professor Emeritus Albert C. Germann tells a story that goes some-
thing like this:
You and your partner are police officers on foot patrol sometime during the
late 1920's. On this particular evening, you and your partner-we'll call him
Nick-walk into a restaurant on your beat and find a couple and their young
child enjoying a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. As you get closer to the
table, you see that both the man and his wife are drinking a glass of red wine
with their pasta. Now, times being what they are, and the two of you being the
dutiful policemen that you are, you place the couple under arrest and take
their child into protective custody.
After work, you and Nick go unwind with other officers of your department
in that ritual known to policemen as "choir practice." As you stand around dis-
cussing the events of your day and all the arrests you made, you and Nick, still
in uniform light up two marijuana cigarettes and tell your buddies about that
poor couple you arrested just a few hours previous. Does this make you and
Nick hypocrites? Not at all; in the late 1920's, marijuana was not illegal. Nor,
for that matter, was cocaine.
Now suppose it is 1994. You and Nick, who have somehow managed to
arrive at this present time without aging, are out again on patrol and wander
into this same restaurant-which, despite a few remodelings and a name
change to "Rubio's Pasta Palace," has remained essentially unchanged. And
there, also untouched by age, is the couple and their child. Except this time,
instead of enjoying a glass of red wine together, the man and woman are shar-
ing a marijuana cigarette. As dutiful as ever, you and Nick arrest the couple,
take their child into protective custody, and tell your buddies about this ill-
fated couple while all of you sit around at a local bar drinking a few beers.
Because, as everyone knows, marijuana is illegal in 1995.