Do you support Marijuana Legalization?

[giblets]

As per Druids, and the like they generally are nothing more than a burden on the welfare system, and will with no doubt in my mind, either turn to drug abuse or the welfare system, so for the good of these rather misguided people, it’d be better if the government put a stop to their rather degenerate lifestyle in the first place.

Really? Prove it. Show me some statistics.

[Berzerker]

Fisher used retail alcohol prices to demonstrate that Prohibition was working by raising the price and decreasing the
quantity produced. However, his price quotations also revealed that the Iron Law of Prohibition was at work. The price
of beer increased by more than 700 percent, and that of brandies increased by 433 percent, but spirit prices in creased
by only 270 percent, which led to an absolute in crease in the consumption of spirits over pre-Prohibition levels.

Are "spirits" the hard stuff? I dont know if the cause is the same, but Nixon's war on pot led an increase in heroin and cocaine traffic. If pot becomes more dangerous to move, more concentrated drugs easier to hide get moved. Adding insult to injury, prohibitionists are pretty damn clueless and too dogmatic to admit when they're wrong and change course. Their drug war is a primary cause of the spike in homicide rates the last 4 decades and I never hear them bother to mention that. And while they make chicken little predictions about drug use ballooning with legalization, they never point to addiction rates to show how their war has lessened the problem. There's irony in that - they cant very well cite all the people in "treatment" for drugs to avoid more jail time while telling us the drug war has reduced "addiction". But that also means the drug war - coerced treatment - inflates the addiction rates making the problem appear worse.

[Asher]

Al B. Sure! Alpha Protocol bc1871 Donegeal onodera trev

This list is pretty much a listing of the most fun people on the board, no?

[Aeson]

I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of potheads on this forum... maybe prohibition works after all?

[Wezil]

Do you actually think that inflation adjusted, that the price for alcohol was cheaper during Prohibition than it is today?

Well maybe that's the difference Imran. In this country we don't have a retarded, never ending, "war on drugs". Pot is readily available on short notice. As I said before, supply is not an issue here.

edit - In fact, I received a Christmas bonus from my supplier.

[Arrian]

#2. I have a kid now and besides, I don't have any connections.

It's prohibition 2.0, and it's working about as well as the original. The only difference is the duration.

Legalize, regulate & tax. The outcome would be more good than bad (as with any policy, there will be good and bad outcomes).

Ah, but then what do you do with coke, heroin, acid, etc.? Logically, the answer is the same. But those are scarier than pot.

-Arrian

[Felch]

I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of potheads on this forum... maybe prohibition works after all?

This board is just full of overachievers.

[Aeson]

Yep... posting on Poly all day is quite an achievement

[MRT144]

#2. I have a kid now and besides, I don't have any connections.

It's prohibition 2.0, and it's working about as well as the original. The only difference is the duration.

Legalize, regulate & tax. The outcome would be more good than bad (as with any policy, there will be good and bad outcomes).

Ah, but then what do you do with coke, heroin, acid, etc.? Logically, the answer is the same. But those are scarier than pot.

-Arrian

I can never see a reason for fully legalizing and taxing meth as it is currently consumed by addicts.

[Felch]

Cigarettes are consumed by addicts. Would it be better if those addicts had to buy cigarettes from sketchy dealers who are supplied by Mexican drug cartels? Would society benefit from cigarette addiction being treated as a law enforcement problem instead of a health problem? Would it be better for governments to spend billions on eradicating tobacco crops, sting operations on cigarette dealers, and imprisoning users as opposed to generating billions of dollars for local and state governments through taxation?

Whether you're concerned with the fiscal situation of governments or the individual freedom of citizens, legalization is the only rational approach. Only uptight moralists and prudes support criminalization efforts.

[Felch]

By the way, MRT, I know you're not an uptight moralist or prude, that second paragraph is more for the marijuana issue than meth. Meth is scary ****, it is very harmful and addictive, and reasonable people can abhor it. I just think that drug problems are best treated as medical problems, and the first step to doing that is by removing criminal penalties for use.

[C0ckney]

damn right felch

[Dr Strangelove]

If you're going to legalize marijuana either as a commercial product or a drug you're still going to have to address the rather hefty problem that the stuff is choc o' block packed with carcinogens. The human epidemiological studies that have been conducted so far have been so small and so poorly designed that they're worthless. Amongst the major problems with that sort of study is that currently most people who smoke dope either cease to do so or sharply curtail their consumption when they grow up. If you made a study of the health risks of cigarette smoking but confined it to people who quit smoking (or cut down to one butt per month) at age 30 cigarettes wouldn't look so bad either. If marijuana were legalized though people's habits would certainly change, they would smoke more and would be more likely to continue toking up through later in life. Let's not forget about second hand smoke either. No one has ever completed a serious large scale animal carcinogenicity study either.

[N35t0r]

So we should get rats on dope ASAP.

[C0ckney]

If marijuana were legalized though people's habits would certainly change, they would smoke more and would be more likely to continue toking up through later in life.

i see this argument getting trotted out quite a lot when people talk about this but i'm not convinced and would like to see some actual evidence.