My uncle drank himself into a diaper and a wheelchair. Should we ban alcohol?
A drug that is mildly hallucinogenic and that makes people slow and stupid is not harmless.
Red herring - the argument for legalization is not that it's "harmless."
“My uncle drank himself into a diaper and a wheelchair. Should we ban alcohol?”
As you know, it’s been tried. The difference is that alcohol has very deep roots in the West through its connection with Christianity. Marijuana has a far more recent history.
The question is: How many legal drugs can a society tolerate and remain functional? Most societies have two. In our case, it’s cigarettes and alcohol. If we legalize marijuana, we would solve the problem of people doing jail time for weed, but we’d institutionalize other problems. I’m wary. The states are laboratories of democracy. See how it works out in a few places. One other poster here has already said that it’s a problem in his state where it’s legal.