More states legalize Pot 8) when for Oz?

[David]

I don't think you need to consider marijuana harmless in order to legalise it. Of course it's a different process to decriminalise something as opposed to banning it, but the fact remains that we could ban alcohol and cigarettes tomorrow if we wanted to. Why don't we? Because a) it would create a black market, which in turn would lead to b) less regulation and potentially dodgier production practices and c) the criminalisation of a great number of casual users.

All of those are great reasons to keep alcohol and cigarettes taxed and regulated, not banned. They're also great reasons to decriminalise marijuana and heavily regulate it. Only substantially greater harms than cigarettes or alcohol could justify keeping it banned (which is why I'm a little more on the fence on decriminalising ice or heroin), but that's clearly not the case with marijuana.

I think we've known what the common sense approach to this is for a long time. What are we waiting for?

[stui magpie]

^

You refer to common sense.

Common sense would allow cartomisers / vaporisers (aka e-cigarettes) to be legal as they allow for people who want to smoke, to get their nicotine hit in a far safer manner, with no "smoke" residue for others to breathe in.

The anti smoking lobby hate them because they claim that they will lead people to start smoking cigarettes.

the smoking lobby hate them because they take people away from cigarettes.

So they stay banned and people import stuff from overseas and use it technically illegally.

Common sense?

[David]

You're not going to get any disagreements from me on that. I was just thinking the other day that our approach to e-cigarettes (banning them from indoor use etc.) is ridiculous.

[Mugwump]

I don't think you need to consider marijuana harmless in order to legalise it. Of course it's a different process to decriminalise something as opposed to banning it, but the fact remains that we could ban alcohol and cigarettes tomorrow if we wanted to. Why don't we? Because a) it would create a black market, which in turn would lead to b) less regulation and potentially dodgier production practices and c) the criminalisation of a great number of casual users.

All of those are great reasons to keep alcohol and cigarettes taxed and regulated, not banned. They're also great reasons to decriminalise marijuana and heavily regulate it. Only substantially greater harms than cigarettes or alcohol could justify keeping it banned (which is why I'm a little more on the fence on decriminalising ice or heroin), but that's clearly not the case with marijuana.

I think we've known what the common sense approach to this is for a long time. What are we waiting for?

A truly terrible argument of the "three wrongs make a right" type.

Alcohol and cigarettes have deep roots in our culture and when you try to ban something that has such deep roots, it really does require an insane level of resources, you will precipitate a vast black market, and it will fail. That is exactly why it is such a dumb idea to legalise marijuana (and "decriminalisation" is just a thin-end-of-the-wedge word for that). Once you legalise dope, you will never get on top of it again, and you multiply its harms a thousandfold as usage is normalized among young people. Brain damager, gateway drug, memory wiper, new DUI agent, and a substance which shows an interesting correlation with psychosis. There is also a lot of anecdotal evidence that shows how prevalent heavy dope users are among the perpetrators of many recent acts of terrorism and violence (Breivik is one of the few who was not a heavy dope user, and he was a heavy user of steroids, which also affect mood formation). I do not know whether the link will stand scrutiny, but it sure as hell needs to be investigated closely.

You'd legalize all of that for a few semi-somnolent highs ? "O brave new world that has such people in it !"

[David]

[Mugwump]

^ Weed has indeed been around for a century, perhaps, but usage has only been relatively widespread since the cultural revolution of the 1960s - in which time hard drug use has also proliferated, with consequences that probably rival one of the world wars in terms of impact on young human lives. The last estimate I saw (in the reputable LiveScience magazine) was ~ 250,000 deaths a year from using illegal drugs. That's about the death rate of British and Commonwealth soldiers in the First World War, except it is rising all the time and it is unlikely to end in armistice.

