# So why are alcohol and tobacco legal while marijuana is illegal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2005, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847 "2005-07-02T17:58:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/121 "2005-07-04T21:23:59Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > But the fact is that there has been perhaps only one society in the history of the world that did not use recreational drugs. > > Can you guess which one it is? Okay, I’ll bite. Which society was it? ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/122 "2005-07-04T21:30:19Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Okay, I’ll bite. Which society was it? I think it’s the Inuits. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/123 "2005-07-04T21:35:44Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > I think it’s the Inuits. Well, if so, that’s not really fair. They didn’t have easy access to wacky-tobacky vegetation, or vegetation that could be fermented (or vegetation generally, actually). They managed to find a way, though, getting their hallucinogenic fixes through sweat lodges. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/124 "2005-07-04T21:53:14Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > I think it’s the Inuits. We have a winner! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/125 "2005-07-04T21:55:19Z")
Meh. The exact method by which one gets into a mind-altering state seems pretty trivial to me, so a sweat lodge that induces wild hallucinations is the effective equivalent of blotter acid. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/126 "2005-07-04T21:55:57Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Well, if so, that’s not really fair. They didn’t have easy access to wacky-tobacky vegetation, or vegetation that could be fermented (or vegetation generally, actually). They managed to find a way, though, getting their hallucinogenic fixes through sweat lodges. Yeah, and the moral of the story is that humans everywhere will get loaded any time they are not so frozen that they just can’t find a mushroom to chew on. Once alcohol and other drugs were shipped in, of course, they had huge problems. (Hmmmm, what would you do when the nights are six months long and there is no TV but a big case of booze?) Therefore, stamping out drugs is going to be folly for a long time to come. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/127 "2005-07-04T21:57:30Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Meh. The exact method by which one gets into a mind-altering state seems pretty trivial to me, so a sweat lodge that induces wild hallucinations is the effective equivalent of blotter acid. I tend to agree with you on that. But it makes a big difference to the law. You can sweat yourself into all the hallucinations you want. That blotter acid is a different story. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/128 "2005-07-04T22:28:41Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > Read the articles. I am sure your attention span will handle it. Once you turn to personal insults in here, you have lost. Bye! “When come back, bring facts”. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/129 "2005-07-04T22:32:28Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Once you turn to personal insults in here, you have lost. Bye! “When come back, bring facts”. How is saying that your attention span can handle it an insult? I could see your point if I had said your attention span couldn’t handle it. So let me rephrase: It ain’t that long. Trust me. It is well within the range of things that you seem to read here with no problem. Better? Excuses gone now? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/130 "2005-07-04T23:25:36Z")
> [@](#): > > How is saying that your attention span can handle it an insult? Are you attempting to claim that you intended a compliment? This is a rather rancorous topic and you have a fairly in-your-face attitude to go with it. That is fine to a certain point. However, if you truly want to _discuss_ the topic (which was your choice in the OP), you might want to ratchet down the hostility a bit. Otherwise there is always the possibility that others will simply dismiss your arguments as ranting, regardless how cogently you believe you have framed them. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/131 "2005-07-04T23:40:50Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Are you attempting to claim that you intended a compliment? > > This is a rather rancorous topic and you have a fairly in-your-face attitude to go with it. That is fine to a certain point. However, if you truly want to _discuss_ the topic (which was your choice in the OP), you might want to ratchet down the hostility a bit. Otherwise there is always the possibility that others will simply dismiss your arguments as ranting, regardless how cogently you believe you have framed them. Just FYI, having been through a similar scenario about a thousand times before – no one seems to take offense to the point where they say they aren’t going to participate until I ask them rather directly if they have any evidence of their own. Then they haul out something usually from several messages back, that was actually relevant at the time, swear it is an intolerable insult, and leave. You can ask him yourself if he has any better research, as I did. See if he answers you. If he doesn’t, that ought to tell you something about “insults”. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2005, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/132 "2005-07-04T23:48:02Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Are you attempting to claim that you intended a compliment? Forgot to answer your question directly. Sorry. I didn’t intend is either compliment or insult. Simply a statement that the linked materials ought to be well within the reading capability of anyone who spends as much time reading this forum as he does. Therefore, I find his requests to repost everything here to be less than valid, shall we say. Do you like that phrasing better? Do you think the reading materials I linked are far too long to be considered reasonable reading by people who apparently spend a good deal of time reading a lot less valuable stuff here? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/133 "2005-07-05T00:27:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you think the reading materials I linked are far too long to be considered reasonable reading by people who apparently spend a good deal of time reading a lot less valuable stuff here? I think that deliberately commenting on another poster’s _capacity_ to read a text is insulting and I believe that you know that. If you intend to carry on every discussion with quite so much aggression, you will possibly find this an unpleasant place to post. This is not a warning or a threat, but an observation. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/134 "2005-07-05T00:30:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I think that deliberately commenting on another poster’s _capacity_ to read a text is insulting and I believe that you know that. If you intend to carry on every discussion with quite so much aggression, you will possibly find this an unpleasant place to post. > > This is not a warning or a threat, but an observation. He had previously claimed that one article was way too much to read. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/135 "2005-07-05T00:48:35Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > He had previously claimed that one article was way too much to read. No he did not. He noted that you had indicated that there was testimony in support of your position in a series of articles and that you had on more than one occasion simply waved at the entire set without indicating where in the piece the information might be found. He then asked you to assemble an actual argument in your own words rather than making a single sentence assertion and saying “the argument is in there.” Now, it might be quite easy to discover the information, and perhaps **DrDeth** was not as energetic as he could have been in his search. I really do not know or care. However, you are being disingenuous with your claims, here, and you are being needlessly argumentative. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wolfman97](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman97)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/136 "2005-07-05T00:57:39Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > No he did not. He noted that you had indicated that there was testimony in support of your position in a series of articles and that you had on more than one occasion simply waved at the entire set without indicating where in the piece the information might be found. He then asked you to assemble an actual argument in your own words rather than making a single sentence assertion and saying “the argument is in there.” Now, it might be quite easy to discover the information, and perhaps **DrDeth** was not as energetic as he could have been in his search. I really do not know or care. However, you are being disingenuous with your claims, here, and you are being needlessly argumentative. Well, not exactly, but let’s say close enough. Here it is, posted for the third time now: THE NARCOTICS BUREAU AND THE HARRISON ACT: JAILING THE HEALERS AND THE SICK - [http://www.druglibrary.org/special/king/king1.htm](http://www.druglibrary.org/special/king/king1.htm) Another excellent historical work for those interested in conspiracies. Let me give you the ten-cent summary. The US Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the Federal narcotics agents had no business interfering in the medical prescription of narcotics, even if those prescriptions were solely for the purpose of maintaining an addict on their drug of choice. In response, the FBN sent deliberately wrong fliers to doctors about USSC decisions and indicted thousands of doctors. They never brought any of the doctors to trial because they knew they would lose every case. But the indictments alone were enough to silence dissent among doctors. As for the “conspiracy” – clearly there were multiple people in government acting together to break and abuse the law – to the great detriment of the medical profession and the American public. There is the summary of the illegal action in my own words, along with a link to a not-too-long article detailing what happened, so you can verify if my summary is correct. This is the third time I have posted it. Does that fill the bill? Or do you want the full text of the article pasted into the forum, too? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/137 "2005-07-05T01:45:11Z")
> [@](#): > > This is the third time I have posted it. Does that fill the bill? Or do you want the full text of the article pasted into the forum, too? All I want is for all the posters in this thread, including you, to carry on a discussion without making personal remarks. Since my personal opinion regarding drug laws and enforcement in the U.S. tend to be a bit closer to yours than some of the other posters, you are really not winning any points by making snide remarks when I initially simply asked you to avoid personal insults. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/138 "2005-07-05T06:08:18Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > In response [to the Supreme Court decision], the FBN sent deliberately wrong fliers to doctors about USSC decisions and indicted thousands of doctors. They never brought any of the doctors to trial because they knew they would lose every case. But the indictments alone were enough to silence dissent among doctors. The article that you link to ends with the Supreme Court case, after the FBN had arrested a doctor for selling addictive narcotics to an addict–and the Court ruled that the doctor was perfectly in his right to prescribe a narcotic if he felt it was a proper cure for addiction. There is no mention of anything past that. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/139 "2005-07-05T06:18:50Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > Under the law, that still amounts to a criiminal conspiracy (assuming there was anyone actually interested in prosecuting the case) It would be a criminal conspiracy because the moral code of several million people tell them that drugs should not be allowed to be pedalled freely? If that were accurate, then you would have to prosecute all those conspiracy holders who have outlawed murder, theft, jaywalking, and anti-nudity laws. There is infinitely less reason to outlaw public display of nudity than narcotics, and yet it is outlawed. That still doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy; just that the government is full of uptight moralistic buttheads. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2005, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847/140 "2005-07-05T07:16:58Z")
> [@wolfman97](#): > > I guess you missed that part up front where it said that it was transcribed from a speech and, therefore, contains things that you might here in common speech that you wouldn’t see in a written essay. Well, I saw it the first time through and then forgot. There were various other places that had a similar style–where the writer was adding a lot more subtext than could be attributed to the facts he was displaying–and so the second time through, I mistook this for just being a worse example. Apologies. > [@](#): > > In the particular cases of the “inanities”, if you heard the tape you would have heard the judges laughing their asses off and the speaker verbally emphasizing the inanity of the whole story. Dunno, seeing as how much the Dems and Republicans are nipping at each other in the text, personally I would be enheartened that in reality they were at least being jovial about it. > [@](#): > > Well, actually, it is there on the advice of people who seemed to be better educated in those topics than you have demonstrated so far. Well, I’m not a Graphic Designer, but in general, you will do better with a dark grey text on a white background if you want to make it less harsh, or only a very subtle grey background with black. But black on white will generally look the most academic. > [@](#): > > I will put my English SAT scores, or academic record, against yours any time. 700-700. And while true, I had forgotten it was a speach, the issue isn’t so much grammar as the lack of objectivity. Many of the articles have a similar method of trying to make note of how nefarious the people it is discussing are. It will talk about the Mormons outlawing marijuana as if this is some horrible plot–while as I can’t see how anyone could expect the pillars of the core church of Mormonism to look at a bunch of dopeheads in 1920 and think of doing anything except for illegalising it. The most recent article, complains about them arresting doctors for prescribing medication to addicts and you feel this is proof of a conspiracy–yet just a few months ago the same thing was happening with Terri Schiavo, or a few years earlier with Dr. Kevorkian (sic?) In a democracy, the morallity of the majority–regardless of whether there is any logic there–or at least whoever can have the final say are the ones who get to decide law. But that is not something new, impressive, nor magical and it is certainly not a conspiracy: You just got outvoted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-are-alcohol-and-tobacco-legal-while-marijuana-is-illegal/310847.md?page=8)