Ah, at last! Finally someone with a different viewpoint.
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On 2002-10-23 11:58, Kitsune1527 wrote:
My opinion? Legalizing pot is bad.
Why? Because the government suddenly gains a new outlet for taxation, and by God they'll use it.
Ah, but if pot were legal, I for one would grow it myself. As would many, many others. If you can grow it for free, why buy it from someone else? The government would have no market. Sure, they could try and tax and regulate it like tobacco, but how does this add to <b>our</b> tax burden? (unless there is a tobacco tax that I am unaware of)You would have to pay taxes on the actual product, and if you didn't buy it then you would have nothing to worry about.
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Plus, you legalize pot, where's it stop? Pot is almost universally recognized as a commonly-abused drug, similar to OxyContin and tobacco. In fact, the OxyContin fiasco is exactly why i don't think pot should be legalized. Because it weas legal and could be attained through LEGAL prescriptions for newly-registered reasons for its use, people figured out they could use the system to buck the system and get more of the drug.
It's the abuse that is the problem, not the drug. The potential exists to abuse anything; money, sex, power, and drugs can all be addictive and self destructive. If you want to cure drug addiction, you need to focus on the addict, because outlawing drugs obviously doesn't work.
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Yes, I know marijuana is not addictive, per se, but like Kurt Cobain says in his diaries, it's not the physical dependence that makes you get addicted. It's the euphoria you get from it.
Anybody who tells you marijuana isn't addictive either hasn't smoked it or is lying to themselves. The euphoria is a part of it, but the substance itself is still addictive.
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Believe me, there's enough people in America who lead shitty lives to make marijuana an even worse problem than it is already if it's legalized.
People will abuse drugs whether or not they are legal. Legalizing marijuana would make it easier for people to get help if they are addicted.
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Public access to pot is one of the last things I ever want to see happen. The easier you make it for people to get something, the more people will want it. If marijuana's legalized (a damn big if at the moment) then people will get more of it. The reason US's pot problem's so low is cause it's harder to get.
I would argue that the public <b>already has access</b> to pot. I can go downtown and get an 1/8th oz. of weed within 30 minutes. It isn't legal, but it's sure as heck available.
According to
http://www.drugwarfacts.org, marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the US. 36.9% of the population admits to having tried it. In the Netherlands, where pot is legal, only 15.6% of the population says they have tried pot. I would say we have a bigger 'pot problem' than they do. It would seem to me that keeping pot illegal is not improving the situation, while keeping our jails crowded with drug offenders who have harmed nobody but themselves. If you think that making pot legal will increase our taxes, think of how much you pay <b>right now</b> to keep all those drug users(approx. 1,500,000 new inmates each year) in jail?
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(For a comparison, look at abortions. Before Roe v. Wade, there were none. Now because it's been legalized, there are at least 4 million a year.)
There were no <b>legal</b> abortions, but that does not mean they did not happen. We can't ever know how many there were, because it was illegal, and no accurate census could be taken. The same goes for drug use today, the numbers are not accurate because not everybody admits to using drugs. So the real drug use may actually be higher than reported.
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So I say it shouldn't be legalized, because it will cause more harm than good.
That has yet to be seen. I may be wrong. You may be wrong. We can't know unless we try. Other countries have tried legalization, and so far the results have all been positive. But we don't live in other contries. We live in the US, where marijuana is illegal. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I say.
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: tychoseven on 2002-10-23 13:03 ]</font>