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I think ubiquitous intoxicant use is bad for society, and if I reluctantly think that we could suppress alcohol or marijuana we should. I could use either drug responsibly but I can see the damage caused by irresponsible use all around me, and the net cost to society dramatically exceeds the benefit. Empirically the easiest way to destroy public trust in the law is to selectively enforce drug laws against the outgroup, even if this actually targets problem users, so if you care about Rule of Law the choice is between ubiquitous use or a Singapore style serious crackdown.
The best argument for distinguishing marijuana and alcohol is a practical one about enforceability. Alcohol is sufficiently embedded in the culture and used by a sufficiently large number of respectable otherwise-law-abiding citizens (including cops, politicians, judges etc.) that banning it will do more damage to the rule of law than to drinkers (see Prohibition). Marijuana hasn't got there yet except in a few places like Colorado, and it is important to make sure it doesn't.
FWIW I don't buy this. I think that marijuana is sufficiently easy to produce and sufficiently built into Blue Tribe culture via the hippy-to-liberal-elite pipeline that the battle is lost and a serious attempt to enforce marijuana laws would turn into another Prohibition.
I believe its legal now in half the US states, plus all of Canada. I would hardly call that "a few places"
It is not. It requires a great deal of upfront capital, real estate, permitting, and marketing. Products have to be registered with the state, tested for potency, mold, and hazardous chemicals.
What kind of people do you think consume cannabis?
Mass producing marijuana in order to sell it isn’t something your average Joe can manage, but it’s fairly trivial to grow enough for yourself and your family/friends. If you have a spare closet, a couple of lightbulbs, and some potting soil, you’re 90% of the way there, and if it’s all done indoors, it’s pretty much undetectable. Thanks to LEDs, police couldn’t even detect an increase in energy usage if they tried.
And thanks to LEDs, even if they could it's not even close to probable cause. CNet, a few days ago, reviewed "The 8 Best Indoor Smart Gardens for 2024". My wife got one for us last year. They're never going to be remotely price-competitive with farmland, but they're now cheap enough to be a fun yuppie hobby, and that means that even if the cops get subpoenas for hydroponics supply sales they're likely to find far more literal herbs than metaphorical herb.
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Mere legality isn't what @MadMomzer was talking about. They were referring to a norm where marijuana "is sufficiently embedded in the culture and used by sufficiently large number of respectable, otherwise-law-abiding citizens (including cops, politicians, judges, etc.) that banning it will do more damage to the rule of law than to [users]." Do you think legalization is necessarily equivalent to that?
No, I don't think it's equivalent to that, but more people that you think use cannabis. The people I've seen in dispensaries appear to be no different than the people you see in package stores. They're average, working adults.
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