing pot is the smartest first step toward a utopian nation where an insult can be met with a knife to the throat, where a man can hunt drugged humans while feasting on the meat of the rarest endangered animals. Once society tolerates the open smoking of joints, it will only be a matter of time before humans can see no difference between right and wrong, and 5,000 years of human folly will finally start to fall away.
The full-scale collapse of civilization may be outside the desires of dull, unimaginative cowards who only want to sit on their couches, watching mindless TV and living free from roaming gangs of organ harvesters, but they don’t see the future. The Onion welcomes it with open arms.
We live in a world in which the cowardice of morals and the desire for stability chain our minds. We are supposed to care for each other, respect each other, go to work, but all that will be rendered meaningless with cannabis. Society is a lie. Death and destruction are the only rules of nature, and the prohibition of marijuana infringes on that. Soon, not only weed, but also crack and amphetamines will flow freely, and mothers will bash their children’s skulls in to partake in drug-fueled orgies uninhibited by society’s standards. These are things we all secretly desire, the dark heart of man we try to deny with our rules and regulations. But The Onion knows the truth: We were born to eat each other. A man should be free to smoke a joint with one hand and sip wine from the skull of his enemy in another.
From the moment man harnessed the power of fire, he became an agent of destruction—now the embers of our blunts and bowls will seal our fate. We have always tried to fight disorder, but that is the disorder itself. Is a man who cannot shoot heroin and expose himself in public truly free? No. That is why the editors of The Onion endorse legalization. We must be saved from ourselves, and only by embracing the darkness and ending the prohibition of marijuana can we do it.
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