But that doesn't mean I have to approve of it either.
Approve of it
personally? No, of course not. But if you actually have interest in preventing harm to others, as what the rest of your passage noted, you have a
current moral obligation to approve of its legalization or, at the absolute least, its decriminalization. Because the state of things as is is significantly more toxic and harmful to people than just about anything else
could be.
Right now, the state of criminalization in regards to marijuana (and, to be frank, a host of other similarly harmful recreational drugs) is doing significantly more harm to the US (which is the country in regards to which this discussion is framed) -- to the
people, in the US -- than even the current, illegal, use of the drug is. The lack of regulation resulting in laced or dangerously prepared material, the criminal element involved in its procurement, the
incredibly screwed up state of our justice and penitentiary system, including the cultural treatment of ex-cons, resulting in basically catastrophic harm to anyone actually prosecuted for possession... those are just the domestic harms that have come from criminalization.
And that's not getting into the issues abroad which are also being caused by marijuana criminalization -- notably that, instead of it being grown and sold locally and legally, the substance is being used to fund some of the most vicious criminal organizations in the world.
Right now, the states' fucked up implementation of the bugshit insane war on drugs is actively aiding in the destabilization of entire goddamn countries.
If
ideally you want heavy restrictions and breathalysers and so on, and so forth -- that is also fine. And it's a goal to
work towards. But in the mean time, if you genuinely hope to reduce harm to people, your
immediate moral goal is the recension of the criminalization of marijuana, probably as part of a larger campaign to decriminalize the possession and use (if not
necessarily their production, but frankly, probably that as well -- heavily regulated, but legal, is the functional ideal*) of recreation drugs as a whole. We do not need users in jail. We do not need them economically crippled for life. We do not need them getting sometimes-extra-deadly substances from back-alley dealers. If they need help, we need to get them help -- rehabilitation, instead of imprisonment. If they can function, then they need to be allowed to function, just like we allow alcoholics and chain smokers to function by not throwing them in prison and ruining their chances at work. And so on.
The states have pretty much categorically demonstrated that, at this point in time, we cannot handle criminalizing recreational drug use without doing catastrophically more harm to most users (and society in general) than the use itself. Maybe we'll be able to in the future, but right now? We need to stop -- if not entirely, then certainly mostly -- and seek a better way.
*Not because it's a desirable end, but because criminalization is a
significantly worse one, and, as you noted, we don't really have a different tool to use in regard to the situation at the moment. It's either criminalization or some strain of legalization, and of the two there's not actually a choice if you're interested in reducing harm.
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For the shared personal note? I'm a near complete teetotaler, even to the point of having almost entirely cut of caffeine use (I've had like two caffeinated drinks and shared one two-liter bottle of caffeinated root beer in the last
year... and a little bit of chocolate, I suppose.). I wouldn't use marijuana if you paid me to. If there were a way to make the substance just vanish into the aether, I'd pretty much be behind it (providing we had a good replacement for its medical uses). I would say similar things for pretty much every recreational drug on the planet. And all of that is entirely irrelevant to me, because the harm our criminalization of recreational drugs is doing is worse than just about anything we could do short of intentionally addicting our entire population to heroin. From the principle of doing less harm, of approaching the problems inherent in recreational drug use appropriately, we
can't criminalize recreational drug use. It's the wrong approach, the incorrect tool. And our insistence on using it is causing genuinely massive harm, far in excess of what harm the drug use itself brings about.
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Topic: Cannabis Legalization Discussion (Read 21390 times)