If you are a leftist you should be against the criminalization of drug use or drug possession, especially for a drug as relatively harmless as cannabis. Like this really is a no-brainer, throwing someone in jail because they're addicted to drugs doesn't help them in any conceivable way. Drug abuse is a mental health problem and should be treated like one. Get them therapy and addiction support to help them get over it, and stop criminalizing drugs for people who can use it responsibly.
Again, it's not binary for me, despite these increasingly polarized times we live in. No one should undergo the same prison sentencing as rapists just for carrying a potentially addictive and life-altering substance, but we shouldn't also (in my opinion) just open the gates and let this substance into foray of our daily lives.
Hell, alcohol shouldn't be so freely dispensed as it (see: russia's entire history), but we do it anyway. Adding another substance just seems like a step backwards for me.
Should it be legal for consenting adults or not? Sounds like a binary question to me.
we shouldn't also (in my opinion) just open the gates and let this substance into foray of our daily lives
You speak as if legalizing cannabis will suddenly make it available everywhere, but it won't, because it already is everywhere, and it has been for decades. I had no trouble obtaining weed before my state legalized it, and I'm just a boring ass suburban white dude who barely knows anybody. Criminalization has never made cannabis go away, and continued criminalization isn't going to change that.
I appreciate that you're concerned about drug abuse and drug addiction, and those are real concerns that I don't want to minimize, but refusing to legalize it won't solve those problems, because most countries have been doing that for the better part of a century and it plainly hasn't worked. If people want to abuse drugs, they're going to abuse them whether or not they can acquire them legally. But at least when it's legal people won't have to fear going to jail because they got harassed by a cop while in possession, and making it legal reduces the stigma of drug abuse and makes seeking treatment easier to do.
If you are a leftist you should be against the criminalization of drug use or drug possession, especially for a drug as relatively harmless as cannabis. Like this really is a no-brainer, throwing someone in jail because they're addicted to drugs doesn't help them in any conceivable way. Drug abuse is a mental health problem and should be treated like one. Get them therapy and addiction support to help them get over it, and stop criminalizing drugs for people who can use it responsibly.
Again, it's not binary for me, despite these increasingly polarized times we live in. No one should undergo the same prison sentencing as rapists just for carrying a potentially addictive and life-altering substance, but we shouldn't also (in my opinion) just open the gates and let this substance into foray of our daily lives.
Hell, alcohol shouldn't be so freely dispensed as it (see: russia's entire history), but we do it anyway. Adding another substance just seems like a step backwards for me.
Should it be legal for consenting adults or not? Sounds like a binary question to me.
You speak as if legalizing cannabis will suddenly make it available everywhere, but it won't, because it already is everywhere, and it has been for decades. I had no trouble obtaining weed before my state legalized it, and I'm just a boring ass suburban white dude who barely knows anybody. Criminalization has never made cannabis go away, and continued criminalization isn't going to change that.
I appreciate that you're concerned about drug abuse and drug addiction, and those are real concerns that I don't want to minimize, but refusing to legalize it won't solve those problems, because most countries have been doing that for the better part of a century and it plainly hasn't worked. If people want to abuse drugs, they're going to abuse them whether or not they can acquire them legally. But at least when it's legal people won't have to fear going to jail because they got harassed by a cop while in possession, and making it legal reduces the stigma of drug abuse and makes seeking treatment easier to do.