Note: I'm going to use the term "drug" or "drugs" in this post to refer to substances that negatively change someones perception or judgement without significant medical benefits. This is simply for brevity, I understand the difference between various types of drugs and the fact that it is a very general term.
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.
I don't actually care about the harm that people do
to themselves, I only care about that harm that they do or could do
to others. As such a law making marijuana illegal serves that purpose perfectly. If I don't use it, and I remove myself from situations where people do, then it's impossible for me to be penalized by the marijuana laws (assuming I'm not framed).
For things like drug cartels, my take on them is a big picture type of thing. The only reason they survive is due to the widespread use of illegal drugs, if nobody used illegal drugs, than they would stop. Thus I'm weighing the harm currently caused by drug cartels and viewing that against the possible harm to others that could be stopped by the earlier stopping of overall drug use, and I'm deciding that the harm stopped in the future outweighs the harm stopped in the present. (A reminder that once again I'm not talking about overall harm in general, but rather the harm that people do to others. You want to do anything to yourself I'm cool with it, unless by doing so you harm others).
This is, frankly, a bizarre method of logic to use to get at what you really care about at the end of the day. Why go through this assumption-ridden, overly generalized thought process, when instead you could just measure the number of accidents and assaults and negligent homicides, etc., among sober people versus people under the influence of a list of drugs?
These are completely measurable numbers... and for purposes of policy, we should simply measure them.
I'd love it if someone wants to do an analysis of various drugs to find out what their effects are on the damage people do to others, and then I'd happily use that data to argue for or against them. But because we don't have that data in many cases, I'm forced to fallback on what data we currently have and what I see as 'safe' assumptions to make. If comprehensive data shows up showing that people who use marijuana are many times less likely to be murderers than I'll happily argue for it, but as it stands we've got more data (that I've seen) showing increased harm than reduced harm. Add to that the fact that some of the assumptions that I consider 'safe' include that negative symptoms like paranoia and slower reactions are more likely to cause you to harm others on purpose or accident than not harm others, and that's what sets my stance (for now).
As such I've purposely tried to stay away from hard numbers in my posts because we don't have them in many cases. If you want I can start to bring in some hard numbers (like the NHTSA study on the chance of you crashing your car if you drive high, or the fact that in
one study 7% of murderers investigated said that marijuana use was related to their homicide), but I'd really prefer not to since in so many cases we just don't have the relevant data to discuss legalization of marijuana (as opposed to whether or not we should do more studies on it).
Ok, but isn't that an argument against driving while impaired rather than an argument against marijuana?
Impaired driving was a particular example of a significant cause of damage to others due to drug use that I chose. I could include other examples instead, but that was just the one I chose because it's a fairly common activity that people with impaired judgement engage in. My point was for it to serve as an example of my stance rather than a discussion focus.
We already have laws against driving while under the influence of alcohol. Why treat marijuana differently?
Alcohol is already legal and so entrenched it's not going to be changing anytime soon (as we saw in Prohibition). Marijuana, on the other hand, already has laws making it illegal in place at the federal level. As such with my sub-eventual goal being "the removal of all substances that negatively affect your judgements and perception without medically significant reasons" (the eventual being to "limit harm people do to others over time"), going from "completely illegal" to "legal, but prohibited" like alcohol is would be backsliding. As I noted in my first post I would be for it if it was along with a significant set of restrictions, but IMO the restrictions on alcohol are too little, and it's generally much easier to go from a harsh law to an easier one with less criminals than it is to go from an easy law to a hard law that would turn some new people into criminals.
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Topic: Cannabis Legalization Discussion (Read 21453 times)