Posted by baloo on February 25, 2001 at 22:51:57:
In Reply to: Re: Yes but posted by Melmac on February 25, 2001 at 22:13:13:
Point taken, but (there's always a but isn't there) the crime is in the fact that people who drink and drive kill people. Same for those who smoke cannabis and drive! And that is turning out more and more to be the cause of the far too numerous fatal car crashes on the roads these days. True, alcohol is probably a much greater problem in today's society but that is because it has been freely useable for so long. Start making drugs like cannabis legal and the number of users will start to go up. As much as we want to deny it, a lot of people don't do things because they are afraid of getting caught for something illegal. So why generate long term problems for short term reasons like - it doesn't hurt anyone. Neither does heroin if you use it at home and don;t kill someone to get money to buy it, so should we legalise that too?
And, at the risk of starting a whole new discussion - the arguments used against GM foods ie that noone really knows what will happen, are the very same arguments one could use to say not to legalize cannabis - we don;t know enough about what it does. The data is mixed as to whether it is physically addictive or not, and there is clear cut data that it is hundreds of times more carcinogenic that ordinary cigarettes. So, in the long run legalizing could cost us a lot of money paying for more sick people. Funny though, the same people who cry out against GM foods are also the loudest voices for legalising cannabis. Can't they see the hypocrisy in their arguments?