The Bush administration’s war on science continues with marijuana. I think that marijuana, birth control– especially the “morning after” or “Plan B” variety, and the political opposition to the new HPV vaccines are all of a piece. They all come from the standard puritan fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.
Let cancer-stricken people stop vomiting? Not if some of them might also get high! Stop unwanted pregnancies and abortions? Not if it allows people to have sex without feeling guilty! Vaccinate against an STD that also causes cancer? Not if people can have sex without fear of death!
There are several ironies here. The first is the more commonly observed: teaching young people about birth control prevents abortion more effectively than the right’s current plan of telling them just to avoid screwing like teenagers. The second is parallel: if you prevent cervical cancer by using the HPV vaccine, you’ll prevent some of the need for medical marijuana. The third is that, as my father pointed out to me, we don’t even know if abstinence is really effective or not, since it’s never really been implemented in any systematic way (fortunately for those of us who enjoy having been born or having offspring).
Secretly Ironic 