Hacker News Reader

Comment by BryanB55 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how I feel about legalizing it but part of me thinks we don't need yet another substance that will make people more likely to act like idiots or endanger others.

I get the idea of having the freedom to do what you wish with your health and body but it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it, using it as a gateway drug and causing negative affects on society. I can't really think of anything positive society as a whole would gain from this except maybe tax money?

[Edit] Then again, a lot of this can be said about alcohol. I'm not sure which one is easier to abuse.

View on HN

Generally speaking, I expect that legal cannabis will tend to cut down on alcohol use, and I would tend to see this as a good thing.

Cannabis tends to be less addictive than alcohol, it's pretty much impossible to kill yourself with an overdose, and people intoxicated with it tend to overestimate how impaired they are rather than underestimate it like with alcohol.

I've seen a bunch of different studies using different methodologies to come up with various rankings of drugs by degree of harm [1][2][3], but every one of them rates cannabis as safer than alcohol.

EDIT: I expect that the "gateway drug" effect is due to people finding out that pot is much less dangerous than they are led to believe. People have always heard that using illegal drugs would kill them, then find that their friends are using it safely and assume that all illegal drugs are similarly safe.

[1]http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/drug-ranking.htm [2]http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774.full [3]http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...

People intoxicated with cannabis may be overestimating their impairment because smoking cannabis is a crime, which is a factor that is cancelled out by legalization. I know from hanging out with smokers that concern about degree of impairment tends to come up only when contact with law enforcement is a possibility.

Well, according to an article I read in New Scientist a while ago, people who were given cannabis and asked to perform drive in a simulator tended to slow down enough to nearly overcome their impairment, while people given alcohol didn't tend to slow down at all. And in fact people in the study who were given moderate amounts of both alcohol and cannabis tended to do driver better than people who had just taken alcohol.

And anecdotally, the one time I ate a pot brownie I was convinced that I must be swaying back and forth until my friends convinced me I wasn't. The experience started with 20 minutes of horrid vertigo which I gather was a pretty idiosyncratic reaction, so take that with a grain of salt.

So people don't smoke and drive because they don't want to be caught doing something illegal. Seeing as DUI is still illegal in Washington, I don't see how this changes anything.

Unless you're saying that because cannabis is legal I'm going to think that a cop is more likely to let me go, or be less likely to check me or what? The legality of cannabis use doesn't change the likelihood of me getting pulled over, no?

Or am I misunderstanding where you're coming from?

Yes, I am saying that when cannabis is legal, its users are no longer going to be continuously paranoid that the mere detection of its presence is going to be enough to have them imprisoned.

Right, (barring the discussion about the differences in impairment between cannabis and alcohol...) those are the same type of people that think they can get away with drinking and driving. They're arrogant, selfish people. But I don't really buy that they're sitting at home being good law abiding citizens waiting one hour for every drink or one hour for every toke before driving to Taco Bell right now, only to abandon that once it's legal.

No, I disagree. People think they can get away with drinking and driving because they almost overwhelmingly can get away with drinking and driving, and because the penalties for DUI conviction are routinized (they're more severe than a ticket but, barring injuries, less severe than any felony). Neither is the case for cannabis. If you're pulled over and your car reeks of weed, your car will be searched, and if cannabis turns up, everyone in the car is likely to be arrested. Your prosecution afterwards will not be routine; if you're found guilty, it is very likely to cost you your job in a way a DUI conviction isn't.

>People think they can get away with drinking and driving because they almost overwhelmingly can get away with drinking and driving

The legality of cannabis does not affect the likelihood of me getting pulled over so I don't understand. Or are you saying "keeping your job and not getting a felony = getting away with it"?

I mean, how many people are you imagining are cool with a DUI conviction and not a, I don't know, whatever it is if you get pulled over with weed in the car, possession+DUI?

First offense DUI in most states isn't even a felony. It doesn't matter if your employer is "cool" about it; they're unlikely to discover it.

Stipulate a fixed likelihood of being pulled over at all. You're pulled over for making the kind of mistake anyone could make, or pulled over because a traffic cop is bored or has a quota. But once you're pulled over, the likelihood of an officer detecting marijuana anywhere in the car including its passengers is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting alcohol intoxication in the driver.

These observations are so straightforward that I feel like we might be getting argumentative just for the sake of it. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of decriminalization.

>These observations are so straightforward that I feel like we might be getting argumentative just for the sake of it. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of decriminalization.

huh? I'm not trying to argue with you. I know that you think cannabis is a net-negative and I have no desire to argue with you about that. I respect your position and know that you're in favor of decriminalization.

