Legalizing Marijuana

[jwoodie]

I think there are legitimate arguments to be made in support of this proposition, but the alleged medical benefits of Marijuana and its analogy to tobacco are not among them. First, the active ingredients in MJ are already legally obtainable with a Doctor's prescription. Secondly, tobacco is legal only because of its historically widespread usage. If it was introduced today, it would never receive FDA approval. In the absence of any credible medical studies to the contrary, it must be assumed that the same harmful effects of ingesting carbonized tobacco particles would be realized by ingesting carbonized MJ particles into your lungs.

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

 

[TheOldSchool]

Absolutely legalize it. That would greatly decrease the drug cartels' revenue, free up space and money in jails, greatly decrease the amount of drug dealers in the country, free up police to deal with real issues, create an entire industry, and close a chapter of our history marred by racist scare tactics. Look up Henry Anslinger to understand why people think of Marijuana in the way that they do.

Then tax the bejeezus out of it. 300% if you want. I guarantee people would be willing to pay that for a safe and legal way to obtain it.

 

[oldfart]

You shifteed your ground and ended up contradicting yourself. It's the classic Sophist's Dilemna. In the orginal, a student in Athens agreed to study under a rhetorician in how to argue cases in court, and to pay as his fee for the instruction whatever he recieved for the payment in his first case in court. The student decided to not argue cases in court, and the teacher sued the student for the customary fee. The student argued, "If I prevail in this case, by the order of the court, I am not obligated to pay my teacher. On the other hand, should I lose this case, by the terms of our agreement, I have not won a case and therefore have no obligation under our agreement to pay my teacher." Of course the teacher made the mirror argument demonstrating that either way, he was entitled to the fee. Of course both committed the same fallacy of shifting ground. You must decide first whether the terms of the contract govern the decision or the opinion of the court. You cannot consistently argue two different standards for the decision when they are incompatible.

tobacco is legal only because of its historically widespread usage. If it was introduced today, it would never receive FDA approval. In the absence of any credible medical studies to the contrary, it must be assumed that the same harmful effects of ingesting carbonized tobacco particles would be realized by ingesting carbonized MJ particles into your lungs.

So your argument is that tabacco is legal because of widespread historical use, regardless of its harmful effects. But marijiana, which also has a long history of widespead use, is illegal, regardless of its medical effects. Apparently harmful medical effects has nothing to do with whether a substance is or should be legal. So what do you propose as a basis of distinguishing them? I think you are inadvertently making a case for treating them the same, either legalizing, taxing, and regulating both or criminalizing both, as their medical effects are both deleterious.

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question.

And if your cost-benefit analysis turns out supporting keeping marijuana illegal, and the facts are parallel, have you not made the case for criminalizing tobacco? Logically how can you assert the facts are parallel and that cost-benefit analysis is appropriate in one case but not the other, where the historical fact of illegality will govern instead?

Which side are you arguing, the student's or the teacher's?

Jamie

 

[jwoodie]

Your apparent assertion that marijuana and tobacco have equally long and widespread histories of use is grossly inaccurate. Your assertion that harmful medical benefits has nothing to do with whether a substance should be legal is equally absurd. Under that "reasoning," Thalidomide should have been allowed in the US so that we could have had millions of deformed babies.

Unlike you, I am able to evaluate both sides of this issue.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Just what we need... One more thing (legalized pot) to bring down the standards of the American public.

 

[FA_Q2]

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

I actually disagree with this sentiment.
While laws should have some sort of cost/benefit relationship the underlying factor should not be whether or not this ambiguous entity called society benefits but rather is your freedom impeding on others.

Drug laws, for the most part, clearly fail this rule because your personal decisions on what to stick in your own body have next to zero impact on my freedoms. As long as you are not impacting my rights, you should b allowed to do as you please.

As far as cost/benefit goes though, drug laws fail miserably at that and prohibition proved such when we were forced to repeal it.


To be frank, 'society' would benefit from a completely caged and controlled populous. We would all live longer if we were forced to exercise, our complete diet was controlled and we lived under some authoritarian vision of 1984 but we are not looking for what is best for our longevity or even our happiness. What we are looking for is giving each and every man the opportunity to make these things for themselves and freedom.

Drug laws are an absolute failure by any measure whatsoever and need to be done away with. What the hell is a victimless crime? Why are you allowed to claim it is your body when you want to kill your unborn child and then, suddenly, it is not your body when you want to smoke some drugs?

 

[arKangel]

I really don't care one way or the other.
If you don't like drug laws then don't do drugs.

