SATCHMO

At this point, I need a bit of subversiveness to enhance my weed buzz.

CanwllCorfe

I would say yes. If people wanna smoke pot then let them do it. As long as they don't try anything stupid and somehow end up putting others in danger (which no one would obviously want). In the grandiose world of drugs it's not nearly as dangerous as some others and as mentioned earlier would help cut down on organized crime and the cops could focus on more important things. If all the things about it are true on the various health websites, then that's just a risk the user would be willing to take. It's just one of those things. If someone's obese and dies of diabetes due to complications with overeating and an obsession with fast food, it's their fault. Leave it up to the user and let them make their own decision

__________________
Your eyes were never yet let in to see the majesty and riches of the mind, but dwell in darkness; for your God is blind.

Guybrush

That's a very good point and the only argument so far which makes me doubt illegality. So far, I've assumed that legalizing pot will lead to new kinds of crime. Taxation of marijuana would lead to a government versus black market situation against homegrowers and black marketeers selling tax-free. I also assume it would result in an expansion of the black market. Harder drugs and crimes relating to them could piggyback and use many of the same channels and that could happen regardless of whether or not taxation takes place. I've assumed that the amount of drug users would increase and that would greatly add to these problems. Add that I think legalization will support the drug cartels and a belief that marijuana is potentially bad for you and the weight shifted against legalization. A lot of these are assumptions and I don't know for sure if they are correct.

Last time I read about who gets jailtime because of marijuana, it was by far mostly people with more serious stuff on their criminal records and that most first-time offenders were sent home with a fine. If that's true, it takes a lot of relevance out of your argument. If most who get arrested are criminals, marijuana arrests may part reflect crime at a greater scale. However, reading pro-legalization sites, they try to convince you the opposite is taking place, that first time offenders and otherwise innocent people go to jail.

Because of conflicting information, it's hard from here to tell who really goes to jail for marijuana possession today - if it's people who's only crime is posession of marijuana or if those who go to jail are people with more on their records, such as traficking of harder drugs. I agree that sending otherwise innocent people in jail is extremely detrimental to society for the reasons you mention and if that really takes place, then that could change my no position into a maybe or perhaps even yes.

Let me add at the end, though, that if there's a problem with how the law is enforced, it might be possible to alter the law or alter the way it is enforced without removing it.

__________________
Something Completely Different

Captain Awesome

True^

Besides, the only reason it's illegal and alcohol and tobacco aren't is because the government haven't found a way to justify making money from it yet.

__________________

"If we're all merely players in a play on this great stage,
the problem is the script writers ain't on the same page,
I echo through the mountain when I'm singing in the air,
from my lab a lad with lavish lyrics living in his lair."


"Wake up and listen, hear what's not for the public's ears
Pinocchio poets played by profiting puppeteers"

Freebase Dali

Sorry for coming off that way. I think I'm probably too passionate about this.

Anyway, I just wanted to highlight the principle behind the matter. I'm not sure how much you know about pot historically, but I can tell you for certain that it was banned not by careful study and thought for the benefit of society... at least not in a way we might consider noble... but by outright deceit, racism, and political maneuvering.
Anti-pot laws began passing as early as 1915 and snowballed along with alcohol prohibition and has been a part of our legacy for years.

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.

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.

storymilo

wasn't pot partly illegalized because big corporations complained?

That doesn't really seem like good justification:/

Freebase Dali

Here's a link for a basic overview:
http://www.mpp.org/states/connecticu...-based-on.html

If you want to look up the related laws, I encourage you to do so. It will take a while to put everything together, but fortunately it's already been done for you by millions of people who watched it transpire through the years.

crash_override

This pretty much says it all. Theres not a legit argument against this point that could possibly be more logical and practical.

__________________
My MB music journal

Guybrush

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.

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 :

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.

__________________
Something Completely Different

lucifer_sam

Uh...overdoses on what?

Because suggesting that decriminalization of marijuana led to overdoses on other drugs is a horrible post-hoc argument.

__________________
first.am