Duuuddee... Pass the blunt...

[Amish]

I think all drugs should be legalised, not just marijuana.

[Phlogiston]

But it could be like alcohol where its really hard and expensive to obtain a license. And then you have to pay taxes when you sell it. I think it would be better if they just didnt tax it.

There is pretty much nothing that goes untaxed. Also, if it's so easy to "grow very high quality marijuana in your closet with the right seeds and equipment," wouldn't they make licenses that much easier to obtain (and have penalties of various forms for those who grow without a license, because otherwise why have a license system?).

[OldManJenkins]

I think all drugs should be legalised, not just marijuana.

Me too.

Not everything is taxed the same way as alcohol is. I mean, if they made licenses really easy to obtain then most people would just get a license but if its like getting your alcohol license most people wouldn't go through the trouble.

[GrizzlyB]

Any is good surely?

Any legalisation will reduce the power of cartels. That's just logical.

This is true, but as far as I'm concerned, the costs/risks don't outweigh the benefits. You shouldn't take drastic measures for small comeuppances.

Hardly that much of a problem in Holland/Portugal etc.

Unless I'm mistaken, you're only allowed to use there, and grow/sell in small amounts. Mass distribution/production is still illegal.

Well it will make some difference. Of course it's not going to get rid of under-age usage altogether, but anything is better than what we have now. Right now, the legal age to buy pretty much any drug is about ten dollars/pounds.

Yeah, but if you increase the amount of drugs in the hands of everybody, it's only logical that kids will get more, too. Plus, if there were no longer any risk just to have pot in the first place, they'd quite possibly sell it for cheaper, too, further increasing its prevalence in youth.

No evidence this is the case.

I think not.

How many people brew beer/grow tobacco at home? Not that many. Even then, there's no need to tax it highly. Just tax it fairly.

My point in bringing that up was to highlight the differences between them. Alcohol and tobacco both take a long time and a lot of overhead to produce, and have to be made in very specific conditions. I'm not sure if making either at home is even cheaper, and you'll have a lot of time between batches of alcohol, and you can harvest tobacco once a year. Marijuana is way, way simpler than that. And maybe it shouldn't be taxed highly, but the most prevalent reason I hear for legalizing weed is to tax it, but since it's stupidly cheap to produce, unless you've got a high sin tax on it, there's not going to be a whole lot of money coming in.

Yeah because all those studies so far have really come down on cannabis as being really harmful.

Many have.

[GoggleBoy]

Alcohol is fine, but Weed is bad? Come on!
Legalize it!

[GoggleBoy]

I've never tried marijuana, and most likely never will. A lot of people I know smoke it, but I make the personal decision not to participate. On the issue of whether or not to legalize it for recreational use, I am not really informed enough to have an educated decision. I don't know enough about the effects, etc. One thing to consider is that legalizing it would reduce crime/gangs/drug cartels. On the other side, do we really want a whole generation being raised under a haze of marijuana smoke? Do we really know what will happen to society when it is legalized? Not that people don't smoke it already, but should we really have it happen on a much larger scale? Again, I'm indifferent; I don't know enough on the subject.

Not everyone will be smoking marijuana if it gets legalized though. Alcohol is legal but not everyone drinks.

[Snorunt conservationist]

This is true, but as far as I'm concerned, the costs/risks don't outweigh the benefits. You shouldn't take drastic measures for small comeuppances.

The risk of more people developing scizophrenia doesn't outweigh the multiple lives that may very well be saved if the cartels wield less power?

The problem here is that (a view no means exclusive to you) legalising Marijuana (we'll leave other drugs to the side for now) is somehow seen as a drastic measure. Which in a way it is, in the sense that you would be legal/decrim a substance which has been illegal for years. However, if we see it as the legalisation of a drug which has minimal effects upon (the vast vast majority of) fully developed brains and which is directly responsible for precisely zero deaths in history, it becomes far less radical.

Unless I'm mistaken, you're only allowed to use there, and grow/sell in small amounts. Mass distribution/production is still illegal.

Exporting is exporting. I thought you referring to "drug tourism"as it were.

Yeah, but if you increase the amount of drugs in the hands of everybody, it's only logical that kids will get more, too.

Yet there's no evidence that loosening drug laws leads to an increase of use so your premise is flawed.

