Wrong. It is not magical thinking in that marijuana DOES provide a myriad of health benefits. Furthermore, side effects are minimal. Everything has side effects including food.
Keep legalizing it. Even Bill Buckley (who was what I like to call a “friendly acquaintance” of mine back in the day) proposed legalizing it. Probably 90% or more of my Prosecutors office wanted it legalized.
I would hate to see it legalized because it would become ubiquitous because it would be so readily available, the stigma (what’s left of it) would be gone, and younger and younger kids would be using it. Not everyone, I understand that, but more people would use and those that use would do it more frequently. Before long, Wwe would have a stupefied population even worse than we now have.
In addition to that, drug cartels would flourish because since it’s legal, people can have it in their possession and how will the cops know whether they got if from a street dealer or a legal dealer? The street dealers will always be able to undercut the legal dealers on the black market because of the tax the government will put on the legal stuff.
The proliferation of street dealers will mean an increased trade in other drugs as well. Besides, how can it be argued that the government can’t tell you what you can put in your body, which is one of the biggest arguments for legalization. If you legalize marijuana, you’ll eventually have to legalize other drugs.
Marijuana is addictive. The marijuana of today is much more potent than anything that was around in the 60’s and 70’s. Will we now have to grow government and create yet another agency to regulate and oversee the standardization of marijuana?
Will marijuana smoking be banned in public places like tobacco smoking? There are already hooka bars, they will just supplant the fake stuff with the real stuff. Then taverns will argue that since marijuana smoking is allowed in hooka bars, people should be able to smoke tobacco in their bars. There are as many tars and nicotine in marijuana as tobacco. So the second hand smoke argument will be gone.
I’m not saying any of this will happen over night, but it will be the catalyst of a steady, generational erosion of society.
I think Buckley would agree.