If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted. That might not "solve" the problem but it helps.
I'm not arguing that weed should be illegal, only that making something illegal reduces its use.
I'm not sure how that flies with this: "An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found there was no increase in cannabis use among the general population or among previous users after their states legalized marijuana."
https://abcnews.go.com/US/marijuana-climb-legalization-state...
And also adding that making something illegal will only increase illegal usage, which puts people in jail and ruins lives (for a plant?).
You sound like my uncle.
enforcement is significantly less 'a joke' for heroin and cocaine, yet addicts still exist for the products.
also : is incarceration/penal-justice really the desired outcome here? Is the punchline here : "Would you rather be surrounded by ex-convicts or addicts?"
Countries like The UAE or Saudi Arabia don't seem to have any problems with high/drugged people on the streets for some reason, mainly because they actually enforce the rules, you take drugs, even just for personal use, you will go to jail, it's not a joke.
Curious ain't it
In those countries they actively hunt for drug users, they don't wait for you to get caught high at some kind of street checkpoint.
And the population having an active moral compass helps for sure.
Would you send your daughter, wife, or mother to live there as a local does -- i.e. without all the special privileges that Westerners get outside of the culture's standard "active moral compass"?
Have you ever visited Dubai? Riyadh is almost there too.
And yes they do have a moral compass, the population has a more united look on these issues.
Outdated as of… when?
2018 when the morally advanced civilization of Saudi Arabia decided to let women drive?
Or do you mean way back in 2023 in UAE where it’s completely legal for a husband to rape his wife and, if killed for “a good reason” (like being raped), her killer goes unpunished so long as her father acquits?
Not sure there’s much to discuss here, I think we just care about different things. You care about drug addicts not existing and you’re fine with actively “hunting” them to achieve that, I care about everyone in a society having basic legal rights and protections of law.
UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
With all due respect, this sounds BS
> UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
No they aren't, and their drug enforcement hasn't changed a bit, probably got stronger.
It is very very obvious that restricting the product works in such case (from 30%+ of active smokers to almost 5%)
If we legalised heroin, more people would do heroin. Gateway drugs are real. Decades of fighting against stupid Reagan-era drug policy have trained so many people to completely throw the baby out with the bathwater and brush the nuances of addiction under the rug in support of their cause, on both sides.
The argument in reality tends to be more that decriminalisation presents a net benefit literally by virtue of mitigating the criminal aspect.
I’d use drugs more than I do now if there was less of a legal disincentive. People that think they understand the tenants of harm reduction often hate to hear that, which I find absurd. It’s just…the truth. Usually I’m told “but you’re not the one we’re worried about” as if those with ‘serious’ drug addictions are somehow ‘other’. A ridiculously narrow view. There but for the grace of God go I.
I live in an area that saw drastically lower drug importations during COVID travel restrictions. We also had social policy that loaded loads of people up with money that kept everyone paid. We got to see first-hand the effects that supply reduction had on drug use, across the aggregate. There was an inarguable correlation. The issue is usually that policing action is just never that effective.
Heh, well.. you give me a bit too much credit. I went from one or two bong rips a year to most days of the week.
To be honest I think my point of view is more common than you may think because admitting to it is tantamount to admitting I'm some sort of uncool uptight square, but also that I now use. Saying it won't win me friends with either side of the issue, so people like me are generally disinclined share our experiences.
Washington state and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, after which marijuana use saw a slight increase among Hispanic and white participants, researchers said.
Your comment was so much better before that point.
Simple: there is no possible way that's true. It fails every imaginable sniff test. Anecdotally, I never purchased marijuana when it was illegal and I do now. I know many people for whom the same is true. If marijuana were made illegal again tomorrow I would stop using it. I'm a normie middle-aged dad. The only way I'm buying and consuming marijuana is if I can walk into a shop and buy it legally. There must be millions of people like me.
This doesn't require any deep insight. It would be very surprising if ease of access had no effect on consumption.
Enforcing the law is not without costs, financial and social. We’ve tested this theory, and it does not help in net.
Why do you think the balance is that way round?
But ye more effort should be put into making peoples' lifes better rather than going after the symptoms.