Plus, if there were no longer any risk just to have pot in the first place, they'd quite possibly sell it for cheaper, too, further increasing its prevalence in youth.

Yet if there's an age limit to buy, it can be regulated more effectively than it is currently. As I say, the current legal age to buy drugs is a handful of pounds/dollars. I fail to see how that's better than 18.

I think not.

So drug use increased in 2010? Fair enough.

http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsro...teenagers.aspx

While marijuana use by teens has been increasing since 2005, an analysis of data from 1993 through 2009 by economists at three universities has found no evidence to link the legalization of medical marijuana to increased use of the drug among high school student

http://sensiblecolorado.org/marijuan...s-took-effect/

Since the passage of HB10-1284, Colorado’s historical medical marijuana regulation legislation, current marijuana use among high school students in Colorado has dropped from 24.8% to 22.0%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1865095.html

I do apologise for using the Huffington Post. Please forgive me.

Unfortunately your source doesn't stack up.

My point in bringing that up was to highlight the differences between them. Alcohol and tobacco both take a long time and a lot of overhead to produce, and have to be made in very specific conditions. I'm not sure if making either at home is even cheaper, and you'll have a lot of time between batches of alcohol, and you can harvest tobacco once a year

It's fair enough, but my point is that a lot of people don't bother producing these things because of the time and effort involved for what will probably end up an inferior product. Even if the time taken to develop draw is lesser than these other substances, the fact that someone is able to go down the street and buy some quality controlled produce will render much home growing irrelevant.

Marijuana is way, way simpler than that. And maybe it shouldn't be taxed highly, but the most prevalent reason I hear for legalizing weed is to tax it, but since it's stupidly cheap to produce, unless you've got a high sin tax on it, there's not going to be a whole lot of money coming in.

A man runs a marijuana dispensary. He employs three people. The owner turns a profit, pays his corporation tax and has something left over. The three employees pay their income taxes and still have a degree of disposable income. They also work in the private sector, meaning little public burden to the taxpayer. The tax from marijuana doesn't have to necessarily come from marijuana.

Many have.

In under 18's and people with pre-developed potential to get Scizophrenia, yeah. I doubt we're advocating those people smoking draw. The vast majority of the public will continue to be fine.

[Cosmical El Amarna]

While I agree that the youth should not be toking it up because their brains are not fully developed, I disagree that we should now go back on the progress that has been made. People are going to smoke weed regardless, kids still get drunk even though they're not allowed to consume it until the age of 21. One can point their finger as much as they want, but shortly after one should realize that its pointless because you'll eventually be pointing out every flaw in human society, unless you're prejudice and discriminatory that is.

[GrizzlyB]

The risk of more people developing scizophrenia doesn't outweigh the multiple lives that may very well be saved if the cartels wield less power?

The problem here is that (a view no means exclusive to you) legalising Marijuana (we'll leave other drugs to the side for now) is somehow seen as a drastic measure. Which in a way it is, in the sense that you would be legal/decrim a substance which has been illegal for years. However, if we see it as the legalisation of a drug which has minimal effects upon (the vast vast majority of) fully developed brains and which is directly responsible for precisely zero deaths in history, it becomes far less radical.

I think legalizing any psychoactive drug would be pretty drastic in and of itself, but even moreso if the idea behind doing so was to take power from cartels. That's mostly what I was referring to.

Still, the fact remains that we don't know what will happen if marijuana is legalized. Will people start driving high? Would that be a problem? How do we test whether people are driving high or not (considering it remains in your system for days)? And those are just about driving, with dozens more unknown questions about things like mass production, if use in general will go up or down, if it will be easier or harder for kids to get a hold of, effects of long-term and regular use, full range of benefits/detriments, taxing, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of variables, so even if weed were proven to have no detriments beside getting high, as so many seem to believe (even though that's constantly being thrown into question), I don't think you can say suddenly legalizing it isn't drastic.

Exporting is exporting. I thought you referring to "drug tourism"as it were.

Nah, what I was thinking was more along the lines of, "Well, if cartels already have operations in the US, odds that they'd move in to legally cultivate marijuana seem pretty good." Or even just use it as a middleman to legally store marijuana they'd ship elsewhere.

