Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire April 20th... National Marijuana Day!

You're an idiot.

So does all the gateway nonsense. About like guns kill.

1. Prohibition has enormous social costs.

The deleterious effects of prohibition run from wasted resources to ruined lives. Our police devote thousands of hours to arresting, booking and imprisoning marijuana smokers, many of whom are otherwise law-abiding. The most unfortunate of these arrestees have spent over a decade in prison, in some cases for nothing more than possession of cannabis for personal use.

2. The benefits of criminalization are minuscule to nonexistent.

Cannabis prohibition is quite costly, but so are other government initiatives. A fair analysis of criminalization must also consider its benefits. The thing is, it’s not clear that there are any.

One of the strangest aspects of the war on drugs is how completely it has failed at reducing drug use, despite costing over $51 billion annually, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.

3. Prohibition is racist.

In one of its series of editorials, the Times reviews the history of cannabis criminalization, and finds it has been racist from the outset in the 1930s. The campaign to make pot illegal was “firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time.” The word “marijuana” was popularized as a way to associate the plant with Mexicans.

4. Cannabis has legitimate medical effects.

The narrative of cannabis as a harmful drug has been dominant for so long, that many people had trouble accepting the plant’s demonstrated medicinal effects. Opinions on medical marijuana have shifted dramatically in the last two decades: this year, a slew of mostly conservative states passed laws permitting epilepsy patients to use strains of cannabis high in CBD. These states joined 23 others with broader medical marijuana laws. While the federal government still lists cannabis as a Schedule I drug, meaning it does not acknowledge any legitimate medical use, the states clearly disagree.

5. Legalization won’t lead to increased use.

There is reason even for people who oppose the use of marijuana to support its legalization: legal substances can be controlled in ways illegal ones cannot.

6. Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.

American history has a good analog for cannabis prohibition: alcohol prohibition. With both, use of the substance did not stop, laws were selectively enforced and violent gangs made staggering profits filling a market law-abiding merchants could no longer touch. In the end, despite alcohol’s costs to bodily health, and the alarming effects it can have on behavior, it was determined, rightly, that criminalizing alcohol did more harm than good.

Can any of you make the case for weed without a moral equivalent? Weed as an issue by itself.

Not weed = alcohol, not weed = tobacco, not prohibitition was a failure. I don't want to hear "you suck because you drink but don't want to legalize weed". I don't want to hear stoners should have unfettered access to pot just because millions drink everyday. Discuss weed on its own merits and as its own subject. You can start another thread about booze and cigs if you want and I'll happily opine on those individual issues.

Harry Anslinger, criminalization’s biggest champion, is responsible for any number of quotes that sound like satire, but formed the basis of the movement to make cannabis illegal:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers,” Anslinger declared. “Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Fast-forward to present day, and the words we use around marijuana have improved, but our actions have not.

“Whites and blacks use marijuana at roughly the same rates; on average, however, blacks are 3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for possession, according to a comprehensive 2013 report by the A.C.L.U.,” the Times lays out. “In Iowa, blacks are 8.3 times more likely to be arrested, and in the worst-offending counties in the country, they are up to 30 times more likely to be arrested. The war on drugs aims its firepower overwhelmingly at African-Americans on the street, while white users smoke safely behind closed doors.”

This racial disparity has been present throughout the life of marijuana prohibition. While the obvious solution for a proponent of criminalization would be for police to arrest more white pot smokers—after all, they are criminals too, aren’t they?—no one seems to want to lead that charge. Instead, the drug war, however well meaning its supporters, is in practice, a blatant assault on minorities and their economic mobility.

I believe #5. #3? Pleeeze!

You're an idiot.

Had some little hippie tramp in the line in front of me at the local market/gas station. Whole line of people behind me. I'm just standing there minding my own business in a daze after working all day in the heat. She turns around out of the blue and says you're freaking me the F out, go stand over there, pointing off to the side. She got set real straight about what's right and proper and who to respect and who not to.

Great argument. Welcome to the discussion on hypocrisy.

I believe #5. #3? Pleeeze!

Here is the rest of #3

The New York Times lays out. “In Iowa, blacks are 8.3 times more likely to be arrested, and in the worst-offending counties in the country, they are up to 30 times more likely to be arrested. The war on drugs aims its firepower overwhelmingly at African-Americans on the street, while white users smoke safely behind closed doors.”

Before it was made illegal, one of the "arguments" to criminalize it was that black men who smoked it often raped white women. It's factual history. Ever see Reefer Madness?