Marijuana.

[Terex4]

Not to mention the money saved on keeping people alive in jail who are only in there for marijuana charges.

The pros outweigh the cons. Regulate it like alcohol.

I for one don't mind big tobacco getting bigger if it means we have less government spending on hunting down people and a substance that's mostly harmless.

[Fifthfiend]

Just as a general note I would like to make it clear that if anyone does think marijuana should be illegal or is immoral or whatevs you should totally feel free to share that view.

I say this cause I punted Joshelplex the hell out of here for expressing similar views and I want it clear that this happened because he was expressing these views in like random threads about music or wherever that had nothing to do with the subject and kind of just generally getting on everyone's nerves. Anyone who wants to express their anti-marijuana viewpoint in a thread specifically addressing that subject should by all means do so.

...I mean there's no need to for anyone to start outright insulting the people who have smoked pot, but we've generally been able to do discussions on like, file-sharing/piracy where the people who think it's wrong have been able to say that without saying that the people who do it are terrible monsters. And I mean likewise people that think pot is totally great don't need to be telling people who disagree that they're I don't know, brainwashed tools of The Man, or whatevs.

[Seil]

Fifth brings up a particular "Lizard-man, man!" quote to my imagination.

That being said, I agree with Shiney on this. I mean, legalizing pot is going to mean that there's going to be layoffs. There's going to be a reorganization of the priorities of an embarrassed government. There's still going to be anti-pot lobbyists, and the big companies, as they often do, are going to try to cash in on it.

However I don't see any reason why, if you don't want to buy the plant, you can't grow the plant. If it's legal, why not? People have vegetable gardens.

[Bells]

You see, the "Parent who dosent care" routine, dosent seem to work. At least not how i see it... you know?

Girl dates scumbag to make daddy angry
daddy forbids it, but she donset care and still do it behind his back
secretly, the little girl wants daddy to support her relationship
So, daddy finds out and decides to play along
he goes "I do not care that you date this scumbag my child!"
Child goes happy, and here is were my opinion seems to take another path

some of you guys think that by doing that, the scumbag will lose his appeal, and even though she will never be a virgin again, daddy will get his little girl back after a while. When the magic of this crazy relationship runs out.

I, on the other hand, belive that by doing that, Daddy is trying to play it cool without noticing that he dosent even know anything about "Scumbag's" REAL life and intentions (Maybe his name is Joe? Bob? Joe-bob? Juan Carlos Bush?). So he ends up leaving her pregnant and going away. probably because he has done the same to a bunch of other people too... which is ok with all of "Sumbag's" friends and family, the ones Daddy never got to know.


other than that

Saying that Pot should be legal because smoking and drinking are legal, and if Pot is ilegal so should be the other two. It's pretty much the same as saying that we should make it legal to steal midia. Becuase we can have it free via the internet... and if it cant be made legal, then we should ban the internet. Because it's Hypocrisy to keep it around and not call it illegal...

Fact being that are several drugs that in the right amount are just as "harmless" as Pot can be. Many are "party drugs", and it's just a matter of "how much" you use. Other fact being that it is nothing more than a very complex luxury, so having the option to not have to deal with that to deal with more important things... makes sense.

After all Legal or not, allowing people to consume Pot freely will require a TON of watching over and funding just to make sure that things are under controle. It's not just signing a piece of paper

[Mirai Gen]

Originally Posted by DruidoftheDead

Regulate it like alcohol.

This too, really.

It doesn't matter what drug does or does not do, because the government can just as easily (easier in some cases) enforce laws behind driving, using machinery, etc while under influence.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Bellsouth Minion

Girl dates scumbag to make daddy angry
daddy forbids it, but she donset care and still do it behind his back
secretly, the little girl wants daddy to support her relationship
So, daddy finds out and decides to play along
he goes "I do not care that you date this scumbag my child!"
Child goes happy, and here is were my opinion seems to take another path

some of you guys think that by doing that, the scumbag will lose his appeal, and even though she will never be a virgin again, daddy will get his little girl back after a while. When the magic of this crazy relationship runs out.

I, on the other hand, belive that by doing that, Daddy is trying to play it cool without noticing that he dosent even know anything about "Scumbag's" REAL life and intentions (Maybe his name is Joe? Bob? Joe-bob? Juan Carlos Bush?). So he ends up leaving her pregnant and going away. probably because he has done the same to a bunch of other people too... which is ok with all of "Sumbag's" friends and family, the ones Daddy never got to know.

It's more like at first Daddy just didn't really like the guy because he was of a different race but tolerated him because it would be hard to actually put a stop to Joe being alive and all.

But then it turns out the kid was working on things that could have put some of Daddys friends out of business, so Daddy went to all the neighbors homes telling everyone that Joe was a horrid little child who would rape and steal from their families, so everyone on the street is in an uproar over stuff that, if it did happen, wasn't actually Joe or in anyway related to Joe.

So Joe goes spiraling into a depression at the love of his life being snatched away by Daddy, so he goes and meets up with his old friends who happen to have become Drug Dealers.

