Proposistion 19 Fails in California
 

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I don't know how everyone on here feels about this, or if they've even heard of it. Today was a sad day for our economy, environment, and crime rate in America and Mexico.

I have never smoked pot, nor do I intend to. However, I see no harm in legalising it. As you said, it would be good for the economy because with it legalised it can be taxed, and pot isn't even as harmful nor as addictive as regular cigarettes.

I don't understand how it remains illegal... I don't understand people.

yeah i really feel marijuana is less potent than alcohol and could be very useful for our economy. and like you said it really criminalizes people that probably wouldn't be involved in crime otherwise. I especially don't understand the hype about medical marijuana, it's less harmful than the narcotics out there that we take. I suppose it will just take it getting less taboo.

I feel that drug prohibition is huge infringement on our rights. Plus we are spending too much money trying to stop something that merely makes people find stuff funny.

Marijuana is a dangerous drug, it shouldn't be legalized.

I'm in two minds about drug legalisation. On the one hand, making it legal would make it easier to control, make it safer, and get some money off it. On the other, it does condone the use of drugs which I don't really agree with, especially since the actual effects are not clear.

So is alcohol, so is tobacco. Drug laws are hypocritical and selective. Oh and making things illegal increases the risk and danger for the user. IMO forcing anything underground makes things worse in terms of crime, cost of trying and failing to reduce said crime etc.

I genuinely thought prop 19 would get in. I was shocked by the results, and annoyed by how close it was.

Yeah, I have a member of my family who smokes pot every day. It *is* addictive, and it is seriously damaging to your health. His mind is faltering, he gets paranoid, angry and says terribly damaging thing.

That said, it's gonna be around anyways so we may as well make some government money out of it.

I agree with drug legalisation for one reason - I believe that drug use should be a medical issue not a legal one, I don't think people should be criminalised for what is often an illness and I think that if it was legalised then it would be in many ways safer as it would not be cut with god only knows what (not such an impotance with marijuanabut meh).


I have never used drugs (other than alcohol) but I have been close to people who have, I used to date a heroin addict and most of his friends were on one thing or another. Due to this I was VERY anti-drugs for a long time and TOTALLY against the legalisation of any drugs, however, I think that these people need help and not to be criminalised for what is often a way of coping with things that occur in their lives and for an addiction which is a medical issue NOT a legal one

Yeah no one is saying that it is safe. But you do have to do a cost benefit analysis of enforcing the current drug code.

Anything to excess is damaging. One could argue that sugar has addictive qualities, plus think of the health risks if somebody consumes too much sugar? Also, the research that links schizophrenia and cannabis usage are shaky at best - as much as anything else, because people who are more prone to schizophrenic tendencies are more likely to engage in dangerous/illegal behaviour and drug-taking anyway, so it's hard to draw the line between cause and effect, or onset and symptom. I thought this Time article about the relationship was quite interesting, too.

I agree with this. I think that legalisation of it would open up the door for far better support for drug abusers, rather than sweeping it under the carpet or, even worse, putting people in prison for it (which is not only bad for creating or continuing drug addictions, it also creates a whole barrage of other problems).

Alcohol is an interesting one; if you look at violent and gang-related crime, as well as alcoholism, during and post the US prohibition, all of them decrease after alcohol was legalised. Actual alcohol consumption increased, but alcoholism decreased. Also, although clearly the two countries are pretty different, Portugal decriminalised drugs with a resounding success from most accounts.

I'm not sure where I stand on harder drugs, but I think that potential benefits vastly outweigh the risks of cannabis legalisation. And, to be completely honest, although it is illegal it's certainly not hard to get hold of weed at the moment anyway, haha.

Pretty much this.

Not particularly.

^ No more so than alcohol or tobacco. But really I have a problem with those too.... but I see no point in making them illegal and pushing them underground where it becomes unregulated and deadly.

I'm not sure if Hierophant is talking about health risks or safety risks such as drinking while being high, or something like that.

If it's the former, then yeah I definitely agree with you, MeaCulpa. Pot has been proven to be both less harmful and less addictive than cigarettes. It poses no more of a hasard to one's health than cigs or alcohol.