Clearly, under the present regime, dope is available. But I think it is obvious that it would be far more available if it were leqalised. To that extent, legalisation would indeed make something "imaginary manifest". Today you actually have to go looking for it, to buy it. If it were legal, it would be a bypass purchase and used far more widely by the young. The Netherlands, where I lived for four years, has been progressively tightening its drug laws since it normalised marijuana use in the 1960s, because of the effects on public health and order.

This touches on another and deeper point, less tangible but probably more important. As a society, what does it say when we licence and profit from a drug which has, as its sole purpose, the divorcement of the mind from reality ? I don't think the argument that "tobacco and alcohol are legal so make dope legal too" survives a minute's careful reasoning, but even if it were true, ordinary use of these drugs does not stop rational social functioning. People socialise and sell and negotiate while drinking, in a way that they cannot under the influence of dope. I don't think any healthy society promotes this kind of apathetic resignation from responsibility. It is literally like licensing a new drink that makes you incapably drunk the instant you drink it. Just think about that : would people vote for that, to be licensed for profit ? A nicer style of drunk, maybe, though even this is less certain if you take it while in a filthy mood.

Another issue, but also important - Australia is part of Asia. In one place, dope becomes legal while in the other it attracts serious legal sanctions. I can't see that working well. And if you wanted a reliable workforce, which country would you choose - the clean one, or the dope-smokers ?

I agree that the link between heavy cannabis use and acts of egregious violence is hypothetical, and far from proven ; but read the case stories of the low-life petty crims who do this stuff, and it merits study. I'm not exactly sympathetic to Islam, but I wonder whether the real culprit might lie, at least in part, in disordered thinking attributable to mind-altering drugs. Play on human synapses with a hammer for a while, and you might expect to get some strange damage effects in some people.

We love to think that we are self-evidently brilliant compared to the parliamentarians and policy makers of an earlier age. Yet one looks at our society today and the picture is.... well, let's be kind and say mixed, at best. This issue looks so benign, but perhaps an earlier generation understood a few things more deeply than our age of permanent adolescence.

[David]

I'm somewhat perplexed as to why you would say ordinary use of marijuana seriously impairs social functioning but alcohol doesn't. I haven't smoked a lot of weed over the course of my life, but I've certainly had a number of occasions when a puff or two on a joint at a party left me more or less unaffected and still able to carry on function all social interaction. Perhaps the parties I've been attending haven't been very exciting, but that seems to be far more the norm than, say, a bunch of people lying around stoned out of their minds. Conversely, for some of us, it doesn't take much more than a glass to start making a fool of ourselves (and sometimes no alcohol at all, but that's perhaps a different story!).

There is absolutely a scale of use with both drugs ranging from mild giddiness to incapacitation, but I wouldn't say that marijuana use necessarily lends itself towards the latter pole more than alcohol does.

Otherwise..

https://youtu.be/EZx5OgKQNrA

[Mugwump]

^ well, your parties must be very different to the ones I went to, where lots of people (self included on a few occasions) got stoned (the word is apt), and a few puffs was not the point. I did it several times, and one time (the last), I had an episode which was genuinely terrifying, as I became fully convinced that I should never again, from the age of about 22, be able to form a coherent sentence. I only felt like that for about 8 hours, during most of which suicide seemed the best option. Serious drugs can do that shit to you.

Anyway, we're back to the same very strange reasoning : alcohol's a terrible scourge, so let's legalise dope as well because it's probably not worse. Would not be accepted in any other area as a good argument, but dope is somehow a special case.

The YouTube clip is just crude dope propaganda dressed up as very flimsy satire.

[stui magpie]

I'm somewhat perplexed as to why you would say ordinary use of marijuana seriously impairs social functioning but alcohol doesn't. I haven't smoked a lot of weed over the course of my life, but I've certainly had a number of occasions when a puff or two on a joint at a party left me more or less unaffected and still able to carry on function all social interaction.

A couple of puffs on a joint is comparable to a couple of pots of beer, depending on the level of THC in the dope and the individual tolerance.

Both are depressants.