As soon as this happens, Daddy jumps on it as an Affirmation of everything he's been saying up till this point, and Joe spends the next 6 (60) years on a downward spiral of violence and other illegal activities that causes the complete destruction of his reputation.

Only the little daughter is all grown up now, so she still sees Joe every now and then even if Daddy doesn't want her to. Except now he only hangs around with said Drug Dealer friends, so everytime she wants to see Joe, she has to go through them first.

[FloralVikings]

Originally Posted by Bellsouth Minion

You see, the "Parent who dosent care" routine, dosent seem to work. At least not how i see it... you know?

I agree with you there. I always found those arguments to be...stupid. I make no bones about it, if pot were legal, there would be more potheads.

Saying that Pot should be legal because smoking and drinking are legal, and if Pot is ilegal so should be the other two. It's pretty much the same as saying that we should make it legal to steal midia. Becuase we can have it free via the internet... and if it cant be made legal, then we should ban the internet. Because it's Hypocrisy to keep it around and not call it illegal...

I really don't see the point here. I see the relevance, but I don't think anyone would actually take either of those standpoints.

Fact being that are several drugs that in the right amount are just as "harmless" as Pot can be. Many are "party drugs", and it's just a matter of "how much" you use.

Not really. You can smoke pot every day for a month, and quit, no long term side effects, no physical addiction. You take ex or do coke every day for a month, even small amounts, and you might well die.

Other fact being that it is nothing more than a very complex luxury, so having the option to not have to deal with that to deal with more important things... makes sense.

...huh?

After all Legal or not, allowing people to consume Pot freely will require a TON of watching over and funding just to make sure that things are under controle.

I don't think it would require any more than is in place for alcohol now. There are more alcohol-related deaths and injuries that pot related, and the gov't seems fairly content to just leave that where it is.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Wyndon

I am against the legalization of marijuana.

I know right, who expected that from the kid who's always talking about smoking and whatnot? Well, I'm all for the decriminalization of it, but once you legalize it, I have several fears:

1) They will make it such that you have to have a government contract to grow marijuana. They will do this so that big companies can have a monopoly on the marijuana market.

2) They will overprice marijuana cigarettes (read: joints)

3) They will put nicotine in said joints to addict smokers to marijuana. That sucks. I do not want to smoke nicotine. I don't smoke cigarettes for the sole reason that I do not want to be addicted to anything (plus nicotine is a terrible thing healthwise).

So there y'are.

The major reason tobacco is controlled by a few big companies is that tobacco is a plant you need huge resources in order to farm. It only works economically as a large-scale enterprise. Whereas with marijuana well you can grow it on your windowsill, in your backyard, in a local greenhouse, pretty much any which damn way you please. Restricting MJ sales to a handful of big companies would probably be more futile than the current attempts at prohibiting it altogether.

I suspect it would end up in a situation somewhat more like alcohol - you would might end up with a few Coors / Miller / Anheiser-Busch scale growers/distributors but also lots of the equivalents of smaller breweries or liquor distilleries.

You would end up with some shape of regulatory state after legalization but I suspect any such regime too much more onerous than whatever governs alcohol now would buckle under its own weight fairly quickly. Once you've legally conceded that it's legal to posess and use it's kind of hard to justify like, no-knock SWAT-raid warrants for unlicensed distribution.

[Demonlink2]

I just want to comment on this little tidbit right here

Originally Posted by Bellsouth Minion

Saying that Pot should be legal because smoking and drinking are legal, and if Pot is ilegal so should be the other two. It's pretty much the same as saying that we should make it legal to steal midia. Becuase we can have it free via the internet... and if it cant be made legal, then we should ban the internet. Because it's Hypocrisy to keep it around and not call it illegal...

The problem here is you have a bad connection between this comparison. The internet is not just used for file-sharing, it also has relevant information to your daily lives and is probably 95% "good" websites. I see where you're trying to go with this, and the point is relevant, to be sure. The difference is, it is illegal to be supporting File-sharing websites. The government does take down the servers that run them. The difference is it takes a lot of time and money to remove a single site that will be back up within a week or if there's 50 replacements, you can't stop it. It's incredibly similar to pot dealers, who deal in it, the difference is the government can't take them all down, because someone will replace them or there will be another dealer around with similar prices. The difference is, using your comparison, if torrents are legal, but they contain illegal things, then we should make .torrent files illegal. Oh, that .rar MIGHT contain a pirated video game/mp3/movie? all .rar files are illegal.

What is being proposed is the reverse: That since .rar and .zip are legal, then why shouldn't .torrent? They all do the same thing, and .torrent is better than it, since they can be started and stopped without loss and don't take up a bunch of space if they fail. Torrents are legal, so my comparison is also faulty, but that's the gist of it, in computer terms. I personally don't care either way, but if anything I'm pro-legalization because it would be a positive for the economy and the government at this point, but it's not a personal negative if they keep it illegal.

[Lord Setheris]

Fact:
If you want marijuana legalized you want it legalized because it can be used to recreational use. You cannot deny this. Bring me all the economic data you want, the fact is you would be using this drug recreationally.

Recreational drug use should be discouraged in all cases. Including cigarettes and alcohol.