Question for those of you living in a country where marijuana is legal. What are the positive sides, what are the negatives?
If you could go back in time, would you vote for legalising again? Does it affect the country’s illegal drug business , more/less?
OP, please change the title to make it less vague what the question is about without having to open it.
Done, thanks 🙂
I think that the pros are obvious. It should simply be legal, and other comments have given good reasons.
However, there are some cons that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
It impairs you, so any activity where that is a problem, like driving, may need extra attention or public education.
For smokers, inhaling smoke is dangerous.
Thank you for all the answers! :) It seems like most replies are positive to legalisation. The (amount of) stores is mention by a few to be one of the negatives. Perhaps government-owned stores (Like those some Nordic countries have for alcohol) could be a better solution? They have trainer employees and very strict rules both for opening times and age controls.
Government stores is how it works in Quebec Canada and I found that to be the best experience for sure
Pro:
- people aren’t criminalised for kinda nothing.
- you detach it from other drugs (the regular dealer will also have other stuff for sale - not an issue if you buy officially or grow yourself).
Con:
- despite what people claim, there are people that get highly addicted to cannabis. Probably similar to alcohol, you’d say? Well, in my unpopular opinion, alcohol also shouldn’t be available the way it currently is (make it insanely expensive please).
- most people consume it with tobacco, so there’s that to deal with.
Alcohol just isn’t hard to make. It’s also really easy to sneak into places. You could never make it insanely expensive. It would just all go black market.
As if Finland and Norway wouldn’t exist. 😉
We already tried making it illegal. Plus we don’t have the health infrastructure for it. We have a shotload of people self-medicating a variety of disorders with alcohol. And lots of people brewing beer just for fun. I don’t know what they do in Finland and Norway but it wouldn’t work here.
Not saying the model works in every country, but we see more and more moving against tobacco and alcohol in the EU, which is a good development.
I guess you’re from the US? I think we can agree alcohol isn’t the biggest drug issue you have.
In my experience, most people definitely don’t consume tobacco with marijuana. Some people smoke on the side, but mixing is quite uncommon in western Canada.
That being said, I am definitely highly addicted. I think anyone with chronic pain, trauma, or mental health disorders or probably at a higher risk. Not to mention the risk of psychosis for a very small portion of people.
Alcohol is way more addictive than cannabis
Making it expensive only bankrupts addicts and makes more things privileges for the rich.
Worked in Norway and Finland.
Places with much stronger social safety nets and much more accessible healthcare.
Compared to…?
Looking across Europe, I think they’re comparable. No reason to not go for a similar model here.
Poonited States
Nah, won’t work in Murica.
Agree with the pros, not really with the cons to the extreme that you describe.
Kurz gesagt did a pretty good episode, balancing the pros & cons
Oh hey look the propaganda machine I used to watch.
I’ve seen people so addicted to it that they stopped going to work and completely ignored their family. I don’t have numbers to put it into perspective, but the sheer level of addiction was beyond what I thought was realistic.
People can get addicted to anything.
If the addiction isn’t a chemical dependence, and isn’t inherently extremely harmful, then I think it should be accessible and addiction support should be available.Cannabis is legal here, and the level of addiction you’re describing is both very uncommon, and typically just exacerbating issues caused by other drugs or mental illness.
Hey, I noticed it in another comment of yours so I thought I’d say something-
“Stopped to go to work” in English implies that they stopped smoking weed so that they could go to work. You’re looking for “stopped going to work”
Appreciated!
You are not a trained psychologist and are unable to detect underlying conditions like depression or anxiety
Alcohol addiction is way worse than that
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You said it might be similar to alcohol
You are right, sorry.
Ah yes let’s bankrupt my alcoholic mum. What a great idea
The important factor isn’t whether someone can be addicted (otherwise you’re banning nearly everything), it’s the harm that addiction causes. As a general rule of thumb physical dependencies like alcohol are more harmful than habitual addictions, but that obviously isn’t the whole story.
Caffeine addiction is the same category as alcohol and tobacco but causes so little harm that I don’t think anyone is seriously opposed it. On the other end of that scale is something like meth or other hard drugs, generally understood as destructive and has few serious supporters encouraging use. Breaking these addictions is almost always hard and physically taxing, in some cases can even be lethal.
Marijuana addiction is in the same category as most things that make you feel good or form habits so it’s harder to nail down a proper scale, but the lower end is probably something like video games; a debilitating addiction is possible but uncommon and most people would oppose a blanket ban on the basis of “can be addictive”. Gambling is on the other end can definitely ruin lives. I’d say that’s a little worse than coffee. Breaking these addictions is more like breaking a bad habit, it can feel hard for the addict but generally isn’t going to kill them.
True to an extent, but looking at it from an individual’s perspective, it can be devastating. I’ve seen people stop to function as human beings because of this.
What I am genuinely concerned about is the scale. So far, we don’t have too much insights into the long term effects of this, both on individual and on society level. Cannabis addiction can cause long term psychological issues, and it will be years before we will truly understand what this means for us.
Scientifically speaking, the pros outweigh the cons everytime.
Public Safety should not be done with the assumption that the public is made up of stupid children that would kill themselves at every possible opportunity (though some people are like that) rather it should come with the assumption that adults are smart enough and have the right to make decisions about them selves.
The government should work towards education so that the public can be better informed and only restrict extreme situations where a reasonable mistake can lead to unreasonable consequences or harm to others. And “Gateway drugs” is as stupid as saying that teaching people how to use a knife would lead them to seek out sharper and bigger knives until they stab themselves and die.
I love that rhetoric but it reminds me of reddit discussion about mother suing the zoo after she dopped her children into…I think it was hyena pen?
