# Screw weed, legalise crack and smack **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2012, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203 "2012-08-11T17:51:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203/81 "2012-08-17T23:55:34Z")
> [@baka420](#): > > I don’t understand why you put “my” in quotation marks. Are you saying you don’t actually have a personal opinion on the topic and just enjoy quoting facts and figures? I understand your point but I don’t understand how legalization increases the amount of people attending rehab, if anything it decreases it. All I am asking is how exactly legalizing heroin will cut heroin addiction. I know it’s a hard question to answer but it is the basis of your entire argument. Punishment leads to treatment as rehab IS the punishment. I don’t feel like I am qualified to give some sort of explanation that would qualify as my own. I’m not a researcher or expert, so I prefer to just link my source rather than try to “put it in my own words”. ---
**Author:** ![stw004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@stw004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stw004)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2012, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203/82 "2012-08-18T03:44:51Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > We have lots of laws on the books that apply to a majority of people who don’t cause harm of some sort. Not every speeder or drunk driver hits anyone. So you favor eliminating those laws on that basis? And again, they aren’t arrested because they have the potential to harm someone; they are arrested for breaking duly enacted laws created to guard against that potential. Why is that so hard for you to understand? > > In most municipalities you can’t fire a gun or shoot off fireworks on your own property, and the reasoning is the same - there is simply too much potential for harm to innocent parties. (This includes your own friends and family, btw. You have no more right to expose a family member, friend or neighbor to harm, or to cause them harm, than you do anyone else. Anti-drug laws seek to protect those around you from harm as well as the public at large.) And of course you can’t rob, defraud, assault or murder anyone on your own property either. > > I’d be careful about using that word “assinine” if I were you. I’m going to ignore the first half of your post since apparently you failed to read my entire post before responding. Care to cite your assertion that municipal laws against discharging firearms and fireworks are in the interest of public safety and not to prevent disturbance of the peace? Your statement about assault etc on your own property is a straw man. As those are crimes outright, drug laws seek to punish people based on the assumption that drug users are at an increased of committing those crimes. Statistics show that poor people are the most likely to commit most crimes, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t get behind preemptively locking up someone for being poor in the interest of public safety. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203/83 "2012-08-21T19:51:30Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > …We’re much further away from something similar in regards to heroine and other more dangerous drugs… Friends don’t let friends read Nancy Drew. ---
**Author:** ![pipaton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@pipaton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pipaton)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2012, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203/84 "2012-08-27T04:39:30Z")
I’ve got a question, if coca is part of a person culture, do they need to get special permission to use it? or are they altogether forbidden from using it outside their community? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/screw-weed-legalise-crack-and-smack/631203.md?page=4)