Why Are So Many Still Against Hemp / Marijuana ?

[Ericpwp]

Okay, if I sell a high school kid a couple grams of heroin, and he ODs and dies, was a crime committed? Or, is it that individuals, and his family's fault for not influencing him to make better decisions/or showing him how not to die while getting high?

 

[rambone]

Okay, if I sell a high school kid a couple grams of heroin, and he ODs and dies, was a crime committed? Or, is it that individuals, and his family's fault for not influencing him to make better decisions/or showing him how not to die while getting high?

How does the scenario play out with alcohol?

Just keep repeating that question until every prohibitionist argument falls apart.

 

[AA&E]

Hey, reducing the competition my kids will face?

I'm all for it!

A parent that thinks his kids will be different... impossible.

Perhaps your child will be lowering the bar for the rest of our children?

 

[AA&E]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a minute here. Let's say we made everything legal. Pot. Meth. Cocaine. Heroin. Got rid of the entire concept of schedules. For the purpose of discussion, we'll ignore the medicinal prescription drugs.

So what if, years later, the toll to society has become very dire, such that it threatens the existence of society? Not saying it would, but just for the sake of the discussion, let's say that such conclusion is demonstrable; proven.

Does society have the right to tell people they can't do some things because those things have been proven to devolve society?

And if society has that right, do the results of those studies then matter?

ETA: I'm not advocating anything here. I'm just asking what you think.

My vote, no they have neither the right nor responsibility. Show me the text in the constitution that give one man power over what another man does with his own body and life.

 

[AA&E]

Do you want the police to be able to smoke pot on the job. (they can smoke tobacco)
how about truck drivers?
ambulance drivers?
how about your heart surgeon before surgery? (You wouldn't want him to uptight)

who decides who it is legal for and who it isn't. When can you do a doob and when can you not?
employers?
the public?

no not the public, that would by like elected officials or something?

Truck drivers and pilots are already held to higher standards of sobriety. To assume all of a sudden the precautions put in place for those with jobs such as these disappear is a ridiculous assertion.

 

[AA&E]

How about in public? The guy getting sloshed next to me has zero affect on my drunkenness. The guy smoking a joint does however have an affect.

Full disclosure, I have gotten to work stoned because I was stuck in traffic behind a guy smoking a blunt. Should I just stop breathing?

I doubt anyone is going to believe this story. I sure as hell don't. Someone completely ignorant on the subject might fall for it...

 

[AA&E]

I don't buy that at all. In my college days I went to class NOT stoned after being stuck in the same room with several people smoking pot. I'm not saying there's no such thing as contact high, but I'm calling bull**** on your traffic story.

This ^

Total bull****, propaganda.

 

[Ericpwp]

How does the scenario play out with alcohol?

Just keep repeating that question until every prohibitionist argument falls apart.

So your answer is no, no crime was committed?

 

[jamil]

So your answer is no, no crime was committed?

Under current laws, yes a crime was committed. Should it be a crime? That's the current discussion.

 

[Ericpwp]

That is what I asked.

I have a friend who's Dad did time for selling a girl (minor) prescription drugs, she ODed. Not that prescription drugs are relevant to this conversation.

 

[rambone]

Alcohol prohibition is over, and yet there is still a penalty for giving it to minors. What's more, it has been said that minors have a tougher time obtaining alcohol (legal) than drugs (illegal). No rational person could believe that the war on drugs has successfully spared children from exposure to drugs.

 

[Ericpwp]

So yes, a crime was committed.

 

[jamil]

If an action leads to "real, provable, demonstrable, existential harm" against another party, then we're talking real crimes with real victims. This is the kind of thing that a government is right to outlaw and punish. Liberty is not endangered by punishing people for victimizing others.

But, the above description does not apply to drug prohibition. There is no provable harm in owning a warehouse full of drugs.

I can't think of any prohibition-related crimes that fit your criteria.

So the answer is yes. There is a point where government/society can say, no you can't do that. Okay, so let me talk through both sides of the argument on legalizing drugs.

Consider a drug like Meth. It is so addictive that for a certain percentage of the population, taking it for the first time will cause addition. A certain population of Meth addicts will die. Manufacturing is inherently dangerous, such that a non-trivial number of cooks will harm others during the manufacturing process. Possession itself doesn't cause harm, but leads to harm, not limited to just the doers, but other innocent people around them.

An argument can be made that manufacturing or distributing a product like meth, knowing the real, provable, demonstrable, existential harm it does to individuals directly involved or not, is more than society should allow. That's the argument against legalization. That's where most of society's individuals' minds are at now. And that's why the fallout from the war on drugs is tolerable.