I still do not understand what you're getting at. If I were to smoke a bowl, drink two beers and get in my car and got pulled over, I guarantee you I would be asked if I had been drinking because that would be far more present on my breath. Even if I had some weed in a grinder in my glove box.

>detecting marijuana anywhere in the car including its passengers is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting alcohol intoxication in the driver.

I have no idea how you come to this conclusion or find it obvious.

Besides, I think we're just going to disagree at the core of this. I like to think that there is more keeping people from recklessly drunk-driving than a "felony" on their record or losing their job.

I'm asked if I've been drinking virtually every time I'm pulled over (I am not an unsafe driver). I simply say "no". If I've drunk 2 beers in the last couple hours, I am driving unimpaired and won't be questioned further.

But if I'm pulled over and my car reeks of weed, a bunch of things are probably going to happen. The cop is going to shine his flashlight throughout the car looking for sources of the smell. He's going to ask me to get out of the car and will probably then frisk me for his own safety. He'll ask to search the car. He'll question everyone in the car. In many states, he is likely to call for a drug dog to effect probable cause for a search of the car.

My impression is that these things not only happen but happen routinely at traffic stops where cannabis is implicated; the state police have a whole infrastructure ready to go to make cannabis arrests happen, and they are higher-value stops (arrests) than traffic stops. None of these things happen during ordinary traffic stops, and unless you've been driving erratically or spilled high-proof alcohol on your clothes or have an open container, nothing else does either.

The problem is that cannabis stinks (literally); it has a sticky, lingering, resinous smell. Alcohol simply doesn't generate the same evidence.

Where I live, we have random breath testing units. This is where the police choose a random stretch of road and time, and pull over either the entire stream of traffic and each driver has to blow into a breathalyser, or they randomly sample traffic if there is too much, and each sampled driver has to blow. I got sampled just recently on a sunday afternoon, ironically on the way home from buying a large case of beer and wine to stock the larder for the christmas period. The testing office laughed when I pointed to it and said 'not until I get home'.

In the big operations they actually have a mobile police station in a truck, and if you register over the limit in the portable device, you are taken into the 'station' and booked immediately.

Since the introduction of this probably 20 years ago, the DUI rates have plummeted. Last year, over 12 million drivers were tested, which resulted in about 100,000 convictions, a rate of 0.8%. Since the introduction in the 1980s, there has been a reduction in the single vehicle, nighttime fatal accident rate of 26%, as well as an overall reduction in accidents across the board. Before the program started, fatal road accidents testing showed that the driver of the vehicle recorded a blood alcohol content of 50mg or higher (0.05) in 49% of accidents. This has been reduced to around 20% now, along with a nearly halving of fatal accidents (fatality rates are also reduced with mandatory seatbelts, increased speed limit enforcement and improvements in vehicle design).

There is no argument that increased enforcement lowers the chance that a road user will be involved in a fatal accident. In any case of decriminalization, this information must be used to design an enforcement program for driving that goes along with it.

There's no doubt plenty of people are driving around stoned right now - so arguably any random testing should include alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine and other drugs all in one simple test. Perhaps the technology isn't there yet, but it's one of the most effective harm minimisation strategies available.

I'm not sure why you believe marijuana users are likely to endanger others. How many have you met? Police officers say marijuana users tend to be the easiest people to arrest -- they're less likely to fight or cause problems than drunk people or meth heads.

The biggest effect this will have on our society is the dismantling of the Mexican drug cartels and the ending of the War on Drugs. This will obviate the need for hundreds of deaths and hundreds of thousands of arrests each year. A large percentage of the US population will no longer be criminals for recreationally using an intoxicant less harmful than any legal intoxicant, including alcohol.

why you believe marijuana users are likely to endanger others

Driving stoned?

Which is much, much safer than driving drunk. Even then, it will be illegal drive while under the influence of marijuana. This is basically a Wont someone think of the children! type argument.

If you think it's safe to drive while stoned, think again. Relative safety compared to driving drunk is not important, it's the absolute impairment level that is the key here.

If anyone reading this is in the habit of driving around stoned, please stop before you kill or seriously injure yourself, someone important to you, or some random stranger. It's just not worth the risk.

No, it's more "OH GOD, WHAT ABOUT MURDER?! SHOULDN'T MURDER BE MADE ILLEGAL?! WHY ISN'T MURDER EVEN MORE ILLEGAL?!" type argument.

