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Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I'm not saying that current study of pot's effects are null and void just because prohibition had no foresight to these effects. Certainly there are negative factors we should consider when talking about legalizing pot. But the most damaging effect pot has had on society is the black market, cartels and crimes that were created BECAUSE of prohibition.
Look at alcohol prohibition and the ensuing birth of the mafia and the horrible crimes that resulted. You can't ignore the parallels.
Drug cartels survive because they monopolize the market of illegal drugs. If you lift the prohibition on pot, tax and regulate it, you pull the rug out from under the pot cartel's feet.
Looking over California's attempt to pass their state's decriminalization of pot, you see that it would be legal to buy, sell, grow, and possess pot. This means that there would literally be no black market involved. It would be akin to owning, manufacturing, and selling your own brand of beer. Aside from minors using against regulation, you cut the crime resulting from possession and distribution, the costs of enforcing it, and gain economic advantages by selling and taxing it at a state level.
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You seem to think of alcohol as a paralell to pot, but it's not. Of course bootleggers and mafias had a hard time on the legal market because they did not make Cognac, Gammel Dansk, Aquavit, Scotch, bitters and the multitude of other distilled liquors and alcoholic beverages out there. All they could offer on the legal market was a tiny, tiny piece of the variety of booze available, probably not even at a very high quality. They were not really very able when they had to compete.
Now, perhaps pot isn't pot, but it's certainly a lot closer to a truth than alcohol being alcohol. Changing the black market into a market doesn't mean cartel products won't be viable and even competitive. Saying it's a paralell is misleading. From what I've read from american history and pot, the amount of users rose drastically when drug laws were softened in the 70s when several states decriminalized and Alaska legalized and if that would happen again, it would mean a vast expansion of the market - a scenario that has also taken place in other countries. That could easily help make up for loss of customers to other producers.
In a world of legal pot where growers are abundant, people are gonna sell (taxation or not) and the government will have no way of regulating that market. Cartels and other exploiters/criminals could thrive in such an environment and use it to push harder drugs which would still be illegal. I'm sure they'd love the opportunity.
In Netherlands after legalization, organized (and unorganized) crime increased drastically. The amount of users also increased, both for marijuana and harder drugs. Netherlands has also since become a large exporter of drugs to other countries, such as XTC pills. In Portugal, decriminalization led to an increase in users and drug-related deaths (homicides/suicides/overdoses). You should assume the same thing can happen in the US.
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Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
What you're left with are concerns relating to psychological and societal side effects, which are still largely debatable at best.
Out of the years and years of study of the long term physical and psychological effects of using pot, there STILL aren't any definitive results that justify continued prohibition. Results that are published are usually questionable and/or so insignificant and non-relevant that one has to wonder about the motivations behind this clawing, grabbing attempt to keep pot out of the hands of functioning, responsible adults.
In a world where outlawing proven dangers to yourself and others is second behind creating black market violence, criminal records and spending billions to do so over a substance who's theoretical effects are largely subjective should pull your head forward and scream into your face that this IS a matter of principle and priority, and that any supposed negative effect that still can't be quantified pales in comparison to the damage that prohibition has done and will continue to do if we don't re-think this thing.
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This bit is quite manipulative because you write that negative effects of pot are at best debatable. Yes, in a way they are, but probably not in the way you think. What scientific studies show is that marijuana use
does correlate positively with problems like anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. What's debatable is why that is. People who are pro-legalization desperately want to believe that the marijuana is not a causal factor in all this, that it's just a trend that sick people like to smoke or at worst exacerbate their problems or cause "latent" illnesses to emerge. Exacerbation of such problems would be a very negative effect and so should anyways be taken into account when considering legalization.
If you want a scientific source, you could take a look at this recent paper :
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Originally Posted by 6 Moore TH, Zammit S, Lingford-Hughes A, et al. Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: A systematic review. Lancet 370 (9584):319–328, 2007.
we conclude that there is now sufficient evidence to warn young people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness later in life.
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Link :
Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review : The Lancet
Those who are undecided or pro-legalization should be aware that there is a massive amount of propaganda coming from your side of the debate which glorifies the effects legalization and decriminalization has had on other countries, that exaggerate positive scenarios as the only possible outcomes of legalization and say that marijuana does not have negative effects on mental health and more.
Of course there's some propaganda coming from the other side as well, but they tend to be way less fanatical about it (pro-legalization could be called a movement, but I don't think you can say the same about those who oppose) and either way, science and history has often produced results such as presented in the paper quoted above or in political reports.