My country will drink your country under the table.
Oh, and I’m another poster checking in to answer the OP with a simple: no. No good reason that it’s illegal.
Threads like this make me wonder how much of a third rail this issue really is. I remember a Republican from Arizona maybe, who suggested legalization and it sparked an outrage. He only made the comments because he was not running for re-election.
Does anybody have a cite to a poll on legalization of marijuana? The pro-pot bills usually seem to do good at the state level. shrug
I don’t think so, Malthus. I don’t think it’s been legalized in Canada, just decriminalized. That’s already the case in some states here. Full legalization or decriminalization is a ways away, I think.
That’s because they are already addicted to nicotine. Someone new to smoking may never deign to try a cigarette for a mild buzz when he can smoke a joint getting him high. The fact that nicotine is much more addictive than pot may also pull new users towards pot.
Depends on how much you smoke. Again, the reason that people smoke cigarettes during work is because it’s become a habit and there’s craving.
My anecdotal experience is completely the opposite. I rarely smoke any pot. But when I did, we would never mix any alcohol with it. In fact, alcohol was only consumed when pot was unavailable (happened occasionally).
Maybe, but that’s not the point. These companies can’t be sure what the dynamics of the atmosphere where pot is legalized will be. The short and long-term trends and market for both alcohol and cigs are established. No big company likes to stir the pot (no pun) when they’re already doing well.
Decriminalization seems like a good stepping stone to full legalization, though.
Besides, as others have already pointed out, one can grow enough marijuana for a small group of people. If it’s decriminalized, that would seem to be enough of a fix.
No more overcrowded prisons with personal pot users.
No more wasted resources arresting and trying pot users.
The criminal elements that are currently profiting from pot being illegal would continue to do so somewhat, but to a much lesser degree.
I, for one, would be happy with just decriminalization. Maybe it could stop there. Just getting rid of laws making pot illegal is almost as good as passing laws making pot legal, IMHO.
Plus, I don’t know if we need to have CVS and the corner store stocking Marlboro Greens anytime soon. It would just be too much in the face of the anti-drug folks who think it’s harmful. Let those that want to grow the plants and distribute small amounts of it themselves. This keeps it out of peoples faces for the time being.
O.K. I usually avoid most drug legalization threads, but I just poked my head in here and found this post amazing. And then I was further amazed that nobody, but nobody seemed to question it.
The illegality of certain substances is due to a worldwide conspiracy to further a totalitarian government? Ummmm, I hate to ask, but do you have a cite for this? Or any logical basis? Thanks.
As I sit here, bored as any monday, several different “ideas” come to mind. I am sure some one has discussed some of these at one point, but I want to clear the room of smoke before people continue…
If the government was to make pot legal, people do not have to know. We have historicaly in this country with-held information (Think the atomic bomb, truman didn’t even know its exsistence untill it was to be dropped and the American public didn’t know till much after the war… i think…). Anyways, why not legalize it… and not say anything… and then just allow whatever to happen, without any form of punishment? Beyond that, who says that the government would have to produce it? Why not just allow it to be legalized, and look around it? How hard would that be?
70 odd percent supports legalization… where are the other 30 in this thread?
As for the actual question, the government meant to legalize pot awhile ago, but they forgot.
Indeed. On the few occasions when I’ve smoked a cigarette, my reaction was “This hurts my throat a lot more than pot, and isn’t nearly as fun.” Maybe it would’ve been different if I’d tried cigarettes first, but they just seem pointless to me. Hamlet, I didn’t see anything in his post about a worldwide conspiracy, just a policy that has fnord been pushed on other countries by the U.S. government. capacitor:
First, that page gives no evidence that he was high at the time. Testing positive for marijuana only means that he used it at some point in the past few weeks (which you can assume is true of anyone who carries joints in his backpack ;)).
Second, I don’t think anyone has suggested making it legal to drive cars or subway trains while high.
Legalizing marijuana would not have anything to do with it. It would still be a crime to operate a vehicle while intoxicated on any substance.
Not too long ago, a teen was convicted for causing a car accident while driving under the influence of marijuana. The issue at hand was not that he was using an illegal substance, but that he was impared while driving, the same as he would have been if he had consumed alcohol (which, at his age, was also illegal.)