I don't buy for a second Skids argument that making it legal and regulated wouldn't increase usage, so if it's going to be made legal, there's a few things that need to happen as a precursor.

1. Investment in education and mental health to deal with the repercussions

2. Settle on a regulatory framework, including a way to regulate and advise the strength. (eg, alcohol per volume indicators) and a way to sell it

3. determine a reasonable impairment level that can be tested and applied to driving (like 0.05) and other things. I drove stoned once back in the 80's, I'd far rather drive at 0.15 BAC, I'd be safer on the road for everyone. (3 bongs of some seriously strong stuff, I was a mess trying to drive home)

I'd rather just decriminalise it for personal use, let people grow their own (couple of plant limit) and back away from users, but still go hard on importers and dealers

[David]

[Mugwump]

^ "I don't think it's necessarily clear that use will skyrocket upon legalisation."

So when it is "not necessarily clear" that's enough to accept all the risks. How the standards of evidence change when we want to believe something !

"Anyone who wants weed now can get it"

That would be true if you added the words "badly enough" between "weed" and "now". You have to actually seek it, find it, and be prepared to enter into an unlawful transaction. Quite different from popping into a shop (or getting an older kid to pop into a shop for you, as they do with booze). The nation's 15 year olds will no doubt be far better educated, better functioning, and live more fulfilled lives when they have easier access to dope. No amount of education will make that relatively harmless, in my view.

[stui magpie]

I never said use would skyrocket and i don't believe it would.

it would increase though

[Skids]

^ "I don't think it's necessarily clear that use will skyrocket upon legalisation."

So when it is "not necessarily clear" that's enough to accept all the risks. How the standards of evidence change when we want to believe something !

"Anyone who wants weed now can get it"

That would be true if you added the words "badly enough" between "weed" and "now". You have to actually seek it, find it, and be prepared to enter into an unlawful transaction. Quite different from popping into a shop (or getting an older kid to pop into a shop for you, as they do with booze). The nation's 15 year olds will no doubt be far better educated, better functioning, and live more fulfilled lives when they have easier access to dope. No amount of education will make that relatively harmless, in my view.

We obviously have different ideas on how it would be made available.

I would think it would be a lot tighter controlled than the way you're suggesting.

[Mugwump]

^ "I don't think it's necessarily clear that use will skyrocket upon legalisation."

So when it is "not necessarily clear" that's enough to accept all the risks. How the standards of evidence change when we want to believe something !

"Anyone who wants weed now can get it"

That would be true if you added the words "badly enough" between "weed" and "now". You have to actually seek it, find it, and be prepared to enter into an unlawful transaction. Quite different from popping into a shop (or getting an older kid to pop into a shop for you, as they do with booze). The nation's 15 year olds will no doubt be far better educated, better functioning, and live more fulfilled lives when they have easier access to dope. No amount of education will make that relatively harmless, in my view.

We obviously have different ideas on how it would be made available.

I would think it would be a lot tighter controlled than the way you're suggesting.

If it is more harmless than booze, as many are suggesting, why would that be the case, since we sell booze that way ?

[Skids]

Because the way we sell booze is a failure. As I've stated before, 80% of calls police respond to involve people affected by alcohol. Drunk drivers cause carnage on our roads and it's the biggest csuse of violence in our society.

I get your obvious disapproval of legalizing cannabis. But your tunnel vision on how bad it is and simplistic views on its availability are becoming tiresome.

I would think that; users wiuld be registered and their usage/supply be strictly monitored, something on their motor vehicle license that states that a drug test is mandatory if pulled over (similar to laws for heavy vehicle users), places it be used restricted and regular GP visits and assesment compulsory.

I believe ALL drugs should be treated the same way. My lunatic ex-wife drives around on prescription (legal) mind altering drugs and is unaccountable.

Morphine is a legal drug and doctors prescribe dexys to 'naughty' kids like they're minties.

To keep trying to police the issue is throwing money away and keeping drugs on the black market simply fuels criminal activity.