In Britain there is overwhelming popular support for the legalisation of cannabis, yet because recreational drugs are illegal, our cities are being ravaged by criminal turf wars over drug distribution. Taking the products out of the hands of criminals and into regulated markets would not only end the bloodshed, it would end the unnecessary criminalisation of thousands of young people. Drug addiction would be treated as a medical, not judicial problem. The war on drugs has failed and will always fail because humans like to alter their mental state. Voters should be allowed to enjoy drugs safely …
Ever since I attended Essex University in the early 1970s I have been of the the opinion that cannabis can have a very bad effect on some people. I watched it turn a few relatively normal people into excessively placid and “pacific” people who, if you then verbally pressurised them even quite mildly, but in a way they couldn’t handle, were liable to turn on you like cornered rats, in ways that were wildly excessive compared to any rudeness you had subjected them to. In short, cannabis drove them mad. In particular, paranoid. All sense of proportionality in how they defended themselves in a vigorous but basically friendly conversation went out the window. That’s what I think I then saw. And ever since then, I’ve heard further anecdotage that confirms that prejudice.
Which does not mean that I favour cannabis being illegal, any more than I favour it being illegal to smoke, or to drink alcohol, or to borrow money unwisely, or to gamble, or to climb mountains, or to parachute out of airplanes, or to do anything dangerous merely because it is dangerous. Guido frames this as an argument about the right to do drugs safely. I prefer to think of it as the right to do unsafe things, to decide what risks you will take with your life, to make your own judgements about how to balance pleasure against danger.
Insofar as Guido merely implies that dangerous things which you can only get from criminals are a hell of a lot more dangerous than if they are legal, I wholly agree.
@Samizdata quote of the day
Voters should be allowed to enjoy drugs safely …
I find this statement to be wrong. It should be “government should have no right to interfere with people’s private decisions.” Or, perhaps to use a slogan rather popular today “my body, my choice.” To say “voters should be allowed” is to suggest that we can only do what the government “allows”, when in truth it should be the other way around, the government should only be able to do what we “allow” them to do.
In short, cannabis drove them mad. In particular, paranoid. All sense of proportionality in how they defended themselves in a vigorous but basically friendly conversation went out the window.
In fairness one could well substitute “whisky” for the word “cannabis” and get the same result. However, it is also worth pointing out that black market drugs are of very unreliable quality, and also, as drugs become legal people do tend to take a more moderate version. I am an alcohol user, but I very much prefer less intoxicating versions. I am not of the mind of “getting blitzed” which seems all to common among the fellows of my son in college. However, it should perhaps be pointed out that for them drinking is largely an illicit activity, being under 21.
I don’t know about the effects of cannabis, I moved in drinkers circles rather than druggies circles. Perhaps as with alcohol, some people become cuddly drunks and some become fighting drunks.
One wothwhile step: any crime committed under the influence of drink or drugs should attract an increased sentence rather than have the drug/alcohol effect used as mitigation.
Fully legalise it, no halfway point that allows possession for personal use but outlaws possession with intent to supply.
Were I to want cannabis I would not want to have to deal with a criminal to get it.
The part that leaves me torn is that when we legalize it, we deliver to government a huge source of tax revenue which they use to burrow in even further.
And, of course, my opinion that, for every one percent of market penetration for the general use of drugs that we attain, we also cause a one percent decrease in the general quality of civilization. When you get 20% more people on drugs or booze, human society tends to suck 20% more.
So, yeah, my libertarian instincts (s.a.t.a.) conflict with my knowledge of human behavior. Nothing’s perfect.
The difficulty is that there are various ways of legalising cannabis and the stupid one (i.e. Canadian style) is probably the option the UK will follow, because they’re idiots.
Going from illegal to licensed and then hiking the price to such an extent that people still go to the back street dealers because it is way cheaper is not the way to do it.
The best way to do it is to simply remove cannabis from the drugs classification tables and let the populace do what they will. Want to grow 30 plants on your allotment? Absolutely no problem – just remember to pick a good fertiliser.
That way the drugs gangs have no remaining incentive to be involved in cannabis at all and can either do something in the legal market or take their chances with the Afghans, Colombians and Mexicans dealing heroin, cocaine and meth as they will.
It’s not a perfect solution, but better focus on getting rid of the crime and the criminals than just attempting to make a quick buck by being a state licensed drug dealer.
