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Comment by tiahura | Hacker News Reader

The way America’s legalization effort has progressed has been really unfortunate. It seems as though no attempt at finding a middle ground was made, and consequently we wound up with complete legalization.

Marijuana is an addictive highly potent mood altering substance that’s become available on demand with no real discussion about the consequences. Will anyone argue that having 15% of the otherwise young and productive demographic zonked out 24hrs a day on “Mint Diesel x AK-47 DDH Live Resin (TM)” gives us an advantage over China? Hyperbolic discounting par excellence.

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By that logic America should also ban video games because Chinese kids arn't "zonked out" on Fortnite. You're not having a real discussion either, you're employing overblown rhetoric in your request to bring the conversation to a more sane environment.

In most states there are limits on purchases for different products. While I totally agree that more regulation should be in place to inform consumers, I cannot at all agree with your rational or verbiage.

This is the sort of response that makes me wonder: dude, what have you been smoking?

Let's start with the whole notion of organizing our society based on some perceived need to compete with a country half the world away. That's the sort of paranoia combined with hazy connections that I'd expect from somebody who was a bad kind of high.

And then there's the concern about addiction. Marijuana is way down the list of addiction potential. Nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine are much stronger and the former two have widespread proven harm: between the two they cause ~600k deaths per year. [1][2] (People debate the latter more, but most of those arguing in favor of caffeine are addicts themselves, and nobody can deny that Starbucks is a plague upon the urban landscape.) And let's not forget sugar, the white powder that causes enormous medical harm and that whole industries work to hook our children on!!1!

Jokes aside, I'd note that at least here in California, we already have a "middle ground". Marijuana is only available from a relatively small number of places, with production and distribution heavily regulated. Alcohol and nicotine are much more widely available. If anything, I'd expect legalization has resulted in reduced availability to minors, as this has surely driven a lot of the previous weed dealers out of business.

I believe that we have a duty to prevent people from exploiting others, especially to prevent organized commercial exploitation. And I believe that duty is strongest where addiction is concerned, because that bypasses the rational choice that freedom depends on. But on balance I think we do a much better job with marijuana than drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and the legal opiates.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...

> And let's not forget sugar, the white powder that causes enormous medical harm and that whole industries work to hook our children on!!1!

> Jokes aside

You don't think sugar causes enormous medical harm, or that the industry is geared towards addiction of their users?

Walk into any supermarket, it's everywhere. It's even in wide display in the checkout area, their last chance before you leave, along with cigarettes and cute bottles of alcohol.

Frankly it's disgusting.

oh, I agree. But most people are so far from seeing it that I'm just going to joke about it. It's way easier for people to see the addictions of others than their own addictions.

I would argue that the injustice of mass incarceration resulting from inequitable and inconsistently applied drug laws was far more unfortunate and harmful. I say: more legalization, and now.

> gives us an advantage over China?

1) What exactly has China, its people and government done or doing to you, your people and your country specifically

I don't think HN is the type of platform for BS political flame baiting but...

2) I am curious as to why you felt the need to include win against China and if you think that's a reasonable statement.

some people seem obsessed with some fight between the us, china and russia like life is some interesting story.

If you used a different strain like UK cheese it would provide an anti-anxiety effect to that group. Mint Diesel and AK-47 sounds like it would make you ampped and confused. Finding/using the proper strain for the effect you want is the missing context from your comment above.

The discussion of the consequences were raised 50 years ago and the accepted conclusion was the biggest harm was it acting as a gateway drug to crack specifically in the 80s. I don't think that belief is as accepted as it was before.

Your fears of a lost generation and losing a trade with China as a result is not based in reality. The economic loss to China is a result of large companies trying to open the market to their product while giving away too much and inbalances in currency and trade barriers. A super motivated extra 10-15% of the under 29 age group just doesn't matter when weighted against those bigger policies.

Federal legislation is far from finished. Who knows what we end up with.

I for one would prefer to pay rehabilitation therapy rather than supporting the ludicrous enforcement apparatus we have now. If someone wants to burn away their brain cells, let them do it. Why involve police and the justice system? Why throw them in jail, where they have even less chance of rehabilitating themselves?

I don't need to retread the old discussion "How on earth is alcohol legal?", since the effects of alcohol abuse are so much worse than the effects of marijuana abuse and it's rather hard to OD on the later. But in the end; what do I care?

There's the case to be made for protecting young adults, since there's solid evidence that smoking weed is harmful to the developing brain.

I don't use it, nor do I drink alcohol, smoke tobacco (or vape), and I don't use any other drugs at all. I haven't, for decades. I'm no fun at all.

That's because I burned through my quota by the time I was eighteen.

As far as I'm concerned, they should totally legalize it, to the same extent as booze (which, if discovered today, would easily be classified as a Schedule IV narcotic).

Here in New York, we had the Rockefeller sentencing laws in the 1970s. There's people still in jail, today, for offenses that would get a slap on the wrist, these days.

I doubt that it will suddenly make America look like the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show. People who would have problems with legal weed, are already having problems with it now, or are having problems with other drugs (like booze). Most folks won't have any real issues with it. Some will have problems that will cause things like traffic fatalities. Big Tobacco will take over the industry, destroying many of the mom-and-pothead dispensaries that we have now, and we'll probably see an "artisanal cannabis" industry, like the wine industry, today. I suspect that Napa Valley will become known for things other than wines.

Personally, I think it could be pretty cool. It will be another industry that would promote "back to the earth" values, like farming (except for the inevitable factory farming).

If we were really concerned about protecting people's health, we'd still be in prohibition, and tobacco would be 100% illegal, as would whole classes of junk food.

> Here in New York, we had the Rockefeller sentencing laws in the 1970s. There's people still in jail, today, for offenses that would get a slap on the wrist, these days.

That's so sad. Lives were ruined and society not only pays to to ruin their lives by keeping them in prison, but also basically destroys any means of rehabilitation. We really have to rethink our justice system when it comes to drug abuse.

Here's a good analysis by the CATO institute, and the conclusion is that legalization has not had much of an impact in either the positive or negative direction. Until there's good data to support the idea that cannabis legalization is creating harms it's probably best to remain neutral. Both pro and anti cannabis sides are going of "feels", rather than facts it seems.

https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/effect-state-marijuana-...

Guinness World Record for biggest strawman. As if anywhere close to that number of people would be permanently "zonked out", or that the "zonked" ones wouldn't aready be as such on alcohol or illicit cannabis, or that the government should have the right to tell you exactly which mood-altering substances you can enjoy, or that cannabis isn't actually a beneficial mood-altering drug for many people.

In other words, I disagree with almost every premise you've established.

Comments like this remind me why I avoid this place

I think our ability to evolve, adapt, invent, and assimilate will keep us ahead of the game longer than others might, though eventually it will lose efficacy. The Chinese government is too genocidal, militaristic, and authoritarian to permit the same broad range of innovation as exists...basically everywhere else (including Russia). China will only continue to advance as long as the rest of the world permits their technology thievery and genocidal empire building to continue.

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