Question for those of you living in a country where marijuana is legal. What are the positive sides, what are the negatives?
If you could go back in time, would you vote for legalising again? Does it affect the country’s illegal drug business , more/less?
There are very few cons, all the negative effects of cannabis can be better handled when it’s legal.
Con: I am stoned all the time
Pro: I am stoned all the time
I’m in this comment!
Pro: Everywhere it’s legal has seen a drastic reduction in the amount of violent drug-related crime, lower incarceration rates for non-violent offenders, and less abuse of prescription painkillers. Plus an incredible rise in quality when pot is regulated.
Con: Your straight edge friends who’ve never touched a joint in their lives start smoking regularly, since it’s legal. Your 30+ year old friends will start talking like junior highschoolers who just smoked oregano for the first time and think they’re high.
Your straight edge friends who’ve never touched a joint in their lives start smoking regularly, since it’s legal.
That’s not what straight edge means
Yeah, straight edge people still don’t drink or smoke cigarettes, even though they’re legal. I doubt anything would change regarding the straight edge crowd.
I tried it first when I was 30+, and tried it a few times at parties. Got a good laugh once and then a weird trip once… All other times were just meh, and since I never smoked anything, my throat hurt. The result was, that I stopped and then convinced my friends to stop it as well
I think it’s much easier to handle when you are an adult.
So, additional plus - when it’s legal, it’s easier to restrict access for a certain age group (let’s make it at least 21+. I heard it’s particularly dangerous for teens)
I love that since it’s become legal where I live I don’t really have to maintain any shady contacts with lazy guys who always say they’re on their way.
I just swing by the shop on the way home and pick up whatever I want with access to 10x the variety and quality of product. I love it and I’m happy it’s working so well everywhere it’s tried.
I voted to legalize it because it’s stupid to arrest people for it. That said, I hate the constant smell in public, and people seem to get addicted to it quite easily. It’s a pox on society, imo. At the end of the day, we have much larger problems on our hands.
This so much. I walk my dogs by a gradeschool and I smell it in the air every morning. Gradeschool. They aren’t even teenagers yet. At 8am. Every. Day.
Bonus points for the deluge of infused product packaging litter everywhere.
This is my problem. I don’t really ever do it, but I don’t abstain completely. My son in law thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. I don’t really care as such, but my kids are surrounded by it and I worry how it will affect them. If it weren’t for kids being around it all the time, I’d be fine with legalization. Hell I signed petitions in support of legalization. But I wasn’t anticipating huge billboards fucking everywhere. Or the sheer ubiquity of vape pens.
Legalization is fine but I do want to see some further laws around public use and display. It has always been that I don’t care what you do within the walls of your own home, but I would very much like to keep that activity there.
I think that the pros are obvious. It should simply be legal, and other comments have given good reasons.
However, there are some cons that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
It impairs you, so any activity where that is a problem, like driving, may need extra attention or public education.
For smokers, inhaling smoke is dangerous.
Why only Cannabis?
I get you, but we also have to start somewhere.
Pros:
- funny green plant
- I like it
- I’m high and forgot the 3rd
Cons:
- N/A
Legalize it
Legalize it
Tax it
Regulate it
I just wanna note that we’re basically blind when it comes to the health impacts, positive or negative, of cannabis right now. This will change in the coming years, but for now it’s impossible to tell what the cons are.
not sure I agree with you. we’ve had generation after generation after generation of people smoking/using cannabis. Whatever ramifications using cannabis has would have shown up by now.
Were scientific studies conducted on cannabis users before legalization? Because if not then it’s gonna be hard to notice anything but the most obvious stuff.
I’m not sure, you’ll have to look into that and let me know as I’d be interested to know about that myself.
The issue is I had was with the use of the word “blind”. As if cannabis was a new and unknown substance. While I’ve no doubt we’ve a lot more to learn about cannabis to say we’re “blind” is disingenuous at best.
Okay fair enough. Also apparently there’s a whole Wikipedia article on the topic so we already know a lot about this stuff, though long-term effects are more tenuous due to legal restrictions.
Exactly, so “blind” really isn’t the best descriptor of our understanding on cannabis, by the looks of it we’re quite informed.
Yeah true enough. Lemme edit that.
Yes? What the hell are you talking about
Okay apparently I didn’t know what I was talking about. There’s a whole Wikipedia article about it. That said it seems there are/were legal restrictions that have limited research on the effects of long-term use.
That’s what the wikipedia article might say but there are definitely studies on the long term effects of cannabis use: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fi&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=long+term+effects+of+cannabis
What? Cannabis is widely consumed for a thousand years
Yeah but for how many of those thousand years had people studying and counting how often people suffered this disease or that syndrome when they consumed or didn’t consume cannabis?
All of them. It’s been part of the pharmacopea since forever.
https://philarchive.org/archive/SUMCIT-2
Beside if there’s any niche side effects I’ll be easier to know with legally allowed medical supervision. Under prohibition the main side effect is jail
Pro
But Bill Maher is a walking testament to why it matters a great deal how often you come back to the surface.
OP, please change the title to make it less vague what the question is about without having to open it.
Done, thanks 🙂
Pro:
- people aren’t criminalised for kinda nothing.
- you detach it from other drugs (the regular dealer will also have other stuff for sale - not an issue if you buy officially or grow yourself).
