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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

I am firmly against marijuana legalization. This is partially because of this insanity of the pro-legalization arguments. When I would see friends/family that started smoking regularly become noticeably less intelligent while pro-legalization proponents would argue there are no negative side-effects, or people who were obviously compelled to smoke every day or as often as they could.... like some sort of addiction, while pro-legalization proponents argued it was totally not-addictive.

The anti-legalization side had a few odd arguments as well, and some old claims that were unfounded. So no hands were totally clean.

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> I am firmly against marijuana legalization. This is partially because of this insanity of the pro-legalization arguments.

this is also just motivated reasoning

The insanity of the fringe pro-legalization arguments has no bearing on whether legalization is a good idea or not.

> When I would see friends/family that started smoking regularly become noticeably less intelligent while pro-legalization proponents would argue there are no negative side-effects

This is also just ripe for cognitive bias which is why we should use science to understand these types of claims.

I have two friends who started at a young age and they fucked their lives with this shit. It's not anecdotal at this point.

It's anecdotal - you have no way to know what would happen otherwise. I have seen plenty of young people smoke weed in their teens while gradually stoppping later and leading completely 'normal' lives, while a few didn't stop and went to heavy polydrug abuse etc. What exactly does that say about weed? Not much I'm afraid.

Similarly, I know of several persons that went schizophrenic after car accidents, but were the car accidents the cause?

That... is an anecdote...

Not suggesting people should smoke weed when they're young etc, but there's a reason that we do these gigantic, extremely complex, extremely failure-prone things called clinical trials to actually ascertain the effects of drugs in the body.

It's because we've found over and over and over and over and over that the "I know N people who X then Y" claims were wrong.

For example: Why did those two people start smoking weed so young? Were their lives, families, and personalities otherwise the same as everyone else? Probably not!

Did the people you notice becoming less intelligent ever recover? I'm genuinely interested. My biggest regret in life is early years drug use, smoked my first joint at 13. Mdma 18. Cocaine late tewnties. I personally think marijuana might be worse than mdma but not by much. And cocaine is really bad for cardio vascular system, probably physically worst of all of them that I tried.

I think both mdma and marijuana cause anxiety and they mess with short term memory.

There doesn't seem to be a good answer to protecting kids from drugs. Heavily regulated legalisation might help or it might normalise drug use.

As an aside I personally think alcohol in very moderate use isn't really as harmful as other drugs. And is probably a net benefit for many. Even moderate use of illegal drugs seems to have bad affects on people.

Edit: added my thoughts on alcohol and something on cocaine use.

> I think both mdma and marijuana cause anxiety and they mess with short term memory.

OTOH MDMA never caused anxiety (and I had plenty of anxiety issues at the time) or memory issues for me, but of course drug effects are very individual.

I am firmly in favor of legalizing all drugs, except maybe antibiotics where overuse is causing harm for everyone.

The thing is, I 100% agree with your reasons for why it should be outlawed. I just think those are reasons to discourage using it, especially chronically.

However, I wholeheartedly believe the government should not have any say in how anyone lives their life, and treats their own body.

…just so long as the government remains responsible for clearing up the mess?

I'm curious, do you also think alcohol and tobacco should be banned? I definitely believe that marijuana use can lead to negative consequences, but I still think it is less dangerous than either of those 2 substances.

They will say yes, but you will never see most of them defending that in any news about alcohol or tobacco. For some, it's just a way to ignore the hypocrisy corner.

Yes I do.

Can't have the billionaire sociopath fodder off in lala land... they must be 100% intelligent and productive to continue farming them resources

I never understand this line of thinking.

So the easiest way for an opposition to a good idea to get their way, is to go argue insane things on the opposite side?

Imagine if the oil industry starts paying people to go throw soup on paintings just to make the pro “let’s prevent climate change” people look stupid.

Oh. Wait.

>I am firmly against marijuana legalization.

Is there an argument or data that could be presented that _would_ change your mind?

I would be for legalization of marijuana if there was evidence there was no negative effect on children or families from people taking marijuana.

So in your mind, there is no acceptable risk.

Do you hold this position for everything or only some things?

If it's some things, how do you determine which things can have some level of risk that's acceptable and which things can have no acceptable risk? And if there is an acceptable risk for some things, how do you set that level?

You should ban cars too, because they sometimes collide with children and families and injure/kill them.

But why is alcohol legal then? It has worse side effects and more collateral damage.

I think prohibition was the correct move as well, the US was unwilling to truly punish people and make it illegal. You can't slap people on the wrists.

Are you also firmly for alcohol abolition? What about gambling?

Yes to both.

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