Not only are you parroting war on drugs talking points, but also I wonder if you realize how thoroughly the origins of it lie in racism.
I'll let you do your own google search on who Henry Ainslinger was, and notable quotes from him on the matter of marijuana - but more more recently you may find this bit interesting from Nixon's drug guy:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Decades of supposed concern for public health was a cover for conservative control of the population. A pretty popular template for so many other conservative talking points.
He sounds like a right vile removed. But me not being head over heels for more vices doesn't mean I'm a strawman for ostracizing others. It's not binary. I will always vote left and progressive to protect the freedoms of others. But I just don't see the social advantage in adding yet more bread and circuses to keep people down, and nor do I see the benefit of throwing more avenues of abuse to people who already struggle with impulse control. I genuinely believe this will end badly, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
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.
constructive
Not only are you parroting war on drugs talking points, but also I wonder if you realize how thoroughly the origins of it lie in racism.
I'll let you do your own google search on who Henry Ainslinger was, and notable quotes from him on the matter of marijuana - but more more recently you may find this bit interesting from Nixon's drug guy:
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Decades of supposed concern for public health was a cover for conservative control of the population. A pretty popular template for so many other conservative talking points.
He sounds like a right vile removed. But me not being head over heels for more vices doesn't mean I'm a strawman for ostracizing others. It's not binary. I will always vote left and progressive to protect the freedoms of others. But I just don't see the social advantage in adding yet more bread and circuses to keep people down, and nor do I see the benefit of throwing more avenues of abuse to people who already struggle with impulse control. I genuinely believe this will end badly, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
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.
You're welcome.