LEGALIZE IT

[yukoncpa]

[ QUOTE ]
Given that we make the sweeping (and incorrect) assumption that marijuana makes anyone who smokes it lazy and inactive;

Hypothetical,

Bob just got aquitted of rape because of lack of evidence but just like O.J., everyone knows he committed the crime. Furthermore, he expressed no remorse for the victim and explicitly stated in a book he wrote that he 'hypothetically' wanted to rape more people.

Bob gets very lazy and does nothing when he smokes marijuana.

Should Bob be allowed to smoke marijuana?


;;;;;;;

Hypothetical,

Mary is an anorexic. She has no appetite and constantly does aerobics because of a hopeless addiction to endorphin. Doctors have warned her, to no avail, that she is causing damage to her body because of malnutrition and overexercising.

When she smokes marijuana, she gets hungry and lazy.

Should Mary be allowed to smoke marijuana?


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, Yes.

As to the first question:

I believe that seized marijuana ought to be rolled into joints and supplied to persons in prison. They would get what they want and the prisons would be less violent places.

It always amazes me that Hollywood persists in portraying marijuana as a violence inducing drug. For example, in Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are having a perfectly happy conversation until they share a joint, then they get into an all out fight. In reality, I’ve never seen this happen with marijuana.

[CORed]

[ QUOTE ]
I think marijuana is a very harmful drug -- I have seen firsthand what it can do to people's personalities. It just sort of turns everyone lazy and they never do anything with their lives. I do not think it should ever be legalized, I think that would harm the world a lot.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some people do respond to marijuana this way. Others only use the drug during leisure time and lead normal, productive lives.

Some people who use alcohol beat their wives, drive drunk all the time and can't hold a job (or don't even try).

In spite of what you may have been told, some people use cocaine responsibly. Not everybody who uses cocaine becomes an addict, although cocaine is a pretty addictive drug.

Some people devote their entire lives to surfing or skiing, to the point that they never hold a steady job, or hold only menial jobs way below what their abilities would allow. Does this mean surfing and skiing should be banned?

Drug laws are the result of the fallacious belief that, if we think the world would be better off if a particular substance didn't exist, we can legislate it out of existence.

What actually happens is that a black market develops, usually with a considerably higher price than the commodity would have if it were legal, and it becomes a cash cow for the criminal element. Because a drug dealer who gets ripped off can't call the police, the only way for the dealer to deal with getting ripped off is violence, so generally the drug trade ends up in the hands of the most ruthlessly violent dealers.

[Benjamin]

[ QUOTE ]
What actually happens is that a black market develops, usually with a considerably higher price than the commodity would have if it were legal, and it becomes a cash cow for the criminal element. Because a drug dealer who gets ripped off can't call the police, the only way for the dealer to deal with getting ripped off is violence, so generally the drug trade ends up in the hands of the most ruthlessly violent dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

You would think that we would have learned from our experience with alcohol prohibition. It really is amazing how the Drug War blights our society.

And yet, people still nod in agreement when the politicians and the police chiefs get up on the podium about how we need to crack down on drugs, and how important it is to allocate X million (or billion in total) dollars in tax money. They arrest and imprison a segment of our population. At the same time they convert poor neighborhoods to black market war zones.

Then they use the presence of the black market war zones to justify spending another 1.2X million dollars the next year.

[CORed]

Another thing. Methamphetamine is arguably the most destructive drug in common usage. It is fairly easy to make, but it's manufacture involves the use of flammable liquids, corrosive chemicals and poisonous gases. So, given that there are people around stupid enough to use the stuff, where would you prefer it to be manufactured: In a chemical plant in an industrial area, by people who know how to handle hazardous materials safely, or in the apartment next door to yours, by a brain-damaged addict who doesn't have sense enough not to spill a can of Coleman fuel next to the water heater?

[johnnyrocket]

yesss, def legalize it

[ConstantineX]

[ QUOTE ]
Another thing. Methamphetamine is arguably the most destructive drug in common usage. It is fairly easy to make, but it's manufacture involves the use of flammable liquids, corrosive chemicals and poisonous gases. So, given that there are people around stupid enough to use the stuff, where would you prefer it to be manufactured: In a chemical plant in an industrial area, by people who know how to handle hazardous materials safely, or in the apartment next door to yours, by a brain-damaged addict who doesn't have sense enough not to spill a can of Coleman fuel next to the water heater?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm. This is true. Undoubtedly, with a hypothetical liberalization of drug policy, its manafucture would be industrial. But this would require a much greater overhaul of government, indeed, of the psyche of the American people. It concerns the ethics of the thing - how could the FDA reconcile the fact that industry was selling a dangerous and potentially lethal product? Surely it can't be regulated as a typical pharmaceutical drug, because one is using it for pleasure, not healing. Even the advantages of an industrial approach would pale, to same people, in comparison with stomaching the fact that the gonvernment was essentially condoning the distribution and sale of poison (which IMO meth is). For alcohol, we gloss over the fact by believing that alcohol is dangerous, but only in EXCESS (and excess generally requires a long, protracted history). This sort of dissonance cannot work for crystal meth - far too many communities and scientists are aware of how dangerous the drug is. I can't just pick up a capsule of potassium cyanide for personal use, either. If this sort of paternalistic sentiment faded, fundamentally the US would quite a different incarnation of what it is now, in all sorts of political spheres. You have to appreciate that.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
Undoubtedly, with a hypothetical liberalization of drug policy, its manafucture would be industrial.

