Legalizing Marijuana: Why Should It Be Done...

[Fraggle Rocker]

Don't forget that gangs that control turf have the advantage of artificially inflating drug prices, since they force out any competition. In the United States, we have similar problems with legal pharmaceutical products. How do we ensure prices stay low enough that addicts don't have to mug other people to pay for them?

It seems to work okay with tobacco, which is far more addictive than almost all of the illegal drugs. Even with the government taxes raising the price of cigarettes up to ten times their free market value, tobacco addicts in withdrawal bum cigs off of strangers but they don't mug them.

It also seems to work okay with alcohol, which is less addictive than tobacco but makes up for it by motivating much more violent anti-social behavior. A lot of winos live on the street because they're too drunk to work and too broke to pay rent, yet they merely pester us for booze money rather than robbing us.

And it works okay with caffeine, even though it drives quite a few of its users berserk. Nobody's ever been mugged by a Starbucks junkie with the shakes.

Many prescription drugs are horribly expensive. Some of that is simply capturing the R&D costs, while some is just opportunism, taking advantage of the elderly. But there's a limit to how high a corporation could raise the price of a recreational drug because they're too easy for laymen to produce. You can grow marijuana indoors under lights. Refining coca leaves and opium poppies is not rocket science. You can't say that about some of these ten-dollar pills that your grandpa takes.

If sale and use were legal it would be difficult to crack down on private bootleggers undercutting corporate prices. And especially difficult to crack down on people who grow their own and don't even transact business. Prices would have a more or less reasonable cap because of competition from suppliers who are not members of the corporate guild.

Yes but is there psychological addiction without chemical changes in the body?

People can become addicted, in the colloquial sense of the word, to a great many things, including sex and shopping. The path to ruination of their lives is much the same as with chemical addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms can be harder to treat.

Many of the drugs of the hippie era, such as marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms, seem to have no physically addictive properties. In fact, often just the opposite because the highs can be self-limiting. A second dose of acid is useless and smoking more pot after being stoned for 4-6 hours usually results only in a craving for sugar, followed by carbohydrate shock and sleep. But people can become so enamored of the feeling of being high that the term "psychological addiction" is meaningful. We just have to keep our perspective and remember that this is the same kind of craving people get from the joy of sex or shopping.

 

[android]

Legalizing marijuana should be done so that non-smokers do not bear the burden of smokers. If marijuana is not harmful, smokers will be OK; if not, who cares? It's not a mandatory behavior so we can afford to lose a few to it.

 

[lixluke]

People generally don't want crack on the streets, and they don't want the crime that comes with it. Even if it was legal, addicts would still be mugging innocent people so they could afford their fix. Marijuana doesn't generally cause this sort of problem. Alcohol is likely responsible for far more violent and criminal behavior.

As for telling people what they can consume, I think the safety of many overrides the luxury of a few. Nobody's being told they can't eat, they're being told that if they eat this stuff, they're going to jail because it presents an unwarranted hazard to everyone else.

Well said.

This is hypocritical.
If you legalize MJ, you have to do the same to other drugs. You cannot just say ok, I like this drug better, so it should be legal.

 

[leopold]

okay lets suppose we want to solve this question
lets also suppose that the national drug has been narrowed down to 2 choices namely alcohol and marijuana.
which should it be?
lets draw up a list of what defines a national drug.
1. it must be well known
2. the effects of the drug should be easily predictable
3. it must do the job of being the national drug.

marijuana and alcohol both pass 1
marijuana fails both 2 and 3

the effects of marijuana is not easily predictable in first time users.

marijuana falls flat on its face with doing the job of the national drug.

in my opinion we already have a national drug, it's called alcohol.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

This is hypocritical. If you legalize MJ, you have to do the same to other drugs. You cannot just say ok, I like this drug better, so it should be legal.

That's a wonderful idea and many of us dream of a world like that. But this world isn't like that. The people in power in the USA made the decision 70 years ago that they do indeed like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine better than the drugs other people like. And so they made their group of favorites legal and everyone else's are illegal. Even despite considerable evidence that their drugs are objectively no less harmful than most of the others.

Whether this is morally right or wrong, it has been proven that a government can actually do this, even when it violates its own Constitution. (Remember that they played by the rules and passed an Amendment in order to outlaw alcohol, but since the days of FDR the rules have been increasingly ignored.)

Most people in the anti-drug-war movement have resigned themselves to the fact that it will be difficult to get all drugs legalized. So they'll settle for the one that is most popular, least harmful, and already supported by a majority of the voters in several states and the District of Columbia: marijuana.