Tried cannabis twice in Amsterdam and can’t say I found anything tempting me to do it a third time, plus the skunk variant smells like cat piss. Not a fan, but that doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be able to do so to their hearts content. One of the more ridiculous pieces of legislation I’ve always thought.
Once the whole kerfuffle of cannabis has been sorted then do something along the same lines with cocaine, heroin and meth. Might want to take a more controlled approach given the more serious medical issues (not that cannabis is trivial, but that’s a separate issue)
If you are under 30 and present to any psychiatrist in the UK with symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, their first question will almost certainly be “do you take cannabis?”. If your answer is “no” they will probably assume that you are lying.
My sample size of “people who did MJ” is very large, as in the majority of people I knew over about a 20+ year period, and I must be lucky to have only seen a single person who suffered long term baleful effects (& they were pretty odd to start with). Frankly I knew more people who were ‘problem drinkers’, as in getting drunk made them deeply unpleasant.
Legalise.
As bobby says (bobby b, April 21, 2021 at 6:37 am), increasing customary drug use in a society will show up as a decrease in quality of life of those who interact with some doped dopes. In a free speech society, that would be OK – Sherlock Homes took cocaine and Dr Watson denounced the habit – but we increasingly live in an “everything not forbidden is compulsory” society, under the law of merited impossibility:
When it is a ‘pharmaphobic’ hate speech offence to speak critically of a drug user, let alone to object to employing or working with one, bobby b’s point may seem to have more content than it does just now. We’ll see, I guess.
Prohibition teaches a lesson and the ban on cannabis in the UK has certainly taught a similar if less marked lesson (and we live in a society that is rotten at learning the lessons of the past). I think Brian and Perry and Clovis are all presenting true facts about what cannabis can do to people, and the ability to know some users without seeing too much of that. I’d love to live in a society with fewer laws. Sadly, one is forced to consider whether, in the medium term let alone the long, it could be only a change of laws.
@Perry
I can’t disagree. I would just wish we could have a higher `age of consent’. Most of the damage seems to be done pre-age 25 when the brain is still reforming after major disassembly during adolescence. Cannabis/THC does seem to interfere with that.
I went through university in a haze of smoke, yet am not paranoid in the slightest, in spite of the Illuminati, global Zionist conspiracy, shapeshifting lizards & that terrible woman across the street spying on my every move. That is how chill I am.
“we deliver to government a huge source of tax revenue” ha, ha, ha. The tax avoiding distribution nets are already in place.
The “think of the tax revenue” arguments worked with ending prohibition because of how alcohol is made and distributed. Dope is different.
Also, remember that all this stuff was legal once, and it wasn’t some golden age.
https://www.amazon.com/Hep-Cats-Narcs-Pipe-Dreams-Americas/dp/0801861659
Just because there is popular support for something doesn’t mean it should happen.
That’s what so called liberal and progressive people told us about Brexit.
The same people who campaign the hardest for the legalisation of cannabis using popular support as one reason why it should happen.
Your tinfoil hat is quite fetching.
Peter Hitchens often argued that drug prohibition could work – if the police had the power to make it work.
Well for the last year the police have had lockdowns and, essentially, unlimited powers – and the country is more awash with drugs than ever before.
“The heart of the police heart is not in it – if they were true believers in prohibition, they would make it work…..”
A response of that sort is rather desperate – a clutching at straws.
As for me – I utterly despise drugs, but I felt no great urge to kick down doors and engage in citizen’s arrests every time the people I have been out leafleting with have told me they smell drugs.
If I was young and fit and a police officer, is this what I should be doing? Should I be out kicking down doors and arresting people every time I smell drugs on the wind?
If your answer is “yes” well fair enough you are at least consistent – but if your answer is “no” then you do not really believe in the policy.
As for the flip side of the dishonest coin – the people who say that cannabis is harmless. Well they are either stupid or lying – it is not harmless, it does great harm to some people.
The point is not that it is harmless, the point is that the policy of prohibition has not worked.
Yes so people keep telling me, Paul. Yet that is not my personal observation of reality over a couple decades (1980s & 1990s), so am I lying or stupid?
Long ago, I partook – reasonably often – of three drugs considered terrible: tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis. The first was legal, the second has a checkered record of legality, and the third was, and is, illegal. Strangely enough, they gave me troubles in inverse proportion to legality.
