After Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and aspiring
Democratic Party candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed their drug
free past, it once again raises an important question for political
representatives and those aspiring to be one: should one’s past ‘mistakes’,
even as a young person, be a reason for disqualification and/or embarrassment?
After Republican candidate for Lt. Gov.,
E.W. Jackson, admitted to using illegal drugs in the past, the two
candidates running for Virginia governor were also put to the fire to answer
this ridiculous question.
Behind these questions of illegal drug use are a number of
assumptions. First, someone who has used illegal drugs is beyond the pale,
someone who has transgressed the laws of society and cannot therefore be
entrusted with the reins of government or the public trust in general. Second,
if their judgment was this cloudy before, the assumption goes, who’s to say
that their judgment won’t be cloudy again as a public representative?
All of these assumptions are, of course, ridiculous. I can
vividly recall the many foolish things I did as a kid and I’m sure just about
everyone in America can think of at least one instance as a child when they did
something that we as adults would perceive to be extremely foolish. And who’s
to say that smoking some ‘pot’, for instance, is any more or any less foolish
than the acts we committed?
Who cares if E.W. Jackson smoked pot when he was younger or
if Cuccinelli or McAuliffe tried illegal drugs in the past? If this is a
disqualifier for public service we’ve got a lot of public representative spots
to fill.
The point is that our society loves to ask unimportant
questions about issues that are greater headline grabbers than they are
important topics in the continuing policy discussions that we so desperately
need. Instead of asking about candidate drug use, let’s talk about the
horrendous drug laws on the books across the country that have
landed thousands of low-level offenders in prison. Now that’s a crime.
Let’s also talk about our economy, gun control, voting
rights, Virginia’s future, and much more, just not candidate drug use. With that
said, I say no more on the subject…
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