"Which is much, much safer than driving drunk."

I support legalization, but these fabrications do not help anyone. DWI should remain illegal.

Driving drunk? Driving tired? Driving while talking on the phone? Driving stoned?

Oh, you meant driving while impaired/distracted? Yes, that is always a bad idea. Which is why it is of course illegal.

Your opinion is very uninformed. You can't think of anything positive that would result? What about:

- ending our massively expensive "war on drugs"

- ending massive spending on incarceration

- decreasing the U.S. incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world

- stop penalizing citizens who are using a drug which is scientifically proven to be harmless (and is also much less dangerous than alcohol)

- raise U.S. tax revenue from drug sales, instead of sending the money to Mexican drug lords

- spend some of this new tax revenue on actually rehabilitating drug users, instead of sending them to prisons, where they often come out worse than they went in.

I could go on. Drug legalization was tried in Portugal, which had a massive drug problem, and it solved most of their problems. See: http://www.economist.com/node/14309861 .

"decreasing the U.S. incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world"

I suppose that is one way to reduce incarceration rates: reduce the number of laws.

I seriously doubt the majority of incarcerations involve a regular person just smoking a few joints. Most are hardcore drug users that committed other crimes or dealers (which will still be illegal).

"raise U.S. tax revenue from drug sales, instead of sending the money to Mexican drug lords"

If drug users really cared about the violence in Mexico, they would boycott any drugs grown in Mexico. I haven't even seen this as a suggestion. Why?

"spend some of this new tax revenue on actually rehabilitating drug users, instead of sending them to prisons, where they often come out worse than they went in."

I thought drugs were okay? Why do we need to spend the money we get from drug revenue to rehabilitate addicts? There are plenty of other things that could use that money..like paying down the national debt.

"I could go on. Drug legalization was tried in Portugal, which had a massive drug problem, and it solved most of their problems."

I would really like to see some pros and cons. The problem is that all of the pro-drug users only want to talk about the great things (and deny any of the bad ones).

Until we can have an open and honest discussion, there won't be any progress.

"I suppose that is one way to reduce incarceration rates: reduce the number of laws."

Yes, and legalizing drugs would be one way of doing that.

"I thought drugs were okay?"

Marijuana was found to be non-harmful by medical researchers. Certainly other drugs are not.

"If drug users really cared about the violence in Mexico, they would boycott any drugs grown in Mexico. I haven't even seen this as a suggestion. Why?"

The point I'm making is legalization would raise revenues here and have a positive side effect on Mexico. How would it be a bad thing to help Mexico return to normalcy?

"Why do we need to spend the money we get from drug revenue to rehabilitate addicts? There are plenty of other things that could use that money..like paying down the national debt."

Regardless of what we do with the funds, it's additional revenue. Whether or not we spend it on rehabilitating drug addicts or not is a different discussion.

"I would really like to see some pros and cons. The problem is that all of the pro-drug users only want to talk about the great things (and deny any of the bad ones)."

Pros:

- increased revenue

- less spending on enforcement

- lower incarceration rate, less spending on prisons

Cons:

- greater access, though access isn't difficult right now.

- may result in more drug users (Decriminalization in Portugal did not result in more drug users, but full legalization could have a different effect.)

Criminalizing popular drugs like Marijuana is no different than alcohol prohibiton in the 20's, and we all know how that turned out.

I am not an illegal drug user myself. Read some more on the topic and you will likely be swayed to the side of legalization, which I and many others believe to be the side of reason.

I think many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs. It sounds bad on its face, but the actual results are the opposite of what you'd expect.

We've already got that substance. And a lot of people already use it. Among ex-users, at least two recent Presidents of the United States of America.

As a consequence of using it, with enforcement and penalties varying very widely based on socioeconomic status, a great many people have their lives compromised by legal, not medical or addictive, properties of the substance.

The United States tried prohibition with alcohol. As you may recall, it didn't work.

My own view is that a legal regime in which the use of drugs is decriminalized, the negative consequences of use and/or sale are not (e.g.: if you as a dealer / corporate vendor are liable / responsible / deliberately causing harm, illness, or seeking to create addictions particularly among children or others unable to provide valid legal consent to use), and terms and condition of sale are legal but highly regulated, we'd be far better off than we are today.

If there are abusers of marijuana or other drugs whose use is causing a problem, then that use should be treated as a medical problem, without legal sanction. If use/abuse of a drug leads to other criminal activity (theft/robbery, assault, sexual crimes, etc.), then those activities should receive legal sanction. Possibly (though I'm not fully convinced and inclined against) with an additional penalty for deliberate intoxication.