I managed to get majorly drunk during my high school years. It did wonders for my social reputation, but then I had to deal with the hangover. I didn’t like the hangover, nor did I like the room spinning about me, so since then I have used alcohol quite moderately, mostly in the form of beer. I’ve known several folk who dug much deeper holes for themselves with alcohol.
Tobacco, oh, that one was a bugger to get off of. I finally had to hire a hypnotist. I had to get off, you see, because my voice didn’t hold together long enough for an hour’s lecture. No tobacco, no trouble with public speaking. There were two things that helped me get off tobacco: first, I was not going to smoke again until I’d saved enough money by not buying cigarettes to equal the money paid to the hypnotist. (They were both considerable sums back in the sixties. They would be much larger today.)
The second thing that helped me get away from tobacco was cannabis. I was used to inhaling smoke, and that gave me much of the same satisfaction. It was Minnesota Green, found in the wild, and not very potent at all, but it had enough THC to calm anxiety from the lack of nicotine. One day, I noticed I hadn’t smoked any for a couple weeks. If it took me that long to notice, the cannabis was nowhere as addictive as they claim. I had smoked cannabis for years before that, and years after, and it didn’t seem to cause any trouble. The world was full of hippies in those days, and I didn’t notice very many getting in trouble with it. I’ve only had to help deal with one bad trip, and I don’t know what the hell he’d been using.
Everybody has their own biochemistry, primed to fall into addiction with different acts or substances. Over the long term I’ve found three: tobacco, gambling, and the internet. I’ve managed to stay away from the first two for something like fifty years. Given I’ve been dealing with computers for sixty years, I’m probably stuck with the third.
Take it from an old hippie: people do want to move their state of mind up and down. It’s always been that way. The ancient Persians made their big decisions while drunk. The next day, once they’d sobered up, they took another look at the decisions. They only accepted them if both their states of mind approved.
Every society needs at least two drugs: one to mellow out, one to perk up. They should be gentle, not taking people to the extremes. Right now, alcohol and caffeine are what we have. (Energy drinks provide wakefulness; caffeine is their major ingredient. “Red Bull” has more social cachet than “No-Doz” and can be used in mixed drinks, so lots of the party animals go for it.) Alcohol soothes in small quantities, but causes trouble in large. It’s not very good at its job.
Frankly, I think cannabis would do a better job of mellowing out than alcohol. For other folk, it may be different. But you really do want a couple of mild drugs easily available to lessen the market for the harder stuff. Heroin mellows you far to deeply; speed or cocaine makes you dangerously active. Let’s all be reasonable about this.
When I was a teacher one of my colleagues was a heavy cannabis user. At first his forgetfulness seemed funny – he was very good at charming apologies. But as he became increasingly unable to do his job it stopped being funny. Eventually it became something very like senile dementia, in a man in his mid-30s.
But I still say legalise it. The same effects could have been brought about by alcohol (and I have seen that happen too), and they were brought about in him despite cannabis being illegal. And what everybody else said about getting the trade out of the hands of criminals. Has anyone mentioned yet how illegal intoxicants are nearly always stronger than their legal equivalents because if you are going to have to smuggle stuff it helps to have it take up a small volume?
None of these points are new. I probably first heard some of them from people here. Nonetheless there is value in making the case again and again. Some points will be new to some people. Everyone can do with a reminder.
My thought on all this is, this or that drug is harmful to some degree. Does making it illegal reduce or increase the harm? The answer, seeing that people can still aquire the drug in question anyway, is probably neither. That is without taking the resulting criminal activity into account.
I think it all comes down to the ‘heavy’ bit. Many a person has drunk themselves to death on nothing but beer.
Perry – it is all to do with your baby eating.
James Strong raised a good point: use of cannabis (like alcohol) has been misassigned by the legal system as an impairment that mitigates responsibilty.
If this is being framed as a matter of free choice, so be it : you are responsible for damage caused by your choice to get high.
Paul (Paul Marks, April 21, 2021 at 10:27 pm), in the UK at least, in a certain important sense, I think you’d have to go back to the 50s or early 60s to find a time when the cannabis users, rather than any “Oh my God, you smoked pot!“ parents or friends, were in fact the socially-mocked ‘baby-eaters’.
Perhaps the illegality added to its ‘coolness’. Perhaps it increased the aggression or indignation of practitioners against critics. If so, either would be another argument for legalising. But we can also see from events today how such attitudes can be purely performative.