Yet there's no evidence that loosening drug laws leads to an increase of use so your premise is flawed.

I guess not, and if there is any out there, I don't feel like searching for it. Still, I feel like this half falls into my "unknown" spiel above, and half falls into the "being illegal acts as a deterrent goes without saying" category.

Yet if there's an age limit to buy, it can be regulated more effectively than it is currently. As I say, the current legal age to buy drugs is a handful of pounds/dollars. I fail to see how that's better than 18.

Really? How so? I don't think anyone who currently has any qualms about selling illegal drugs will suddenly decide that maybe minors shouldn't have it. Either way, selling it is against the law. And kids don't have any trouble getting tobacco and alcohol, in my experience (nor any drug, really, but that's beside the point), because all you have to do is know somebody of age willing to buy for you, or find a stranger willing to do it. You then give them money so that they walk into a store and get it for you. Sounds simpler than locating an illegal a dealer to me.

If there's any pro-legalization argument I disagree with 100%, it's this one.

So drug use increased in 2010? Fair enough.

http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsro...teenagers.aspx



http://sensiblecolorado.org/marijuan...s-took-effect/



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1865095.html

I do apologise for using the Huffington Post. Please forgive me.

Unfortunately your source doesn't stack up.

Well, the Huffington Post used the same (.gov) source as the sensiblecolorado.org one did, so I don't think it's an issue.

While I can't just discredit what the CDC says, I can say that the ucdenver.edu source is probably bollocks, though (although they seemed to use the CDC, too). States did pass medical marijuana laws in the timeframe they looked at, but the DEA shut down basically all dispensaries and medical marijuana operations until Obama came into office in 2009 - meaning that although it was on the books, medical marijuana didn't exist in any meaningful context until then. Conveniently, this was the end bound of the data they looked at. So, regardless of what it says, I don't see how the data they present is meaningful at all.

I actually do think that what the CDC found is interesting. Still, although I posted my source first (and it had a much shorter out from medical legalization), I don't think you can get a whole lot of information by compiling one or two polls, what with normal flux and sampling error and all of that. Additionally, I'm not sure how reliable the CDC really is, when you use it to look at individual states' data. Especially Colorado. I went back to the 2007 report, and it wasn't even listed in the marijuana use category, and 2005 had levels at about 2011's. The confidence interval on these things is also huge - giving ranges of over 10% in some cases, which would make all years statistically equivalent. I don't mean to sound like I'm nitpicking, but people always say that legalizing it should be OK because they haven't seen any terrible consequences from medical legalization, when the fact of the matter is that we're not far enough out to say that yet.

It's fair enough, but my point is that a lot of people don't bother producing these things because of the time and effort involved for what will probably end up an inferior product. Even if the time taken to develop draw is lesser than these other substances, the fact that someone is able to go down the street and buy some quality controlled produce will render much home growing irrelevant.

Yeah, maybe. The thing I see a lot of, though, is people growing and selling marijuana out of their homes, rather than a business. Although a given individual might not actually be growing it themselves, the end result is that they may as well have been, as far as the economy and taxes are concerned. Even if it's not so easy that every person would be willing to grow their own, there are people who would, and I'm not sure what benefit there is to be had in running an actual business instead (I mean, I see SOME benefits, of course, like more customers, completely legal, etc., but there are also drawbacks, like taxes, maintaining a storefront, etc.).

A man runs a marijuana dispensary. He employs three people. The owner turns a profit, pays his corporation tax and has something left over. The three employees pay their income taxes and still have a degree of disposable income. They also work in the private sector, meaning little public burden to the taxpayer. The tax from marijuana doesn't have to necessarily come from marijuana.

That's usually not what people mean, and it seems more of an economic argument than a tax one. Though I certainly can't disagree with it, aside from mentioning that this situation is also true of any business/product.

In under 18's and people with pre-developed potential to get Scizophrenia, yeah. I doubt we're advocating those people smoking draw. The vast majority of the public will continue to be fine.

Those aren't the only exceptions. So as to abstain from just throwing more articles out at you, however, I'll just reiterate that every one I have read, whether it concluded that marijuana was harmful or harmless, stated that more research had to be done to get a more complete picture. This is the only draw I see to legalization at the moment.

