End of Prohibition

[ijmorlan]

No, they just really hate the idea of letting people make their own decisions. A trait unfortunately shared by many of our zoning professionals.

I like to think this is more around preventing unsanctioned producers and the harm that comes to property with large scale indoor grow-ops. 

I see the concern but there are probably better ways to deal with these issues more directly.  

The same is true of zoning, take parking minimums.  They aren't here to troll urbanists.  They're used to solve the very real problem of too much street parking.  Of course again there are better ways to solve these problems. (i.e., pricing street parking)

Your points are well taken. At the same time, however, I think I have identified a systemic problem within the regulatory community, if I may call it that.

I have heard of discussions involving possibly replacing parking minima with parking maxima. Basically the idea is that people have noticed that parking minima lead to excessive investment in parking. So what should the replacement, more urban-supportive rule be? Why, parking maxima of course! It doesn’t occur to them that just repealing the rule would be more appropriate; there always has to be a rule. In this specific case, it’s absurd to go directly from parking minima to parking maxima. Essentially one is just swapping what is allowed and not allowed, with the possible exception of an overlap which either remains allowed or not allowed depending on the specifics. Implicitly, it’s an admission that they were doing completely the wrong thing before, but without the appropriate markers of humility and contrition for screwing up so badly.

Going back to the marijuana issue, while I do understand that we don’t want people running large operations out of a residential property, it’s so basic to personal freedom to be able to do things for oneself that outlawing personal cultivation entirely is obviously wrong, and administrative convenience can’t override the basic requirement that people be left alone to live their lives as they see fit. There can be a reasonable discussion around the exact limit (4 plants? 8 plants? a floor space limit? some other way of calculating the limit?), but I don’t think there can be a reasonable discussion around whether personal cultivation should be allowed at all, just as the specifics of marijuana do not allow for a reasonable argument for prohibition, especially in light of the historical evidence around both alcohol and drug prohibition.

While people who call themselves libertarians usually have some pretty wacky views, I think they have something important to tell us about the role of government, which by default should be none in any particular situation. Government should only get involved when it needs to; if rights conflict, for example, or if more injustice will result from staying out than from going in, or if certain services are best provided by government, or for other good reasons (I don’t have a codified list). I believe, contra the typical libertarian, that there are actually many many situations in which government should be involved. But not all, and certainly not as many as people who work for the regulatory state seem to believe.