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comment by StephenBuckley
StephenBuckley  ·  4361 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Next Seven States to Legalize Pot

I sincerely hope that this conversation moves into this realm very soon. There are a lot more reasons to get rid of prohibitory weed laws than simply "people seem to like it now!" Weed laws directly influence the ability of our legal system to penalize people for being poor, black or latino. This should be reason enough to legalize something a lot of people in America have tried at least once.

(That source is 2008, so who knows how many more people would admit it now?)





MattholomewCup  ·  4361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And even if you don't care that the system is set up to seemingly punish people of low socio-economic status and really do think that people who smoke pot are all layabout hippie losers contributing nothing (which is flagrantly incorrect but whatever), there's STILL good reason to support legalization. Consider the delicious tax revenue the government could obtain by making people do it their way instead of risky black market methods.

It worked with alcohol - some people still see it as a vice but no one in their right minds will be legislating against it, because it brings in money and we've tried that before. And we are currently trying to undo it with marijuana. Just wait and watch the crime rates in CO and WA drop precipitously, while the government spends less money embroiled in absurd legal battles and on the cost associated with jailing low-risk drug offenders for years.

There are so many logical reasons to do this beyond simply "people like it so what's the problem!" There's no good angle to oppose it at this point.

user-inactivated  ·  4361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Great points, both of you, and yes -- legalization of medical in Colorado/Cali has exposed a bit of "soft statistics" that was going on with crime rates. It's very clear that those numbers really can't be trusted at all when they can be so casually inflated by silly marijuana arrests.