The pie tin balanced in his hand, Anish Sarma '12 stepped forward and jammed the whipped cream into Brian Judge's '11 face. Onlookers cheered as Judge wiped the mess off, but he had acknowledged his chances from the beginning.
"I can see I'm fighting an uphill battle here," he said as some members of the audience — about 40 people congregated under Wayland Arch — jeered in jest as he stepped forward to argue against legalizing marijuana in the Janus Forum's first debate of the year.
Moderating the student debate was Janus Forum Executive Director Andrea Matthews '11. While Judge, the Janus Political Union director, represented the anti-legalization side of the debate, Sarma argued in favor of legalization. The walkway under Wayland Arch was divided in two by a long strip of duct tape that would later serve as the audience's measuring stick.
Judge, a former Herald opinions columnist, emphasized that he did not think legalizing marijuana would lead to widespread drug addiction, increased violence or health crises. Instead, he said marijuana sapped people of their ambition and could possibly prevent individuals from reaching their true potential. As an example, he said he could only list a handful of well-known marijuana users who became successful — including Cheech and Chong and "maybe Richard Dawkins," he said.
"It's not so much that it's corrupting the youth," Judge said, "but making us boring and lazy."
Thus, by indulging in the "petty pleasures" of marijuana, Judge said, "we do ourselves a great disservice." He added that the government has the ability and the authority to prohibit the harmful activity, and that smoking marijuana stands distinct from drinking alcohol because the latter can be done without the intent of becoming drunk.
"There's no such thing as enjoying the aroma of THC," Judge said.
Sarma, for his part, conceded that marijuana use was not without its risks — there is a correlation between smoking marijuana and a slight risk increase in developing heart problems, and driving while high is dangerous.
None of these reasons, though, support the complete abolition of marijuana as a recreational drug, Sarma said.
"The issue is not legal, it's cultural," Sarma said.
He suggested legalizing marijuana and then taxing and regulating it, such as with cigarettes, over continuing to waste time and money on prohibiting and criminalizing the drug.
"We don't have the resources to prosecute a crime no one really cares about," Sarma said.
As part of the debate, audience members were encouraged to ask questions after Judge and Sarma finished speaking. The audience challenged each other's points on many fronts, debating whether decriminalization could solve the problem of rampant violence as part of the drug trade, whether legalization and taxes would inflate marijuana prices, whether the "gateway drug" argument had any merit, and whether legalizing marijuana would cause drug organizations to reinvest in harder drugs.
At the end of the discussion, Matthews called for everyone who supported legalization to stand on one side of the Arch and those who did not support it to stand on the other side. Only a handful of people declined to support legalization, and Sarma was given the pie-smashing honors.
Ultimately, though, Sarma said, winning was not everything. The stakes were fun, but the final vote did not matter — the discourse, instead, prevailed.
