Political Crossfire Forums

There was a guy who periodically made random accounts and called everyone who agreed with legalization worthless loser stoners on threads related to the subject. I forgot what his nickname was. He doesn't really count because he seemed somewhat obsessed with that particular subject.
There was someone else though, I believe some sort of case worker or someone who's job involved a lot of community service in poorer neighborhoods, who was also very anti-legalization of marijuana. He had slightly better arguements but overall they amounted to mostly personal prejudice.

It's something that should be a non-issue. How does something become "illegal" in a place where people are supposed to be free?

Look at the way tobacco use, a drug that kills far more than any other, was dealt with. Did anyone spray agent orange on North Carolina or call in the army to destroy the tobacco fields and imprison producers and users of the drug?

No, this did not happen but tobacco use has vastly declined through a program of prevention through education. When people learned that tobacco was deadly most individuals voluntarily stopped usage.

Without the use of force tobacco use has been vastly reduced.

Now look at the "war on drugs", an attempt to use force to resolve a particular social issue. It's been a disaster that has completely altered our society into a police state that imprisons the largest percentage of it's own people in history and the only results have been economic, social, and cultural devastation.

Why the difference in reaction to similar social issues?

Well, Marijuana is the largest cash crop grown in the US. There is far more money to be had there than there is with tobacco.

So that is a kind of a superficial reason. I would say the real reason is that tobacco was popular with the predominant social group so the problems associated with it's use were dealt with far differently and issues with substances used by marginalized groups.

Quite simply it illustrates the differences in treatment of the different classes by government policy. We need to get at the underlying problem, not just treat the symptoms.

I've already bought my RAI stock. Bring on the legalization. I can't wait to make money off of other people's addictions. I hope they start putting nicotine and caffeine into the pot cigarettes they sell. REALLY get people hooked on them.

In other words, people don't have social power because they have money. People that have money are given it by society because they have social power. Their wealth signifies their social standing.

Look what happens to lotto winners, athletes, or celebrities etc that are given large sums of money by society but have no actual social power.

It's not long until they are bankrupt and things are right with the world again. lol

Professor, you could introduce a line of nicotine and caffeine enriched baby food and get your customer's hooked before they can even walk.

They won't even have a chance to stand up to your mighty profits.