You have to look at it from a purely pragmatic perspective. Everyone who wants cannabis, even teenagers, can currently get it very easily. Growing up, everyone knew it was easier to get than alcohol(drug dealers don't check ID).

In the states that are considering legalization, the vast majority of possession arrests end up with the charges dismissed or a civil fine anyway. So from a purely logical perspective, spending a ton of money on arrests that will only result in the charges getting dropped anyway makes no sense.

This is really far from true. There's a difference between the fact that anyone who really wants cannabis can get it, and the idea that it is very easy to get. Cigarettes are easy to get. Alcohol is easy to get. At most times of day, if I want a bottle of whisky or vodka, I can walk into a 7-11 and pick it up. I have only a vague idea of how I'd acquire an 8th.

(It is easier in Chicago for teenagers to get alcohol than weed; you just pay people on the street to get it for you. No, you cannot walk up to a random street person in Chicago and buy weed.)

It's very very very easy to acquire marijuana.

Just because you don't know how you'd acquire an 8th, doesn't mean that it isn't easy to acquire.

If you're the type of person to smoke, then you'd know where to go to get it. Or you can just ask someone and they'd tell you.

No, I disagree. The fact that I don't know how to an acquire an 8th does mean it isn't easy to acquire.

You're discarding the context of the thread here. Everybody agrees that the "type of person to smoke" --- that is, people who are driven to smoke --- can readily acquire marijuana. But it does not follow from that that everybody can readily acquire marijuana.

Marijuana is stigmatized. Its distribution is cliquish and sometimes confined to subcultures (we may be blinded to that because demographically we tend to adhere to some of those subcultures). It's also illegal.

The point here is: marijuana would be much easier to get --- so much easier that it is likely that way more people would try it --- if it was legalized or completely decriminalized.

(I oppose criminalization).

It's one thing to know who to ask for weed.

It's another to be able to find any random stranger, walk to a gas station and get alcohol.

They're both "easy" in a sense, but there's a semantic difference about whether it's easy for YOU to get cannabis or if it's easy for ANYONE to get alcohol.

I suspect tptacek is right at least about trying it. The debate about a longer-term trend of overall use is almost pointless until we wait and see. Many, many people I know claim that they haven't tried it because: they don't know where to/how to, they don't trust that they wouldn't get something tainted, it's illegal.

Yes, there are some that repeat the "it makes you a loser", etc, and they're not going to try it either way, but I certainly think that it will be more accessible to people who would have never pursued it but may be curious. (edit, sorry, there are also plenty of people who simply don't want to do it or don't want to be mentally impaired, or are worried about provoking an underlying mental issue, etc, I don't mean to criticize them.

Why do you think that you, or anyone, should have the ability to tell anyone else what they can and can't do with their body? Follow this principle through, why not try to tell everyone how to run their lives for the betterment of humanity? Listening to certain types of music, for example, is likely to be correlated to higher rates of crime and unwanted pregnancy, maybe we can ban those types of music.

History has shown us repeatedly that attempting to "legislate morality", attempting to run people's lives "for their own good" leads to far worse outcomes than simply letting the original "undesired" behavior alone. We should only use the power of the state to control people's behavior in so far as, and precisely when, it harms others. And we should use social and cultural pressure (not guns, violence, and imprisonment) to try to improve our society in regards to negative or self-destructive behaviors.

Honestly, given American culture, diet would be a better example. Think of the immense, immense benefit to the American public health if we literally regulated what people ate?

Indeed. It's easy to think that, and it's easy to convince people of that. But once you get into the messy business of creating a police state to enforce what people eat then things take a turn for the worse. Good intentions don't always lead to good destinations, it's funny how well that is known and how often it is failed to be understood.

> it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it, using it as a gateway drug and causing negative affects on society

Do you have a shred of evidence to support this claim?

Under current definitions, any use = abuse.

He's just expecting usage to rise if it's legal.

I think both claims are spurious.

The freedom to do what you wish with your body is a pretty gigantic positive.

Also there's the pleasure of smoking weed for those who are into it. What's the positive affect french fries have on society?

It would be rare to find someone who wanted to smoke pot and couldn't find some to buy. But, it must be said that legalization would increase bith the number of users as well as the total amount.