 

[leopold]

there are some cases where the majority is wrong.
living forever or almost forever
a situation like that would be death to our society as we know it.
i believe that legalizing marijuana is another case where the majority is wrong.

you must remember that we are dealing with all manner of people from the ones that can get buzzed on 3 beers to the ones that can drink 2 cases and still walk.
marijuana has no hopes of dealing with that wide range.

 

[baumgarten]

It seems to work okay with tobacco, which is far more addictive than almost all of the illegal drugs. Even with the government taxes raising the price of cigarettes up to ten times their free market value, tobacco addicts in withdrawal bum cigs off of strangers but they don't mug them.

It also seems to work okay with alcohol, which is less addictive than tobacco but makes up for it by motivating much more violent anti-social behavior. A lot of winos live on the street because they're too drunk to work and too broke to pay rent, yet they merely pester us for booze money rather than robbing us.

And it works okay with caffeine, even though it drives quite a few of its users berserk. Nobody's ever been mugged by a Starbucks junkie with the shakes.

Many prescription drugs are horribly expensive. Some of that is simply capturing the R&D costs, while some is just opportunism, taking advantage of the elderly. But there's a limit to how high a corporation could raise the price of a recreational drug because they're too easy for laymen to produce. You can grow marijuana indoors under lights. Refining coca leaves and opium poppies is not rocket science. You can't say that about some of these ten-dollar pills that your grandpa takes.

If sale and use were legal it would be difficult to crack down on private bootleggers undercutting corporate prices. And especially difficult to crack down on people who grow their own and don't even transact business. Prices would have a more or less reasonable cap because of competition from suppliers who are not members of the corporate guild.

What about more potent drugs like cocaine and heroin? I agree that marijuana should be legal.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

you must remember that we are dealing with all manner of people from the ones that can get buzzed on 3 beers to the ones that can drink 2 cases and still walk.
marijuana has no hopes of dealing with that wide range.

And what in the world is your source material for that sweeping conclusion? More government propaganda? I spent the 1960s and 70s in California, where it seemed like half the population was into grass. I never once observed the kind of dangerous, violent, and/or self-destructive behavior that I see almost every time I stay in a bar late enough to hear the band's third set. That "wide range" you hypothesize is apparently based on an analogy with alcohol that is not valid. The stupidest thing I've ever seen a stoned person do is drive, and unlike drunks, who think they can fly, they stay in the right lane and keep to 50mph; it's as if it compensates by increasing their sense of self-preservation. The most self-destructive thing pot-heads do is get "the munchies" and overeat. And the most anti-social thing they do is lose their drive for consumerism: all they want to buy is food and music. Personally I believe that is the real reason that the people in power in America don't want their customers getting high.

Yes I've heard all the horror stories about kids doing awful things while stoned. Those are KIDS! Kids should not be taking drugs, not even the caffeine we pour down their throats and conceal in their chocolate bars. They react to things more strongly than adults, they haven't developed adult sense and judgment, and perhaps most importantly their central nervous systems aren't finished growing and we shouldn't want them artificially altering the direction in which they grow.

What about more potent drugs like cocaine and heroin? I agree that marijuana should be legal.

"More potent." Another line from the government's drug handbook? I've read quotes from old-timer addicts who say heroin and cocaine are baby food compared to the crap that people are brewing up today in laboratories... often for the very reason that the stuff they're inventing hasn't been outlawed yet!

Forty years ago I knew people who were as old as I am now, and had clear memories of the era in which cocaine and opiates were legal. They did not observe the drug reactions that make the news today. For a variety of reasons:

They were getting properly manufactured mixtures, so there was no danger of accidental overdoses. They were getting their drugs from doctors and pharmacists, who took a lot of personal interest in making sure they didn't keep increasing their dose. Cocaine of course was mixed with the caffeine in soft drinks, but it was so diluted that nobody could drink enough to hurt themselves. (In case you ever wondered about there being two popular kinds of "Coke," there used to be just one kind.) And because they weren't paying black market prices, they didn't have to ration their consumption by mixing their drug of choice with something cheaper. It seems that these days everybody adds alcohol to their high because they don't want to run out of their first choice. That's a terrible thing to do with today's cocaine, which is mixed with amphetamine by the dealers, because the speed and the booze mask each other's side effects; you could take a lethal dose of both of them and not even know it until you pass out. Alcohol is a terrible thing to add to any drug party because it's the booze that generates all the rotten behavior. Next time you see a "news" story about somebody taking drugs and getting in trouble, look carefully and see if they even tested him for alcohol, or bothered to tell you the results of the test! Elvis, Marilyn, Janis, Jimi... as far as I know every single high-profile "drug-related death" also involved copious amounts of alcohol. (I still haven't even been able to find the info on Layne.)

