Slippery
Slopes
Governor Christie of New Jersey recently objected to
extending minors’ access to medical marijuana, claiming it would be a slippery
slope to widespread abuse by minors. He
is not alone; slippery slope arguments have frequently been used by opponents
to reforming the drug laws. In its most
extreme form, this argument claims that any relaxation of the drug laws will
inevitably lead to a nation of violent, homeless drug addicts with everyone
threatened by ruthless cartels. What is
this argument and how does it work?
First year law students fall in love with it because it
is easy to make, but they quickly become disenchanted because it is not
effective. It falls in the third part of
the old trial lawyer’s advice to novices: “When the law is against you, pound
the facts; when the facts are against you, pound the law; when both the law and
the facts are against you, pound the table.”
A slippery slope argument is nothing more than pounding on the table while
shouting doom and destruction.
The problem is that life itself is a slippery slope. A baby emerges from the birth canal unto a
slope where merely standing is a perilous adventure, and a life-long struggle
follows. Civilization is even riskier:
imagine trying to support the population of Los Angeles or Mumbai using only
the tools and techniques of humanity’s distant past – or of trying to feed New
York if the electricity failed for a month.
As the Red Queen told Alice, here you have to run as fast as you can to
stay in the same place.
The only choices are to scramble upward as fast as
possible or to slide down to oblivion.
Even if one found a flat spot upon which to stand, it would soon erode
out from under him. And no safety net is
waiting. Change is inevitable, but one
can choose between up or down.
If someone presents a slippery slope argument, gently
suggest that he is already on a slippery slope and that standing still is not
an option. Drug policy is already on a
downward slope. If nothing is done – or if
only more of the same is done, the slide will accelerate into more deaths and
disease, more and fuller and more brutal prisons, more people made derelict by
unnecessary criminal records, more corruption, and more violent gangs. More and more money will be spent to
accomplish less good. The only route out
of this precarious position is to brave the slope and find a better route
leading up the slope of progress.
Progress up the slope will not be easy. Some parts of the path will be more slippery
than others – even scary. Patches will
be slick or composed of loose, rolling rocks, steep cliffs will interpose
themselves. But all of these obstacles
can be overcome. But the alternative is
even worse. Society cannot be allowed to
fall into the abyss simply because leaders are afraid to face the future. If leaders will not lead, then they must be
pushed from behind. The future is open,
but only to those daring and willing to climb to reach it.
(May 27 – Happy Birthday
to me!)
The slippery slope argument is an evolved form of the 'protect the children' argument underlying the 'prevention' paradigm that has ruled since the rise of the Parents Movement in the late 1970s. Everything, even suppressing discussion of the idea that prohibition might be a bad idea, is justified by the goal of protecting the children: such a discussion itself it might cause youth to experiment.
ReplyDeleteI theorize that the slippery slope argument now has one primary function - it is the only remaining justification for prohibition: the corollary (?) to the tidal wave of cannabis legalization (medical use or unrestricted) bills is that prohibition is no longer a good idea - or may NEVER have been a good idea.
The slippery slope argument basically proposes that prohibition must be maintained in order to justify the policy of the last 75+ years - i.e. cannabis legalization means we were wrong all this time and that cannot be possible.