Quote:
Originally Posted by RezZ
It seems that both of you have treated this as a 2 sided argument. There is always the grey area where marijuana could be legalized to a limited extent. As you have mentioned alcohol, which has a serving and drinking age limit, (which should obviously be 18) is a middle ground between those who feel strongly one way or another.
I personally am for the full legalization, and feel he Pro's FAR outweigh the cons but would give ground in an argument over legalization if a compromise was reached. It seems this is never talked about when debated are being flung at each other.
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Actually, I do agree with you to a large extent. There's the cost of legalizing it and there's the cost of prohibiting it. I agree that it's not a black and white issue and what should be discussed is wether or not the benefits of legalizing it outweighs the costs.
If you look internally in a country, of course it will have implications for society health and social-wise that will be negative. If alcohol or cigarettes were unknown, letting those loose in society would likely also lead to negative results in this regard. I don't want to get into much more detail about that because I think the point is actully exhausted.
However, something else which is not so frequently brought up is you also have to figure out how to handle cannabis in a political way. jgd suggested letting companies sell it and then government taxation. A "problem" with cannabis is that you can homegrow it and if that's tolerated, people are gonna grow it and sell it themselves, pushing down the prices and avoiding taxation. Because of this, if you're gonna say that legalizing it will be cheaper for society, you need a way of regulating it. The appearant way is to say something like "homegrowing will be illegal" or "you can only have one plant". However, people are still gonna grow it and then you need the police to handle those .. in other words, in that scenario there will still be cannabis related crimes which will cost society to deal with and the government and it's taxes are going to come head to head with homegrowers and illegal sellers. You can deal with this by saying "anything goes", but then you essentially only have the costs of legalizing cannabis in society and very few benefits.
Looking out of the country, there's the industry which sells these drugs operating in other countries. The general perception is that these are not very good industries and so that could also be a moral challenge. Are your market forces going to support these industries? Also something you could consider is that marijuana is still illegal in most nations in the world. What would legalizing it do to your neighbour? Would it strengthen the industries that your neighbours generally percieve as harmful? Would it turn your country into a huge source of drugs to all the neighbours who don't like it? I don't like the idea of America, such a monster in terms of marketing power, possibly marketing marijuana. That also means marketing out of the country because it would have a huge impact on other nations like Norway.
And so on .. There are so many points that are not being addressed and people never think about them. They usually focus purely on health effects (sometimes by countering/discrediting/ignoring them) rather than effects on society. I usually try to think for society. For example, I'm prepared to vote against Norway in EU because while it will give me much cheaper food prices, it will also introduce foreign agricultural products into our market and put simply, there's no way norwegian farmers can compete with those prices, so they would have to go. I'd rather have a nation where agriculture is possible and pay a little extra for my meat and milk. In other words, I'm prepared to give up something for what I think is the greater good. Had I been a cannabis consumer, I probably still would be against legalization.