Stronger Pot Causes Governmental Policy Shift

[Last Conformist]

@Kuciwalker: Driving a car regularly increases the risk for a whole lot of potentially very expensive complications quite noticeably. Should drivers be excluded form Medicare?

Point being, the only way to be fair is to exclude everybody, or include everybody.

[Whaleboy]

Stronger pot is better for you because you inhale less smoke to achieve the desired effect.

I'm getting some white widow in soon... getting bored of my orange bud

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ming
People who DON'T smoke can get lung cancer, so should they be denied coverage? And if your answer is no...

No.

While the chance of lung cancer increase for those that smoke, it is impossible to determine if smoking actually caused it.

It's all fine and dandy to say if it's your own fault, you don't deserve coverage... but then it comes back to proof. Where do you draw the line, and how can you possible be fair about it.

How can it possibly be fair to charge me to pay for your mistakes?

What about people that eat fast food... should they not be covered if they have heart problems later?

Nope.

What about people that get sun tans... skin cancer is a big problem... but do you deny people coverage because somewhere in the past, they went to a tanning salon?

Sure thing.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
@Kuciwalker: Driving a car regularly increases the risk for a whole lot of potentially very expensive complications quite noticeably. Should drivers be excluded form Medicare?

I shouldn't pay for the treatment for accidents that were their fault.

Point being, the only way to be fair is to exclude everybody, or include everybody.

I'm fine with the former.

[Atahualpa]

Well all this pro-legalization and heavy tax people forget the power of the black market.

If the official price for pot is $50 per gramm and you can get it on the black market for $20, why the heck would you want to buy it officially? (prices are just made up and probably exaggerated)

There is a drug delivering system in place currently that is quite effective and there are prices. If you want to legalize it, you'll have to be cheaper at first until the current delivery net has so many holes it wouldn't be able to repair itself when prices go higher.

And I think making drugs available for cheaper is not really what any government intends.

Also you'll have to get the same level of control to prevent home-grown stuff and control gets even harder when it's legal to smoke pot, because you have to proof that the pot he is smokes is not government pot, so you have to invent some kind of branding and proofing...

It's really NOT that easy!

[Ming]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
How can it possibly be fair to charge me to pay for your mistakes?

Since there is no guarantee that a person who smokes WILL FOR SURE get lung cancer, you can't really call it a mistake. There are people who have lived past 100 and died of natural causes who have smoked all their lives...


Using your definitions so far, there isn't a single person in this country who would qualify for the program... since most people have tried fast food, or sat in the the sun TOO LONG, or has drunk liquour at some point, or eaten red meat, or doesn't exercise enough...

So I don't see any reason to have to fund a program that nobody will be able to take advantage of

[debeest]

Originally posted by Sikander
Smokers actually save programs like Medicare money because they die earlier and suck up less money during those extraordinarily medically expensive later years. Plus they also save money paid out for Social Security etc. If they died in middle age in significant numbers then you'd have a point (we'd lose tax money from their prime earning years), but they don't.

[edit: apologies for having recapitulated shawnmmcc's excellent post; I didn't anticipate that anyone else would jump on this]

IIRC, this claim was put forth by people on tobacco industry money and has been shown false. The really expensive years of life, in terms of medical cost, are not old age per se, but rather, the last year or two of life when you're crashing toward death. Smoking doesn't eliminate those years; it just moves them forward. Meanwhile, smoking increases lots of other medical costs, such as for asthma and bronchitis and emphysema, long before the end-of-life cost spike.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Well all this pro-legalization and heavy tax people forget the power of the black market.

If the official price for pot is $50 per gramm and you can get it on the black market for $20, why the heck would you want to buy it officially? (prices are just made up and probably exaggerated)

I'm glad you note that your prices are probably exaggerated... but looking at pot, there is no way the it would be worth it for the black market to undercut the government. I'm sure the government can deliver it to the user AFTER adding a high tax for far less than the 200 bucks or more an ounce that it costs on the Black Market in the US. Granted, people go out of state to buy cigerattes for a few bucks less, but the majortiy of people just pay. It would be difficult for the drug runners to make the kind of profits needed if they got into a price war with the government

[debeest]

Originally posted by Ming
While the chance of lung cancer increase for those that smoke, it is impossible to determine if smoking actually caused it.

I agree with your main point, that we should not bar coverage for smokers or others who induce their own illnesses.

