Bongs get stolen all the time. While this is objectively pretty funny, it highlights a particular problem created by the fact that weed is still illegal in this country.
Set aside for a moment any problems you may have with the institution of law enforcement - a big ask, I know. But let’s imagine a team of perfect community police. Now, if you’re living in a world where these perfect police exist, they still can’t help you if the thing you’ve lost is itself illegal. Like, say, a bong. So, if someone sneaks into your flat, sees your prized piece on the living room table and runs off with it, what then? The perfect police can’t help you recover an illegal item, even if they wanted to. You’d only be putting yourself at risk for reporting this.
Potential bong thieves know this.
Point is, keeping weed illegal harbours a sort of satellite class of criminal activities: all the crimes orbiting around the world of weed. If someone broke into your dad’s garage and stole his microbrewery kit, he could have the cops on that within the hour. There is no black market for stolen fermentation buckets (or if there is, it’s very small). But there is certainly a market for stolen bongs and other paraphernalia, as there is little to no risk of being accused of stealing it. As one student put it: “What idiot would call the cops to report a stolen bong?”
It follows that the people most likely to have their bongs stolen in Dunedin are students, the same people who are the least vigilant about flat security. They’re also not very likely to call the cops because, as another student put it, theft is “just part of the culture”. And this muddles crime statistics; because bong theft (or any illicit theft) goes completely unreported, we have literally no idea how common bong theft really is. What burglary patterns are we unaware of? What neighbourhood crime statistics are way out of proportion, entirely due to the fact that residents are unable to report the crime?
At the end of the day, bongs are property. And our legal system is set up, first and foremost, to protect property. Make all the arguments you want about the dangers of legalising weed, but if you believe in “law and order” and all its accoutrements, it follows that you should be equally uproarious about bong theft. Every bong theft that goes unreported is a datapoint missing from our collective understanding of crime, and our collective ability to enforce “law and order”.
To keep bong theft illegal is to allow thieves to act with impunity. By insisting that one act (the possession of weed paraphernalia) remains illegal, you are ensuring that another act (theft of this paraphernalia) remains untouchable. Who would you rather see punished: someone who smokes weed, or someone who breaks into that person’s house? Which is more harmful?
You tell me.