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Comment by DarkContinent | Hacker News Reader

The real concern with this study is not the possible negative effects of marijuana (which are already known) but the moral correctness of its legalization. I personally have not and never will smoke pot, but that doesn't mean I support the continuing ban in America. Everyone has the right to determine his own destiny, and if engaging in personally (but not socially) destructive behaviors like smoking pot is a person's chosen destiny, he shouldn't be held back by dated laws restricting personal freedom.

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Never say never.

I was very anti-drug when I was young, due to being very trusting of the tons of anti-drug propaganda I was fed, and my lack of knowledge about drugs.

As I learned more about them I found out that they were not necessarily so evil and their users not so stupid as I'd been taught. In fact, there were some brilliant users and advocates of drugs, and their effects could be quite interesting and useful. That included pot.

Eventually, my attitude towards drugs turned almost 180 degrees. Now I recognize that currently illegal drugs have benefits and drawbacks. Some of them (psychedelics in particular) have quite amazing benefits. A lot depends on who uses them, with what knowledge, mind-set, and intention, and how they are used.

It's possible to have respectful, constructive, and beneficial use of drugs. That's something the laws and most mainstream society do not yet recognize. To them all use is abuse. I believe that's a mistake. Scientific research on psychedelics is bearing this out. Barring another major conservative backlash against drugs (which is still quite possible), there may be a positive sea-change of attitudes towards drugs in the not-so-distant future.

Would you extend that reasoning to heroin, for instance?

It's already handed out to addicts for free where I live. Immediate benefit was discovering weening people off heroin with heroin works much better than methadone, throngs of violent street dealers disappeared, no more seeing countless people sprawled out in alleys shooting up either.

It's my body, so yes. It's legal to kill an unborn fetus that lives in my body, but it's not legal to grow some poppies and ingest them? That's ridiculous to me. It's my body.

Don't make some substance illegal because I might commit some other crime while pursuing my addiction. Arrest me if and when I commit some other crime. If shit were legal, it'd probably be pretty cheap anyway because we'd be able to grow our own.

People who work towards keeping the drug war going are the people who benefit from it. They do not care about other people's bodies or safety from crime. They just want their money and power. All sorts of money disappears when drugs are made legal. Local police can't just seize money anymore, DEA can't have any funding, CIA can't make any money for black-ops and so on and so forth. They'll never give that money up, so it's just never going to be legal. Maybe pot will, but harder drugs - never.

To play devil's advocate, if you apply the same reasoning to seatbelt laws, the flaws become obvious.

It's your body, yes, but it's our society. Your reckless endangerment costs money and ties up limited resources.

The fact that prohibition is not an effective strategy makes for a good argument, but "it's my body" rarely does, IMHO.

if you apply the same reasoning to seatbelt laws, the flaws become obvious

No, not quite: When one drives, one most often drives on shared public roads, and one's action can directly increase risk to others, costs to those who maintain the system, etc. E.g., if you are in an accident and unrestrained, your being unrestrained may place me at greater risk. Your being more seriously injured due to being unrestrained will have greater social costs (financial cost of first response, possible PTSD to first responders, etc.).

One can hardly but drive in a public space, one can hardly ever drive in a private space.

While similar arguments re costs of first response, e.g., can be made about drug use, drug use can be practiced wholly privately, and, with quality drugs and with appropriate delivery systems, including training, risks kept manageable, likely social costs kept low, etc.

Just to play devil's advocate, as you say.

The "my body" argument is the central thrust of Roe v Wade and it is the very reason that abortion is no longer illegal. So that argument is absolutely worthy of consideration here.

Indeed, the stronger point is "Don't arrest me because I might commit some other crime." If we applied drug law logic to things like politics, we'd be arresting anyone who became a politician because they might be corrupting our society worse than any drug.

