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So, I don't disagree, but we legalized weed in the civilized parts of the country and it had little effect, I'm not sure I want to legalize cocaine, it's much better at killing people.
Still waiting for legal grass.
California announced they’ll be opening cannabis cafes
Assuming you’re in the US:
It’s called THCa and is the same weed you’ve been smoking your whole life. You can get ounces to your door in the mail 100% legally thanks to a poorly written Farm Bill.
The farm bill only states a certain % of THC is illegal. Well, THC isn’t on the plants in large quantities - that only exists once you heat the cannabis to isomerize it from THCa to THC. It’s not delta 8 or some weird synthetic cannabinoid, weed has always been THCa before it’s heated.
There are dispensaries all over Texas these days selling great weed with this loophole. Texas, of all places.
Good to know. I moved out over a year ago. Going back EOM for a family visit. Hate landing anywhere dry, so I'll probably check these out.
As I said, the civilized parts of the country.
Little effect in what regard?
I think they're saying that legalizing weed hasnt done anything to reduce Mexican cartel influence or violence.
Why would it? It’s the bulkiest, smelliest, lowest cost drug there is. Mexican weed sucked ass too. Moving cocaine or especially ultra high strength opiate analogs is significantly more lucrative.
Making things illegal doesn’t work. Not alcohol, not drugs, not abortion. It needs to be addressed by education. The current just say no abstinence approach leaves people ill prepared for when they encounter drugs. Our relationship with drugs is fucked, currently. Altering our state of consciousness with drugs is a fundamental part of being human.
The whole argument for legalizing weed was that it would cripple the cartels.
That doesn't seem like it's worked so much.
So again, we have to legalize cocaine before the cartels are weakened?
Then we have to legalize heroin? Fentanyl? Anything else?
I'm in favor of legalizing weed, but this seems a lot like it's actually not helping.
I don't know anyone who was touting the cartels as a reason to legalize weed... weed is usually being legalized because 1) it's (relatively) harmless, 2) it has medicinal uses, 3) it was outlawed for racist reasons, and 4) it was causing mass incarceration and devastating black communities due to clearly racist enforcement.
The whole argument, or the part of the argument that you are able to argue against? In my opinion the "whole argument" is that getting caught with relatively harmless plant matter shouldn't ruin your entire life.
Happy Cakeday! 🍰🎂
Lol no it wasn't.
Oh definitely. All drugs, actually, I'd say.
Here's a question for you. Is the reason you don't shoot up opiate that they're illegal? If you could legally get them, you'd shoot up? (And please, don't answer with "well I wouldn't, but like others...")
Have you read any science about legalising, decriminalising, etc?
Because it all shows it's worth it.
Honestly, I'd absolutely do coke if it were legal, and it would almost surely fuck me up.
I might not do opiates, but honestly, if I had back pain or surgery and they gave me opiates, I probably would take it up after.
Because that's how a LOT of people take up drugs.
Drugs aren't good, you just like them, they're nasty because they break assumptions evolution made, and we're not quite ready for that yet.
If nukes were legal, do you think everyone could be trusted with them? Because most people have self-control, but not all, and before you say "Drugs don't hurt other people!", yes, they absolutely do, you just don't give a shit about them.
It’s harsh, but El Salvador did what was necessary to fix their problem. They saved countless men, women, and children both inside and outside their country from monsters walking in human skin.
What???
They jailed 1% of the population and devastated an entire generation at the very least, often for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time
https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-bukele-central-america-crime-gangs-60c3a34c571dfdbdf0a203deb85abf71
And yet vast majority of their population had him at over 90% approval and thought everything he did was necessary to maintain order.
There’s already far more trauma, and even more to be inflicted if he didn’t go all out against gangs. If you aren’t from that area or other similarly dangerous country you wouldn’t really get how desperate it gets. He 100% was necessary.
They’re no longer the murder capital of the world and safer than even Canada. Women can actually walk outside and children can play.
First I’ve heard of this, and I’d consider myself a pretty big follower of drugs and drug culture. Who thought weed was lucrative for cartels? The plant you can easily grow, and is challenging to transport?
