Marijuana is not something someone should make a habit of, neither is tobacco, alcohol or other mood altering substances, and marijuana use should be publicly discouraged with both formal and public education campaigns.
But, outright prohibition has created the same problems that alcohol prohibition did - actual crime (violence, murder, ect. over the drug trade), as well as creating virtual criminals out of everyone who partakes of it.
It is right that government help to deter marijuana use, through education, but criminalizing it and all who partake of it has not been worth the cost of the effort and its horrendous results.
The problem with the war on drugs use of the term “gateway” is that it is used with the intention of implying that if someone uses marijuana, particularly as a teen, they are likely to become a user of “harder” drugs later on.
But gateway cannot be used or understood in that fashion, because among the millions who try marijuana as a teenager or very young adult - college, or military - MOST neither become regular long term marijuana users or hard drug users.
The real “gateway” is not merely a drug, but an entire set of circumstances in someone’s life, of which the drug use is one part.
But, outright prohibition has created the same problems that alcohol prohibition did - actual crime (violence, murder, ect. over the drug trade), as well as creating virtual criminals out of everyone who partakes of it.It is right that government help to deter marijuana use, through education, but criminalizing it and all who partake of it has not been worth the cost of the effort and its horrendous results.
This crap is constantly repeated by Libertarians in an effort to legalize drugs. They keep saying over and over again that we are achieving NO BENEFIT and we are suffering GREAT COSTS.
That there is, and has always been a benefit is simply lost on people who have never really contemplated this subject very much.
Do you know what is this?
That is what addiction looks like when you don't stop it. Do you know what ours looks like? It's a flat 2% since 1900. It didn't rise. Do you want proof that the normal condition is rising addiction? Here.
Here's another one.
Now what were you saying about those horrendous results? Do you know what kind of horrendous results China got for not stopping drugs? By 1900 50% of the adult male population of Manchuria was addicted to Opium. 100 million dead was the eventual result.