As for safety concerns, obviously if pot were legalised there would be laws created to restrict its use. Alcohol is legal, but you still can't drink your heart out then do whatever you want in public. Pot would be the same.

No it's not. I've been smoking daily for a few months now because of the health benefits it carries and it helps to relax. I know lots of people who do it, friends, family. I have never once seen someone be harmed by cannabis.
The only negative effect it can have on someone is that it can cause schizophrenia to develop earlier in people who are going to develop it anyway, and people with that sort of medical condition shouldn't be using mind altering substances period.

^ and it can have negative side effects such as memory loss, paranoia, anger, irritability, obesity....

As with any drug, prescription or otherwise side-effects are highly variable and difficult to monitor. I would take all the listed 'nasty effects' cannabis with a pinch of salt: it is scientifically proven to be safer than many of the drugs people use legally but there seems to be a lot of scaremongering (Look at Proffesor David Nutt.) Obviously side effects are dependant on usage but cannabis can be used sensibly! I may be a crazy conspiracy theorist but I genuinely believe it was criminalized to keep certain people very rich I can't see any other reason for much more harmful drugs being legal.

Another reason for legalising the sale of cannabis is regulating what exactly is being sold. The pot people get hold of nower days is from strains many more potent than what was smoked in the 60's and 70's. If it was regulated, then you could make rules ensuring that producers don't breed stronger and stronger strains.
Once regulated you could increase the penalties for illegal dealers and this should help reduce access to the drug for people under the age of 18.

I live in California. I voted for Prop 19. I could go into all the reasons I consider it substantially less dangerous than tobacco, but honestly, I don't remember the exact statistics, and don't feel like looking them up right now (plus it's late, and I'm likely to ramble, probably incoherently, for hours if I get started at this point). But the main reasons I voted for it are:
1. I consider it far less dangerous than tobacco (if anyone wants to challenge me on this, I'd be happy to defend my position once I'm less tired and more sober), and feel that if tobacco is legal, marijuana definitely should be.
2. I realize this probably doesn't apply to all of California, but at least where I live, marijuana laws are so rarely enforced that it's practically legal anyway. People smoke in public all the time, and police walk right by them without intervening. So it's not like keeping it illegal is much of a deterrent for people using it, and legalizing it would allow it to be regulated (making it safer), taxed (giving the state much needed income), and set a minimum age for use.
3. It would still be illegal at the federal level, and the federal government made very clear they would continue to enforce federal drug laws in California, so realistically, it wouldn't really make it much more legal to use marijuana than it already is. It would, however, be one heck of a screw you to the feds. And whether or not marijuana should be legalized, our federal drug policy needs some *serious* examination. For example, marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance (considered to have high abuse potential and no medical applications; illegal under all circumstances; basically the highest level of restrictions), whereas both methamphetamine and cocaine are Schedule II (the same category as Ritalin and Methadone; high abuse potential but legitimate medical applications; can be administered in medical settings or prescribed for up to 30 days at a time, nonrefillable).

Incidentally, I didn't expect Prop 19 to pass, and was surprised it even came as close as it did. Although I did still vote for a city measure that kind of assumed it would pass (that one passed by a huge margin... so technically Oakland now has a tax on non-medical marijuana sales, even though such sales remain illegal... I'm not entirely sure how this works, although I kind of wish it meant the city would actually start taxing illegal drug deals, cause that would just be awesome). But even before Prop 19 failed, there was already another measure proposition to legalize marijuana in the works for the 2012 election, which probably stands a very good chance of passing (especially given how close Prop 19 came), because a lot of the support for Prop 19 came from young voters (ages 18-25), who unfortunately tend not to vote in midterm elections (like this one), but are much better represented in presidential election years (such as 2012; and by better represented I mean that overall voter turnout is higher in presidential than midterm elections, but the difference is typically much larger among young voters, so even though more people vote overall, the portion of them who are under 25 still increases as well). So basically, really good chance it will pass in 2012, but the federal government will continue to prosecute Californians people for marijuana use/possession/sale, so it will probably be more symbolic than anything else.