To allow corporations and cities to deal dope, but lock men and women up for these same offenses is crude, and the differences in treatment must be justified by relevant differences in treatment or condition, where relevance is defined in the light of general rules, and that every human being should be treated with at least a minimum of respect as a source of claims and not as a mere instrument for the promotion of the interest of others. The reason, and I am not justifying this because I think even smoking cigarettes should be illegal and regulated to facilities like the consumption of alcohol because it makes it hard to breath and pollutes the air and if it was done indoors at a smoking bar they could purify the air before releasing it, but people often deal drugs because they grew up poor and are uneducated and need a way to get out of strong gravitational effects of poverty that many cannot seem to escape from through legal mean. Many people feel like they are being held hostage in the ghetto, and it can be argued that it is wrong to allow wealthy people and cities with public money deal quasi legal dope, but punish victims of society who are being held hostage in poverty. 

Corporations and cities being allowed to circumvent the law and cultivate and distribute marijuana, while others are severing life sentences in prison for the same thing is an abuse because it necessarily makes for more unhappiness than it prevents, and it treats a certain class of men and women in a way that is appropriate only for the guilt and creates a double standard for the wealth that makes them believe it is okay to not follow the laws. Moreover, a legal system is designed to guide conduct by laying down rules and attaching penalties to those who choose to break them. It is acceptable because the criminal males the essential choice; he, she, or they bring it on themselves. The people trapped in poverty and who have been arrested for cultivating and distributing drugs, on the other hand, have no chance to settle their own fate; they were used as a mere lever for manipulating other people’s conduct, and their own interest is subordinate to that of the other members of society. So it could be argued that many of these people in prison for selling and cultivation and possession of marijuana are technically innocent.

 And punishment of the innocent ignores, in the short, fundamental procedural rules of justice and morality without which utilitarianism would make little sense, for unless every is worthy of equal consideration as a source of claims, whose interest is to count in assessing the utility of a course of action? Whom are we entitled to treat as simply a tool for advancing other people’s interest—slave by nature—and what would count as a reason for considering other people before them? This has bearing, too, on the reasons for accepting as excuses such defenses as duress, unavoidable accident, or ignorance of fact—conditions under which an offender can claim that he could not help doing what he did. “I had no choice but to sale drugs, I could not get a job and my baby was hungry and the lights got shut out and my family was about to be put out on the streets. As a man, I had to do something to provide for my family.” It could be argued punishing anyone under such conditions, when you are allowing people to deal dope who have other choices, would be pointless and, therefore, mischievous, because the threat of penalties could not possibly deter anyone in the future who was similarly placed. 

People who sale drugs are considered to be hustlers—uneducated, unskilled at anything honorable, and they consider themselves nervy and cunning enough to live by their wits, exploiting any prey that presented itself. They will risk just about anything. Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday’s and today’s school drop-outs are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling. These people might be casually dealing card in a black jack game, and an old cook with wild and sloshed eyes, forming at the mouth, might try to be slick, and they have to drop a pistol in his face. The dope game is not fun and games. We do not want to glamorize weed and make it seem like it is okay to sale and by corporations and cities and states to get involved in the drug trade is just wrong.  And people who sale and use illegal drugs inevitably moved into more and more, worse and worse, illegality and immorality. Full-time hustlers can relax to appraise what they are doing and where they are bound. As is the case in any jungle, the hustler’s every waking hour is lived with both practical and the subconscious knowledge that if one every relaxes, if one every slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vultures out there with one will not hesitate to make him their prey. 

Now that the law somewhat protects people, who deal dope for a corporation, from being robbed and having their brains blown out or dope stolen, one might say that it is morally acceptable to interview people in jail and prison, find out who was locked up for the sale, cultivation, or possession of marijuana and ask them is it is the consequence of an act freely chosen by the criminal, or if they were somehow forced into it and release those who had no other choice because we now have corporations and cities disturbing, cultivating, and possessing marijuana and they are not being arrested, having their assets auctioned off, and doing time in a government facility. In the minds of some, a man acting in ignorance or by accident cannot be said to bring his punishment on himself. Punishment, seen as a way of influencing conduct, cannot be justified if there has been no real possibility of choice. Moreover, the punishment of involuntary offenses introduces into men’s lives the possibility of disaster which they can neither foresee nor avert. They cannot be fairly tried and judged before an Earthly tribunal. We are after all justifying a particular case of punishment, but allowing others to go unpunished for the same crime who actually have more resources, which is setting a dangerous precedent.