Smell of Weed

As a person who's never tried weed before, I don't really understand why the legalization of mariguana in Colorado can be such an excitement to some of my friends. Not only that, the pleasance of enjoying mariguana in the public produces some negative externalities - the smell of weed on Berkeley streets are driving me crazy. I took a walk this afternoon in downtown for fresh air. Beautiful sunshine lightened up the world, when I suddenly came across strong stink at the corner. I trotted a few steps, but the smell made me sick for quite a while. This is not the first time I've smelled weed in Berkeley, the smell is almost everywhere - in downtown, in parks, by stations. What I don't understand is, in a country where public smoking is strictly forbidden, drugs are not treated in the same way.

Freedom has been widely discussed in modern society: the freedom to speak, the freedom to talk back, and the freedom to escalate the quarrel. Sometimes to protect other people's freedom, the government has to put certain limitations on our freedom. For example, to protect people's freedom of accessing public roads, there are traffic rules to guarantee rational use of infrastructure, the broken of which are subject to punishment. This is straightforward, but more controversial cases arise when freedoms are in conflict. Now to protect people's freedom of "getting high", I have to sacrifice my freedom of enjoying clean air. So the question is where is the line?

In a culture where the respect for individual freedom goes too far, any conflict over freedom can evolve into an endless battle of pushing the line back and forth between different groups. For example, one group (let's say some minorities in the community) wants the freedom of celebrating their traditional festivals by taking days off, and another group (let's say their employers) wants to keep them working as their white peers do. Then whose freedom should we respect? If there is no clear rule of defining the line, the entire issue is subject to power balance.

In China, individual freedom is always subject to collective objectives in the name that collective actions will bring "bigger individual freedom". A notorious example is the propaganda for One Child Policy. The logic provided by the central government is that booming population will undermine the survival of current and future generations. Therefore if we enjoy the freedom of delivering more than one child in a family, the result is exhaustion of resources, poverty and scarcity in the future. To save China from "complete annihilation", actions such as forced abortion and whopping fine for the second child are taken to protect "freedom of majority." In this case, the line is mistakenly drawn.

So back to the question, I think the fundamental rule could be "Pareto Optimal": don't harm other people when you enjoy your freedom. Do not enjoy the weed when creating stink for pedestrians; and do not delay your work when you want to celebrate your own holidays. Another rule should be "mind your own business first": don't tell other people how many kids they should have, and don't assign new graduates to positions "as the country needs". Then may we live in a happy and friendly world!