I’ve a feeling that if marijuana were made legal, at least for the first couple years, there would be big problems. people would go nuts with the stuff. I bet it would be a long time before the novelty of being able to have it legally would wear off.
Anyway. My debate question is, what if it had never been made illegal in the first place? What would peoples attitude be towards it? What would it’s use be like today? same as alcohol? Would there be big problems with people driving stoned? Would there be more dope use than drinking??
whats more, would there be people screaming to ban it?
Or would alcohol be looked at as a bigger problem than pot?
Considering how easy it is to actually get this illegal substance I really doubt people would “go nuts”. Certainly there would be some more casual use of it, probably following similar patters to general alchohol use, but I don’t see anarchy in the streets.
Not to mention the fact that generally speaking marijuana is pretty good at sapping motivation from it’s user, meaning while it might be fun to think about holding up a 7-11 when your stoned, you will likely lack the motivation to even get up off the futon.
People’s attitudes towards pot are a prime reason it was made illegal in the first place. Propagandists painted pot to be a filthy Mexican habit. Since we have such a great history of racial tolerance here it wasn’t to hard to make it illegal once it was associated with our friends from south of the border.
If it had never been propagandized in the first place then it might well be viewed as similar to liquor or in even friendlier terms. I’d think liquor would by now be viewed as worse than pot as in my experience in security drinkers are a lot more violent than pot heads. That alone is likely to give it a better rap than booze.
It’s my belief that we’d be better off if marijuana had, all along, been handled the same way we’ve handled alcohol. Compared to other recreational substances, it is closer to alcohol then to any of the outlawed hard drugs (heroin, cocaine, etc.). Compared to alcohol, it seems, if anything, to be less harmful.
Our criminal justice system is wasting a lot of its resources in catching, trying, and imprisoning marijuana users, growers, and sellers – not to mention, ruining a lot of lives.
Let’s consider an alternate America, in which pot was never outlawed. How would it differ from our America?
Some of the people who are drinkers in this reality would be pot smokers in that reality. Hard to guess what the percentages would be. Bu think of any problem that comes from drinking: drunken driving, drunken asaults, drunken crimes. Less drinking would reduce the incidence of these problems. Pot smokers would cause less trouble. As Zen pointed out, they’d stay on their futons and not bother anyone.
In particular, I’d expect a lower crime rate. A lot of ordinary, everyday crime, from beating someone up to knocking over a gas station or convenience store, is comitted by people who are drunk or who have had enough drinks to impair judgement and self-control. Any of these people who got into smoking pot instead of drinking would be less likely to run around comitting crimes.
Also, in that alternate America, people with AIDS, cancer, etc. would be able to use pot for pain and nausea with no interfearence from jack booted govt thugs. In that alternate America, a lot of needless suffering was avoided, and Peter McWilliams is still alive.
Hayduke, I don’t think, if marijuana were to be decriminalized, we’d have big problems. Whatever increase in marijuana smoking occured would be at the expense of alcohol consumption. The number of people in states of mild to major impairment at any one time should remain reasonably constant.
I’ve heard the theory that pot remains illegal because the manufactorers, distributors, and sellers of alcohol want it to stay illegal so as not to cut into their profits, and are keeping the politicians on their side via campaign contributions, etc. But why, I wonder, woudn’t they think in terms of adding marijuana to their product line and making even more money?
What would be different if pot was never illegal in the first place? How about just if there never was “a war on drugs”?
According to Michael Pollan in The Botany of Desire, the current potency of pot is 10X that of pot in the 60’s and 70’s … mainly because the intense criminalization of pot drove it indoors and into the hands of serious horticulture,
Again according to the same source, the drug war has been mainly fought over pot.
Add into this mix the fact that the drug trade, specifically the increasingly very criminalized and profitable drug trade, is associated with an increase in the use of handguns during crimes and with an increase in the homicide rate. Canada has 1/3 the drug arrest rate (with likely similar drug use rates) and 1/3 the homicide rate.
So probably pot would be much less potent, and we’d have less homicides.
As to why marijauna is so taboo, he offers two stories -
One is the story that assciates hasish with the recruitment of assassins. The story was likely mostly untrue, but was oft-repeated by Harry Anslinger in his 1930’s “reefer madness” campaign for marijauna prohibition.
The second story is about Pope Innocent VIII’s condemnation of witchcraft in 1484, and specifically of cannabis as an “antisacrament” in “satanic worship.” Witches were, after all brilliant with psychoactive plants (Do a search for Cecil’s column on what riding a broomstick was all about!)
DSeid is dead on. Increased potency of all illegal drugs is directly caused by criminalization.
There are two reasons. The first is that a smuggler has to ship smaller amounts of a more potent drug, which makes smuggling safer. The second is that the user wants a return on the risk they are running by buying/using the drug, so they want a stronger drug and a more pronounced effect.
Sua
Except that it is so easy to grow! If it were legal, you’d be able to grow enough at home to keep you happy, for free (almost free anyway).
Well, except, first off, it might not be legal to grow. For example, distilled liquor, like whiskey, is legal to have and drink, but it’s illegal in the US, I believe, to distill liquor, even though stills aren’t hard to make.
Also, it’s not too difficult to brew beer, for example, as seen from the popularity of home brewing kits, or even to grow tobacco, assuming that you live in the right climate for it, but most people buy their beer and tobacco. If you buy it from the store, that gives you quality and supply assurance. Plus, even if growing hemp isn’t much work, it still is some work, and over a period of time. The plants still have to grow.
As for how America would look, I don’t think you’d see too much difference.