imac wrote:
Duke Juker wrote:
Well, I'm still up in the air on it, but I think it should not me legalized. Here's the way I see it, though. On the one hand, a drug is a drug. When you put a drug into your body, there are good and bad things that happen. For one thing, I don't feel responsible for what other people put into their bodies. I feel that I can warn the person of what can happen to them if they do, but that choice is theirs, not mine. I can't stop someone from choosing one way or the other unless I hold a gun to their head and strip their freedoms. But if I'm not around, that choice is up the person. To me, I believe marijuana is bad and should not be legalized or decriminalized. A government should not support or gain profit off people's unhealthy choices. The greatest examples of these are tobacco and alcohol. These are generally acceptable practices to many people, but our heavily taxed and regulated by the government. I don't think it's necessarily bad to do that, but I think the government has gone over the line with it. I also think this whole argument depends on how you have grown up and what you believe. If you are like me, you think very conservatively. I tend to shun very liberal ideologies such as this. Even if marijuana was medically legal, it would still cause problems of distribution to people who are not supposed to have it. The real truth of the matter is that this issue opens a whole can of worms that people have to deal with. As I mentioned earlier, should a government profit off the choices people make, whether good or bad? Is making something legal better for the people or totally worse? Is it up to the federal government or the state and local governments? Should we just start following the wishes of the masses in order to get along? To me, the answer is simple. Don't legalize or decriminalize the stuff. Force people to get it illegal and possibly get caught trying. Make harsher punishments for possession and use. Unless it is legal, it should not be practiced at all and should be made very undesirable.
You sat there and said the government shouldn't profit off of people's unhealthy habits, but they do. What would be the difference of what in your opinion is a terrible drug made legalized compared to alcohol or cigarettes. The government is profiting off of unhealthy things what would be the difference if they profited off marijuana.
I would also like to point out this. Remember the prohibition what happened there alcohol was deemed illegal. As soon as that happened mafia profited and crime reigned over cities. When it was legal again all the crime dropped.
I did say they do profit off them. When I mentioned tobacco and alcohol, I said they tax it heavily, thereby profiting. I suppose the difference between legalizing a terrible drug compared to alcohol and tobacco is really nothing. As I said, a drug is a drug. When you use it, there are consequences for doing so, both good and bad (usually more bad, though). There would be no difference if they profited off of marijuana. They would still be profiting off a drug, just as they are now. It doesn't matter what the drug is. It all goes in the same boat. From tobacco, to alcohol, to weed, to heroine, to opium, to anything else, it's all the same. A drug is a drug. Drug are more often than not bad for your body. Governments should not legalize or support drugs. The job of a government is to do what is best for the people (within certain limitations). Would it make sense for a government to make it legal to hurt yourselves or others around you? That's what drug dealers and users do. They get others hooked who would have otherwise probably would not have been. So I feel that, though governments do make legal and tax drugs, they shouldn't do it, even though they do, knowing it is hurtful to the general populous.
On your second point of prohibition, I would not completely agree that crime dropped. Because alcohol became legal, crime shifted to other ventures. There was no point in bootlegging if it wasn't illegal. I would say that alcohol has brought on more problems than when prohibition was in place. Think of all the alcoholics out there, the abuse, the violence, and everything else that could happen that is associated with bars, booze, and drinking. Was it really worth it yo repeal prohibition in order to make crime and mafia activities stop, only to start up in other, worse areas?
On a final not, I want to leave this to think about. The whole drug trade is viewed as a war, and rightly so. We are fighting against the drug trade in order to make sure that people do
not get addicted to these other drugs. If we just give up and say its legal, than the drug runners and smugglers win. But they won't give up until every drug they can lay their hands on is exploited. Sure, once a drug is legal, it may drop crime and smuggling a little, but the loss of health to the general populous will be implacable. The appropriate thought here is that it's a lose-lose situation.
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