Posted on 05/05/2007 8:07:29 AM PDT by dukeman
I have never indulged in marijuana. That said its use and posession should be legalized immediately and without undue further delay.
If some idiots want to get stoned, fine. If they operate motor vehicles, there are already plenty of laws against that. Off to gaol they shall go.
Most folk on dope are too dopey and clumsy and obvious to be dangerous: quite the contrary, it is an easy matter to arrest them and slap on the cuffs — in their current condition they do not care. They are generally docile and goofy, perhaps even entertainingly so.
So where is the harm? Why do we spend squillions enforcing a law against a plant that is essentially a very hardy noxious weed, universally available? And so what if it is dangerous for health? So is tobacco. Alcohol is every bit as dangerous.
Mary Jane should be legalized and free for use as the stupid person’s drug-of-choice. By doing so, it would also be available for legitimate medical purposes, of which I understand there are many: particularly pain relief.
This could be legalized in ten minutes, max. It’s a no-brainer.
*DieHard*
Yes, this is true... although they'd be somewhat lower as the availability of a partial substitute good would lure some of the demand away. But that's like saying that if you buy a burglar alarm, your house may still burn down. Yes, and?
If THC content is regulated, dealers will sell high potency pot.
And if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather. I'm all for requirements to label pot for potency... just as we do with alcohol and tobacco. Why should the government mandate certain potencies?
They'll sell pot laced with other drugs.
Rather like saying that there's a thriving black market in baggies, which drug dealers sell laced with marijuana.
They'll sell to the under-aged.
Indeed... although the underaged would find it harder to get pot, with much of the supply going to licensed dealers with a strong financial incentive not to sell to minors. Nowadays, 100% of marijuana is sold by dealers who don't check ID. And, of course, if law enforcement didn't have to spend so many resources tracking down and arresting responsible adult consumers, they'd have that much more to devote to busting the scum who sell to kids.
They'll sell it untaxed.
Which is why our cities are infested with low-life scum peddling untaxed alcohol on the streets, right? Got news for you, sport: supplying a black market is expensive. There are costs to keeping one's operation clandestine, to bribing law enforcement and judicial officers, opportunity costs to the necessary small-scale production forgoing economies of scale, and of course the cost of purchasing weapons and hiring enforcers to resolve disputes in a market which cannot use the civil court system. Black markets cannot be price-competitive with free markets, and taxes could be ridiculously high (as they are on alcohol and tobacco) without making illicit drugs a good buy for the consumer.
Alcohol is every bit as dangerous.
On the contrary, alcohol is much, much, much more dangerous than pot. But of course it shouldn't be prohibited for this reason; while many fall victim to alcohol's consequences, many more use it responsibly and without much in the way of ill effects. Alcohol brings pleasure to the vast majority of its consumers, who are aware of its risks and consider them worthwhile. The same is true of illicit drugs, and would be even more true if drug prohibition itself didn't vastly magnify the dangers.
Seems a very appropriate location.
Good one.
Sorry your thread got pulled, check your mail.
> On the contrary, alcohol is much, much, much more dangerous than pot. But of course it shouldn’t be prohibited for this reason; while many fall victim to alcohol’s consequences, many more use it responsibly and without much in the way of ill effects. Alcohol brings pleasure to the vast majority of its consumers, who are aware of its risks and consider them worthwhile. The same is true of illicit drugs, and would be even more true if drug prohibition itself didn’t vastly magnify the dangers.
I agree with everything you have said, mate. I was using moderate language to avoid stirring up the pro-alcohol hornet’s nest. You were right to haul me up on that one, for the avoidance of doubt.
*DieHard*
The "and" is that the illegal conduit remains. As I said, it would be like legalizing wine during Prohibition. Those who drink wine certainly would be in favor. But what does it really solve?
"Why should the government mandate certain potencies?"
To get the votes for legalization. From parents concerned about their kids getting hooked on high potency pot as they're concerned about their kids getting hooked on cigarettes because the tobacco companies are "deliberately increasing nicotine content".
"Indeed... although the underaged would find it harder to get pot"
Harder to get. Sure. But harder to get means nothing. Today, kids admit that alcohol is harder to get than pot -- yet they use alcohol 2:1 over pot. Why? Because society says it's OK (Hey, how bad can it be? It's legal!)
"have to spend so many resources tracking down and arresting responsible adult consumers"
True. Instead they'll have to spend their time running sting operations on 500,000 retail outlets selling marijuana.
"Black markets cannot be price-competitive with free markets, and taxes could be ridiculously high (as they are on alcohol and tobacco) without making illicit drugs a good buy for the consumer."
The taxes on alcohol aren't there yet. But they are on cigarettes.
"Thanks to recent city- and state-level tax hikes, New York City now has the highest cigarette taxes in the country—a combined state and local tax rate of $3.00 per pack. Consumers have responded by turning to the city's bustling black market and other low-tax sources of cigarettes. During the four months following the recent tax hikes, sales of taxed cigarettes in the city fell by more than 50 percent compared to the same period the prior year."
" New York has a long history of cigarette tax evasion. Former governor Malcolm Wilson dubbed the city the "promised land for cigarette bootleggers." Over the decades, a series of studies by federal, state, and city officials has found that high taxes have created a thriving illegal market for cigarettes in the city. That market has diverted billions of dollars from legitimate businesses and governments to criminals."
If you could be convinced that, if marijuana was legalized, the number of underage marijuana users would at least double, maybe triple, would you still want it legalized?
> If you could be convinced that, if marijuana was legalized, the number of underage marijuana users would at least double, maybe triple, would you still want it legalized?
