The real question is: is it the business of government to regulate every thing in the world that might be bad for you? Or do we want to be free? I already have your pompous answer.
I spent 25 years of my life responding largely to people like you, who feel deep down that our society has an obligation to wait on them hand and foot after laziness and poor choices cause them to become a burden on everyone else. No one objects more to government over reach than I do, but you simply have no idea the amount of resources which are wasted on people who instead of taking care of themselves choose to rely on “the rest of us.” Marijuana and alcohol abuse are the primary contributors to this nonsense.
Alcohol is so firmly entrenched in our society that there is almost nothing meaningful that can be done at this point to curtail its use. Marijuana in my view is every bit as bad, probably worse especially as an obstruction to people getting off their lazy asses and doing something for themselves and others.
Marijuana use has been tolerated in our area for decades... it got worse when it was legalized for “medicinal purposes” and it has gotten much worse in the five years since it was legalized for “recreational purposes”. One man in our community ran up a $2.4 million dollar medical bill not including the services of the fire department that I work for. Although the only abused substance typically mentioned when referring to people like him is usually alcohol... in the more than one hundred times that I personally responded to this particular person, marijuana was also a key component basically every time...
Alcohol use causes a lot of problems in our society when it is combined with marijuana the problems are greatly magnified. The current trend with opioids results in a lot of people dying from overdoses and is comparable to the meth problem we had and still have in this area for many years. It is impossible to make truly meaningful comparisons and I suppose you believe that people should be free to destroy their lives in any way that they choose??? Unfortunately abusers of all of these substances take down many innocent victims with them and the cost to our society is immeasurable. I have seen it first hand repeatedly over decades.
You can call me a “pompous ass” all that you want... I have never had a problem with people hurling insults my way because I know exactly who I am. I have actually gotten my hands dirty working with people in need many, many times. My crews always complained that I was doing too much for people not too little. I got in difficulty for taking people across town to the safety of their homes and loved ones instead of having them hauled to jail or transported to the hospital.
At my retirement party stories were told about me and my wife putting up unfortunate souls in our own home, some for more than a week while we found the best solution for them going forward. The chief of our department told my wife that he wished that every member of our department could have just a sliver of my heart. The mayor of our town even asked me at a later charity event if all the stories were true. In my life I have been known for literally giving the shirt off my back not for being a “pompous ass”.
You are being willfully blind in your selfish quest to make it more convenient to acquire your mind altering drug of choice. In this case you will probably eventually get what you want despite the misery and the cost to our society that will result. It will be just one more contributor in our liberal society’s downward spiral.
Where's the evidence that anything meaningful can be done at this point to curtail marijuana use?