I think the counter arguments are better though. There are potentially harmful products on the market today, but usually not as dreadfully harmful as some illegal drugs like Meth. That is because manufacturers are liable for the products they sell. Such liability escapes the black market to a large extent.

Natural market forces and a fair civil legal system should help regulate the market to prevent harm at least as well as the criminal justice system does today, but without all the drug war casualties. And if that is true, there is really no benefit to keeping it illegal. Is there real harm done to other individuals because people are allowed to smoke pot? Such things are yet to be objectively defined.

As it stands now, I think hemp will be made legal. Also there is a realistic chance that marijuana will be legal in most states in the US. But I doubt that most of the harder drugs will ever be taken off Schedule I.

 

[AA&E]

Under current laws, yes a crime was committed. Should it be a crime? That's the current discussion.

I think that guy regularly gets stuck in traffic behind someone that is smoking a blunt...

 

[rambone]

So the answer is yes. There is a point where government/society can say, no you can't do that. Okay, so let me talk through both sides of the argument on legalizing drugs.

Consider a drug like Meth. It is so addictive that for a certain percentage of the population, taking it for the first time will cause addition. A certain population of Meth addicts will die. Manufacturing is inherently dangerous, such that a non-trivial number of cooks will harm others during the manufacturing process. Possession itself doesn't cause harm, but leads to harm, not limited to just the doers, but other innocent people around them.

An argument can be made that manufacturing or distributing a product like meth, knowing the real, provable, demonstrable, existential harm it does to individuals directly involved or not, is more than society should allow. That's the argument against legalization.

No, I don't agree, and this falls outside the very specific criteria that you laid out yourself. You said if X happens, Y will result, every time. That's utterly unlike the War On Drugs. A person could create a meth lab the size of Rhode Island without harming anyone.

I'm not at all in favor of laws that are based on correlations and statistics. Nothing I wrote supports it.

Going down that road leaves you conceding that if violence reaches X level, then weapon bans are legitimate. If public nutrition reaches X level, then government can ban foods and plan our diets. If disease reaches X level, then government can control our health care choices. No way. Debating statistics is conceding that rights do not exist; that they are revokable privileges that can be taken away if/when the math is right.

 

[jamil]

No, I don't agree, and this falls outside the very specific criteria that you laid out yourself. You said if X happens, Y will result, every time. That's utterly unlike the War On Drugs. A person could create a meth lab the size of Rhode Island without harming anyone.

I'm not at all in favor of laws that are based on correlations and statistics. Nothing I wrote supports it.

Going down that road leaves you conceding that if violence reaches X level, then weapon bans are legitimate. If public nutrition reaches X level, then government can ban foods and plan our diets. If disease reaches X level, then government can control our health care choices. No way. Debating statistics is conceding that rights do not exist; that they are revokable privileges that can be taken away if/when the math is right.

Ram, don't get the two conversations confused. The discussion about society's right to say "you can't do that" ended for me when I said, "So the answer is yes."

I described not an argument that I agree with, but the way the real, practical world operates. The one where popular culture determines laws. If whatever perceivably bad thing reaches X level, then government tends to have the support it needs to ban Y. We saw a preview of that with the kerfuffle over IRFRA. When our people are culturalized to think like Europe and Austrailia, events will drive laws. The constitution doesn't really matter when most people who even know of the constitution's existence believe that it's an "evolving" document.

Point was, there is an effective argument, that convinces the masses that the war on drugs is better than legalization. The counter to that is that the market and civil legal system are probably a more effective way of mitigating the complaints against drugs in society.

And as I said, culture is moving away from fear of drugs like mj. But it will likely never allow drugs like Meth, Heroine, Cocaine, etc., to be legal. But, we can take steps to start dismantling the drug war machine, which will solve many of the bad consequences that the drug war has imposed. I think that's what Rand Paul is trying to do with the legislation he's introduced.

 

[Libertarian01]

To All,

Where society, using the tool of government, can get involved is seldom even understood as a debate, yet that is exactly what we do all the time.

There are generally two (2) criteria that society uses to justify the use of government to oppress rights. The first is almost universally agreed upon, while the second is where we have the most debate and disagreement.

In the first case actual harm has been done. Examples: I have murdered someone. I have raped someone. I have burned someones house down(without any people being hurt). I have spray-painted someones car. In the first two (2) examples I have caused direct harm to another human being. In the second two (2) examples I have caused direct harm to property. In all of these examples everyone who is reasonable agrees that society has the justified authority to interfere with what I am doing. Society can even go so far as to say, "no one is allowed to do that" through laws.

In the second case we are discussing risk, and this is where our individual tolerances come into play. Most people will concede that if a risk becomes "so high" that imminent harm is probable to follow, that activity should be controlled. The problem is that all human beings have different comfort levels of tolerance, thus the conflict between "nanny state" and "freedom lovers."

