Legalize it?

[tBone]

Keeping the drinking age to 21 does nothing except encourage the overconsumption of it. Same with weed. "Oh, we can't have it, that means WE HAVE DO TO SEVEN POUNDS OF IT AT A TIME!"

Education and responsible use is what will stop drinking and driving and other binge/drug related shit. Not keeping it criminal or keeping the age-of-use at an even more arbitrary, and needlessly higher, number.


E: And... high school is where 18 year olds hang out? I was out of high school when I was sixteen, and would have been in college had I not waited a bit. So... Do you have two grades we don't or something?

The only times I've heard of over consuming of alcohol is at parties. Changing the legality of something won't stop people from abusing it. It is also impossible to OD on weed. You would have to smoke your body weight in 15 minutes.

Yes education is what we need. At the same time, you can't say age regulation doesn't work. This can be noticed by the fact that there has been an increase in weed and a decrease in alcohol consumption.

In the USA, kindergarten starts at 5 or 6 depending on your birthday. Then 5 years of elementary school and 7 years of middle/high school. 7+5+1+5/6 = 18/19. Then accounting for all the kids that get left back a year, most kids coming out of high school are 18-20. You can drop out after 10th grade, but that is setting yourself up for failure 90% of the time.

If we changed our education system, which we need to do, and we graduated at 16 or 17, then I would be more open to the age limit being lowered. But until then, it should be 21.

[les]

Me being me and having tried almost everything and anything.

I allowed Pot and booze to be consumed in their bedroom.
So long as it was discreet and it didn't impact on the rest of the house.

This was is to stop surreptitious consumption in the park behind the bushes.
Where they could be vulnerable to other ne'er-do-wells and so suffer other problems.

This did not mean it was the local crack house.

I must have got things wrong all my kids are in work or education and in stable long term relationships.

[denton]

B) I am a firm supported the child birth should be regulated. There should be a system in place that prevents those in situations un-fit for children from having kids.

Wow.

I mean, I do get why one would might want to do that, but who would have the authority and decide? Based on which criteria? It's an extremely bad idea in my opinion.

Instead, one should rather try to make the world a place where as many people as possible are able to provide their children with a good situation to grow up in.


As for the original topic:
If one would want to treat alcohol and marijuana differently, then alcohol should be more restricted, not marijuana. I am pro-legalization and pro-education and prevention. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get stoned or drunk sometimes. I'd even say it's healthy in some way. But as with anything you can get addicted to (tv, internet, alcohol, pot, harder drugs, work, sex, prescription drugs etc etc) what we need is education so that people can learn how to deal with it in a healthy way and ways to get help if you screwed up. The alternative is making it a taboo, which means that those who do end up with an addiction won't get help because there is such a stigma associated with it.

I don't have the numbers to back me up here, but I'd guess that abuse of prescription drugs is a bigger problem in the US than the consumption of Marijuana.


edit: btw, les, from everything I have read about you and your kids in the time I've been here, you're a great father. As far as drugs go, this is exactly the right approach in my opinion.

[les]

btw, les, from everything I have read about you and your kids in the time I've been here, you're a great father. As far as drugs go, this is exactly the right approach in my opinion.

[CheerfullyInsane]

The age for purchasing alcohol and tobacco products should be 18.

You can enter into a contract, vote, and enlist in the military at age 18.

If you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough drink and buy tobacco products. If not, then raise the age of responsiblity for everything back to 21 (voting, entering into a contract, ect).

I tired of the nanny state mentality that has developed in the U.S. Too many people telling others how they should live their lives.

+1
The marriage and having kids by 18 has been mentioned.

It is also legal to go into porn by 18.

Doesnt make sense AT ALL then not to be able to buy alcohol till 21.


Did a quick look at the wiki article on marijuana. Seems like tobacco is worse then pot.

Anyone know why marijuana was banned in the first place and tobacco not?

Try reading this: http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why ... a-illegal/
No idea whether it's a credible source (the web being what it is), but if nothing else, it's a fun read.

As to the difference between military/voting and drinking age.....I agree that it's utter madness.
You can see your friend off to war, but you can't buy the bugger a drink when he comes home???

I mean, I do get why one would might want to do that, but who would have the authority and decide? Based on which criteria? It's an extremely bad idea in my opinion.

Not to mention that you run into the small problem of what to do with the end result of the 'illegal' pregnancies. You end up with a choice of executing them (which seems a bit harsh *LOL*) or shoving them into the foster-care system that already works so wonderfully...... :)

I think that having some sort of criteria for having kids is a good idea, but it'll be impossible to enforce.

Instead, one should rather try to make the world a place where as many people as possible are able to provide their children with a good situation to grow up in.

