As several state flirt with legalizing marijuana, it’s time for a quick pro-and-con check:
Legalization would be good because:
- The “war on drugs” has killed more people than Vietnam, and with less to show for it.
- The “war” has also destroyed most American inner cities.
- The black market has created a multinational organized crime network that Al Capone would envy, and whole soulless violence would make Sammy The Bull Gravano blanche in mute horror.
- Pot is probably less harmful, all in all, than booze.
Legalization would be bad because:
- Stoners are the most annoying people in the world.
- Stoner culture is the most annoying counterculture in the world.
- Phish and Dave Matthews.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
I do not accept the libertarian notion that the bad things that occur as a result of drug prohibition are worse than what would happen if drugs were decriminalized or legalized.
Suppose some hot shot pharmacist invented a drug that was instantly addictive and withdrawal inevitably resulted in death. Should its sale & use be decriminalized on libertarian principles?
Heroin and meth aren’t illegal because Uncle Sam wants to keep some hippie from smoking a joint while he listens to Dark Side of the Moon for the 10,1000th time, despite what the folks at Reason say. Drugs are illegal because voters believe the social costs of legalizing drugs — the costs pushed by the users onto the rest of us — would be greater than the social costs of the war on drugs.
Forgot one more bad thing:
Prices of pizza and Fritos will skyrocket as producers will be unable to meet greatly increased demand.
Our civil liberties have been the biggest casualties in the war on drugs.
If people actually knew the extent their privacy and property rights have been tossed aside, there well might be an armed insurrection….at least there should be, and those that say “if you’re not breaking the law you have nothing to worry about” are a bigger threat than all the Osama’s there could ever be.
Legalization of pot. I’ve been pro and con this so many times, here is where I stand now. All of my presumptions are based on the idea that pot smoking will go up because it’s legal.
A. Don’t we already have an obesity problem in the USA? I don’t smoke weed now because I would weigh 500 lbs if I did.
B. Don’t we already have a problem with drunk and texting drivers? We need more stoned drivers on the streets? Or stoned texting drivers?
C. Don’t we have enough lazy people already on the public dole? I don’t smoke pot today because I couldn’t perform my job(100% commission sales) if I were a pot smoker.
A minor quibble: alcohol can actually be good for your brain and heart in moderate quantities, while pot will lower your IQ and speed up the onset of dementia.
Other than that- yeah, legalize the stuff.
The way things are going, pot will be legal but Doritos won’t be.
Okay, legalize pot, then legalize gay marriage, then polygamy, then hashish, then cocaine, then oxycodone, then watch a sunset, eat a bag of Doritos and wait for the end of the world and wonder where we lost control of everything.
Open-ended morality has a consequence. Just saying.
Terry: I don’t accept the premise either. There is no meaningful way to compare beer and pot with meth, heroin and fictional all-powerful synthetics. There’s a point to be made for society in drawing a line in the sand about drugs that actually, actively, quickly destroy brains and lives, and drugs like pot that are, in the grand scheme of things, less harmful than beer.
Swiftee: +1 for the win.
Fisch: Time to ban beer!
BP: We assume moderate, responsible use in all cases. Bear in mind, I have never smoked pot, and never would; the idea of drawing smoke into my lungs is a claustrophobic horror to me.
NW: Heh.
Stink: Well, no. Approach each issue on its merits. There are cases to be made for each of the things you mention, and cases against. With most of your examples, the case against is transparently obvious and overwhelming. With pot – and especially the criminalization and the black market it creates – the case for legalization vs. the potential harm are a lot less convincing than the others. To me, anyway. I mean, if we ban pot, why not whiskey, which causes society a *lot* more trouble?
I am for legalization of open container. Legalize it. Tax it. Regulate it.
Or as I like to call it….”medical open container”. You can buy your beer from an open container dispensery.
Wasn’t there an O. Henry story about a government that legalized marijuana just as it banned salty, fat laden snacks?
A sure fire way to make sure that even the smell of pot smoke makes you nauseous, would be to smoke a joint of pot mixed with dried water buffalo dung. It worked for me! Less reputable Vietnamese and Thai dealers would frequently pull this on unsuspecting GIs. When we caught on, these dealers would give us a pure sample, then try to sell us the mixed stuff.
I don’t have a particular interest in legalizing pot nor in keeping it illegal. It certainly seems to have practically zero fatalities from direct use for smokers compared with alcohol, cocaine, opiates and so forth, but beware of unintended consequences. My attitude is as follows: when marijuana smokers and advocates get well enough organized to mount a successful legalization campaign they will probably ask themselves why the hell they waste time and money getting stoned, and then address some of the more compelling problems of society.
Weighing with the criteria you outlined, any thinking person would opt for legalization.