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Comment by il | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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