[/ QUOTE ]

More importantly, with higher-quality, safer, cheaper imported drugs, fewer people will even want meth.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Another thing. Methamphetamine is arguably the most destructive drug in common usage. It is fairly easy to make, but it's manufacture involves the use of flammable liquids, corrosive chemicals and poisonous gases. So, given that there are people around stupid enough to use the stuff, where would you prefer it to be manufactured: In a chemical plant in an industrial area, by people who know how to handle hazardous materials safely, or in the apartment next door to yours, by a brain-damaged addict who doesn't have sense enough not to spill a can of Coleman fuel next to the water heater?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm. This is true. Undoubtedly, with a hypothetical liberalization of drug policy, its manafucture would be industrial. But this would require a much greater overhaul of government, indeed, of the psyche of the American people. It concerns the ethics of the thing - how could the FDA reconcile the fact that industry was selling a dangerous and potentially lethal product? Surely it can't be regulated as a typical pharmaceutical drug, because one is using it for pleasure, not healing. Even the advantages of an industrial approach would pale, to same people, in comparison with stomaching the fact that the gonvernment was essentially condoning the distribution and sale of poison (which IMO meth is). For alcohol, we gloss over the fact by believing that alcohol is dangerous, but only in EXCESS (and excess generally requires a long, protracted history). This sort of dissonance cannot work for crystal meth - far too many communities and scientists are aware of how dangerous the drug is. I can't just pick up a capsule of potassium cyanide for personal use, either. If this sort of paternalistic sentiment faded, fundamentally the US would quite a different incarnation of what it is now, in all sorts of political spheres. You have to appreciate that.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think a lot of these objections are more traditionalist than anything else. They are using it for pleasure, rather than healing? There is no line separating the two. All medical treatments are ultimately geared towards alleviating suffering and increasing pleasure. Why must you have some subnormal function of some system before you are entitled to suffering-reducers or pleasure-enhancers? We could ALWAYS be happier, or suffer less. The person with cancer suffers more than I do, to be sure, but it isn't as if there is a digital categorization here.

A large number of medications (most? all?) are poisons. Chemotherapy meds are the most obvious example. Yet, we still use them, because, if used carefully, they provide more happiness than suffering. If meth could be used in a similar way (I've never taken meth and I don't know if this is possible) then what is the difference? I will anticipate your response as having something to do with normalizing some subnormal condition. I think this is arbitrary and unimportant.

[m_the0ry]

The DEA and the FBI don't even want America to be drug free. If they did, they would offer to redirect all of the funds to drug education in public schools. There is nothing more effective in preventing hazardous drug use than the truth.

In middle school and high school my home in suburban Oregon (no it's not farmland near Portland, contrary to popular belief) was in a nexus of sorts for meth use. I was oblivious of this until I read a newspaper article outlining how meth was becoming a huge problem. It described how meth triggers only slightly less dopamine than heroin and its stimulant properties made it incredibly addictive. The article included an amazing series of 'before' and 'after' pictures of people who had a file prior to meth use and an updated picture after the meth use. The physical difference was absolutely disgusting and really disturbed me.

I was a freshman in high school and prior to me reading that article methamphetamine was just another drug that was across the magically arbitrary 'illegal' boundary. I had no reason to differentiate between meth and pot because I had heard so little about it. Then it struck me. Why is the media the one distributing drug *facts* and not the government? If the truth is so terrifying that it makes me never ever consider methamphetamine use, why isn't some bureau somewhere barraging me and the rest of the public with the staggering death toll for cigarettes; why doesn't someone just speak the compelling truth about the addictive potential of methamphetamine or cocain or heroin?


Looking back on it, I've learned everything about which drugs NOT to do from erowid.com, research papers, and Requiem for a Dream. I learned nothing from the war on drugs. I learned nothing from dare. And I bet 99% of the people you find addicted to coke or meth had no idea what they were getting themselves into the first time they did it because the government would rather spend billions feeding the 'DEA' and 'FBI' to perform drug raids than educating the public.

The war on drugs is only second to the Iraq War when it comes to the worst policies in the history of western civilization.

[ShakeZula06]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that legalization will make the prices will come down, but you'll still end up with people begging on the streets for their next "fix" (not for marijuana, of course, but for "harder" drugs). For instance, a meth addict has a very hard time keeping a job, and would still need to beg for money if the prices were to come down.


[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, but lower prices would cause less people to need to beg for money. I didn't mean to imply begging for drug money would vanish, just that it would be less.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm all for legalization, but not because I believe that it will have much effect on the number of beggars on the street.

[/ QUOTE ]
Same here, just responding to someone whos argument consisted of "don't legalize harder drugs because people who do them end up on the streets begging for drug money".