Long term, there are public health costs, as cannabis has been shown to be impair cognition. Yes, it makes people stupid.
short term, there are costs arising from the fact that some very dangerous criminal elements are involved with the production, distribution, and retailing of cannabis.
You will object that the criminal problems are artificial and will be mitigated or eliminated with decriminalization. That does nothing to solve the fundamental and uncurable objection, that the stuff is bad for you. You will object that we allow alcohol and tobacco, both of which can do harm if abused. The answer is that alcohol use is governed by millennia of custom in every culture, so that the human race has developed standards for use that are socially enforced. Moreover, even the occasional abuse of alcohol usually imparts no lasting damage to health. Worldwide, tobacco use is declining in developed countries as its risk to health comes to be better understood. There is no good reason to sanction the artificial mainstreaming of a recreational drug non-native to every successful culture on earth.
“That does nothing to solve the fundamental and uncurable objection, that the stuff is bad for you.”
That fallacy ruins any argument you might put forward on this matter. I spent 25+ years taking prescribed medicine for depression & anxiety that never really helped me get better. Last year, out of desperation I began using cannabis. Thankfully, it works for me. The pill bottles are gone. My only regret is I didn’t start using it sooner.
There’s lots of research out there that PROVES cannabis is GOOD for some people. Not everyone. But for some. Educate yourself & have a great day. Peace :)
Bullshit.
Alcohol is BY FAR the worst drug on the face of the earth.
The Prohibitionist Mind is amazing in the amount of rationalization it can spew in an effort to excuse outright Tyranny.
Contraband Law is Tyrannical. Putting someone in prison (or threatening them with it) for possessing the wrong plant, liquid spirits, or medicine is as Authoritarian as it gets.
Using such expansive logic, Nanny-staters can justify virtually any amount of Arbitrary Law.
"It's bad for you"? "Public health costs"? Socialist much?
Left wing authoritarians use the same invalid reasoning for their petty authoritarian causes.
No thanks. I'll take actual Liberty, with all of its challenges and warts.
If an action does not directly infringe on others' rights, there's no justification for criminalizing it.
It's no wonder we have such dwindling Freedom in this country, what with everyone being so willing to whittle it down with self-righteous, hysterical demagoguery, until we end up with to the "least common denominator" of Freedom due to the fact the each little petty group ends up fomenting their petty Tyranny on everyone else.
Arbitrary Law is an abomination. If you argue for it, you argue for Tyranny. There's no limit to what the State can justify when it starts being everyone's nanny.
My concept of the "Pursuit of Happiness" is not subject to your authoritarian whims, any more than your concept of it is subject to mine. If I want to smoke tobacco or weed, no amount of logic can ever justify persecuting or prosecuting me for that choice.
Prohibition always causes more problems than it solves, and is inherently Tyrannical. It was tried with alcohol, with perfectly predictable results, and other drugs are no different. It leads to a biiger and bigger police state, replete with no-knock warrants, dead citizens, disregard for the 4th Amendment, legalized theft via asset forfeiture, and all manner of Statist hysteria and abuse.
So petty Drug War fascists need to stop complaining when nanny-staters on the Left try to regulate conservatives' freedoms using the same exact Tyrannical logic.
Freedom is simple. When someone infringes on your rights, recklessly endangers your safety, etc., that's where the Law is legitimate. But anyone who wants to imprison someone based on contraband law has little conception of the true nature of Freedom. All such uses of Law to coerce and threaten people are evil.
Education, not legislation, is the answer to a Free People. Coercion at the hands of an all-powerful Nanny State will never be a legitimate solution in America.
Contraband Law necessarily requires a large government apparatus to enforce it. Prohibitionists must necessarily be, therefore, supporters of Big Government, and must embrace the ever-expanding Police State which is needed to enforce such Law. All else is hypocrisy.
I have done a lot of searching for factual evidence about marijuana, and it is indeed harmful in subltke and not subtle ways, short term and long term. Just one is the permanent lowering of IQ (depends on how long it’s smoked and other factors) but it is a fact that mj makes people permanently stupider.
Now that the THC content is ratcheting up and up, it’s getting more and more dangerous. I used to smoke it in the olden days when it was far, far less potent and it was freaking strange then, and I hung out with dopers and some dealers and saw life on the seamy side, for a couple of years (crash course in it) until I saw light and turned away from the doper life.
More and more research is now being done, what with so many pot heads for years, about the long as well as obvious short term damage form mj. The evidence is clear. But dopers refuse to even consider that there is any downside to the all purpose wonder weed.
I live in a state that just legalized pot, and many people grew it already. Now that it’s legal, life here has gotten even stranger and will continue to do so. In CO they thought legalizing it would stop the black market, of course they were wrong. Why go the legal route when it means you have have pay for licences, permits, fees and then pay tax? Same thing here. They’re going to suck the acquifer or suck the dwindling creeks, use who knows what chemicals on it that will get into the watersheds and streams, already car crashes have gone way up, break ins as well, and just general craziness.
A lot of very strange characters have moved in and are buying properties with cash, and dope “farms” are going up everywhere. The vast majority do not have permits and there is no LE so they’re going to grow any old way they want, use up water, pollute, trash the places they bought, and who knows what else.
No civilization can endure when a large proportion of the citizenry are doped up or drunkards. I’ve also been arging with libertarians and pro-dope people for years, and they’re the worst of the worst when it comes to reasoned discourse. The only cause for that I can come up with they’re stoned and lost the ability for cognitive thinking. If any of them reply to this comment, I won’t bother to read it or reply. Life’s too short.
Another interesting factoid I found years ago is that for a long time, Soros heavily funded all the legalize mj organizations. Now why would Soros, one of the most evil men on the planet, want mj legal in the US? People should think about that.