Posted by Carlos on July 06, 1998 at 10:59:42:
In Reply to: Legalize marijuana posted by Chris on July 05, 1998 at 16:58:15:
Chris said:
My position is very strongly for legaliation. To withold it as a medicine has no reasonable basis, since much more dangerous drugs are routinely used by doctors. Even allowing the more malevolent use of tobacco and alcohol while outlawing something so relatively benign is just silly. After reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond (thumbs up from me, by the way), I have to wonder if the public prejudice against marijuana and in favor of alcohol and tobacco doesn't have some kind of root in geography, or a historic accident. If everyone had used pot since the stone ages, and THEN some newcomer came up with fermentation, I think the prevalent attitudes of today would be reversed. (BTW, anyone know the history of marijuana? Why was it criminalized in the first place? Maybe I'm dead wrong.)
I'm a Libertarian, and agree with the party line on this issue - legalization, or at least de-criminalization. The amount of money we spend trying to interdict marijuana shipments is staggering, not to mention the rest of the costs in the criminal justice system. And none of it is working!
I also think that the real danger of having marijuana illegal is that it facilitates the slide into harder drugs--things that really are addictive and destructive. The fear of getting caught is a much greater deterrent than the fear of health consequences, as can be seen by the number of people who pick up smoking tobacco every year even though they know it will shorten their lives. So once a person overcomes that "Fear of The Law" and tries marijuana, and realizes it's not such a big deal, the path is open to harder drugs. Might it be advantageous to move the real legal consequences to a point where they reinforce the more important, but less respected, fear of health consequences? (I know that posession of certain drugs is treated more harshly than of marijuana, but I think the average young person may not recognize that graded deterrence as much as he sees the big hump of using his first illegal drug).
I'm not sure about the "slippery slope" argument. I used marijuana many times as a teenager, and never graduated to anything harder. If one drinks wine, do they necessarily move up to vodka? If there is a tendency to get into harder drugs, it is probably because of entrance into the underground drug culture more than the search for ever-expanding thrills. So legalization of marijuana, by removing users from that culture, may actually prevent use of the more undesirable drugs.