Okay, the fundemental question here is one of the biggest ones of our entire society: At which point does your personal freedom end and infringing on that of someone else begin.
It's not an easy question to answer.
People who want to do something and are being told they can't by the goverment (or seeing people trying to get the goverment to pass such laws) reactively conjure images of "fascist" regimes of jackbooted "Nazis" (without any understanding of how things went down, or how things actually were for the German people at that time, the nazis were incredibly popular which is why we had to kill so many people rising up as part of the Volkssturm in the final days of WW II) leading people away to death camps in the night. Honestly it gets me irritated because typically we're discussing something relatively trivial like pot.
The problem with something minor like "pot" is that it's portrayed as being a victimless crime but it's really not. For one the odour clings, just being in room with someone puffing a joint can give you the smell, and this is how the police detect users a lot of the time. It's much more of an issue than say Cigarette smoke. People have the right not to smell like YOUR "joint" and really it can be difficult for pot to be consumed by large numbers of people without infringing on others. Like it or not people do have the right to not have to wash their clothes every time they walk through a room of people puffing so they won't reek of it.
The other thing is that people undervalue how messed up this drug makes people. Comedians like "Cheech and Chong" made a career out of mimicing stupid behavior when people are stoned. The thing is though that in their movies nobody really gets hurt. IRL some dude who gets stoned and does something really messed up is going to hurt or kill people. It doesn't require violence, all it requires is them hopping behind the wheel of a car, or deciding to drive their riding lawnmower down the sidewalk at full speed to pick up some munchies down the street.
Now of course this leads to the defense that Pot is no worse or more inhibiting than Alcohol, and point towards the failed prohibition attempt earlier in the US's history. Well honestly with all of the problems I can't say that I think Alcohol is a POSITIVE thing, and having TWO substances like that in legal circulation is basically going to double the fun so to speak.
I understand there is another side to the story, and that's fine. This is an ongoing issue for a reason. Just because there are worse things than weed does not make weed inherantly good.
*I* personally think we should keep it banned. But then again I also look at it economically. While it can be argued that the goverment could tax the heck out of it, I also don't think we could (or would) be able to viably produce enough for our own domestic needs if it was legalized. What this means is that nations that produce it in quantity would export it to the US, and even with high taxes they would gain a disproportionate amount of power over the US due to the addiction.
See with Alcohol, it wasn't that big a deal because we can produce a ton of it. But I don't think we can produce THAT much weed without using up a ton of farmland currently employed for other things, and even then we'd probably come up short.
Giving drug cartels an effective legal foothold in your nation is not a good idea, and it has ultimatly brought down nations. Read up on things like "The Opium Wars" and then how before the British turned the tables the Chinese were trying to addict the Western World, etc...
Poppies are something differant from weed, but the principle is the same. I for one wouldn't want to open up that trade with South America, and like it or not it WOULD happen if we leganized it.
What's more once you legalize something like this, it's neigh impossible to put the Genie back in the bottle even if people realize it was a really bad idea after the fact.
The point of this latter bit is that there are issues involved here other than personal freedom.
*THAT* said given how stupid the US is, I imagine pot will be legalized eventually. The reason being that in the US it's pretty much impossible to make a permanant ruling and have an issue taken off the table forever more. This means that any civil movement, no matter what about, can try continuously, passing more propaganda after each failure. The abillity to try an infinite number of times can be a problem when your dealing with a situation where all they have to do is succeed once and then it's nearly impossible to change your mind.
I frankly suspect that unless we seriously start growing up and adjusting our attitudes everything will be legal. A few generations down the road you might even see America on it's knees begging nations like Afghanistan not to cut off the flow of poppies.
>>>----Therumancer--->
It's not an easy question to answer.
People who want to do something and are being told they can't by the goverment (or seeing people trying to get the goverment to pass such laws) reactively conjure images of "fascist" regimes of jackbooted "Nazis" (without any understanding of how things went down, or how things actually were for the German people at that time, the nazis were incredibly popular which is why we had to kill so many people rising up as part of the Volkssturm in the final days of WW II) leading people away to death camps in the night. Honestly it gets me irritated because typically we're discussing something relatively trivial like pot.
The problem with something minor like "pot" is that it's portrayed as being a victimless crime but it's really not. For one the odour clings, just being in room with someone puffing a joint can give you the smell, and this is how the police detect users a lot of the time. It's much more of an issue than say Cigarette smoke. People have the right not to smell like YOUR "joint" and really it can be difficult for pot to be consumed by large numbers of people without infringing on others. Like it or not people do have the right to not have to wash their clothes every time they walk through a room of people puffing so they won't reek of it.
The other thing is that people undervalue how messed up this drug makes people. Comedians like "Cheech and Chong" made a career out of mimicing stupid behavior when people are stoned. The thing is though that in their movies nobody really gets hurt. IRL some dude who gets stoned and does something really messed up is going to hurt or kill people. It doesn't require violence, all it requires is them hopping behind the wheel of a car, or deciding to drive their riding lawnmower down the sidewalk at full speed to pick up some munchies down the street.
Now of course this leads to the defense that Pot is no worse or more inhibiting than Alcohol, and point towards the failed prohibition attempt earlier in the US's history. Well honestly with all of the problems I can't say that I think Alcohol is a POSITIVE thing, and having TWO substances like that in legal circulation is basically going to double the fun so to speak.
I understand there is another side to the story, and that's fine. This is an ongoing issue for a reason. Just because there are worse things than weed does not make weed inherantly good.
*I* personally think we should keep it banned. But then again I also look at it economically. While it can be argued that the goverment could tax the heck out of it, I also don't think we could (or would) be able to viably produce enough for our own domestic needs if it was legalized. What this means is that nations that produce it in quantity would export it to the US, and even with high taxes they would gain a disproportionate amount of power over the US due to the addiction.
See with Alcohol, it wasn't that big a deal because we can produce a ton of it. But I don't think we can produce THAT much weed without using up a ton of farmland currently employed for other things, and even then we'd probably come up short.
Giving drug cartels an effective legal foothold in your nation is not a good idea, and it has ultimatly brought down nations. Read up on things like "The Opium Wars" and then how before the British turned the tables the Chinese were trying to addict the Western World, etc...
Poppies are something differant from weed, but the principle is the same. I for one wouldn't want to open up that trade with South America, and like it or not it WOULD happen if we leganized it.
What's more once you legalize something like this, it's neigh impossible to put the Genie back in the bottle even if people realize it was a really bad idea after the fact.
The point of this latter bit is that there are issues involved here other than personal freedom.
*THAT* said given how stupid the US is, I imagine pot will be legalized eventually. The reason being that in the US it's pretty much impossible to make a permanant ruling and have an issue taken off the table forever more. This means that any civil movement, no matter what about, can try continuously, passing more propaganda after each failure. The abillity to try an infinite number of times can be a problem when your dealing with a situation where all they have to do is succeed once and then it's nearly impossible to change your mind.
I frankly suspect that unless we seriously start growing up and adjusting our attitudes everything will be legal. A few generations down the road you might even see America on it's knees begging nations like Afghanistan not to cut off the flow of poppies.
>>>----Therumancer--->