My main point is that we see today in AntifaBLM how a law can be on the books and yet, at the same time, a dominant, controlling part of society can put people in fear, not of breaking the law, but of criticising the nominally-illegal behaviour – in private fear of mockery and exclusion from the smart set in those days, in public fear of a more literal kind today. In a certain sense, cannabis has been ‘legal’ in a dominant part of our society for a long time – so long that (as a side effect of hippiedom in general) it became less ‘cool’ in the 80s.
However this did not alter its smart-set-‘legal’ status (in the UK – I make no claim to know the social reality in any of the many localities within the US).
Of course, by wanting it openly legalised, rather than just by having many people be technically criminals, Perry is indeed revealing his ‘baby-eating’ tendencies to the kind of people who ruled the world at the start of ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Doubtless occasional and partial pretence that the law was, or could be, enforced has had its uses.
The relationship between formal law and social reality is complicated. One reason to want fewer laws is so it can be less so.
Q. What is the one legal substance that has wrecked countless lives??!!
A. Wedding cake!
Ba-dum tish…
After all of the horrid human waste I’ve encountered personally throughout life stemming from alcohol and drugs, I’d rather exercise my libertarian bones in the fight against the tyranny of meat and poultry inspection regimes.
Probably.
@Perry
I’m sure you are right-however, today’s cannabis is a lot stronger than it used to be.
Either that or the baby-eating has done terrible things to your brain.
@bobby b
After all of the horrid human waste I’ve encountered personally throughout life stemming from alcohol and drugs, I’d rather exercise my libertarian bones in the fight against the tyranny of meat and poultry inspection regimes.
Maybe. I think it is always more enjoyable to defend the freedoms that you personally consider important, just as it is far more enjoyable to argue for free speech for Trump and Jordan Petersen than it is for Neo Nazi scum. I don’t do drugs myself (except occasionally alcohol in moderation and frequently caffeine in immoderation), but I am a strong advocate of “your body, your choice”. And that is why I stand up for the legalization of cannabis. Not because I think it is a good idea to smoke it, but because allowing the government to ban it means they will soon ban the things I like to do. In fact I think that is the lesson of the past year. For forty years liberals have been nibbling at the edge of freedom, establishing patterns that they can use to massively encroach when the right crisis comes along.
I think if you are opposed to the legalization of cannabis, a drug that many people use with no ill effect, you really need to be logically consistent and call for a ban on alcohol, and drug that many people use with no ill effect, but which per capita of uses, causes vastly more damage that cannabis ever did. But we have had an experience with that ban before and it went very badly, almost as badly as it went when we banned cannabis. FWIW, I think that we have a softer view of the 1930s because gangster movies have almost elevated thugs like Capone and his ilk as almost heroes rather than the brutal thugs that they actually were.
And FWIW, I hope you find the opportunity to share with us your thoughts on the Chauvin Trial.
The government takes a cut from the sale of alcohol and tobacco through the imposition of duty. They also control the supply through bonded warehouses etc. The only reason that I can see this or any government legalising cannabis would be in order to get their hands on a share of the money.
Can you honestly see the drugs gangs agreeing to this?
Can you honestly see the retailers stocking it alongside booze and fags?
Can you imagine the paperwork involved?
If the government could have figured out how to control the supply and take their cut they’d have made it legal years ago.
@David Clemo
Can you honestly see the drugs gangs agreeing to this?
Can you honestly see the retailers stocking it alongside booze and fags?
I don’t need to imagine it. It happens exactly like that every day in Illinois where cannabis is basically legal and there are shops all over the place selling it. There is a huge billboard near a road I drive on saying “Our Cannabis is American Grown and Packaged”. As far as I know you cannot do that with cigarettes here.
“Taking the products out of the hands of criminals and into regulated markets ”
Why “regulated markets”?? I hate “regulated markets” more than cannabis.
I should probably be more clear. (I may have found a personal motto here.)
1. I’m not opposed to pot. I smoke it. I decided years ago that I hate hangovers and so, when I feel like altering my consciousness, I generally skip the drink and light the weed.
2. Government intrudes in so many harmful and costly ways into our lives – into my life – that I could spend hours simply listing those ways. From building and planning regs that limit affordable housing to safety regs that mandate heavy inefficient vehicles to switching our damned clocks in order to satisfy one particular powerful lobby, there’s no end to the meddling that a liberty-minded person could decide to address if he had time.
