There’s a moment in childhood when you lose respect for your parents. Maybe they’re imposing punishments for no good reason. Maybe they’re just refusing to admit when they’ve messed up. Whatever the catalyst, the child is for ever changed: their parents are no longer gods, or superheroes, but ordinary human beings who make mistakes.
The same is true of our relationship with the state, and never more so than in our first contact with the endless, arcane idiocy of the war on drugs. It’s an opportunity for young people of every political persuasion and background to observe political hypocrisy in real time, as dodging every new prohibition becomes an after-school sport.
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