People got pissed that it was ZOO that was at fault, not her. There was a barrier if I recall correctly, waist-level one, and the pen was lower than the walk to separate animals from humans, but parents liked to held their small children over the barrier for…reasons. Well, she lost hers.
And people absolutely blamed ZOO for not idiot proofing more. As if it was us that should be kept in pens xD
Oh yeah, my second foremost wtf with modern society: let’s build everything around what idiots are gonna do, with even fucking courts seing no problem with forcing companies to pay money to dumbasses (who do things like using electric stoves as cutting boards). Guess I will long be dead by the time this shit gets reversed
I’m going to go against the grain here a little. First of all, it should absolutely be decriminalized. No one should spend time behind bars for using or selling it, obviously.
But it got legalized here back in 2022 and while it was great at first, weed sort of sucks now. Because of legal limits to how many plants you can grow, CBD disappeared. Every strain is somewhere between 20-30 percent THC and just makes your brain numb, doesn’t get you high the same way. Everything is way more expensive because every few years they vote to increase taxes on it, so strains that were 5 bucks a g when it was illegal are 10-11 now. Edibles have concentration limits so you’re paying out the ass now for 100 mg, which someone would before make in their kitchen and give away for cheap.
Not to mention that there is one. On. Every. Street. Corner.
It’s insane. Every business that closes down turns into a dispo and the added competition does not lower prices. Out town is losing cafes, art stores, all sorts of businesses because the cancer that is a dispensary keeps spreading. On a personal note, I’ve been trying to cut back for years and honestly I think if I still had to call “my buddy” to pickup i would have stopped a long time ago, but now it’s in my face everywhere and tbh, it just sucks. It just gets you high. That’s it. I can’t explain it, it lost so much heart.
Now it’s probably cleaner, safer, more ethical. But from a consumers perspective, it kind of sucks now.
The taxes are a benefit though. While I agree pot should be legal, it is a vice and vice taxes seem like a good approach to discouraging a bad habit.
And yes as someone who moderately drinks, I whole heartedly agree the same is true with alcohol. Let’s increase those vice taxes. And cigarettes. And gasoline. And drink cans
It’s been legal in Canada since 2015ish. Haven’t noticed a difference, but now I can get better regulated gummies which is nice for my asthma.
There are some minor downsides, you can’t walk 5 minutes in downtown Toronto without smelling weed. I can tolerate it just fine, but some people hate it. Otherwise it has been great.
Never smoked anything in my life, having one side of the family wiped out prematurely by nicotine, all of them.
Lived in Colorado. The pros outweigh the cons a million to one. The biggest positive was the massive reduction in DUIs, since people drink in bars but smoke weed at home. There may be a reduction in harder drugs, too, given how much easier and cheaper it is to get weed. The tax revenue from weed sales is huge (was bigger, though) and because the laws were changed after Colorado turned liberal-ish, the money was mostly allocated to great causes.
Government loves having a law that can be selectively enforced and is broken by a lot of people. Taking it away is a huge plus, especially in times where the government is looking for easy ways to control the population. Even before now, White people caught in possession or smoking marijuana rarely got more than probation, while some Black people were three-striked for the same.
The only downside is that it still smells bad, and I am still not sure that hacking up your lungs is all that sane or safe.
Yes, it appears that young humans can have very negative reactions to weed, and that it can affect their brains negatively. That would absolutely be a problem if legalization increased week use among teenagers, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Never smoked anything in my life, having one side of the family wiped out prematurely by nicotine, all of them.
Well one good thing is that you don’t need to smoke anything.
Why only Cannabis?
I get you, but we also have to start somewhere.
Pro
But Bill Maher is a walking testament to why it matters a great deal how often you come back to the surface.
Legalize it
Tax it
Regulate it
Why tax it? Treat it like anything else. High taxes just make people go back to the black market.
Cons: capitalism is already ruining it with monoculture strains and subsequent crop loss from one little thing wiping out everything. Industry trade groups are forming to be the next generation of lobbyists. For now, they’re on our side by focusing on legalization, but they won’t be on our side forever.
That’s a bad reason to make (or keep) something illegal. Having legal weed does nothing to stop enthusiasts breeding their own strains or propagating ‘heirloom’ varieties - because they were already doing that illegally since forever before it was legalized.
Put another way, swap weed for alcohol. Should alcohol be banned because Anheuser-Beusch ans InBev exist and lobbies the government for favourable legislation? No… Fighting against the crap legislation is a better idea, and who would be better positioned to do that than an industry growers union or an independent growers union or similar.
Making something legal or illegal doesn’t magically make it immune to capitalism, it just goes back to a black market where you have no protections as a buyer nor as a seller.
Pros if properly managed, takes away profits for criminals and helps prevent grow ops causing a lot of problems in communities.
Con Managed poorly fucks over consumers and propogates the criminals by creating a bigger market for them
Pro new tax revenue to pay for services
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If you think weed should not be legalized, then you should be consistent and apply the same to alcohol and tobacco. Both of these substances do far more harm than weed with far fewer medical properties.
Deal 🤝
Enjoy your Mafia drive by shooting and exploding moonshine allambics
There’s reasonable balances between free and total access to liquor stores on every corner and locking up every bathtub moonshiner.
A good part of the reason prohibition failed was 10,000 years of societal dependence with no alternatives. Humans aren’t built for the sedentary lifestyle and structured civilization we’ve built up and we really do need something to compensate.
We now have the technology and medical knowledge to reliably treat mental and physical ailments, we don’t need ethanol as our cure-all. If I could snap my fingers and swap professional treatment and healthy recreational norms for traditional drugs I’d do it in a heartbeat.