Con:
- despite what people claim, there are people that get highly addicted to cannabis. Probably similar to alcohol, you’d say? Well, in my unpopular opinion, alcohol also shouldn’t be available the way it currently is (make it insanely expensive please).
- most people consume it with tobacco, so there’s that to deal with.
Alcohol just isn’t hard to make. It’s also really easy to sneak into places. You could never make it insanely expensive. It would just all go black market.
As if Finland and Norway wouldn’t exist. 😉
We already tried making it illegal. Plus we don’t have the health infrastructure for it. We have a shotload of people self-medicating a variety of disorders with alcohol. And lots of people brewing beer just for fun. I don’t know what they do in Finland and Norway but it wouldn’t work here.
Not saying the model works in every country, but we see more and more moving against tobacco and alcohol in the EU, which is a good development.
I guess you’re from the US? I think we can agree alcohol isn’t the biggest drug issue you have.
The important factor isn’t whether someone can be addicted (otherwise you’re banning nearly everything), it’s the harm that addiction causes. As a general rule of thumb physical dependencies like alcohol are more harmful than habitual addictions, but that obviously isn’t the whole story.
Caffeine addiction is the same category as alcohol and tobacco but causes so little harm that I don’t think anyone is seriously opposed it. On the other end of that scale is something like meth or other hard drugs, generally understood as destructive and has few serious supporters encouraging use. Breaking these addictions is almost always hard and physically taxing, in some cases can even be lethal.
Marijuana addiction is in the same category as most things that make you feel good or form habits so it’s harder to nail down a proper scale, but the lower end is probably something like video games; a debilitating addiction is possible but uncommon and most people would oppose a blanket ban on the basis of “can be addictive”. Gambling is on the other end can definitely ruin lives. I’d say that’s a little worse than coffee. Breaking these addictions is more like breaking a bad habit, it can feel hard for the addict but generally isn’t going to kill them.
True to an extent, but looking at it from an individual’s perspective, it can be devastating. I’ve seen people stop to function as human beings because of this.
What I am genuinely concerned about is the scale. So far, we don’t have too much insights into the long term effects of this, both on individual and on society level. Cannabis addiction can cause long term psychological issues, and it will be years before we will truly understand what this means for us.
Ah yes let’s bankrupt my alcoholic mum. What a great idea
Alcohol is way more addictive than cannabis
Agree with the pros, not really with the cons to the extreme that you describe.
I’ve seen people so addicted to it that they stopped to go to work and completely ignored their family. I don’t have numbers to put it into perspective, but the sheer level of addiction was beyond what I thought was realistic.
Alcohol addiction is way worse than that
That’s whereaboutism and not contributing to the discussion. I’m sure addiction to meth is worse as well.
You said it might be similar to alcohol
You are right, sorry.
You are not a trained psychologist and are unable to detect underlying conditions like depression or anxiety
Hey, I noticed it in another comment of yours so I thought I’d say something-
“Stopped to go to work” in English implies that they stopped smoking weed so that they could go to work. You’re looking for “stopped going to work”
Appreciated!
People can get addicted to anything.
If the addiction isn’t a chemical dependence, and isn’t inherently extremely harmful, then I think it should be accessible and addiction support should be available.Cannabis is legal here, and the level of addiction you’re describing is both very uncommon, and typically just exacerbating issues caused by other drugs or mental illness.
Kurz gesagt did a pretty good episode, balancing the pros & cons
Oh hey look the propaganda machine I used to watch.
Making it expensive only bankrupts addicts and makes more things privileges for the rich.
Worked in Norway and Finland.
Places with much stronger social safety nets and much more accessible healthcare.
Compared to…?
Looking across Europe, I think they’re comparable. No reason to not go for a similar model here.
Poonited States
Yes legalize. It shouldn’t have been banned to begin with. It makes more sense to ban alcohol than cannabis if we’re just talking from a public safety perspective. It was actually banned because the lumber industry wanted to chop down trees for paper rather than letting hemp take the lead.
That’s a new take for me, I’ve heard it was an aspect of Reagan’s war on drugs, it was an obstacle in the Vietnam war, it was amn attack against the black and Jamaican community, was big pharma wanting to clear the way for over the counter pain killers, and that the tobacco companies weren’t allowed to grow it so they made sure no one else would.
Thanks for adding to the list lol
It’s all of the above. It’s always been a useful folk devil when one was needed.
This. The hemp paper stuff was just the final nail in the coffin. It’s why Hearst got behind a big anti-cannabis propaganda campaign.
Pro: way more variety of edibles I can’t make myself (like fruit gummies), and I know the strength before I consume.
Not really a con, but a letdown: legal retailers can’t really compete with drug dealers prices, so it didn’t hurt the illegal drug industry or generate as much taxes as hoped.
In Germany (where you can now get it via a club or as medication) it is a little bit cheaper since the legalization in some clubs.
I’m in Canada where it is legal everywhere.
Since weed is so crazy inexpensive to grow, drug dealers have just dropped the price to where legal growers can’t compete due to the price of bureaucracy and process and things like having to actually test for potency and label appropriately.
Unmeasured edibles in the olden days, oh boy… I don’t miss it.
My shop sells $30 ounces. Never met a dealer slinging that cheap.
If you can, then they can, because they don’t have to pay for the bureaucracy, no need for testing and accurate labeling, etc.
weed smokers are not cool anymore, like wow bro you’re going to go home and follow the law. Lame