Still, hemp is just a plant. Government should never be able to tell you what plants you can grow on your own property.

Those who are selling dope... I could see that as a community problem. Which is why the most dangerous thing would be to let the government tax it, that creates an incentive for the government to push dope. Then again, they already have a functioning slave system built on dope trading.

Dope is for dopes.
Though I am interested in the potential of hemp for industrial purposes.

 

[Wiseacre]

I think we got more important problems that weed. Make it legal and then tax it to death. Geez, I sound like a democrat.

 

[Katzndogz]

Legalizing marijuana is a fitting postscipt to this failure.

 

[eflatminor]

...society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis...

How about we evaluate laws based on the idea of liberty and individual freedom? If I'm not hurting another nor taking what doesn't belong to me, why are we even talking about a law?

What a consenting adult chooses to put in his own body is nobody else's business.

 

[Katzndogz]

...society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis...

How about we evaluate laws based on the idea of liberty and individual freedom? If I'm not hurting another nor taking what doesn't belong to me, why are we even talking about a law?

What a consenting adult chooses to put in his own body is nobody else's business.

So true. We don't really have a drug problem. It's that the culture is so degenerate that so many people must be high just to get through the day. Although the people killed in accidents where the perpetrator might disagree with how harmless pot is. Pot is a symptom like alcoholism. If all the addictions were added up more than half the population suffers from some kind of depravity.

 

[martybegan]

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

I actually disagree with this sentiment.
While laws should have some sort of cost/benefit relationship the underlying factor should not be whether or not this ambiguous entity called society benefits but rather is your freedom impeding on others.

Drug laws, for the most part, clearly fail this rule because your personal decisions on what to stick in your own body have next to zero impact on my freedoms. As long as you are not impacting my rights, you should b allowed to do as you please.

As far as cost/benefit goes though, drug laws fail miserably at that and prohibition proved such when we were forced to repeal it.


To be frank, 'society' would benefit from a completely caged and controlled populous. We would all live longer if we were forced to exercise, our complete diet was controlled and we lived under some authoritarian vision of 1984 but we are not looking for what is best for our longevity or even our happiness. What we are looking for is giving each and every man the opportunity to make these things for themselves and freedom.

Drug laws are an absolute failure by any measure whatsoever and need to be done away with. What the hell is a victimless crime? Why are you allowed to claim it is your body when you want to kill your unborn child and then, suddenly, it is not your body when you want to smoke some drugs?

The theory, which I do not wholly agree with, is that drug users lead to increased crime, need for public services, and are an overall burden on society, which does impact other individuals.

To me this theory is only sound if an overwheliming majority of people never use a given drug, thus limiting use to so few that there is small enough of a demand and profit margin to preclude the growth of cartels to provide the drug.

Lets look at shrooms as an example. Demand for them is magnatudes of order less than other drugs, thus you dont hear of shroom gangs shooting each other, or major shroom busts in the news.

Pot on the other hand is used at least intermittently by a far larger population, thus creating the demand that creates the profit for illegal cartels to flourish.

What supporters of drug laws neglect to add to the equation is the cost of enforcement, the cost of diverting police from other tasks, the cost of the court system, and the fact that since it is driven underground, it cannot be controlled except via criminal prosecution. And worst of all, its use is still common, negating any real benefit to government efforts of control, and fostering an overall contempt for rule of law.

When looking at the balance between harm of the drug and cost of enforcement of the law, to me pot ends up on the legalization side of the equation. Other drugs may not, but we should try with pot to see what happens. The current course of action is not working.

 

[FA_Q2]

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

I actually disagree with this sentiment.
While laws should have some sort of cost/benefit relationship the underlying factor should not be whether or not this ambiguous entity called society benefits but rather is your freedom impeding on others.

Drug laws, for the most part, clearly fail this rule because your personal decisions on what to stick in your own body have next to zero impact on my freedoms. As long as you are not impacting my rights, you should b allowed to do as you please.

As far as cost/benefit goes though, drug laws fail miserably at that and prohibition proved such when we were forced to repeal it.


To be frank, 'society' would benefit from a completely caged and controlled populous. We would all live longer if we were forced to exercise, our complete diet was controlled and we lived under some authoritarian vision of 1984 but we are not looking for what is best for our longevity or even our happiness. What we are looking for is giving each and every man the opportunity to make these things for themselves and freedom.

Drug laws are an absolute failure by any measure whatsoever and need to be done away with. What the hell is a victimless crime? Why are you allowed to claim it is your body when you want to kill your unborn child and then, suddenly, it is not your body when you want to smoke some drugs?