Most employers also have rules against working while intoxicated. I doubt if this would change.
Despite the fact that alcohol was completely illegal in the United States starting in 1919 – with a Constitutional amendment to back up its illegality, no less – we managed to repeal Prohibition in the 1930s.
What political forces were in place in the 1930s that enabled us to repeal Prohibition then? Could those same kinds of political forces be mustered to legalize marijuana today?
Unfortunately, the primary force was the Great Depression. As much as I’d like to see marijuana legalized, I don’t want to go that route again!
Other factors were:
The original supermajority in favor of Prohibition was a product of wartime hysteria which tended to dissipate after World War I ended.
Alcohol had been legal, and widely consumed, for so long that people had more of an opporunity for a before-and-after comparison. They could remember that the “before”, when alcohol was legal, wasn’t that bad, and they could see that the “after”, with bootlegger gang warfare, was horrible. Whereas, no one has any memory of marijuana being legal, so people tend to assume that the worst would happen (we’d become a nation of Cheech and Chongs) if it were.
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I don’t see why not. The fact that 11 states have decriminalized is encouraging. (Until I looked it up to respond to Lissa’s post above, I hadn’t thought there were more than one or two.) It will be a long slow slog. It’s hard to repeal dumb laws, but it can be done.
Though it’s well worth noting that the fact that brewing one’s own alcohol is legal (up to, I believe, 200 gallons per year per household in the United States) does not seem to have done any significant harm to the profitability of wineries and liquor stores and, thus, their tax haul. (Home distilling is illegal in the States, but that’s still a lot of beer, wine, ale, and mead. Not to mention cordials and flavored spirits produced by getting already-distilled stuff and modifying it.)
A gallon of must comes out to four and a half or five standard-sized wine bottles, depending on the sediment, for non-homebrewers who want a sense of scale on that. I don’t produce anywhere near the maximum booze output I’m permitted under the law without registering as a brewery, and I not only potentially but actually provide booze to a small group of friends.
I suspect if pot were legalised the tax revenue would go up steadily, because I bet a fair number of people who are equipped to grow their own would rather put their time and energy somewhere else, or don’t find it appealing anymore without the challenge. You’ll still have hobby growers, just like you have hobby brewers, and (if the law winds up like homebrewing law) they won’t be allowed to sell their product, just give it away. Probably some of the hobby growers will produce better stuff than is easily and cheaply commercially available, too; that’s the case with brewers.
But the commercial availability will mean that only people who want hands-on or really care about the intimate quality of their product or who want to do something that isn’t commonly available will get into the hobby, and that’s not going to be enough to satisfy the total demand. Over time, the people who learned how to grow their own because that was the only way or who took up growing their own on principle will wind up outnumbered by the people who just go down to the corner store for their packet of weed, and eventually the grow-your-own will be the hobbyists, not the default.
First of all you’re entire argument is made pointless by the use of an outrageously biased source/cite.
That aside, marijuana has been proven to affect both reflexes and timing when driving (and not in a good way, but instead having much the same effects that alcohol does.)
As for your vaunted scientific evidence, hell I could throw out “scientific evidence” proving that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.
You must not have read Thea’s link, because if you had, you would have noticed the extensive citing there. You don’t have to take NORML’s word for it; you can look up the documents they cited. If you refuse to believe the information simply because it’s on NORML’s web site, then you are the biased one.
Do you have a cite for that ‘proof’?
Perhaps you should read SPOOFE’s link as well. Don’t be scared by “norml” in the URL; they quote from several studies and they list their cites on that page, just like on the other one. For example:
Now that’d be interesting. Somehow, I think the evidence you threw out would be… less than scientific.
People who are drunk, eating, drinking a beverage, on the phone, listening to the radio, speaking to a friend, watching road signs, on medication, suffering from illness, or 100% sober, can all cause disastrous accidents. Which is a long way of saying that’s a pretty weak argument.
And anyway, your cite says this:
Makes it sound like this was mostly a tragic accident of circumstance, perhaps combined with some incompetence- but not a drug thing.