This is where drug use laws fail on my set of morals. Sure you can argue that drug use leads to other people suffering, but most of the causes of this suffering are no different to the suffering of families married to alcoholics, or gambling addicts; or there are laws that already cover the actual crimes committed i.e. addicts that steal to cover the cost of their habbits. 

The drug use laws themselves have no place in any just society as far as I’m concerned.

Their place in the Tobacco market wouldn’t change, except that their economies of scale would become even greater (shipping, warehousing, etc).

oddly these street drugs don’t seem to be half as addictive as prescription opiates, Oxy Cotin is a hellva a drug. 

But marijuana is the the favorite among everyone i know, even the folks who’ve done everything, because it makes you feel better even after you come down.  

I bet most of big money is being made on MDMA and party drugs mixed with it and pressed into tablets. The pills are expensive, and the consumer doesn’t know anything about what’s actually in them. 

So I’m not saying these things shouldn’t all be legal, but the “it is just a harmless plant” arguments are weak.  A strong argument should comprehend the range of problems associated with (all) drug use, and carefully weigh the personal and social harm the current policy causes with the potential benefit of changes to the policy.   From what I have seen, I can’t make a compelling argument rooted in anything other than how I interpret the Constitution.

The global market just ain’t ready for millions who used to have an income……to just be suddenly dependent on their governments to bail ‘em all out or solve their financial woes. Not in this economic climate.

Look at your personal views on cocaine, opiates, and synthetic hallucinogens. Ask yourself: do you really want to live in a world where there is easy legal access to all of those things as well?

Funnily enough, yes.

As almost always, reality imitates The Onion.

* Many important advancements in human society (even the reasonable requirement that gynecologists wash their hands before examining a patient) have been vehemently resisted by unconscionable, selfish individuals who were willing to use outright mendacity, specious logic and fear mongering to sacrifice the well-being of the rest of us.

Never have so many been endangered and impoverished by so few so quickly!

* The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it. – H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor, essayist and philologist.

* 2010 Reported Corporate Revenues:

    Johnson & Johnson = $61.90 billion

    Pfizer= $50.01 billion

    GlaxoSmithKline = $45.83 billion

    Novartis = $44.27

    Sanofi-Aventis = $41.99 billion

    AstraZeneca = $32.81 billion

    Merck & Co. = $27.43 billion

    Eli Lilly = $21.84 billion

    Anheuser-Busch InBev (2007) = $16.70 billion

    MillerCoors = $3.03 billion

    Pabst = $0.50 billion

* As with torture, prohibition is a grievous crime against humanity. If you support it, or even simply tolerate it by looking the other way while others commit it, you are an accessory to a very serious moral transgression against humanity.

* The United States re-legalized certain drug use in 1933. The drug was alcohol, and the 21st amendment re-legalized its production, distribution and sale. Both alcohol consumption and violent crime dropped immediately as a result, and very soon after, the American economy climbed out of that same prohibition engendered abyss into which it had foolishly fallen.  

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” 

- Winston Churchill

This is why, for example, there is a law that forces people to take driving lessons and obtain a driving license before they can drive a car on public road. The legislator observed that people weren’t wise enough to do these things on their own.

Whether the legislator is right or wrong is another matter, but these are the principles on which the system works : sometimes citizens need to be protected from themselves.

Thing is, the US seemed to take a few solid steps of its’ own with the legalization of medical ganja in some states, but then suddenly a big, strange slide backwards started happening, such as raids and the IRS throwing the book at ganja dispensers, under a president who said he wouldn’t do this.

So cynicism may be justifiable in this 2012.

There was no political advantage to busting on the medical marijuana facilities in states where it is legal.  It actually has exactly the opposite effect in that it badly demoralizes Obama’s base.  A demoralized base says “ahh fuck it, they are all the same, I’m not voting”, and they sure as hell don’t pound ground and knock on doors for your campaign.  

Obama isn’t going to convince anyone to vote for him over a medical marijuana raid, but he sure as shit is going to demoralize his base and lose voters in his own camp who opt to simply not vote.  For that reason, I don’t think that this is some clever scheme on Obama’s part to drum up votes so that in his second term he will usher in an era of sane policy.  I think he is just a hypocritical asshole who can happily smoke pot and then order government agents to crack the skulls of people who have done the same thing he has done without remorse or even recognizing that it is wrong.  He is better than Romney for sure, but that isn’t saying much.

Thankfully, I live in lovely Massachusetts.  Due to the electoral college system my vote literally does not count.  If Obama losses Massachusetts, he also lost 48 other states.  I’ll be voting for one of the pot smoking third parties with a clear conscience.

I’d love to see the block quote contextualized a bit better. From how you set it up, the “he” in the first paragraph is President Obama.