I'm a believer that psychedelics, including Marijuana, can be helpful. It really depends on the circumstances of why you are using the chemical, and what your intentions are going into the experience.
What matters is that marijuana had a demographic that allowed the government and law enforcement to be both classist and racist at the same time. The severity of marijuana possession was jacked up so that it could disenfranchise people, some of whom just got the vote less than 2 decades earlier.
When you put a law in place under such circumstances, you forfeit the right to talk about what's right and proper. What you did was monstrous, and the only correct response is to give back what you took, let the dust settle for some time proportional to how long you took it away, and only then let some new generation of lawmakers start discussing whether it's right or appropriate to take it away again.
Whether it's worse than alcohol or not hardly matters. It's a dog whistle, and will remain so for decades.
A dog whistle is a hidden signal. I'd say what you are describing is a hidden agenda.
One, welcome to semantic dilution. Two, a hidden agenda that people share without discussing it. And three, not helping.
Sorry, I enjoy a culture of growth in understanding, so when I do something sloppy, I want to know. I don't assume I know everything.
I now get that isn't your thing, sorry. I don't spend much time on social media, so I forget sometimes.
Not an expert on this by any means tho.
Does the drop in the number of addicts achieved by illegalising the drug make up for the increased suffering and societal damage caused by the remaining addicts now turning to more desperate measures?
I think we should view alcohol and cannabis very similarly. Both are potentially addictive and both can seriously harm a person’s life and family.
Both require us to address the same question: how do we handle addictive substances in society?
If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
In this sense, alcohol and cannabis are the same thing with the same problems attached.
I believe you underestimate peoples ability to ruin their own lives, regardless of what laws and regulations are put into place to try to help them.
Many people kill themselves with food, legal drugs to name a few.
We’ll be in a much better place if more people become knowledgeable in the workings of their own minds, bodies and emotions so that seeking self-destruction is less common.
People drink and eat and smoke because they’re hurting and seeking distraction and numbness. There are some anomalies where people fall into addiction more easily, but stronger family and community safety nets seem like a far better insurance against the potential outcomes of this than virtually anything else.
Pretty much every heavy cannabis user, alcoholic, or other addict I’ve met has had deep family issues. It starts early. Regulations and education might make a dent in outcomes, but the only way we’ll have happy people who don’t want to ruin themselves is to make it so they aren’t crushed under the misery and fear of taking on the world in the first place.
I guess you could find it here and there earlier than that, but it was quite rare.
> In my (European) country [...]
Your country, and even Europe as a whole, is not the same thing as humanity.
Documented pharmacological uses seems to be at least since 2,800 BC [0], cultivation seems to be at least another 5,000 years or so before that.
[0] https://www.sydney.edu.au/lambert/medicinal-cannabis/history...
What a strange thing to say, when the previous commenter wasn't saying the opposite. They were citing when weed became legal, socially accepted, and permeating of their culture, which is the topic.
Edit: As an aside, this whole discussion began with on the topic of prohibition in regard to alcohol, which for a lot of people that term specifically refers to a period in the United States during the 1920s-1933. I’m not sure if the colonel was referring to a different European prohibition or how the rise in ubiquity of cannabis in the 90s has to do with their initial point, if at all.
For my point it's irrelevant if people used cannabis thousands of years ago and then stopped.
My point is that weed had no presence in culture or social acceptance pre-1990. Weed is therefore much easier to ban than alcohol and not comparable to the difficulty of banning alcohol.
I don't know the history of weed in US, but my guess is that it's roughly similar.
Er, are you arguing that “bombing people” is a new crime invented to weaponize law enforcement against Muslims, or does your example have nothing to do with your argument?
> "Come on, I know you want to do the thing, you can admit it to me. I want to do the thing too! Here are all the reasons to believe the thing is a good idea... Don't you agree?"
The question is where preventing marijuana addiction ranks in comparison to other goals a Or rights
That sounds logical, but empirical evidence > logic.
This isn't really a useful place to start thinking about law and policy from, because the one thing that we have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is we're bad at enforcing the law as it relates to drug usage.