However, lung cancer in particular is pretty much a disease of smoking. Less than 1% of non-smoking Americans die of lung cancer, while maybe 20% of smokers do. Asbestos and similar fibers are another main cause, but negligible compared to smoking, especially since smoking dramatically increases the effects of asbestos.

Also, while we have never been able to say with confidence that a specific case of lung cancer was induced by smoking, we are now much closer to it. A given substance that causes cancer by causing genetic mutations produces a specific set of mutations that differs from the set of mutations produced by another agent that causes the same kind of cancer. We can detect these sets of mutations now. They are not invariable -- they're sets of probabilities, like the probability that a man will be taller than a woman -- but they can provide considerable evidence about the origin of a specific case of cancer. This is really going to be a firestorm for the tobacco companies when the technology is good enough.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by Last Conformist
@Kuciwalker: Driving a car regularly increases the risk for a whole lot of potentially very expensive complications quite noticeably. Should drivers be excluded form Medicare?

I shouldn't pay for the treatment for accidents that were their fault.

All car accidents are the fault of the people in the car(s) in the same sense that lung cancer is people's own fault if they smoked.

(I'm rather thinking you realize this, but your wording suggests not, so confirmation would be nice.)

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
All car accidents are the fault of the people in the car(s) in the same sense that lung cancer is people's own fault if they smoked.

Indulging in behavior that is risky only due to someone else's faults is different from indulging in behavior that is risky through no one else's fault. Otherwise, it would be "your fault" if you got murdered in a bad district, etc. It's still your fault, however, when the natural result of only your actions causes some harm to yourself.

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm sure the government can deliver it to the user AFTER adding a high tax for far less than the 200 bucks or more an ounce that it costs on the Black Market in the US.

what costs 200 an ounce? you better not be speaking of weed, Ming or somebody ripped you the **** off

anyway, i'm not understanding your logic how the govt prices with taxes would be cheaper than drug dealer prices. a drug dealer can grow that **** himself and no doubt sell it cheaper as he is the production and the retail, all without the taxes. of course, he wouldnt be able to do the technique of exaggerating the amount of weed with additives as a way to maximize his profits but still, how could he not charge less than the gov't?

and what would the motivation be to go to the gov't besides that they would have no additives? would the govt weed be seedless or something?

[debeest]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Well all this pro-legalization and heavy tax people forget the power of the black market.

If the official price for pot is $50 per gramm and you can get it on the black market for $20, why the heck would you want to buy it officially? (prices are just made up and probably exaggerated)

There is a drug delivering system in place currently that is quite effective and there are prices. If you want to legalize it, you'll have to be cheaper at first until the current delivery net has so many holes it wouldn't be able to repair itself when prices go higher.

And I think making drugs available for cheaper is not really what any government intends.

Also you'll have to get the same level of control to prevent home-grown stuff and control gets even harder when it's legal to smoke pot, because you have to proof that the pot he is smokes is not government pot, so you have to invent some kind of branding and proofing...

It's really NOT that easy!

The reason that illegal drugs are expensive is because they're illegal. It's dangerous to provide them, so there are relatively few providers, so the price is high. Make it legal, and anyone can produce it, so the price plummets. If pot was legal, there would be no more black market for it than there is now for tobacco. It would probably be priced comparably to tobacco. Big growers would step in and mass produce it, it would cost about 5 or 10 dollars a pack, and the bulk of the cost would be in taxes. Those who chose to dodge the taxes could just grow their own crappy stuff. There'd be no need to control or prevent that any more than there is now for tobacco.

It really would be that easy.

[Al B. Sure!]

The reason that illegal drugs are expensive is because they're illegal. It's dangerous to provide them, so there are relatively few providers, so the price is high.

are we still talking about weed or are you talking about crack and heroine?

Make it legal, and anyone can produce it

i was under the impression that drug legalizers were not too fond of the entrepreneurial spirit of independent drug selling...

If pot was legal, there would be no more black market for it than there is now for tobacco.

i may be wrong but aren't cigarettes sold by the pack only, making looseys pseudo-illegal? if so, then there is a massive black market for tobacco.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by Last Conformist
All car accidents are the fault of the people in the car(s) in the same sense that lung cancer is people's own fault if they smoked.

Indulging in behavior that is risky only due to someone else's faults is different from indulging in behavior that is risky through no one else's fault.

And that is so because?

Otherwise, it would be "your fault" if you got murdered in a bad district, etc.

You'd be amazed at the number of people who hold that opinion.

It's still your fault, however, when the natural result of only your actions causes some harm to yourself.

The natural result of being on a motorway is that someone is gonna run over you sooner or later.