It seems odd to me that Marijuana is still illegal. It is much more benign than drugs that are already legal, including alcohol and tobacco. It’s almost impossible to find someone who didn’t toke up when they were younger and many continue as adults. Many states have passed laws that allow for medicinal use of pot. All of those things combined with the overcrowding of our prisons with violent criminals makes it seem like the most obvious thing in the world would be to legalize it with reasonable restrictions (no different than the restrictions we have for alcohol and tobacco - age limits and restrictions for drivers) and start taxing it.
What’s taking so long for this to happen? Or will it never happen?
I tend to think it will be legalized eventually. Although a better solution would actually more than likely be decriminalization. Make it so it’s still tacitly illegal on the books but there’s no punishment for possession and cops don’t arrest you for having it and etc.
Why I think that would be the best solution is several-fold.
If marijuana was legalized and regulated like alcohol/tobacco, god what a regulation nightmare. It would have to be overseen by the FDA, there’d have to be licensed farms, licensed sellers etc. Since it would be a regulated good like alcohol/tobacco, it’d certainly be illegal to sell it privately on the streets and such.
More than likely what would happen if marijuana was legalized is there’d be highly priced weed available in stores. Then you’d still have dealers on the street, who are still going to be prosecuted because they’re selling a regulated substance on the streets.
Maybe a dual approach of legalization and decriminalization? But if tacitly have full legalization and regulation by the FDA then it’d be morally inappropriate for the FDA to sit idly by while people peddled possibly unsafe versions of the product to consumers.
However I tend to think that if it comes about we’ll have legalized, regulated pot, but still a huge black market. Because the legally sold pot will probably be much more expensive and may be considered less potent.
But now the Federal and State government will have a real vested interest to go after pot dealers, because they’ll be stealing tax income from them! The war on drugs could actually be escalated ala 1920s alcohol prohibition.
So I think decriminalization is best if we think there will still be a burgeoning black market. If not, then legalization would be the way to go.
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting. Martin Hyde lists sevarl problems with legaliszing marijuana. In short, it won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap. It’s not as simple as passing a bill saying it’s legal. It wil cost huindreds of milluions if not billions just to get the regulation in place. Most people aren’t going to support that sort of expenditure when they aren’t in favour of drug use to begin with.
Add to Maryin’s list of problems the issue of litigation against the state itself, not to mention suppliers. Nicotine is bad enough, but it was in common use long before it was acknoweldged as dangerous. However it has been well established that smoking marijuana is every bit as bad as smoking an equivalent numberof cigarettes. IOW you are talking about legalising something that’s known to be dangerous when used as directed. That has to be a legal nightmare for everyone involved.
I can’t see decriminlaistaion being a solution either, and not just for the reasons’s Martin listed. Tacit legalisation of that kind produces what is essentially prohibition MkII. A substance is nominally illegal, making big usineses shy away fom it, but enforcement isn’t serious so it holds a massive attraction for illegitimate businesses. It’s almost guaranteed to encourage organised crime. Not a good idea.
You’ll forgive me if I am sceptical of a second-hand acount of an unreferenced paper presented on a website published by a group dedicted to legalising pot.
Even if this is true (I did not yet look at II Gyan II’s cite) the fact is that it is not uncommon for smokers of tobacco to smoke several packs of 20 cigarettes a day and do this for years and even decades. If a pot smoker was to smoke that much for that long… well, let’s just say that there’s not enough Cheetos in the world…
The USA still has not accepted the metric system and still uses paper money that is all the same colour. There is a lot of inertia to be overcome to legalize marijiuana, so dont hold your breath (unless you have just had a toke).
I think that tobacco may require a more complex prcoedure for rendering it pleasantly smokable than marihuana. Leastways, I’ve never heard of anyone who grew there own tobacco. And growing a houseplant is a heck of a lot easier than distilling spirits, vinting, or brewing beer.
I’m not sure what would keep folks from just growing a plant or a few (or however much one would need - I wouldn’t know) in their livingrooms. This would be exceptionally hard to regulate.
I’m not sure to what end the FDA or whoever would regulate marihuana. Perhaps it would only apply to the folks selling it commercially. Theoretically, it’d be available at the local farmer’s market.
Actually tobacco is pretty easy to make smokeable. And here in Virginia I know of many tobacco farmers here who keep a small bit of each crop for their own use.
To make a cigarette like what you’d find in a convenience store is a pretty involved process. But back in the 18th and 17th centuries when colonists were smoking tobacco it really wasn’t a very complex procedure.
Native Americans even ate tobacco leaves directly (and when they smoked or consumed it in various ways it was typical an extremely potent and high quantity which caused hallucinogenic effects.)
Well, I’d heard pharmacies in Canada (British Columbia iirc) started stocking marijuana and the prices the marijuana was selling at were pretty high.
It’s possible that current marijuana prices are 15 times what it would fetch if legalized, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll believe that until I actually see it in stores at 1/15th the current street prices.
IIRC, the pharmacies are stocking a pharmaceutical product called Sativex made by GW Pharma of UK. It’s a patented product, not the raw plant you buy on the street. The estimate I quoted refers to a free market. Controlled pricing will be different.
Blake, even if you’re correct, I’m not sure what the relevance would be of the equivalent carcinogens between tobacco and marijuana. In college I hung out with some pretty amazingly heavy pot users, the “wake and bake” crowd, and I never saw anyone smoke more than half a dozen times a day; and when they smoked, it was a pipe that they smoked, and they usually shared it with three or four other people, and the pipe contained probably about as much pot as a quarter of a cigarette, if that. So we’re talking about heavy pot users who smoked the equivalent of maybe three cigarettes a day.
I figured that we’re both left, so I may as well say the same thing as you ;).
Actually, I was aware of your post, but I wanted to try to put some more numbers to it to reinforce your point. Even if my numbers are vague, I think it’s incontrovertible that the amount of pot smoked by a heavy potsmoker doesn’t come close to the amount of tobacco smoked by a heavy tobaccosmoker, and likewise for light potsmokers and like tobaccosmokers. So a comparison between smoking equal quantities of pot and tobacco is a misleading comparison: a more apt comparison would be between the health risks of being a light tobaccosmoker and a light potsmoker.