The theory, which I do not wholly agree with, is that drug users lead to increased crime, need for public services, and are an overall burden on society, which does impact other individuals.

To me this theory is only sound if an overwheliming majority of people never use a given drug, thus limiting use to so few that there is small enough of a demand and profit margin to preclude the growth of cartels to provide the drug.

Lets look at shrooms as an example. Demand for them is magnatudes of order less than other drugs, thus you dont hear of shroom gangs shooting each other, or major shroom busts in the news.

Pot on the other hand is used at least intermittently by a far larger population, thus creating the demand that creates the profit for illegal cartels to flourish.

What supporters of drug laws neglect to add to the equation is the cost of enforcement, the cost of diverting police from other tasks, the cost of the court system, and the fact that since it is driven underground, it cannot be controlled except via criminal prosecution. And worst of all, its use is still common, negating any real benefit to government efforts of control, and fostering an overall contempt for rule of law.

When looking at the balance between harm of the drug and cost of enforcement of the law, to me pot ends up on the legalization side of the equation. Other drugs may not, but we should try with pot to see what happens. The current course of action is not working.

Pot is a starting point but I believe that those points are universal. The drug is not the question, making things illegal will drive it underground and, by extension, cause large criminal enterprises to spring up around them. These enterprises are far worse than the drugs and their abusers. I don't care if it is pot or cocaine, making a substance illegal for me to ingest is asinine (not to mention that such things are legal as long as they come from gov. sanctioned pharma) and none of the governments business. The underground elements that are created to cater to a demand that will always be there is what is harming our society, not the drugs themselves.


We have proof of this: alcohol is one of the more damaging substances out there and was made illegal. We seen what turns out after such a thing is done and how destructive that decision was. Legalizing it was a FAR better solution. That leaves the door open for commercialization, REGULATION and a host of other factors that mitigate the damage that substance abuse can cause. The light is the better place to be. Forcing things into the darkness is a proven failure.

 

[wavingrl]

...society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis...

How about we evaluate laws based on the idea of liberty and individual freedom? If I'm not hurting another nor taking what doesn't belong to me, why are we even talking about a law?

What a consenting adult chooses to put in his own body is nobody else's business.

So true. We don't really have a drug problem. It's that the culture is so degenerate that so many people must be high just to get through the day. Although the people killed in accidents where the perpetrator might disagree with how harmless pot is. Pot is a symptom like alcoholism. If all the addictions were added up more than half the population suffers from some kind of depravity.

I have been thinking along these lines, perhaps too much.
Most of the advertising supports values that are not beneficial to society. Reinforced in almost everything offered on TV.

What about that 'little problem'?

I won't wait on the government to solve that problem for me---individual choice is faster. jmo.

 

[dblack]

I think there are legitimate arguments to be made in support of this proposition, but the alleged medical benefits of Marijuana and its analogy to tobacco are not among them. First, the active ingredients in MJ are already legally obtainable with a Doctor's prescription. Secondly, tobacco is legal only because of its historically widespread usage. If it was introduced today, it would never receive FDA approval. In the absence of any credible medical studies to the contrary, it must be assumed that the same harmful effects of ingesting carbonized tobacco particles would be realized by ingesting carbonized MJ particles into your lungs.

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

Questions of law should not be evaluated on a cost-benefit analysis - or at least not in the narrow sense of economic impact or even immediate societalal benefit. Law, in my view, is not about driving our nation to greater heights of productivity or pushing us toward the 'good life' whether we want to go or not.

That may seem like a non sequitur, but it's very frustrating to see the same approach and assumptions that were used to promote drug laws in the first place used to justify repealing them. Drug laws should be repealed because they are an unjust violation of individual liberty, period.


EDIT: Ok, I was lazy and didn't read the thread first. Gratifying to see others hit on the same point:

...society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis...

How about we evaluate laws based on the idea of liberty and individual freedom? If I'm not hurting another nor taking what doesn't belong to me, why are we even talking about a law?

What a consenting adult chooses to put in his own body is nobody else's business.

That being said, society should have the ability to evaluate its laws based on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether the costs of exposing more children to marijuana and trying to enforce impaired driving laws are outweighed by the benefits of lower drug enforcement and incarceration expenses is an open question. As with the death penalty, practical considerations may trump moral imperatives. What say you?