Calling it the “whole argument” is very disingenuous. People have the right to get high.
Yeah, all of it. You can legally buy chemical analogs of just about any class of drugs because the laws simply can’t keep up. Prohibition isn’t working, and it hasn’t ever. What you’re seeing today is a result of prohibition (and prescription painkillers in the 00s, I’d argue).
The problem won’t be fixed by making things illegal. What, are you going to make opiates more illegal or something? Education and learning how to have a proper relationship with mind altering substances is the way forward, IMO.
Shoutout to erowid.org.
Hey hey hey.
You're a smart feller. I only wish I knew people like you in real life. I've held these opinions for more than ten years, and during that time, a whole fucking bunch of my "friends" have stripped being in contact after I've talked to them about my views about prohibition.
Which is ironic, because their actions (or inaction, rather) and aversion to talking about the prohibition is what is actually holding up the prohibition, which is what enables most of drug abuse. So they thought I was defending drug abuse, while it's their position which literally supports it's existence.
I came up with a slogan some 15 years ago.
"Legalise, educate, tax and regulate."
Respect
Portugal set the standard years ago. Legalize it and divert all the money that would go to incarceration to inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation for drug addiction.
I believe Switzerland was the first country to establish centers where drug addicts would receive a controlled dosage for "free." Of course paid for by taxes. The Suisse found out crime decreased, the parks were cleaner and emergency rooms saw fewer overdose patients. Basically a win across the board.
That happens when much of citizenry can be characterized as "rich blokes who will take coke at some point with no shadow of doubt". When everyone involved knows that, including the voters, it's an easy decision.
However, in many other countries the general population mostly forms their opinion on drugs, weapons and even political freedoms based on fear of what will happen.
They don't look at all this critically, thus don't understand that the worst things happening because of the current state of things they don't know anything about, because information is not and will never be as available as their thought process requires.
That involves said current state of things funding things like cartels, criminal groups in governments involved in drug trade (it's much more profitable when you ban all the competition), creating a vector of control over addicted people. These all have ugly consequences - violence abroad, strong (and rich) mafia groups in governments.
The correct thought process would be comparing abstract mechanisms. In abstract no consumable substance should be illegal, provided the buyer knows its contents and effects.
BTW, in abstract the right policy about weapons ownership would be opt out, not opt in, - mandatory mental examination of every adult citizen, but also mandatory weapons ownership for those who pass it! Perhaps except felons. With other exceptions being a process involving some justification being filed - as in pacifist views, religious reasons, bad atmosphere in family thus inability to keep it secure, something like that. It's not about "good guy with a gun", it's about distributing real power. People who should own weapons are not the same people who want to own weapons generally. Thus mandatory.
Minor clarification -Technically it was decriminalized, not legalized. Distribution will send you to jail and, after 2 or more possession offenses, you’re forced into a treatment program.
And sadly, things have started to get worse again in Portugal. Lately they’ve been sending fewer people to treatment, and surprise surprise, usage and deaths have gone up.
We don’t need to legalize. If we decriminalized, then took the money for jailing and funded mandatory treatment, we could do what Portugal did in the early 00’s.
I am sure. Legalize all of it. Legalize it, regulate it, tax it, use half of the new income for prevention and education, one quarter for medical support for addicts and the rest fills the coffers. You take away the power from the criminal gangs, while at the same time increasing your tax revenue, adding new legal avenues of business and minimizing the health impact considerably.
I think legalizing weed didn't make that much of a difference because the whole claim that buying random weed from a random dealer put money in cartel or terrorist pockets was a lie.
Not that there weren't any large weed organizations, they just weren't murdering people at the scale the cartels are or doing it to fund violence.
They'd also rely a lot on temporary workers since trimming was really the only labour intensive step, and then it would be sent out into a distribution network that wasn't so much an organization as it was a collection of independent or small scale distributors. Which in some locations might have been gangs, but I'd guess was mostly normal people looking to make some extra money.