Heroin, the most potent form of opium, never even became very popular. Most people smoked unrefined opium or ingested it as a medicinal solution called Laudanum. The "hard core addicts" of the day injected it as morphine, which is more potent but still nothing like heroin. It has been argued that the invention of heroin is yet another second-order effect of prohibition. I haven't been able to google the ratio of concentration, but it's at least ten times stronger than morphine, which means it's much easier to conceal and transport, making it a safer product for black market commerce.

This is the same reason that crack cocaine was invented. If powder cocaine were legal, no one would probably have bothered trying to refine it into a smaller package.

It's also one of the reasons that so many young people who want to experiment with getting high are turning to drugs other than marijuana. It's bulky, it stinks, it stinks even more strongly when you light it up to smoke, and it shows up in a urine test for weeks after smoking just one joint, all of which makes it really difficult to get away with. Even if it's not as bad for you as something like meth, the government has made meth more attractive.

 

[leopold]

okay fraggle lets take a scenario.
you buy some weed and some beer to do a test.
you roll a joint and you smoke it
after smoking the joint you determine that you aren't high enough so you roll another joint.
but to your disappointment when you smoke it you do not get any higher.

now for the beer.
you guzzle down 2 cans and decide you aren't high enough.
with beer the answer is simple, more beer.
with weed you have no choice but to search for another drug.

no, we have a national drug, it's called alcohol.

 

[spuriousmonkey]

What about just smoking more weed as an option.

 

[leopold]

What about just smoking more weed as an option.

re-read my previous post.

if you buy say 7 grams of pot and roll a joint then smoke it
the buzz you get is as high as you are going to get from that particular batch of weed. it doesn't matter if you smoke 4 joints or 1.
this is one of the reasons marijuana is a gateway drug because the high isn't sufficient for some people.

 

[TruthSeeker]

This is hypocritical.

SF is always hypocritical...

If you legalize MJ, you have to do the same to other drugs. You cannot just say ok, I like this drug better, so it should be legal.

That's stupid. Alcohol and cigarretes, which are way worse, are legalized while MJ is not.

 

[TruthSeeker]

the effects of marijuana is not easily predictable in first time users.

eh? what?

marijuana falls flat on its face with doing the job of the national drug.

How's that relevant at all!

in my opinion we already have a national drug, it's called alcohol.

Which is way more addictive and impairing then pot...

 

[TruthSeeker]

I agree with Fraggle. Very well said...

leopold, it looks like you are not very familiar with pot. Yes, some people roll a joint and don't get enough of a buzz. I'm one of them, in fact. But there are other ways to smoke that are much more effective, such as pipes and bongs.

Regardless, in any situation, alcohol and cigarretes are by far way more endangering, addictive and imparing then any amount of marijuana.

 

[spuriousmonkey]

re-read my previous post.

if you buy say 7 grams of pot and roll a joint then smoke it
the buzz you get is as high as you are going to get from that particular batch of weed. it doesn't matter if you smoke 4 joints or 1.
this is one of the reasons marijuana is a gateway drug because the high isn't sufficient for some people.

Ok..I am used to the Dutch situation. You have different strengths and the lowest strenght already can totally knock me off my feet.

 

[leopold]

leopold, it looks like you are not very familiar with pot. Yes, some people roll a joint and don't get enough of a buzz. I'm one of them, in fact. But there are other ways to smoke that are much more effective, such as pipes and bongs.

i want you to tell me that the more pot you smoke from a particular batch of weed the higher you get, like beer does.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Beer is addictive.

 

[leopold]

does that mean you can't refut my premise?

 

[tablariddim]

i want you to tell me that the more pot you smoke from a particular batch of weed the higher you get, like beer does.

Not everyone wants to get as high as the sky or to blow their minds to kingdom come. people that enjoy the typical MJ high are happy enough with that. With MJ you can smoke every few hours and keep the buzz going all day enhancing all your creative endeavours and your sex life; with alcohol you'll just get drunk and useless if you drink it all day.

 

[TruthSeeker]

does that mean you can't refut my premise?

Actually, there are many ways to refute all your premises!