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CronoDAS comments on The uniquely awful example of theism - Less Wrong
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Marijuana should be freely obtainable from licensed merchants. It would probably be taxed at a high rate, and there should be laws against operating machinery while under its influence. There would also probably be some licensing mechanism to guarantee its purity.
If possible, all individuals currently in prison for marijuana-related offenses should immediately be released.
The resulting savings in law enforcement resources and prison space, and the accompanying increase in tax revenue would be tremendous. In addition, patients in extreme pain would be able to manage that pain at minimal expense using plants which are easy to cultivate, rather than paying exorbitant amounts to pharmaceuticals.
Biologists would be free to research the effects of THC on the human body, which they are currently forbidden from doing. There have been some indications that THC my have tumor-destroying properties -- not nearly strong enough that I should immediately recommend cancer patients start lighting up as often as possible, but certainly strong enough that if not for the legal issues, follow-up studies would have been performed by now.
That is what I, at least, mean by "marijuana legalization". From my epistemic vantage-point it is an easy win and it is astounding that our government continues to get it so blatantly wrong.
As long as tobacco is legal, anything less harmful should also be legal. (This is more of an argument in favor of banning tobacco than legalizing other substances, though.)
Just curious: Why did at least 2 people vote CronoDAS' comment down?
Presumably because of the implicit assumption that banning harmful things is inherently a good idea. We haven't really discussed that issue because it is not necessary to hold the position that banning people from making choices harmful to themselves is not justified to argue against drug prohibition. Drug prohibition clearly fails on its own terms without needing to convince proponents of the fact that even if it worked it would still be immoral. Many people here would probably take that fact for granted however and so people were presumably voting down the implicit assumption in the statement. They would expect further justification for the claim.
Isn't that pretty much what CronoDAS said, though? The stated premise of banning certain drugs is that they are harmful (either individually or socially). So, again, drug prohibition fails on its own terms, because they are not even choosing the most harmful substances to ban.
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would start with things like rat poison and cocaine, and work its way down as far as things like tobacco and alcohol and cheesecake, but probably leave out things like psilocybin and THC.
But of course I'm presuming there is a serious attempt to ban harmful substances. In reality there is a serious attempt to ban getting high, which is not the same thing at all.
(Responding to old post.)
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would not necessarily start with rat poison because while rat poison is more harmful than other substances, it's less harmful relative to how people use it. The fact that eating rat poison causes more damage to you than smoking weed is irrelevant; eating rat poison is an unusual use case for rat poison, but smoking is a typical use case for marijuana.