Replies

No no no and no again. Let me turn this around on you then since this is the way you seem to want to play. These questions are simply independent of each other.

Why should marijuana be illegal.
Why should alcohol be legal
Why drug prison times reflect the problems the drug causes in all cases except marijuana, alcohol and nicotine.

Your failure to present reason or logic to justify your presumptions is not mine to rectify.

It's just that you are not getting the logic, does not mean it is not present. My position is actually not presumption. Before marijuana (and all other currently illicit substances) was declared illegal, there had to be a reason to make it illegal, Correct? What were those reasons? When you tell your kids not to intake a substances, what reasons would you give them besides it being illegal which is circulatory (bad because illegal, illegal cause its bad)?

The year is 1937. Marijuana is currently legal. YOU make the case to have it outlawed.

You have failed to give any reasons to make/keep marijuana illegal, especially in light of currently legal substances.

I did address your comments on the Constitution, you are right, the 18th and 21st banned intra-state commerce, however the feds have banned intra-state commerce as well.

RB,

I'm going to try to consolidate the multiple posts into one response.

rb22982 says: "No no no and no again."

LOL, you forgot to stomp your feet!

You seem unable to grasp the simple concept of debate that when you post unsupported claims, it is incumbent upon you to defend and prove those claims, not the party questioning them. But in the interest of moving this discussion along, I'll agree to go ahead and show you where your premise is false.

"Marijuana is safer, less addictive and less of a high than alcohol [therefore] since alcohol is legal, its only logical to make marijuana legal as well [and if you don't] you are a hypocrite of the worst kind..."
-- rb22982 [clarification added]

It is interesting to note that your solution to the inherent risk of marijuana is that you choose to make it legal, rather than making both illegal thus increasing the cumulative risk to society. But since you make that choice, we must deal with the why and how society chooses to deal with risks.

THIS FAR AND NO FARTHER ---
People have long recognized the danger to the individual (and the society as a whole), inherent in the abuse of mind altering substances like alcohol and marijuana. They have also recognized, as well, the impossibility of eliminating or controlling all of the different substances available to mankind. In response to the problem of risk, the people, in their "wisdom", decided through their elected representatives, that they would draw a line on such abuse and go "this far an no farther".

If society chooses to limit risk, then there has to be some limit to the cumulative or total amount of risk from all substances combined. Some like to quibble whether the line should include marijuana along with alcohol, some even argue that it should include neither. But like it or not, this is where the line has been drawn. Should any line have been drawn? If the risk to society is real, then absolutely yes, some line should be drawn. The failure for a society to act in the face of hazard is to elect eventual extinction rather than existence.

IS RELATIVE RISK THE CRITERION?
Now we can deal with your false premise that "relative risk" is the appropriate criterion for comparison. The reason alcohol is legal and marijuana is illegal is not one of relative or comparative risk, but rather one of more mundane practical considerations.

Alcohol can be made from products commonly found in all kitchens and grocery stores. Marijuana can not. Alcohol is made from materials that are the basic food stuffs for six billion people. It is ubiquitous. Marijuana is not. Therefore alcohol will always be unavoidably plentiful and available.
Alcohol has long held a myriad of other important uses as a basic substance of the chemical industry, including solvents, fuels, medicines, military uses, etc. Marijuana has no such vital uses. Therefore, alcohol can never be dispensed with in society. Marijuana can be.
Alcohol has been the common drug of choice used my more people and more societies over a greater period of history than marijuana. Therefore, alcohol is a far better understood and accepted drug than marijuana.

These are the practical reasons that, despite any comparative risk assessment, alcohol continues, and will continue, to be legal while marijuana is banned. Your presumption that it just had to be relative risk, is therefore flawed and false.

On to other matters...

rb22982 says: "however the feds have banned intra-state commerce as well."

To the extent that we look at examples of that and both agree that the specific regulation in question is intrastate in nature, then I agree that those should be overturned as unconstitutional.

But if I understand your position, that would still not remove your more fundamental objections that you have about federal government banning drugs under any theory in the first place. In other words, for you to object to intrastate vs. interstate, is a bit of a red herring, in that you object to both when it comes to banning drug commerce. I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong!

rb22982 says: "This little snippet however...[implications of NV legalizing the sale of marijuana]...Throws out the necessity for the 18th and 21st amendment.

By that, I take it you mean that it would then become and example of Congress trespassing on intrastate commerce, correct? How so? State sanctioning and control of all marijuana sales and distribution makes it a single gigantic enterprise, just like organized crime. It would be impossible to have an enterprise that size that was not affecting interstate commerce.

The only way to make it legal without the state becoming part of the business would be to simply remove all laws governing marijuana from the books thereby making the state "silent" on the issue (not prohibiting it, not sanctioning it).

rb22982 says: "Feds not only ban the commerce of it, but also the substance itself is illegal to possess." (including link)

Poor, yet nevertheless valid, example. Of course simple possession can be made illegal under the interstate commerce theory because the quantity can be so large as to be explained only by its effect upon interstate commerce. The question should be possession of how much? If the amount is less (for instance) 20 pounds, then it would (as I have said before) have no business being controlled under any interstate commerce theory. That tiny portion of the federal enforcement activity would be unconstitutional.

This is not a post, it is a friggen book!

--Boot