Legalising marijuana - should it be done?

[bryce]

Agreed, I've seen so many people go from healthy, smart and generally likeable people to lazy layabout stoners, it's just ridiculous.

Sounds like they are over-abusers, a common problem for people who cannot find anything else to do. Does not do much to argue usage in moderation..

Well I was just 'puffing away on a joint' before I came into town today, I guess that's just as pathetic as the few beers I plan to have later at the rugby? Give me a break.

Hmmm. Well one of them is the leading reason for of people comitting violent crime and is legal, yet the other has no direct influence to criminal behaviour and is not only illegal but makes up around 90% of all drug offences. Imagine the impact harsher drugs would have felt by now if governments had used their resources to fight harder drugs instead.

 

[pasag]

Care to expand on this, with examples? I'd be interested to hear what others think is prominent in 'stoner culture'.

See Harold and Kumar, Otto from The Simpsons, Jay and Silent Bob etc.

 

[Top_Cat]

Hmmm. Well one of them is the leading reason for of people comitting violent crime and is legal, yet the other has no direct influence to criminal behaviour and is not only illegal but makes up around 90% of all drug offences. Imagine the impact harsher drugs would have felt by now if governments had used their resources to fight harder drugs instead.

Absolutely bugger-all, really. Most of the harder drugs or pre-cursor chems aren't locally-made or sourced any more. The hard drugs problem is an issue of distribution more than anything and no country can patrol every inch of their borders nor monitor every cargo container entering the country. And even if they threw enough money at it to be able to fix that, the question of whether it's money well spent pops up. All the money spent on enforcing the unenforceable would be immoral and somewhat mis-guided

Drugs are at the root of many social problems. But what's at the root of the drug problem? Is it a coincidence that drug-heavy geographical areas are also the same areas with residents that don't have adequate access to healthcare and education and those are the two areas which, in Australia at least, have seen vast cuts in government spending and incredible decreases in affordability?

As far as I'm concerned, it's not the drugs itself which are the problem. People of that mindset will, if we put vast sums of money in stopping importation of stuff, go huff paint-thinner instead. What promotes the mindset to want to do the drugs in the first place (I'm speaking of people dependent on junk, not casual users so much) is the bigger problem I think and one governments are less apt to solve because there's lots of competing interests at stake. It's not privatisation per se which did it because NGO's do child protection, disability, etc. better than government agencies ever did. The health-care and education sectors are the big money sinks from the perspective of a government and taxes don't generate enough to pay for them, especially since medications just cost so damn much. It's a tough one because lack of both seems to be contributors to the drug problems in some geographies, although no-one's sure how. Nor is anyone sure how to address it.

 

[16 tins of Spam]

See Harold and Kumar

One's an investment banker and the other's a genius... but yeah, I get your point.

 

[howardj]

What about the millions of men around the world who beat up their wives/girlfriends?
...

What the? Do you want me to touch on every social ill? The topic is legalising marijuana.

 

[howardj]

Meh. Just framing success in terms that a tory like you would understand.

That's quite humorous.

 

[bryce]

What the? Do you want me to touch on every social ill? The topic is legalising marijuana.

You said something about there being few more pathetic sights than someone smoking a bong, if you are aware of every social ill then I would not have thought you would have known of alot more pathetic sights.
But good(and thorough) point Top_Cat, it is definately people's midset that are really to blame for the exaggerated negativity associatiated with drugs, and the lucrativity of the drug trade in third world countries certainly has also made a telling contribution

 

[Top_Cat]

You said something about there being few more pathetic sights than someone smoking a bong, if you are aware of every social ill then I would not have thought you would have known of alot more pathetic sights.
But good(and thorough) point Top_Cat, it is definately people's midset that are really to blame for the exaggerated negativity associatiated with drugs, and the lucrativity of the drug trade in third world countries certainly has also made a telling contribution

Supply and demand, my good man. All the poppy fields in Afghanistan would be for nothing if no-one wanted heroin.

 

[Son Of Coco]

I guess it must be ridiculously cool to drink coffee every morning, or to have a beer after work most nights. It's the same thing people, except one is illegal. To label it pathetic purely on that basis must bring in to question how much people actually know about marijuana.

It's not though...that's a poor argument. It's been done to death here though so there's no point rehashing it.

 

[bryce]

I found this extract off a site which is quite interesting,

I'd go one up and decriminalize the growth and wholesaling of cannabis. But narcotics and opium-derived alkaloids are a strict no-no. It has been a long-standing conviction of mine that in an issue of legality, if science can be brought in to simplify the grey areas presented by the combination of ideology and utility, it must be brought in. To be more specific, use/trade of substances that are not toxins according to the medico-legal definition of the word must be decriminalized, and those that are toxins should remain illegal. This immediately makes marijuana/cannabis legal and perhaps LSD too. The alleged reason for the illegal status of cannabis is one of the most believable and best documented conspiracy theory of our times (I tried searching for the article on Wikipedia, unfortunately all references to DuPont's role have been removed from all articles). This causes a new problem - both alcohol and tobacco should be illegal by this definition.

Alcohol has been shown to have various medical benefits when drunk in moderate amounts, including protection against heart disease and protection against renal failure. So it should be retained as legal, but regulated - no alcohol advertisements in electronic media. Tobacco, though, would be illegal in my scheme of things. This is logistically impossible given the current situation. Even a ban on public smoking is supremely difficult to enforce, a blanket ban on tobacco is quite unthinkable. Hence, it should not (can not) be illegalized, but tobacco companies should be taxed until they bleed. I'm sure that the economic benefits derived out of a generation of a lower number of smokers will far outweigh the loss in productivity and revenue resultant from this heavy taxation. Tobacco companies that face losses will have to branch out. (In fact, the continued increase of tax on tobacco products is one of the few heartening things of our budget every year)

So, the final proposal - narcotics and amphetamines illegal, cannabis legal, alcohol legal but unadvertised, tobacco legal but unadvertised and heavily taxed, all others to be judged on similiar grounds after scientific evidence. A most perfect marriage of ideology, science, utility and freedom. What do you say?