And I don't get your seatbelt argument. If I don't wear my seatbelt, I'm not harming anyone else - even if I get in an accident and get hurt or die due to my lack of wearing a seatbelt. Seatbelt laws are as unconstitutional as are the drug laws IMO. (Although, after reading about seatbelt law constitutionality, I see two decent arguments - 1) the driver can become a deadly projectile in an accident and 2) the driver is more likely to retain control of the vehicle with a seatbelt on. Those are good arguments, but I still don't think they're common enough occurrences that they should limit my personal freedom.)

How harmful would cannabis have to be to people until you'd consider banning it?

Personally, it would have to be worse than the impact on your life for getting a felony charge for possession.

This whole "we have to put people in jail and destroy any and all future job prospects for their own protection" is madness.

That simply doesn't happen in America. Cannabis is de facto legal throughout the USA. I repeat: marijuana is in practice legal in America, and all these people talking about drug charges ruining lives don't know what they're talking about.

The only way you get serious charges or any jail time at all for marijuana in America is when you've been arrested for serious crimes, but a District Attorney goes with "possession" for the plea deal. It's just easier that way.

You are either incredibly misinformed or you are an out-and-out liar.

For instance, a drug charge of any kind, even just a misdemeanor for paraphernalia precludes any Federal Student loans from being offered. My younger brother was arrested with a pipe containing some cannabis residue and was unable after that point to receive any Federally subsidized student loans.

Some 20,000 inmates in US prisons are currently incarcerated for cannabis possession and trafficking.

There was a young man of 19 years of age down here in Texas that was arrested after he was ratted out by some teenage customers who were themselves arrested and flipped on their dealer to save themselves. He was arrested with cannabis and cannabis oil along with a pan of brownies he had made with the oil. The Williamson County prosecutor sought to treat the entire volume of brownies as drugs and the defendant was facing LIFE in prison over some cannabis brownies.

So yeah, you either need to inform yourself better or you need to stop lying.

Not true at all. Out side of progressive areas like major coastal cities posession of marijuana can in some cases be a felony offense. Contrary to what you have stated, people ARE arrested regularly for simple possession of the drug, almost always meaning very limited life prospects in the future.

You are misinformed, there were over 700,000 arrests made for marijuana last year. Even without jail time, a possession charge can have serious consequences for young people. Being ineligible for federal financial aid, losing your job, and losing public benefits just to name a few.

Imagine what better things our police officers could be doing if they didn't have to churn a kid through the system every 51 seconds.

You don't get it. Those people get hit with narcotics charges because the cops and D.A. know exactly who they are and the long list of other crimes they've committed.

People who simply use or sell some marijuana and that's the extent of their "illegal" activity, they don't wind up in prison. Doesn't happen.

Nothing can be called "de facto legal" when hundreds of thousands of people are arrested for partaking in it each year. Prison time or not, possession charges can have serious consequences for many.

This is pure disinformation. I was arrested for possession of marijuana in college. There was no other charge, there was no other crime. I was a white middle class male stopped in a middle class suburb of a smallish college town in the midwest.

You got a small fine. At no point were you at any risk of facing incarceration. You were also probably doing something stupid and very annoying like stinking up the floor in a dormitory. This illustrates how the drug laws in practice work.

>> This illustrates how the drug laws in practice work.

When you're a middle-class white male

I agree people should have the right to determine their own destiny. Earth, however, isn't a free planet. Show me a country with sovereignty and I'll show you the Bilderberg, World Bank, IMF, CFR and the UN. How can any individual truly be free to choose their own destiny when society is constructed on man made conventions such capitalism. I contend that freedom doesn't exist at the state level therefore cannot extend to the individual.

I see the truth isn't popular today.

Well, you did mention a number of organizations that are strongly associated with conspiracy theories of various sorts.

I upvoted your post because I agree that the freedoms we are offered is limited to a set of options deemed acceptable by un-elected and un-representative authorities.

That is where we are as a society now? Discussing the influence of global organizations on sovereignty is consider conspiracy theory? Every organization I've mentioned has publicly stated mandates, far from conspiracy theory.

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