I do understand that, and please understand that by giving my personal experience, I am not trying to promote marijuana use as much as taking a simple common sense position and being an advocate for the legalization of a natural plant. Conservative Republicans mocking marijuana users as Jeff Spicoli stereotype does not further ANY cause besides our main opposition, the liberals, because it makes them look foolish to a large swath of our electorate that does know, honestly. Its a big reason I quit watching and listening to Sean Hannity, he says he has never tried it but then goes on to mock ALL pot users as total losers and morons... based on what exactly, edited government information. Our idiot Republican governor Ducey says yesterday that its totally stupid to think about legalizing marijuana when we have this HUGE Heroin problem, in Arizona, when all the evidence points to legalized marijuana reducing that exact thing. It is either just pure ignorance or they are bought and paid for!
I understand the potential for abuse and like alcohol, it is NOT for school age kids, they have enough to try to figure out about life with out any recreational drugs changing thought waves... including Tobacco, Alcohol, Marijuana and all the over-prescribed pills so many children are on today too...
But a Legal adult that can go buy tobacco that is known to cause cancer and kill people sooner than otherwise and be very painful and expensive to treat the results of can also go buy Alcohol which exact negative same things can be said of PLUS all the people maimed and killed by drunk drivers yearly should be able to go buy and use however he sees fit, a natural plant that grows from the ground by adding water, without fear of going to jail.
The difference I see between tobacco and marijuana is, marijuana is much more psychoactive. It affects the mind and brain health, actually causing brain damage.
I run into trouble with this line of reasoning because everything is sort of psychoactive. Sleep is. Sugar is. Coffee is. So.
it is a matter of degree, admittedly.
In my opinion, the psychological damage done by marijuana is great enough that I think it should be banned except for TRULY medical use. I hope we can agree that the vast majority of the “medical use” for example here in California is an obvious farce.
I am not into mocking Spicoli or whatever, my position is serious, and I’m not into using perjoratives. I have lost a lot of good friends, in various ways, (death, suicide, going crazy, just generally becoming useless) to various types of drug abuse and I don’t like it when people act as though unregulated drugs is some sort of conservative position. This is a conservative site, not a conservative Libertarian site, so why are people surprised?
“Victimless crimes” a la Libertarian philosophy are a myth, IMO. I call it is I see it.