Sure....Right after we place Santa and the Easter Bunny on the national flag. ;)
Looking at human history, mankind as such isn't real big on altruism.
Most people, given half a chance, will not only screw you over, they'll brag about it to their friends. *g*

I don't have the numbers to back me up here, but I'd guess that abuse of prescription drugs is a bigger problem in the US than the consumption of Marijuana.

I don't have hard numbers either, but I'd assume you're right about this.
Hell, with some basic chemical knowledge you can extract codeine from over-the-counter pain-killers, and get extremely high........Not advocating it, mind you, since you can also end up extremely dead, but it's pretty easy.
Which brings us back to the pharmaceutical companies having a vested interest in marijuana staying illegal.
Or to quote Bill Maher: "Phizer doesn't want to go up against marijuana....They'll LOSE."

Cheerfully

[Human]

Thanks CheerfullyInsane !

[denton]

Instead, one should rather try to make the world a place where as many people as possible are able to provide their children with a good situation to grow up in.

Sure....Right after we place Santa and the Easter Bunny on the national flag. ;)
Looking at human history, mankind as such isn't real big on altruism.
Most people, given half a chance, will not only screw you over, they'll brag about it to their friends. *g*

Yeah, it may be naive... but it's at least a goal worth pursuing, in my opinion.


And again on the topic of legalization:

http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/b ... r-on-drugs

The war on drugs in the US is pretty much a war on the underclass and hurtful to the people in many, many ways. But few people in power actually have the balls to admit that. Once they retire, however, they suddenly have the courage to say that.

[lexmark402003]

I agree with Ron Paul, legalize it because prohibition 1) doesn't work 2) costs a ton of money and 3) creates a criminal class.

[Alliteration]

While I agree that marijuana should be legalized, I see a lot of bad arguments in this thread.

For example, guess what else doesnt work, costs money, and creates a criminal class? Your police stations homicide department.

Another thing ive seen said is that regulation will make it harder for children to get it - and this is said right after "prohibition doesnt work". Isnt regulation just selective prohibition? Furthermore, if we also tax, regulation will be even less effective. Look at movie piracy these days, its rampant, and all the regulation in the world cant stop it. Why not? Because, like growing marijuana, copying a DVD is easy. Without a barrier to entry, street marijuana will exist regardless of regulation.

People do things because they are taboo, always have, always will. Want to stop kids from smoking pot? Legalize it, with no taxes or restrictions. This will happen: "Wanna get high?"..."My grandma gets high, that stuff is for lame old people!"

So why should we legalize it, if all these reasons are bad? Simple - cause people like to get high, and because theres no reason not to. However, should we legalize it asap? Hell no - change takes time and resources, both of which are in limited supply. So, maybe we should put this issue on the back burner until we solve more important problems.

[denton]

The homicide department analogy just plainly does not work. Smoking pot does not inherently have a victim. Killing someone does. Hence we want those who do it punished. If there were no homicide department there certainly would be more murderers than before. Of course even the harshest punishments won't stop all crime , but it reduces it.

Growing Marijuana is not _that_ easy as far as I know. It's certainly more difficult than copying a dvd. I would expect most people to happily pay a certain amount of tax for good, quality-controlled legal marijuana. Of course some people will say "screw that, I'll grow my own!" and.. so what? I really don't think there would be a similar drug trade (for marijuana at least) if people could avoid shady dealers, potential legal problems etc if they just paid a bit more.

Looking at the state of the US prison system and the state of US inner cities in general, the war on drugs (which of course isn't restricted to pot, I know) does have implications that go far beyond "I wanna buy pot legally but I can't". Of course there are bigger problems, but following that line of argumentation, what should be dealt with first? The way that the western world exploits the rest of the planet? The way that humanity in general treats the earth?

[Alliteration]

Smoking pot does not inherently have a victim. Killing someone does. Hence we want those who do it punished.

I agree. The point was that lexmark above me said we should legalize pot because of the three things listed. If those things are a good reason to legalize pot, then they are a good reason to legalize homicide as well. The very fact that this argument can be used in support of crazy ideas shows that it's a bad argument.

Growing Marijuana is not _that_ easy as far as I know. It's certainly more difficult than copying a dvd. I would expect most people to happily pay a certain amount of tax for good, quality-controlled legal marijuana. Of course some people will say "screw that, I'll grow my own!" and.. so what? I really don't think there would be a similar drug trade (for marijuana at least) if people could avoid shady dealers, potential legal problems etc if they just paid a bit more.

Don't look at it from the buyer point of view - look at it from the grower/dealer point of view. While some people would eschew street marijuana in favor of the regulated stuff, not everyone would, and this is where the grower stands to make profit - precisely because his product is not regulated. He would be able to say anything about the quality, and since there are no regulations, no one would be any the wiser.

As for how easy it is...yeah, copying a DVD was a bad analogy. What I was trying to show here was a point about how easy it is to enter the market compared to similar markets. In the 1980s, music piracy was a far rarer phenomenom than it is now. Why have things changed? Because it's now easier to produce your own product - even my grandmother could burn a DVD.

