LogFAQs > #922768068

CaptainStrong posted...

My point is no one supports banning alcohol and tobacco, so why should less harmful substances like weed be banned?.

You know what's also less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco? Or even weed, for that matter? Driving without a seat belt. 99.99% of the time if you drive somewhere and don't do your seat belt up, you'll arrive at the other side with absolutely no harm done, no long term consequences. And even if you do get in a crash, that crash has to fall in a narrow band (i.e. not so minor that the seat belt does nothing, but not so horrific that the seat belt also does nothing because it, your car, and you are now a pile of scrap metal and raw meat) for the seat belt to actually make a difference.

Yet driving without a seat belt is illegal and no one really bats an eye at it or suggests it shouldn't be. Point being, just because something is mostly safe that doesn't mean that's a good argument for it being legal.

CaptainStrong posted...

And theres tons of proven links between alcohol and other shit.

Again, so what?

We're not talking about alcohol here, we're talking about weed. Why you're trying so hard to deflect the topic of conversation over to alcohol is beyond me, because you could prove to everyone here that alcohol is the most dangerous, most addictive, most toxic substance to ever exist and it still would do absolutely nothing to bolster your argument that weed should be legal.

CaptainStrong posted...

you wanna ban alcohol too? cuz it worked sooooooo well in the 20s and tooooootally didnt create a black market and made it unnecessarily dangerous

If it were up to me and I thought that a ban would actually stick, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Because I don't think the hundreds of thousands of deaths and countless more injuries, families torn apart, etc., caused by alcohol every year are worth it.

But we both know a ban wouldn't do a damn thing, because we, as a species, are addicted to the stuff. Have been since we first crawled out of the trees. Our shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one was done partially because our distant ancestors wanted to brew alcohol. So yeah, there's no way you could effectively ban booze, because everyone who loves it now (what with it being legal and all) will fight you tooth-and-nail on it, despite its clear-cut hazards (because it's not a problem if you don't abuse it, which is a fair argument).

So since there's no getting that genie back in the bottle, my view is we should be very, very, very careful before we legalize another, similar vice, lest it have similar effects, because once it's legal it's going to stay that way. If we do this haphazardly, our decedents could very well be left wondering what the fuck we were thinking when we decided to legalize a substance whose long term effects could be every bit as deleterious as tobacco or alcohol.

CaptainStrong posted...

cuz alcohol impairs you a fucking shitload way more than weed does

Depends on the strength of the booze and the strength of the weed.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Weed hasn't got a strong userbase or production network so the black market is muuuuuch smaller.

Dude, what? Weed has an enormous userbase and production network. There are gangs that run nothing else because it's that lucrative. Back when it was illegal here in Canada it was the main illicit export to the US (with guns coming the other way as payment).
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