I believe most, even on these boards, would agree that if I moved into your neighborhood and started cooking large quantities of chemical weapons out in my front yard with you and your family being downwind, this would be a risk that you don't want to tolerate. Now, it can be argued that so far none of my chemical weapons have leaked, ergo no harm has yet been done. Understandably, the stakes are so high and my chemistry competence is so low that almost everyone would agree that my cooking of extremely lethal chemical weapons should be at the very least controlled in some way, probably even banned.

We don't even think about the risk ratio when we, as society, make laws. This is the problem. We should have consistency in out thinking so that we know with 100% accuracy what will be allowed or not allowed before it even comes into existence. For example, let us presume that a new drug is invented that gives an awesome high! It has no known health harm to the user, is nonaddictive, but 95% of the time while high the users become homicidal and attempt to kill someone. Most would agree that the risk is too high and the drug should be banned. The problem is, where is the threshold? What if we drop the homicidal rate to 75%? Still too high? Probably. 50%? 35%? 25%? 10%? 1%? 0.5%. 0.0001% At some point most people will agree to live with the risk and allow the product to be sold. It is between the 100% and the 0% that nanny staters and freedom lovers come into conflict. As usual, neither is 100% right all of the time or 100% wrong all of the time.

To answer the original question, people are against hemp and/or marijuana because they have a low tolerance for risk AND/OR they don't understand what the risk(s) truly are. They have been convinced through whatever means that the decriminalization and/or use of these products comes with a risk they are unwilling to tolerate.

I am going to make some predictions about YOU if you are a member of these boards.

#1) You do not have a utopian view of the world. You have seen (or at least understand) how thin the veneer of law and order really is.
#2) You have a higher than average tolerance for risk, at least overall. I say overall because we all have certain foibles that even we know are irrational.
#3) You have a higher than average willingness to take action and assume the responsibility to protect yourself and your family.

This means that you are in the minority of Americans! Yes, you are in the majority in some geographic areas, but overall in the minority. As such, it is understandable that your frustration level with the rest of country will be higher than average, so be prepared to deal with it.

The people with a low tolerance for risk are bothered the most, thus they become the "squeaky wheels" that politicians try to oil the most. Those with a high tolerance go through life shrugging off a great many stressors, then become outraged at the nanny staters who are trying to "interfere" with freedom and liberty. The problem is, they have already won in many cases.

Regards,

Doug

 

[jamil]

Doug, well said.

On topic, politicians have been taking advantage of human nature for as long as there have been politicians. Hemp was made illegal because an industry wanted it to be illegal. The weak rational passed off to an unquestioning culture enabled that. And once people are comfortable with a ban, it tends to stay. Easy to get comfy with it when it's not something you really want. People don't show the same outrage against hemp prohibition that they did against alcohol prohibition.

 

[steveh_131]

Thank you, Doug, for a reasonable and well-articulated argument.

Of course, I don't agree with it and I certainly wouldn't call it a 'libertarian' argument.

Freedom-lovers are not interested in your risk threshold calculations. It is not my place nor the government's place to calculate risks and prohibit activities based upon those calculations. If it was, I could probably find some pretty good statistics that would demonstrate the need for gun control.

The very act of performing that 'risk calculation' is the role of a nanny. That's what a nanny does when the boy is jumping on the couch, or the girl is eating too many cookies.

I don't want or need the government performing risk analysis on my activities.

 

[Woobie]

Thank you, Doug, for a reasonable and well-articulated argument.

Of course, I don't agree with it and I certainly wouldn't call it a 'libertarian' argument.

Freedom-lovers are not interested in your risk threshold calculations. It is not my place nor the government's place to calculate risks and prohibit activities based upon those calculations. If it was, I could probably find some pretty good statistics that would demonstrate the need for gun control.

The very act of performing that 'risk calculation' is the role of a nanny. That's what a nanny does when the boy is jumping on the couch, or the girl is eating too many cookies.

I don't want or need the government performing risk analysis on my activities.

I will mostly agree with this. I might be mistaken, but I would wager there is some level of risk mitigation you are comfortable with the government involving itself in. A person driving the wrong direction on a freeway. A person firing shots into the air, or just waving a gun around in public. Granted, no one is actually hurt, yet. I'm sure we could come up with others that are not far fetched, and that most people would agree would require some sort of legal ramifications. But I'm interested in your views, because I think you bring out a lot of great points.

This reminds me of the old joke: a man offers a woman $1,000,000 to sleep with him. She says, yes, why not. He then replies, well, would you take $20? To this she replies "what kind of a girl do you take me for?" The man says "we've already established that, now we're just haggling over price."

I don't know where this leaves us as a country, but sometimes I think we're just haggling over the price of our liberties.