I actually disagree with this sentiment.
While laws should have some sort of cost/benefit relationship the underlying factor should not be whether or not this ambiguous entity called society benefits but rather is your freedom impeding on others.

Drug laws, for the most part, clearly fail this rule because your personal decisions on what to stick in your own body have next to zero impact on my freedoms. As long as you are not impacting my rights, you should b allowed to do as you please.

As far as cost/benefit goes though, drug laws fail miserably at that and prohibition proved such when we were forced to repeal it.


To be frank, 'society' would benefit from a completely caged and controlled populous. We would all live longer if we were forced to exercise, our complete diet was controlled and we lived under some authoritarian vision of 1984 but we are not looking for what is best for our longevity or even our happiness. What we are looking for is giving each and every man the opportunity to make these things for themselves and freedom.

Drug laws are an absolute failure by any measure whatsoever and need to be done away with. What the hell is a victimless crime? Why are you allowed to claim it is your body when you want to kill your unborn child and then, suddenly, it is not your body when you want to smoke some drugs?

Thanks!

 

[April]

I highly' recommend the book "I Should Robbed A Bank" by Hugh Yonn to those for and against legalization.

The man served FIVE years for a marijuana offense, while others, such as armed bank robbers, came and went..some in for no more than twenty months.
It's insane that he had to sit FIVE years, yet other offenders such as child molestors, rapists, murderers and other criminals roam free after just short stay.
I personally know of someone who is about to get released after sitting only five months for child molestation...WTF?
That little girl will be scarred for life, yet he gets to go free to do it again???

I guess busting folks with weed and keeping them incarcerated is much more important than keeping a disgusting pig of a man off the street and away from little girls.

 

[Katzndogz]

He should have gotten life.

There is a way to deal with drug addicts. Bring back the chain gang and put them to work in the fields, send the illegals packing.

This is a sensible alternative to our imprisoning drug users.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/asia/08china.html?_r=0

Our rehab doesn't work. Users get out and immediately start using again. It just doesn't last long enough. Two years of physical labor is a much more realistic timeframe.

 

[Katzndogz]

I highly' recommend the book "I Should Robbed A Bank" by Hugh Yonn to those for and against legalization.

The man served FIVE years for a marijuana offense, while others, such as armed bank robbers, came and went..some in for no more than twenty months.
It's insane that he had to sit FIVE years, yet other offenders such as child molestors, rapists, murderers and other criminals roam free after just short stay.
I personally know of someone who is about to get released after sitting only five months for child molestation...WTF?
That little girl will be scarred for life, yet he gets to go free to do it again???

I guess busting folks with weed and keeping them incarcerated is much more important than keeping a disgusting pig of a man off the street and away from little girls.

It's possible to ferret out the truth. Yonn wasn't merely some user caught with a joint. He was a trafficker and a smuggler. Smuggling drugs and selling them is hardly a victimless crime.

Shockingly enough, he paid off his IRS using the proceeds of his drug sales and the debt was deemed satisifed when it should have been reinstated with penalties and interest since he paid the debt with the proceeds of criminal activity.

Try again, this guy is a criminal under any circumstances.

Shoulda Robbed a Bank, a novel by Hugh Yonn - Portland cannabis | Examiner.com

 

[eflatminor]

He should have gotten life.

Two consenting adults engaging in activity that does not harm another and does not involve taking what doesn't belong to them...and you want to lock them up for life?

Wow.

 

[PaulS1950]

He should have gotten life.

There is a way to deal with drug addicts. Bring back the chain gang and put them to work in the fields, send the illegals packing.

This is a sensible alternative to our imprisoning drug users.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/asia/08china.html?_r=0

Our rehab doesn't work. Users get out and immediately start using again. It just doesn't last long enough. Two years of physical labor is a much more realistic timeframe.

If you look ay why rehab doesn't work it cries for decriminalization (at least) of pot.
A person gets arrested and convicted on posession of pot (actually it is processed as "posession of a controlled substance" - the same as for cocaine and heroine). They go to prison and come out to no job and no way to get a job with a record of "controlled substance abuse" so they start back where they started, only this time they sell drugs to make the money they need to live. The system changes users into dealers that make more users.
By decriminalizing the drugs, people can get help to get off the drugs and start becoming productive members of society. This is and has been working in other countries. When you remove the users you remove the dealers. When there is no market the cartels lose money. It is the same process that happened after prohibition was repealed. The criminal activity was pushed out and had to fall back on other prohibited products to supply folks with. The criminal element lost money and control. A proven technique that worked well and yet the feds will not consider it even after other countries have proven it still works.