Quote:
Originally Posted by Urzu 7
Thing is, how is America going to take on similar cultural elements? American culture is it's own thing and chock full of problems (we aren't going to get into other ones, just talking about drugs and alcohol). With American culture and American society, I'm pretty confident legalizing weed won't go over nearly as smooth as it did for Amsterdam.
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Quite right, American society probably won't respond in quite the same manner that other countries have or would. It could be worse, but it could also be better. Nobody really knows what would happen.
However, I think we need to ask ourselves what the worst-case scenario would be, and if it's realistic. Before I supported the legalization of marijuana, I used to think that everyone in society might start smoking all the time. Productivity would decline, people wouldn't take things seriously, and so on - those were my fears. I don't think those are realistic now, though.
A government study from 2010 indicated that there were 17.4 million people actively using marijuana (doesn't account for people with a history of usage who are not actively using, and they can't fudge the numbers to account for people who wouldn't admit to usage). While there's certain to be some total potheads in that group, when is the last time you heard of someone getting into an accident or failing in their job obligations because of marijuana usage? With that many people, there must be some examples; I just haven't heard of any. On the other hand, I've heard about people showing up drunk to work and getting fired, and about drunk driving accidents.
So how much of a threat would marijuana pose at its worst, realistically? More people might start to use it casually (although I'm sure that society's general attitude of frowning on its usage would remain)... but is that really such a terrible outcome? Is it worse than what we're doing now?
I suppose we don't
have to do anything to change the current situation. We can keep spending money and police effort on the war on drugs, and we can keep throwing people in prison - it won't ever eradicate marijuana from society, and it seems like a pretty poor use of resources to me, but we don't have to change it. I just can't imagine a scenario that would arise from legalization that seems like it would put us in a worse situation.
Out of curiosity, what sort of worst-case scenarios are you thinking of?