3. So, I wouldn’t actively fight against legalization of drugs. But, because of the harm I’ve seen caused by alcohol and meth and heroin and speed and molly and whatnot, I’d not choose to expend a calorie in fighting for the legalization of any mood-altering drug. I’d rather fight for the end of sheep-shearing licenses.
4. And it’s not a completely neutral position. I’ve watched as our American Libertarian Party (TM!) has transformed itself from what could have been a good influence for liberty into NORML-II. I’d guess 90% of the country thinks of them, not as “libertarian”, but as “druggie.” They’ve blown the brand, and “libertarian” is a joke word here thanks to them. If drugs have actually caused societal harm, it’s through the stupidity of concentrating the libertarian fight towards their defense. I’d rather defend hair weavers without licenses. At least then I’m not in the Deadhead Party.
@bobby b
I’d rather fight for the end of sheep-shearing licenses.
Sure, but to be honest, the subject of sheep shearing licenses doesn’t come up all that much in the leafy suburbia I live in. However, were I to be asked, I’d agree with your view. Cannabis is talked about a lot more than sheep shearing, and there are a lot more cannabis users than people whose love of sheep shearing has been stymied by licensure rules. So surely you talk about what people are talking about.
And I think there is another important thing to consider in the debate over liberty. If you seriously want to convince people to consider liberty then you can’t go liberty nuclear on them. You have to start with areas where they will undoubtedly agree that the government is overreaching. And pot is one such place. The large majority of people thing that pot should at least not be criminalized. Certainly it is a lot easier to convince people of that than it is that, for example, heroin should be legal, or that doctors shouldn’t require state licenses.
American Libertarian Party (TM!) has transformed itself from what could have been a good influence for liberty into NORML-II
I’m not sure you are being entirely fair to them. I don’t think it is well run. For example, when Gary Whathisname got caught out with some question about Aleppo, the party was embarrassed and tried to cover his tracks. What they should in fact have said is “Libertarians don’t give a hoot about Aleppo because we shouldn’t be bombing the crap out of strangers who haven’t done us any harm. Libertarians would bring all the troops home right away, and stop burning trillions of tax dollars on pointless wars that kills thousands of innocent people. Gary doesn’t care about Aleppo, just like the vast majority of Americans don’t. The only people who care are fancy foreign policy advisors who care more about Iraq than Detroit. Never mind the rich fat cats making all those bombs with their blood stained hands.”
However, they do talk about other issues quite a lot, though perhaps it is their press coverage that makes them look like pot smoking hippies.
The fundamental problem though is that the libertarian party doesn’t understand American politics. It is more like the super bowl. There are two leagues, you have to win there first to get in the playoffs and eventually the big show. You don’t just start your own league then demand they let you in for the big game.
Here’s where I think we’re mostly just having a tactical disagreement.
I think that the American Libertarians have absolutely conquered the hard-core devoted legalize-drugs segment of society – but I think that that segment is smaller than you think it is, and I think there is another segment that may be larger that is either strongly opposed to it, or simply isn’t enamored of it.
So what the ALP has done is establish their liberty creds with that one smaller segment, but left the rest of society looking down on them as druggies – people whom you ought not take too seriously. In a society that is, at heart, a conservative one, you don’t make R. Crumb your party standard. (Maybe too old of a reference.)
Personally, I think you start smaller, and go after the licensing regimes. You talk about why it’s stupid to require hair weavers to take 100 hours of classroom training. You talk about protectionism. You maybe start in on how urban planning makes it unaffordable for anyone to own a house. You ask why car dealerships must still be closed on Sundays in some places. You convince people that we ought not be looking to politicians to save ourselves from ourselves.
We’re being provincial when we assume that everyone of any intelligence is in favor of drug legalization. There are so many ways we could use more liberty in our societies that it’s not worth it to lose support by concentrating our efforts on drugs. They’re just too polarizing, and we lose credibility with too many people when we do that.
Get people thinking of “liberty” as a good, valuable, meritorious word – first. Make inroads that give good practical results. Maybe only then go after the hugely polarizing issues that are nearer and dearer to our hearts like drugs. By starting with drugs, the ALP drives away many people who are natural libertarians. It’s just poor tactical thinking.
I think if you are opposed to the legalization of cannabis, a drug that many people use with no ill effect, you really need to be logically consistent and call for a ban on alcohol
Actually it is logically consistent to treat the two differently. Alcohol can be enjoyed without significantly altering one’s perceptions … while the whole point of smoking weed (or doing any other recreational drug) is to alter one’s perceptions.
