Why is smoking legal?

[damn-I-Suck]

By your logic, all drugs should be illegal Heaton, which doesn't work.

Think of it this way: Marijuana is currently under prohibition status, a TON of people smoke it in defiance of the law, just like moonshiners did back when alcohol was under prohibition.

What did it accomplish? More crime, more problems.

And finally, you seem to be stuck on how dangerous or damaging pot is. I listed several PRACTICAL reasons why it should be legal, that have nothing to do with it being dangerous or not.

But since you're so stuck on one aspect of this argument, let me say something else:

Did you know that about 25% of prisoners in America are locked up because of marijuana related "crimes"? The prison system here in America is a joke, it costs the tax payers a shit ton of money, and in the last 20 years, America has spent FOUR TIMES AS MUCH MONEY on building new prisons as they do on education.

If they legalize marijuana, tax the crap out of it, you would see a DRASTIC reduction in incarcerations, it would stimulate the economy, people would no longer be unfairly denied work because of a drug test, and it would eliminate the black market value among gangsters.

Since people are gonna smoke pot anyway, regardless of it's legal status, would you rather they support gangsters, or help support the US economy? I for one think that the tax money from pot should go to education.

 

[Heaton]

By your logic, all drugs should be illegal Heaton, which doesn't work.

Uh, no. That's what the argument of "marijuana isn't as bad as" accomplishes. That's not my argument at all.

And finally, you seem to be stuck on how dangerous or damaging pot is. I listed several PRACTICAL reasons why it should be legal, that have nothing to do with it being dangerous or not.

This was also something I never touched on. Not to mention there is very little that's practical about most of your reasons.

Did you know that about 25% of prisoners in America are locked up because of marijuana related "crimes"? The prison system here in America is a joke, it costs the tax payers a shit ton of money, and in the last 20 years, America has spent FOUR TIMES AS MUCH MONEY on building new prisons as they do on education.

Put some numbers and sources down. Not to mention crime doesn't magically "stop" just because marijuana is legalized.

If they legalize marijuana, tax the crap out of it, you would see a DRASTIC reduction in incarcerations, it would stimulate the economy, people would no longer be unfairly denied work because of a drug test, and it would eliminate the black market value among gangsters.

Since people are gonna smoke pot anyway, regardless of it's legal status, would you rather they support gangsters, or help support the US economy? I for one think that the tax money from pot should go to education.

I don't think you can reasonably make those conclusions without putting down at least some numbers. Not to mention legalization leaves a lot of questions unanswered. What exactly are we legalizing? What are the penalties for breaking these new laws? Is the FDA regulating this? If so, who's enforcing this? And what of the stuff that's still going to be on the black market? It doesn't just suddenly "eliminate the black market value" since it's still pot, and isn't subjected to any of these regulations that WILL exist.

Let me be clear - marijuana legalization does not affect me in any way. I also think that there are some good arguments for legalization. There are also fucking terrible ones, and it's those terrible ones that I see that get the most lip service for some ungodly reason. You need to rethink your arguments. Or just stop posting altogether like you said you would.

 

[Supa]

Secondly, as I've stated before, you literally have to smoke twice your body weight in under 15 minutes to overdose. I'm 200 lbs, that means I have to smoke 400 pounds in 15 minutes, which is impossible because I would pass out long before I even scratched the surface.

And you should really read my entire post.

The last bit is funny because funny. You seem to have skipped the entire section where I explained people do more than smoke to get THC - they also refine it into oils and even inject-able liquids. How much do you have to shoot up to overdose?

You also seemed to have missed the part about the carcinogens. Not everyone smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, but those that do are at least smoking a filtered product. Depending on the brand, some cigarettes even have charcoal filtering that reduces a significant amount of carcinogens (still not enough to be "safe", of course).

I've seen people smoke pot out of an aluminum can (did you read the part about cancer and Alzheimer's?), tear pages out of Bibles (not quite rolling papers - significantly higher carcinogen output that might even contain lead), use water as a "filter", etc. All of these methods produce more carcinogens than a cigarette. The fact that you personally consume more cigarettes than pot doesn't have any relevance here.

I'm not even going to bother quoting the rest of a post that tells me to read the whole post that it quotes but misses all of the relevant parts of.

 

[damn-I-Suck]

Okay. You want some numbers? Here we go.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Marijuana#Share

Go to the section near the bottom, the chart "US Marijuana Arrests Percentage Share of Total Drug Arrests".

What this basically is saying, is that 52.1% of all drug related arrests involved marijuana. This is HALF. Just put that into perspective, I won't bother explaining why this is significant. Of that 52.1%, 45.8% of those were just POSSESSION, the other 6.3% was trafficking.

So just in case you aren't following me thus far, 45.8% of all drug related arrests are simply because of POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA.

So yeah, I don't consider this justice. I once again, LEGALIZING MARIJUANA WILL GREATLY REDUCE PRISON COSTS!!

PS: these are statistics for 2010

 

[damn-I-Suck]

The last bit is funny because funny. You seem to have skipped the entire section where I explained people do more than smoke to get THC - they also refine it into oils and even inject-able liquids. How much do you have to shoot up to overdose?

I will admit, I honestly don't know about inject-able THC. In my 15 years of pot smoking, I have NEVER heard of anyone shooting-up THC. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I do agree with you that it has the potential to be much more dangerous than simply smoking raw pot.

Anything you shoot-up is more dangerous simply because you're injecting it. I thought that was common sense.