Now, instead of comparing media storage in the 80s to media storage now, compare growing pot to growing tobacco. Pot is everywhere on the street already, but have you ever seen a black market cigarette? I haven't. I don't know anyone who grows their own tobacco - because it's not easy. Growing marijuana, on the other hand, is. You can grow it in your basement or in your backyard (granted, not a lot of it, but enough to make at least a few hundred dollars occasionally - and that's plenty of motivation for someone to do so).

Another reason to think that regulations would fail is that they would likely include a limit to how much a customer was allowed to purchase, as well as a limit to how potent it could be. Many pot smokers would despise such policies.

Looking at the state of the US prison system and the state of US inner cities in general, the war on drugs (which of course isn't restricted to pot, I know) does have implications that go far beyond "I wanna buy pot legally but I can't". Of course there are bigger problems, but following that line of argumentation, what should be dealt with first? The way that the western world exploits the rest of the planet? The way that humanity in general treats the earth?

I would say that the proper way to improve inner cities is to put more money into education, development, and planning, rather than legalize drugs - I doubt legalization will affect these areas much at all. As for the prison system, I would say that the way to improve that is to change the way they're run (we should rehabilitate, not punish). Overcrowding is an issue, yes, but drug legalization is not the only way to fix that, and doesn't even fix the other problems with it anyway.

As for what problems we should be focusing on, I don't really have a strict answer to that. We can all name many things that are far more dire than the drug situation, though; as well as rank them (roughly) based on how difficult they would be to accomplish. Maybe improving education is best, or maybe trying to avoid warfare is. Or, maybe, we should focus on medical research. Or foreign aid. Or space exploration. But regardless, there's a great many things we could do rather than undertake the massive task of changing an entire country's social and cultural attitude while at the same time trying to undermine powerful opponents of marijuana who stand to lose quite a bit of money if policies are changed; all for relatively little benefit compared to tasks which seem far easier.

[denton]

I would say that the proper way to improve inner cities is to put more money into education, development, and planning, rather than legalize drugs - I doubt legalization will affect these areas much at all. As for the prison system, I would say that the way to improve that is to change the way they're run (we should rehabilitate, not punish). Overcrowding is an issue, yes, but drug legalization is not the only way to fix that, and doesn't even fix the other problems with it anyway.

Throwing money at it will not necessarily solve the problems, many of them have systematic causes (e.g. where tax money goes to etc). I think (I'm too lazy to check for sources right now) that about 70% of the prison population is incarcerated because of drug-related crime. That's an incredible amount.

Don't look at it from the buyer point of view - look at it from the grower/dealer point of view. While some people would eschew street marijuana in favor of the regulated stuff, not everyone would, and this is where the grower stands to make profit - precisely because his product is not regulated. He would be able to say anything about the quality, and since there are no regulations, no one would be any the wiser.

I read that a kilo of cocaine costs (roughly) 1500$ in the land where it is produced and then has a street value of 100 times that. This increase in value that makes the drug trade so attractive and it exists solely because it is illegal. Even with fairly high taxation the profit margin would shrink by an incredible amount and that profit margin is what drives the drug trade. It's pure laissez-faire capitalism.

[les]

All smuggling occurs simply because

           The product is wanted and is considerably/significantly dearer

                      In the destination country.



Most often because of taxation.

[denton]

Of course, but even with harsh taxation the profit margin would be extremely low as compared to now.

Lower profits would make smuggling a lot less desirable, drug dealers/organizations would have less money and therefore have less power and be less attractive.

Just look at Latin America and the horrendous effects that the US war on drugs has in these countries. It's not even a secret that the drug bosses hold an incredible amount of power there and it's hard to blame a corrupt police official when his own salary sucks and his own policework becomes meaningless because for every dealer he arrests a new one pops up. Since 2006 how many people have been killed in drug-related crimes in Mexico? I think it's about 40000. This isn't happening next door or even in the countries we live in but that doesn't mean that it's none of our business. And we're all indirectly responsible for that (and many, many other things completely unrelated to drugs as well of course).

I mostly agree with Alliteration though. The desire to get consume psychoactive substances has always been there and will always be there. Even kids experiment with it (not with psychoactive substances but stuff merry-go-rounds etc), it's natural. And it can be done safely most of the time if you're educated and with people you can trust. Of course legalization would bring about problems but I do think that they would be smaller than the problems we have now. Except that we're turning a blind eye to them.

[les]

The problem with drugs is that the profits are astronomical.

Imagine a typical weekend in New York City. Experts estimate that at least one percent of the population - 80,000 plus - spends $200 on illicit drugs. That alone would amount to $16 million dollars a week or $832 million a year. And that's just New York.

Read more:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... z1iI2UQLEF