Ask Lemmy

It costs more to police it. It is profitable otherwise. No one genuinely cares. I haven't smoked since college. It eventually gets boring. It's a business. That's it. Sorry there isn't a mystical description for it. It's money.

Pros: I don't have to sneak around like a criminal just to get a plant.

I don't care about health benefits/dangers of any vice as much as I hate how ingrained vices are in our daily lives. I'm sick of beer ads, I hate online sports betting sponsoring every event (and rapidly turning a lot of friends into gamblers), my recently weed-legal state is already flooded with local ads and shitty shops.

I dream of a utopia where no vices are sold in a store or advertised. If you want to indulge you go to the equivalent of a Native American casino on steroids. It's a massive temple to hedonism, zoning for it is very restricted. You can do any drug you want there, everything carefully dosed and tested. There's complimentary trip-sitters and emergency services on call.

Things that aren't an immediate threat to yourself/others (mushrooms, lsd, mj, low abv drinks, etc...) can be sold for private personal consumption off-prem with a reasonable limit per person. You can't partake in public and can be asked for proof of purchase during transit.

There's no perverse vice tax that leeches money from addicts who can't afford it, the government's best financial interest is to keep people clean and spending money elsewhere. If you need something to routinely "take the edge off" you get easy access to medical services (mental/physical/otherwise) and a prescription from a real doctor.

Any time I hear arguments for full legalization of anything in the USA I just have nightmares of inane Budweiser-style weed/cocaine/heroin commercials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)

It's not completely safe. Regulation makes sense. Especially for protecting developing brains from long-term negative damage.

If you look at it as an illegal drug, it's obvious that it doesn't work to criminalize. It seems much more appropriate and effective to legalize, regulate, and have information and support programmes in place.

In Germany, it was legalized, but only in a very limited form, to get it through the coalition government. I think the current form is too bureaucratic, too restrictive. The most important thing is that it legalized holding personal consumption belongings.

I don't know much about the effects of legalization on society as a whole, but I personally feel I have benefitted from weed being legal. I find weed to be useful in helping me sleep and manage stress. That said, people should also be educated about the potential dangers of weed. Using it too often can lead to neglecting one's responsibilities, and people underestimate the danger of driving while stoned. I also find, since I've gotten proper therapy, I don't need weed as much as I used to.

On principle, I think drugs should not be treated as a criminal issue. At most, drug addicts should be made to get treatment. Governments should focus on education and treatment instead of harsh punishment. People who are on drugs should feel safe admitting to what drugs they're on in the event of an emergency.

Is this still a discussion on 2025? I always thought this was a no brainer, just blocked by demonization and the lack of examples of places that legalized and nothing bad happened. We should be discussing how to deal with other drugs. Marijuana is pretty much solved

Never smoked anything in my life, having one side of the family wiped out prematurely by nicotine, all of them.

Lived in Colorado. The pros outweigh the cons a million to one. The biggest positive was the massive reduction in DUIs, since people drink in bars but smoke weed at home. There may be a reduction in harder drugs, too, given how much easier and cheaper it is to get weed. The tax revenue from weed sales is huge (was bigger, though) and because the laws were changed after Colorado turned liberal-ish, the money was mostly allocated to great causes.

Government loves having a law that can be selectively enforced and is broken by a lot of people. Taking it away is a huge plus, especially in times where the government is looking for easy ways to control the population. Even before now, White people caught in possession or smoking marijuana rarely got more than probation, while some Black people were three-striked for the same.

The only downside is that it still smells bad, and I am still not sure that hacking up your lungs is all that sane or safe.

Yes, it appears that young humans can have very negative reactions to weed, and that it can affect their brains negatively. That would absolutely be a problem if legalization increased week use among teenagers, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I don't partake, but it's been legal in my area for a couple years now and I haven't seen any negative effects on society. More gaudy smoke shops is about it. They remind me of the payday loan places. I'm sure some people have a dependency on it, it can form a habit like anything else.

There are no cons

giant megacorps can definitely beat out some random shady dealer (indirectly from mental outlaw)

I'm going to go against the grain here a little. First of all, it should absolutely be decriminalized. No one should spend time behind bars for using or selling it, obviously.

But it got legalized here back in 2022 and while it was great at first, weed sort of sucks now. Because of legal limits to how many plants you can grow, CBD disappeared. Every strain is somewhere between 20-30 percent THC and just makes your brain numb, doesn't get you high the same way. Everything is way more expensive because every few years they vote to increase taxes on it, so strains that were 5 bucks a g when it was illegal are 10-11 now. Edibles have concentration limits so you're paying out the ass now for 100 mg, which someone would before make in their kitchen and give away for cheap.

Not to mention that there is one. On. Every. Street. Corner.

It's insane. Every business that closes down turns into a dispo and the added competition does not lower prices. Out town is losing cafes, art stores, all sorts of businesses because the cancer that is a dispensary keeps spreading. On a personal note, I've been trying to cut back for years and honestly I think if I still had to call "my buddy" to pickup i would have stopped a long time ago, but now it's in my face everywhere and tbh, it just sucks. It just gets you high. That's it. I can't explain it, it lost so much heart.

Now it's probably cleaner, safer, more ethical. But from a consumers perspective, it kind of sucks now.

Cons: capitalism is already ruining it with monoculture strains and subsequent crop loss from one little thing wiping out everything. Industry trade groups are forming to be the next generation of lobbyists. For now, they're on our side by focusing on legalization, but they won't be on our side forever.

I can't think of a single negative consequence of legalizing marijuana here, while the positives are numerous such as earning the state more money and people having alternatives for pain management that isn't a highly addictive opioid.

My state has 10 million people and made over $300 million in tax last year distributed around $100 million each divided between roads, schools, and local municipalities/community organizations.