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?
giant megacorps can definitely beat out some random shady dealer (indirectly from mental outlaw)
Pro: Everywhere it’s legal has seen a drastic reduction in the amount of violent drug-related crime, lower incarceration rates for non-violent offenders, and less abuse of prescription painkillers. Plus an incredible rise in quality when pot is regulated.
Con: Your straight edge friends who’ve never touched a joint in their lives start smoking regularly, since it’s legal. Your 30+ year old friends will start talking like junior highschoolers who just smoked oregano for the first time and think they’re high.
I tried it first when I was 30+, and tried it a few times at parties. Got a good laugh once and then a weird trip once… All other times were just meh, and since I never smoked anything, my throat hurt. The result was, that I stopped and then convinced my friends to stop it as well
I think it’s much easier to handle when you are an adult.
So, additional plus - when it’s legal, it’s easier to restrict access for a certain age group (let’s make it at least 21+. I heard it’s particularly dangerous for teens)
I love that since it’s become legal where I live I don’t really have to maintain any shady contacts with lazy guys who always say they’re on their way.
I just swing by the shop on the way home and pick up whatever I want with access to 10x the variety and quality of product. I love it and I’m happy it’s working so well everywhere it’s tried.
Your straight edge friends who’ve never touched a joint in their lives start smoking regularly, since it’s legal.
That’s not what straight edge means
Yeah, straight edge people still don’t drink or smoke cigarettes, even though they’re legal. I doubt anything would change regarding the straight edge crowd.
weed smokers are not cool anymore, like wow bro you’re going to go home and follow the law. Lame
Pros: I don’t have to sneak around like a criminal just to get a plant.
Legalize it
Tax it
Regulate it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)
It’s not completely safe. Regulation makes sense. Especially for protecting developing brains from long-term negative damage.
If you look at it as an illegal drug, it’s obvious that it doesn’t work to criminalize. It seems much more appropriate and effective to legalize, regulate, and have information and support programmes in place.
In Germany, it was legalized, but only in a very limited form, to get it through the coalition government. I think the current form is too bureaucratic, too restrictive. The most important thing is that it legalized holding personal consumption belongings.
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
Pros:
- funny green plant
- I like it
- I’m high and forgot the 3rd
Cons:
- N/A
Legalize it
I voted to legalize it because it’s stupid to arrest people for it. That said, I hate the constant smell in public, and people seem to get addicted to it quite easily. It’s a pox on society, imo. At the end of the day, we have much larger problems on our hands.
This so much. I walk my dogs by a gradeschool and I smell it in the air every morning. Gradeschool. They aren’t even teenagers yet. At 8am. Every. Day.
Bonus points for the deluge of infused product packaging litter everywhere.
This is my problem. I don’t really ever do it, but I don’t abstain completely. My son in law thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. I don’t really care as such, but my kids are surrounded by it and I worry how it will affect them. If it weren’t for kids being around it all the time, I’d be fine with legalization. Hell I signed petitions in support of legalization. But I wasn’t anticipating huge billboards fucking everywhere. Or the sheer ubiquity of vape pens.
Legalization is fine but I do want to see some further laws around public use and display. It has always been that I don’t care what you do within the walls of your own home, but I would very much like to keep that activity there.
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.
Decriminalisation is the way IMO.
I don’t want lots of people taking up smoking even. But being punished for smoking weed? Ridiculous.
OP, please change the title to make it less vague what the question is about without having to open it.
Done, thanks 🙂
As an ex addict to (too many) substances (not marijuana) I can easily see a few cons regarding drug usage but the real pro, if I had to pick one, would be to remove all that money from drug dealers.
I would rather my money went to drug dealers than to capitalists exploiting addiction. I reckon we only finally got legalization because of government corruption and kickbacks. The idea of fucking Fantino (you probably don’t know him, non-Ontario people) making bank after a career of using his power as a police chief to fan social stigmas and demonize users in the press all those decades is more than I can stand.
I would rather my money went to drug dealers than to capitalists exploiting addiction.
Those are the same thing, just with different amounts of revenue.
So we agree one is preferable to the other
There are very few cons, all the negative effects of cannabis can be better handled when it’s legal.
Here in the Netherlands we have the “Gedoogbeleid”, which translates to Tolerance policy. It’s somewhere in between Decriminalized and legal. U are allowed to purchase and have up to 5 grams with you. And using it is okay in your own home and in places that don’t disturb the public. But it’s still partly illegal, as in no indoor growing and carrying more than 5g… It’s a weird setup.
It’s also a weird construction because technically the coffeeshops themselves are not allowed to buy the bulk amounts of weed to sell in their shops. So everything has to come in sneakily through the backdoor…
Lately legalization has been getting a good push, and now shops are buying their flowers from legit, government approved “Wiet boeren” weed farmers.
True Legalization Pros:
- Good alcohol alternative. It’s one of the better substances to abuse.
- Better byproducts of flower. So more room for edibles, hash, concetrates and all the good stuff.
- Quality control, now you have some traceability where your flower is coming from. They put de Wiet Boeren on the bags with a qr code to see your flowers origin.
Cons:
- The wallet doesn’t like the flowers.
- Weed is very habbit forming. Addiction might be too strong a word for weed. But oh boy is it habbit forming. Ppl who deny this, are in denial.
As for how it affects the overall drug trade. Our number 1 export in the Netherlands is XTC. But that’s a whole different beast. As for weed drug trade, it does decrease it. In smaller townds without shops u will always have you local dealers. But weed really isn’t drug to be afraid of as in violence and crime surrounding it.
Weed is very habbit forming. Addiction might be too strong a word for weed. But oh boy is it habbit forming. Ppl who deny this, are in denial.
They’re also in denial about it making you dumber if you smoke frequently. When I still smoked, it became obvious to me that my thoughts were slower and I’d have trouble finding the right words when I started smoking nearly every night. Took a T break and cut back to weekends only and the problem went away.
I’m not sure “dumber” is the right word.
Took a T break and cut back to weekends only and the problem went away.
So it didn’t make you dumber. You just didn’t understand that the effects of frequent weed usage takes longer to wear off than alcohol.
It does make you dumber, and so does alcohol. As we all know, the only drug that makes you smarter is huffing glue pantsless on a unicycle.
Saw a dude like that in Portland once. He had it all figured out.