Definitely. Particularly if it kept the same underaged marijuana users sufficiently stunned that they did not experiment with P-Methamphetamine. This would keep my Patrol much safer.
Naturally, I’d prefer people left such substances alone. But they won’t — so my fallback position is to prefer that they have easy and cheap access to substances that will do them and everyone around them the least amount of harm.
I added an appropriate class of miscreants.
Can put them all in a bottle,shake it up and pour them all out and not tell which is which.
“If you could be convinced that, if marijuana was legalized, the number of underage marijuana users would at least double, maybe triple, would you still want it legalized?”
It *couldn’t* triple...already more than 33% of ‘underage’ people try it.
THAT is how effective your multi-hundred-BILLION dollar ‘war on some drugs’ is. Impressive, eh? (Not to mention the fact that prohibition is both fueling crime and funneling BILLIONs more dollars offshore.)
The costs of keeping it illegal are simply unacceptable, both in treasure and lost human potential. If it were legalized the ‘forbidden fruit’ allure would vanish. Check the statistics in the Netherlands, where it’s legal - the sky hasn’t fallen there.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I didn't say "try it". I said use it. As in monthly.
In 2005, the percentage of those 12-17 that used marijuana in the last month was 6.8%. I'm asking if you would be concerned if that number jumped to 14 or 21% with legalization?
"As part of President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget plan for FY 2007, $12.7 billion is allocated for the federal government's drug control program - an increase of $109 million over FY 2006's funding level for these efforts, including the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)."
"Demand reduction programs, such as drug treatment and prevention programs, aimed at discouraging use of illegal substances and aiding existing users in stopping their usage, represent approximately 36 percent of the request."
$12.7 billion represents less than one-half of one percent of the federal budget. It's a rounding error.
“$12.7 billion represents less than one-half of one percent of the federal budget. It’s a rounding error.”
Yes, and as you spend those BILLIONs over the years, it starts adding up to real money! LOL
You’ve just identified yourself as a fool and a miscreant. Are you also a politician? I’m just curious.
I have better things to do than converse with the disingenuous.
(As a final point, the X billion per year ‘cost’ of the drug war doesn’t count the harm to the economy, or the lost productivity of those in prison. On of Arnold’s latest initiatives is to spend a whole lot of money on new jails...I wonder why we need so much jail space?)
LOL!! I can’t believe I’m the only one who remembers that! (or do I?)
Thanks!
I wasn’t sure the “Dave’s not here!” bit would work since I don’t know which HTML tags to use for communicating a stoned accent.
You are business opportunist. You will go far in this world.
A better analogy would be: it's like, during Prohibition, arguing that legalizing alcohol would still leave illegal dealers in marijuana... to which the correct answer would again be, "Yes, and?"
True. Instead they'll have to spend their time running sting operations on 500,000 retail outlets selling marijuana.
You wanna bet that enforcement costs for illegal drugs absolutely dwarf enforcement costs for alcohol?
The taxes on alcohol aren't there yet. But they are on cigarettes.
I haven't looked up any numbers on this. But I'm willing to bet you, "in the blind", however much you'd like that at least 99% of cigarettes sold in the United States are sold legally through taxable channels. Is it a wager?
If you could be convinced that, if marijuana was legalized, the number of underage marijuana users would at least double, maybe triple, would you still want it legalized?
Without question. Let me explain the fallacy you're committing here.
You're citing an alleged benefit of marijuana prohibition here: it cuts underage marijuana use by 50%, maybe 66%. You of course pulled those numbers out of your ass, but never mind that for now, let's just stipulate to them. Any analysis of benefits is incomplete without a corresponding analysis of costs. Would you support a law that would, say, reduce murder by 90%? How about if, in order to do so, it required five hundred billion dollars per year and severely curtailed civil liberties? Is any price worthwhile?
If you think so, consider that all resources are scarce, and a resource devoted to one cause is a resource that can't be devoted to another. Suppose as a result of devoting so many resources to fighting murder, there were less available to fight burglary, to fight assault, to fight rape. Suppose with so much of the budget devoted to the War on Murder, we had to reduce national defense and raise taxes. Is it still worth the cost?
Let's say that, absent the War on Drugs, deaths from currently illegal drugs would treble... which would mean they would kill about a tenth as many Americans per year as tobacco does. I believe that this figure is way high (a depressingly large number of deaths from drugs come from the fact that drugs are illegal and hence are not regulated for purity or potency), but again, let's stipulate for now. What are we spending to achieve this benefit? What are we forgoing in order to reduce drug use by this amount?
Well, the $40,000,000,000 per year in direct enforcement costs are just for starters. There's billions more in forsaken tax revenue. There's the economic cost of locking up people who otherwise wouldn't be locked up, and the lost productivity of removing them from the workforce. There's also the lost productivity of innocents gunned down in the crossfire of drug-related turf wars. There's the cost of building more prisons to house drug offenders... and the economic damage cause by crimes committed by recidivists released from prison early due to overcrowding. Not to mention the additional economic damage caused by criminals who can afford to engage in more ambitious schemes (up to and including terrorism) thanks to being the sole recipients of drug profits.
Then there are the costs not easily measured in dollars. The loss of civil liberties. The encouragement of disrespect for the law, and of lying to children. The dangerous growth of government power. The rise of a "nanny state" determined to tell citizens what they can do and what they can't, for their own good, poor dears, because they simply can't be trusted to make their own decisions. The corruption of police and judges. The real, literal wars that break out in supplier countries, and the horrific body counts therefrom.
I could go on. The War on Drugs couldn't even come close to passing even the most generous cost-benefit analysis... to even suggest so is laughable. I've never heard any proponent of the War on Drugs argue otherwise; they usually just start and end with "drugs are bad, mmm'kay."
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