Replies

Sure, but look at historical numbers for the Netherlands and you will see that marijuana use went up dramatically, something like 250%, in the years following their law and policy changes that allowed for the coffeeshop system. Use was already on the way up there, as it was throughout much of western Europe. And today their use rates are middle of the road for western Europe and a good bit lower than ours. I don't think the marijuana laws matter that much. If people are going to do it, they're going to do it. If some western nation where the people and the culture aren't that different from ours that for some reason had no marijuana smokers were to legalize marijuana and sell it from shops, use would go up significantly, but the per capita use rate would probably level off somewhere around our level or that in western Europe. Marijuana has limited appeal and I don't think the laws do much to stop people who want to smoke it from smoking it, especially if use is already pretty high and it is already relatively cheap and easy to find anywhere like it is here.

I do not dispute that the percentage of people who smoke or even try marijuana is lower in the Netherlands than it is here. You are absolutely right about that. What I disagree with is your assertion that legalization lowers use. You keep saying that, and you've even said that that has been the case in every country that has tried it, which is patently false. I'm surprised no one has called you on this already. Maybe they just don't want to mess with doing a lot of research and providing you links, and I don't really want to do that either because I don't have the time and I agree with you on much of what you say. I just wish you'd look this up amend your arguments to reflect reality. Legalization does not cause demand or the number of users to drop.

I disagree with you on legalizing all drugs but I am 100% for legalizing marijuana. I think it's already cheap and so easily available in this country that it would be hard for us to make it much more available with legalization. I think the result would be different for drugs that are expensive and harder to find. Heroin, for instance, is practically nonexistent in my area. I'm an attorney and I've handled countless drug cases, hundreds of pounds worth of cocaine and meth cases, thousands of pounds worth of marijuana cases. Most of the weight involved has been in drug mule cases I've handled, but I've handled a lot more simple possession and delivery or manufacturing cases that involved much smaller weights. The only heroin case I've ever had involved one kilo that was being transported on the interstate highway. These guys wouldn't even have stopped in my area had they not been pulled over. I've never had a heroin possession or or delivery case. Most lawyers in my area have never had any heroin cases and most police officers have never made any sort of heroin arrest. It's just really not here. We don't have a heroin problem, and there are a lot of places in this country that are similarly situated. If we were to legalize it and sell it cheaply from a local shop most people would be smart enough to leave it alone, but some would mess with it and before long we'd have a small contingent of heroin addicts causing us lots of problems. We don't need that.

Drugs like meth and cocaine are much more available in my area, but not nearly as easily available as they would be if they were legal. Compared to the number of marijuana smokers in my area, there aren't that many people who use these drugs. Consequently there are far fewer people who sell them and far fewer users you could ask to help you find them. And with these drugs the people who do use and/or sell them are often trouble and it would be hard to mess with these substances and not have to deal with people who are trouble. This is something that makes these drugs less easily available. If you can go down to a nice clean shop and buy a drug it is easily available. If you have to deal with people who are trouble to get it it is not as easily available.

Aside from not always being so easy to find and the fact that you are likely to have to deal with people who are trouble to get them, these drugs are pretty expensive on a per use basis. That also makes them not so easily available. It's harder to come up with the money to buy them. Users of these drugs are less likely to break them out and share them with people than they would be their cheapo Mexican pot. A few hits off a joint costs pennies. A few lines of cocaine costs some pretty serious money for most people. Along with these other things we've talked about, the high cost of these drugs makes them not nearly as easily available as a legal product like beer, or even an illegal product like marijuana that is relatively cheap on a per use basis and is used by so many people that it's dead easy to find and easy to get without dealing with scary people or shifty untrustworthy drug addicts. Americans consume more marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined. It's everywhere. More than a 100 million Americans have already tried it. More than half of all adults under 60 have already smoked it.

I don't think that the argument that legalizing marijuana would make less people use it holds any water. But, we're not going to make it much more easily available. It's already cheaper than beer on a per use basis for the most part. The chance that a pot smoker will get caught is very slim, especially if he's moderately careful and doesn't do stupid things likely to garner unwanted attention from the police, and if he does get caught the punishment will likely amount to a slap on the wrist. I don't think we are stopping many people from smoking it with out laws. I don't think use would go up much if we legalized it, but it probably would go up some. It may very well go down later though. Look at cigarettes, a legal product. Use has dropped precipitously over the years to the point that according to the statistics high school kids are only slightly more likely to try cigarettes than they are to try marijuana. But I don't think there is any evidence to back up the assertion that just legalizing marijuana, or any other drug would make use drop.

If we legalized marijuana use probably would go up some at first. If we legalized drugs like meth, cocaine, and heroin, the percentage of users of these substances is likely to go up more because they are expensive on a per use basis and not so easily available and that would change if we legalized them. Most people wouldn't mess with them. But so few do today that it wouldn't take that many more users to double or triple or quadruple the number of addicts over time. And people addicted to these drugs do cause us real problems and that would change that much if these drugs were legal. They'd still be causing us lots of problems and we'd have a lot more of them. Marijuana smokers don't cause us that many problems to begin with, even those who smoke it all the time, but hardcore drug addicts are a different matter entirely.