It legalization in some states is to be enacted, I would think that an accompanying set of regulations about where and how much can be used. The first problem is driving under influence, but then there is also the need for employers to be able to enforce drag-free workplaces ( current drug tests measure any usage, not just a current level of intoxication). then there's acceptable places of use - like cigarettes, most people won't want to eat a meal with someone taking up at the table next to them.

Finally, on the issue of taxation and importation - if you want to get the economic benefits then you need to get all protective and prevent imports,a nd you need to have a framework of regulating the strength so that people can get a consistent dose, in the same way you know how much two beers is going to affect you.

Ultimately prohibition isn't really working, but lurching to the other extreme quickly could have a lot of issues as well, which would be more likely to bring back the regulations? A gradual decriminlisation, accompanied with regulations on consumption and funding of education and health programs from the taxation revenue would be the best way to go.

>But, it must be said that legalization would increase bith the number of users as well as the total amount.

Again, that has not been the case when decriminalization of drugs has happened in other places.

Also, at least in the case of Washington, all of these issues are already accounted for (due to medical use laws, or new legislation) or are going to be accounted for by the board setup to oversee cannabis sales. (For brevity, instead of me listing them, just check the Wikipedia page and the bill itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Initiative_502#Provi...

>you need to have a framework of regulating the strength so that people can get a consistent dose, in the same way you know how much two beers is going to affect you.

Heh, I think the customers and providers will be wanting that as much as the government does. Ultimately though, I think it will vary because it's not like alcohol. Various types of alcohols have slightly different buzzes, but cannabis has a lot more components that vary more from type to type.

>Again, that has not been the case when decriminalization of drugs has happened in other places.

I doubt this to be true. Illegality has some effect on the amount and number of users. Personally, I don't touch the stuff for a variety of reasons, of which one is illegality which leads to having to deal with drug dealers. If it were legal (or decriminalised), it would increase the chances of me coming across it at a party or similar. At the margin this would have some effect on usage.

The problem with trying to do before/after studies is the patchy data, usually filled in by statistical sampling which leads to error margins. It's pretty easy to determine how much alcohol is consumed per year, because of the status of the industry you can work it out from the sales (the amount of home-brewed hooch wouldn't even been a rounding error).

In any case like this, with very large data sizes (ie, a big chunk of the adult population), any change in the legal status will have an effect at the margins. Hard-core and even regular users will not be affected by the legal status - but on the margin there will be plenty of people who might be inclined to take the occasional puff but don't because of constricted supply and the fact that it is illegal. Remove this and usage will go up - the degree is unknown and probably unknowable - but it will be there.

Any change in the law changes the future, and especially so in this case.

I'm not really arguing for or against here, just pointing out that usage will go up, and nobody knows exactly what that will mean.

Cannabis is a "gateway drug" because it is illegal ... we've known this for a while, and cannabis abuse has generally fallen in countries that legalize its consumption.

Cannabis is the "gateway" drug, because once it's legalized, legalization and research efforts for many other substances will begin. The floodgates will have been broken.

Already, we're seeing research into using meth against the flu [1] and ectacy used to fight PTSD.

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KDIzE_...

we're seeing research into meth stopping major diseases

Citation?

Already, we're seeing research into meth stopping major diseases and ectacy used to fight PTSD

Oh no! Research!?! Oh, the humanity!

I don't think he's saying it's a bad thing. Sheesh.

ecstasy

I'm in general agreement. I think a study of the history of opium in China should be undertaken by anyone who thinks there is no possible bad outcome of this.

This is actually a pretty interesting series of historical events period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_Chin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Why would people act like idiots or endanger others just for smoking pot? There are many places where you can use cannabis without any punishment and people are still normal.

Gateway drug to what? Just because one drug have been used before another doesn't mean that the first drug automatically will make you want the second drug.

Actually, for me marijuana was a gateway drug: it led to a tobacco habit that lasted 40 years. :(

You might be right, but what's your alternative? The current state of affairs wastes a lot of money and ruins lives.

Really man? Alcohol by far!

Acting like someone using cannabis and alcohol is the same thing is just ignorant. I didn't and couldn't have written, eh, maybe half of my media center/library project while drunk. I think it's quite well written and it was all done during my... leisure time.

The misinformed FUD is disappointing. DARE won't even try to demonize cannabis like that anymore.

>it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it

Sigh, "it just seems inevitable" == "I am just repeating the same thing I've heard and believed forever without looking into it". See, Portugal.

edit, If the anti-drug people who have no context want to judge and downvote based on inaccurate out-dated stereotypes, so be it. Surely downvoting me will make me realize just how much of a loser I am.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com