Self-control is an essential element of any free society, if it is going to stay free and not descend into either anarchy or a police state. Altering one’s perceptions inherently compromises that self-control, and there is no practical, reliable way to get around it.
I know this is not a popular view.
But we tolerate a double standard on recreational drug use … decrying the ill effects of that loss of self-control that many DO experience, while laughing at the national inside-joke of politicians proclaiming “I DIDN’T INHALE!” … because we want to maintain access to our own pet vice, be that getting stoned/high or something else.
Legalizing cannabis is to enter uncharted territory in a society where personal responsibility has ALREADY been eroded in favor of licentious behavior, with others burdened to clean up the messes created (directly and indirectly). IMHO, that is simply irresponsible on our part.
Regarding the arguments over whether cannabis is safe or not it would help to differentiate between skunk and normal cannabis/weed.
This is where the real difficulties lie IMO, because weed is pretty harmless while it is skunk that really turns people into violent nutters. Or just nutters. If you legalise weed then you legalise skunk. I have to say I quite like the idea of people being allowed to grow their own, perhaps that would be the ideal solution?
Hardly uncharted. Moreover, acquiring weed in most nations is trivially simple & low risk regardless of what the law says, and this has always been true. I recall some years ago when on holiday in France with a gaggle of British chums, a couple them drove into a provincial town they had never visited before, found some weed to purchase & returned to the farmhouse we were renting within a couple hours. The notion states, other than small geographically bounded police states like Singapore, can meaningfully hamper people who want to acquire the stuff is laughable and that has been clear for more than a century now.
Fraser,
“In fairness one could well substitute “whisky” for the word “cannabis” and get the same result. ”
Is this true the morning after? The whisky can indeed create fighty drunks but, as Churchill had it, in the morning you’ll be sober. Isn’t the problem with cannabis that the paranoia continues after the other temporary effects have worn off?
If that’s the case, then it’s a totally different problem.
But also this:
“James Strong raised a good point: use of cannabis (like alcohol) has been misassigned by the legal system as an impairment that mitigates responsibilty.
If this is being framed as a matter of free choice, so be it : you are responsible for damage caused by your choice to get high.”
Definitely this – if we switch to a legal regime in which you are MORE not less culpable for the bad things you do when under the influence, we might be able to mitigate the downsides. Right now, we’re screwed.
Sorry, missed this. Sort of have to wait for a post in which it’s not horribly OT.
Perry, full-on legalization – where the social stigmas associated with being a “stoner” are removed, because “if it’s legal, it’s moral” – is uncharted territory.
It’s not about availability, it’s about the expansion of use, and the resultant impairment of responsibility and productivity that will likely result. We already have too much impairment of those vital attributes as the result of our century-long embrace of social technocracy as society’s operating paradigm.
Must be the different circles we’ve moved it. In my white collar upper middle class circles, there was never any social stigma either when I lived in USA (NY/NJ) or back in UK (London). Social gathering were never *about* the weed, but weed did feature, and it was as unremarkable as a beer (US) or a nice glass of Burgundy (UK).
That said, these days hardly anyone I know smokes anything as we are just older I suppose, but a lot of high quality alcohol does get consumed 😋
Many American States have already legalised this drug.
Others will do so.
For example, it baffles me that the Governor of South Dakota can not see what harm she has done to herself by backing legal nit picking over Amendment A.
54% of the votes were to legalise the recreational use of this drug – the people may be daft, but you can not successfully enforce a law that less than half the population support (not without setting up some sort of Fascist State) – the very motto of South Dakota is “Under God The People Rule”.
The motto is not “unless we can find some legal trickery to frustrate their vote”.
I say again – this drug is NOT harmless, but then neither are many other things.
As Gladstone would have put it – it is not from the action of the state that the morality of the people will be improved.
I’m surprised by the consequentialist nature of a lot of the comments, here. The primary question is: Does government have the legitimate authority to prohibit cannabis the way most have? For me, the answer is no. After that, none of the other arguments matters much.
The older I get, the more I wonder what things we’re presently doing that future generations will look back on and ask, “What were they thinking,” the way we ask that about alcohol prohibition. Surely, one of those things will be cannabis prohibition, and the war on drugs in general.
Future generations will look back and wonder why our Controllers and Thought Givers allowed us to so publicly air views contrary to those of the State. If they are even permitted to know that we existed at all.
And cannabis won’t be legal … it will be mandatory, like a vaccine against independent thought.