Marijuana Legalization

[SWAT One]

Another Con:  People would be smoking pot all day rather than going to work.  IE, a huge spike in unemployment.

[Ad Bot]

[duke 838]

Another Con:  People would be smoking pot all day rather than going to work.  IE, a huge spike in unemployment.

That's the dumbest argument I have seen yet.

Let's pretend for a second that your stuff logic was real. Then "worthless, lazy, stoners" would be fired, and more deserving people would get their jobs.

[SWAT One]

And then our taxes skyrocket to compensate for them.  Do you know how our governmental/economic system works?

Hint:  Risk of hitting a depression that could've been preventable.

[Aces]

That's the dumbest argument I have seen yet.

Let's pretend for a second that your stuff logic was real. Then "worthless, lazy, stoners" would be fired, and more deserving people would get their jobs.

I don't think you know anything of unemployment.

That was a rhetorical question, seeing as I answered it in the following sentence.
Thank you for the history bit though

And then I gave you a second example?

[duke 838]

And then our taxes go up to compensate for them.  Do you know how our governmental/economic system works?

Hint:  Risk of hitting a depression that could've been preventable.

but the first part of your argument is stuff. "they'd smoke all day, and not work." You're asking me if I get how the government works, do you get how this drug works? I don't think you do, after doing it, you don't become some apathetic twat who doesn't care if he has a job or not. You're just using that dumb stereotypical "hur dur dumb stoners don't care about anything, they lazy dumb stoners" argument. That isn't an argument, it's a stereotype, and just flat out stupid.

[RedGajin]

Another Con:  People would be smoking pot all day rather than going to work.  IE, a huge spike in unemployment.

oh god lol this is actually one of the stupidest  things ive read in this thread so far

[¥ola]

Another Con:  People would be smoking pot all day rather than going to work.  IE, a huge spike in unemployment.

Did you read my post or did you simply think you understood this all?

I compared drunks to stoners, how did you not catch that?

Do you not realize there are many people who sit around all day and drink, with no job.

If you really, truthfully think that legalizing marijuana would contribute largely to unemployment, please rethink and do even a tiny bit of research to see how you are so clearly wrong it hurts to think someone could be that uninformed.

There will always be bums, and they will be bums no matter what is legal and what isn't, if you think making something legal will change whether or not they will attend a workplace, your very wrong.

[Harm94]

A history of our war on drugs and quick to grow material. This is not mine by the way.

20's - 30's: Alcohol prohibition tried and failed, conclusively showed that criminalising recreational substances leads to more crime, not less and more harm to users and society.

30's: Out-of-work "G-men" (FBI's prohibition enforcers) find an ally in the treasury (Randolf Hearst's nethew) who introduces cannabis prohibition under the guise of a new tax. The "tax" was something like 200% of the wholesale cost which made hemp non-competitve with industrial cotton and timber for raw materials (almost nobody smoked cannabis before it was criminalised, but it was widely used for fibre, paper, canvas, oil and medicines). The tax is later converted to outright prohibition as the government tries to sell its story that cannabis users are all psychotic rapists using propaganda movies like Assassin of Youth and Reefer Madness.

40's: Cannabis re-legalised for the war effort - now cannabis is good for America. Farmers even paid to grow cannabis for war materials. Re-criminalised after the war for no apparent reason. US wins war and also bans cannabis in Japan as part of surrender conditions for good measure.

50's (till now): Regular studies showing drug prohibition is causing exactly the same problems that alcohol prohibition caused. Typical government response - ignore the studies, attack the scientists, spend even more money on prohibition.

60's: US uses its UN leverage to force its failed policies on the world via the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961, an agreement which forces countries to not only ban trade in certain drugs but also effectively requires governments to ensure that all research and public education regarding those drugs follows the "drugs are harmful" line. Most countries object but finally passed with the condition the UN maintain a seedbank of cannabis strains for species preservation, medical research and future needs. US agrees then lets seedbank quietly decay - effectively vandalising over 10,000 years of genetic research and hybridisation.

70's: Despite huge shifts in social attitudes the government continues to ignore the will of the majority and massively increases spending on enforcement. It also goes further and criminalises LSD without any evidence of medical harm. US army becomes one of America's largest heroin importers thanks to a constant stream of personnel and material from Vietnam.

80's: Coccaine becomes big in wealthy circles. Remains illegal despite being a party favorite for lawyers and judges. Ecstasy crimalised despite having no known dangers and being used extensively in psychopherapy for over a decade. DEA and CIA caught buying huge quantities of drugs from Cuban terrorists in exchange for weapons.

90's: Ecstacy explodes despite having been criminalised only 5 years earlier showing once again that criminalising drugs increases demand. Many attempts to re-legalise non-drug hemp products and seeds get railroaded and buried by the DEA. Forfeiture laws expanded to allow agencies to easily seize any assets "connected with drugs" even when the owner has not been convicted of any crime. Forteiture becomes so popular with agencies that by 2010 over $2 billion in assets are seized every year.

00's: Worried about studies showing many legitimate medical uses of cannabis for cancer and glaucoma the DEA teams with a major US pharma to sell "Dronabinol" (Marinol). Dronabinol is the THC molecule renamed and placed under a different legal category. In practice this means the DEA has a monopoly on the legal traffic of an illegal drug which is only illegal becuse it has "no medical uses" and only has "no medical uses" due to that being the DEA's argument for criminalisation. California goes rogue and passes a bill legalising medical marijuana. DEA refuses to acknowledge the law despite being a medical maijuana supplier itself. CIA ordered to investigate itself over claims it sold crack in US cities - finds itself innocent.


The history of US drug law is an epic tale of corruption and lies. What we have are a selected group of popular substances, mostly naturally occuring, most with low medical risks, most with legitimate medical uses, made and kept illegal domestically and worldwide via agreements and for reasons that have been repeatedly shown to be exagerations and outright lies.

This leads one to the conclusion that there must be other reasons for criminalisation and since we are talking about the US here I'd put my money on those reasons being closely tied with the immense profits of US pharmaceuticals, the legal system and privatised prisons (in 2005, about 500,000 US prisoners were in jail on drug charges at any given time). I'd also say it's about keeping places like South America, Asia and the Middle East in constant internal strife by playing governments and drug producers off against each other and selling arms to both sides.