Psychoactive Drugs - Legal and why?

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I don't know, it's not a bad prediction by any means but I don't agree.  I mean, yeah, there's always going to be some black market trade - if I can get a stereo stolen for 20 bucks why pay 120 at Wal-Mart for instance, if I'm so inclined.  I don't think that's a good reason to write off decriminalization though. 

For one thing, you don't see the kind of crazy nuts black market for moonshine now that you did during prohibition;  you can only buy alcohol up to a certain potency right now, and it's mostly illegal to brew it at home (well, there are some legal avenues, I have friends that brew some great legit mead) despite the fact that it's vastly cheaper to make it in a bathtub as opposed to buying it off the shelf.  People still make the shine, and people still enjoy drinking it in some places, but the demand for alcohol is satisfied via legal markets for the majority of people so there's no profit in it for large scale organized crime.  The only places where illicit alcohol brewing result in violence and criminality are, no surprise, the kind of backwater places where the local police have nothing better to do than fight an ideological/religious war on brewers.

As for government restrictions on potency, as far as cannabis goes it's actually in the government's best interests in terms of health to increase potency and purity; the less you have to smoke to get high the less of the waste products - tar, etc - you have to inhale.  That's one of the big reasons why medicinal cannabis, in places where it's legal, is so potent compared to street stuff (and man, it is so much better tasting too...)  For other drugs, especially the ones that have been incredibly purified or are just synthetic and insanely potent in the first place, I imagine that there would be some restrictions put in place, but taxes earned from them would most likely be apportioned toward research, education, and treatment for addicts of the "hard stuff"; or at least that's how I'd do it.

As for cost, the majority of the cost for an illicit drug has to do with the risk extant in getting it to the user.  One of the main goals of the war on drugs is actually to reduce supply so that the street cost of the drug increases, supposedly to the point that the average person can't afford to get hooked or something.  Of course this is ruinous for people who are already addicted, because the worst of them will do anything it takes to get that money regardless of the cost, and it's terribly socially irresponsible.  In any case cost would probably drop dramatically for almost anything, though I can see cannabis staying about the same as it currently costs medicinal patients, which iirc is around $5/gram for premium product.

 

[Mundane]

Wow, the thread was dead for awhile, then spiked!

I think it should be legal. Yes, it is bad for you, but not as bad as cigarettes. Sure a marijuana joint has 4X more tar than a cigarette, but it's proven, that no matter how potent the marijuana is, the user smokes until content. Until people are walking around adictively smoking packs of joints a day, no one will get serious lung cancer or shit of that nature from it. I understand what you mean by traditions, but honestly, who cares. How many people die a year from these traditions? How many die on pot? None. The latter - millions. Drugs like LSD and mushrooms have caused people to kill themselves or be involved in freak accidents, but so has alcohol.

If the government were to man up and sell it, it would not only keep it off the streets, but would get them some more money. It's just unfortunate that grumpy old conservative geezers run the system right now. If the government sold it like cigarettes, or by the quarter ounce, the prices would be cheaper than dealers even with heavy taxation. They have more money to grow more high quality weed, thus they can mass produce and shut illegal stuff down. That's what they don't want...

Whatever, legal or not. I'm still doing it.

 

[kaidus]

Entirely agreeing with the above post. To build on it, I know more people who smoke weed than those that smoke cigarettes. Whilst this is obviously partially due to the results one gets from smoking, it goes to show that the legalities of the matter really do not come into consideration for the average 18 year old. Furthermore, as an active drinker and smoker, I find myself far more likely to cause harm to myself through being drunk than being stoned. If I smoke too much, I feel a bit queezy but sleep it off no harm done; if I drink too much it's not uncommon to find myself vomiting my guts out and being in insufferable agony. If I smoke a moderate amount and get stoned until I am content with the high but go no further; I will sit back, chill out, generally not move around. If I drink a drink a moderate amount until I am drunk but not ill; I will go wild, create a mess, do stupid shit that usually results in someone getting pissed off. This is a similar case with pretty much every person in a similar circumstance to myself.

To be honest, in this respect, the problem is that alcohol and tabacco are legal, not that cannabis is illegal. However I'm entirely in favour of the idea that a persons body is their own, and as long as they are of an age considered to be mature enough to make their own decision; they should be free to treat it how they choose. Alcohol faces some controversy here, but that's an argument for another day.

Edit:
On a related, slightly humerous note. I tend to find that when I come into conflict with an individual for my drug habbits; their argument is often based on the premise that drugs "make you stoopid", yet on nearly ever occasion I find these people to be of a dramatically lower level of intellect than I.

 

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If drugs make a person stupid, I'm a moron with a great proofreader.  I think I said before in this thread that I've put that stuff behind me, and I do not try to claim that the wrong person in the wrong situation (read: most people) will not suffer averse consequences from drug abuse, but you can come out okay or more than okay despite being a pot smokin' hippie. 

One of my old buddies that I'd been smoking with since high school is a very successful stock trader right now, one of the smartest people I know in the field of economics, math and statistics, very mature and well-grounded and he still smokes to this day.  Another friend of mine that we used to smoke with is still smoking and making a very respectable living as a phlebotomist and general lab rat (no...  he doesn't get stoned while processing your urine samples from drug tests).  Yet another guy I know abused crystal meth all through high school and is now a very well paid systems administrator for the military (he quit the meth, but used to smoke with us all the time).  For each of them I probably could list off half a dozen people who did the same things we did and completely ran their lives into the gutter though; was it the drugs' fault, or their lack of ambition or interest in their livelihoods?  Who's to say.

Actually out of my whole original circle of friends, I'm probably the hardest-up besides the one who became a fundamentalist religious nut (lives with his parents) and I'm the one who quit.  So what does that tell you?  Er... nothing. :D