[OldManJenkins]

I think legalizing any psychoactive drug would be pretty drastic in and of itself, but even moreso if the idea behind doing so was to take power from cartels. That's mostly what I was referring to.

The idea behind legalizing marijuana has very little to do with the cartels. It has to do with the fact that its an unjust law and that it is a relatively harmless problem.

Still, the fact remains that we don't know what will happen if marijuana is legalized. Will people start driving high? Would that be a problem? How do we test whether people are driving high or not (considering it remains in your system for days)? And those are just about driving, with dozens more unknown questions about things like mass production, if use in general will go up or down, if it will be easier or harder for kids to get a hold of, effects of long-term and regular use, full range of benefits/detriments, taxing, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of variables, so even if weed were proven to have no detriments beside getting high, as so many seem to believe (even though that's constantly being thrown into question), I don't think you can say suddenly legalizing it isn't drastic.

I dont think its drastic at all. Also driving high isnt that dangerous and people do it all the time now. Driving while high is nothing like driving drunk. And people get arrested for it, determining whether or not the person was high isnt really a problem.

[Snorunt conservationist]

The idea behind legalizing marijuana has very little to do with the cartels. It has to do with the fact that its an unjust law and that it is a relatively harmless problem.


I dont think its drastic at all. Also driving high isnt that dangerous and people do it all the time now. Driving while high is nothing like driving drunk. And people get arrested for it, determining whether or not the person was high isnt really a problem.

Why'd you have to go and mess up my arguments? Seriously.

[OldManJenkins]

Why'd you have to go and mess up my arguments? Seriously.

What'd I do? Im just telling it like it is, snorunt.

[Snorunt conservationist]

What'd I do? Im just telling it like it is, snorunt.

No you're not. Cartels are a serious motivation behind decriminalisation and drug driving is dangerous.

[OldManJenkins]

No you're not. Cartels are a serious motivation behind decriminalization and drug driving is dangerous.

Oh, I thought it was more of a civil rights issue. And its not that dangerous. My friend works at pizza hut delivering pizzas and he is high everyday and he has yet to get in a wreck. People who are inexperienced with the drug driving is dangerous. People on medical marijuana drive while "medicated" no problem. As long as you are experienced with the drug, and an experienced driver of course, you should be good unless you smoke a whole lot of strong indica or you smoke more than you can handle.

[Ekypsekim]

MARIJUANA
Should it be legalized nationwide??? (NOT JUST FOR "MEDICAL" PURPOSES. I MEAN ACTUAL FREE SALE OF MARIJUANA.)

Not really neccessary at all the government in USA makes more money incarcerating people than they would taxing it

[OldManJenkins]

Not really neccessary at all the government in USA makes more money incarcerating people than they would taxing it

What? The government wastes huge amounts of money incarcerating people for marijuana possession. Thats one of the reasons for legalization.

[Phlogiston]

What? The government wastes huge amounts of money incarcerating people for marijuana possession. Thats one of the reasons for legalization.

Never mind what he's saying. He's clearly drunk.

I mean.

But yeah, running a prison is extremely expensive and is in no way profitable to the government. Putting someone in jail is a bit of a process and costs a shitload of money as a result. Also, these people barely count as criminals. It's not like they're hurting people.

[Snorunt conservationist]

Never mind what he's saying. He's clearly drunk.

I mean.

But yeah, running a prison is extremely expensive and is in no way profitable to the government. Putting someone in jail is a bit of a process and costs a shitload of money as a result. Also, these people barely count as criminals. It's not like they're hurting people.

Not to mention a criminal record is a ***** when trying to get a job.

Imprisoning drug users/dealers is a self defeating exercise.

[Klizcool]

Not to mention a criminal record is a ***** when trying to get a job.

Imprisoning drug users/dealers is a self defeating exercise.

Drug dealers should be locked up for selling drugs to people. Users aren't punished nearly as much as the dealer. In fact, the possession of Pot is actually a misdemeanor in most of the US.

[Snorunt conservationist]

Drug dealers should be locked up for selling drugs to people

Why?

Users aren't punished nearly as much as the dealer. In fact, the possession of Pot is actually a misdemeanor in most of the US.

The fact remains you can still go to prison/get a record for it, and that prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders.