Health Canada presides over birth of billion-dollar free market in marijuana

[Ideologue]

I wonder how disastrous it would be for local economies for pharma companies to suddenly enter the market.  Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods would vanish overnight.

Hell, some countries would probably be badly damaged.

[viper37]

Have you ever drunk alcohol, smoked pot, or been a teenager?

It doesn't sound like it...

Never smoked voluntarily.  Never used drugs either.

I have been a teenager, I have done stupid things just because they were forbidden. I have drank alcohol and kept increasing my consumption and trying stronger alcohol for a while.  Eventually, it passed. 

But I've seen the results of drug use on most of my friends.  Of course, it usually doesn't come alone, people rarely use only one kind of drug, it's often mixed with alcohol and cocaine being a party drug, it ends with prostitutes and/or a g/f that's sharing your habits, wich tends to hurt your banking account a lot.

I may have been a teenager, but I was always greedy, so I stayed away

[garbon]

Sounds like you just have self-destructive friends. I'm not sure that I'd generalize that though. Actually I certainly wouldn't.

[viper37]

drug users like the buzz, teenagers like the forbidden.  If we legalize some kind of drugs, they'll simply turn to stronger, illegal stuff.

Have you ever drunk alcohol, smoked pot, or been a teenager?

It doesn't sound like it...

It also doesn't sound like he has paid the slightest bit of attention to what actually happens in the world.  Banning drugs is what causes them to morph into stronger versions, because criminal penalties and difficulty of movement are based on raw quantity, not strength.  Producers therefor have an incentive to make each ounce/pound/ton they move as strong as possible, even if this is expensive to do.

The shift from powdered cocaine to the much more addictive crack cocaine came about because the vipers of the world tried to solve other peoples' problems.  Modern MJ is much stronger than the traditional stuff for the same boneheaded reasons.

Heroin was freely available in the early 20th century, it didn't stop people from consuming it.  Just as with cocaine, it was made illegal/heavily regulated around the 20s, maybe late 1910s.  Crack didn't appear until the 80s, when the technology to create it was available to just about everyone. 

If it had been a result of the products being forbidden, we wouldn't have seen consumption in the early 19th century, and it wouldn't have taken that long after the products being forbidden for people to develop stronger alternatives.

New drugs are developped because: a) there's a market for the higher buzz and b) we have the technological means to develop it at a reasonable costs.  It ain't different than the "market" in general, really.

Drug users are like alcoholics, always convincing themselves that there are far worst uses, that there are things they won't do, etc, etc.  In the end, they simply seek the higher buzz until they really can't take more.

[Gups]

Heroin was freely available in the early 20th century, it didn't stop people from consuming it. 

Is anyone suggesting that making drugs legal would stop people taking them? I mean, apart from you.

The point is that we can stop criminals making vast amounts of money from the illegality of drugs and stop drug users committing huge amount of crime to fund their habits.

And your suggestion taht as sooon as something is made illegal people move onto something illegal is ludicrous as well. The biggest current issue is folk taking "legal highs" which givernemnts simply can't ban quickly enough.

[Malthus]

drug users like the buzz, teenagers like the forbidden.  If we legalize some kind of drugs, they'll simply turn to stronger, illegal stuff.

Have you ever drunk alcohol, smoked pot, or been a teenager?

It doesn't sound like it...

It also doesn't sound like he has paid the slightest bit of attention to what actually happens in the world.  Banning drugs is what causes them to morph into stronger versions, because criminal penalties and difficulty of movement are based on raw quantity, not strength.  Producers therefor have an incentive to make each ounce/pound/ton they move as strong as possible, even if this is expensive to do.

The shift from powdered cocaine to the much more addictive crack cocaine came about because the vipers of the world tried to solve other peoples' problems.  Modern MJ is much stronger than the traditional stuff for the same boneheaded reasons.

Heroin was freely available in the early 20th century, it didn't stop people from consuming it.  Just as with cocaine, it was made illegal/heavily regulated around the 20s, maybe late 1910s.  Crack didn't appear until the 80s, when the technology to create it was available to just about everyone. 

If it had been a result of the products being forbidden, we wouldn't have seen consumption in the early 19th century, and it wouldn't have taken that long after the products being forbidden for people to develop stronger alternatives.

New drugs are developped because: a) there's a market for the higher buzz and b) we have the technological means to develop it at a reasonable costs.  It ain't different than the "market" in general, really.

Drug users are like alcoholics, always convincing themselves that there are far worst uses, that there are things they won't do, etc, etc.  In the end, they simply seek the higher buzz until they really can't take more.

There were four primary reasons why drugs became regulated in the 20th centrury:

(1) as a consumer safety issue. Prior to regulation, many so-called "patent medicines" were often mostly opiates; there was no labelling requirements, so granny Smith taking her tonic for gout (or whatever) became addicted, or OD'd, without even knowing what was in the shit. Labeling and ingredient restrictions were part and parcel of cleaning up the consumer industry altogether.

(2) Alcohol was seen as a White Man's drug. Opiates were seen as the Yellow Man's drug (ironically, as the Brits essentially made it so). Pot was what Blacks and Hispanics did. Thus, the latter drugs were seen as unacceptable, explicitly because they had racial implications. In Canada, the leading text was "The Black Candle", which was written by a very influential woman - the first female judge in Canada - and makes for very entertaining reading today. In it, you learn pot makes Blacks go crazy and rape White women ...

(3) Prohibition generally - the puritan notion that taking substances to feel good = bad, morally.

(4) Impressions - either realistic or exaggerated - of the actual harms that the products do, their potential for addiction, etc. - which is really a subset of the first reason.

The difficulty, in this complex mix, lies in seperating out the various motives, and determining what is true and what is not. No-one would deny that addiction is harmful and that drugs can also cause both chronic and acute harms if abused. However, exaggerated and absurd accounts of those harms actually do more harm than good, as people quickly discover that the exaggerated accounts are nonsense. No, pot does not lead Blacks to go crazy and rape White women. No, smoking pot does not inevitably lead to taking more and different drugs until the user can't take any more ...

[grumbler]

Heroin was freely available in the early 20th century, it didn't stop people from consuming it.  Just as with cocaine, it was made illegal/heavily regulated around the 20s, maybe late 1910s.  Crack didn't appear until the 80s, when the technology to create it was available to just about everyone. 

This is a joke, right?  The "technology to create" crack cocaine consists of, what, a candle, some baking powder, and a spoon?  When was the candle "available to just about everyone?"

And of course heroin was consumed by people when it was legal.  In fact, it was sold as a cure for morphine addiction!  But that is neither here nor there; no one claims that making alcohol any drug legal will make people stop using it.

[viper37]

The point is that we can stop criminals making vast amounts of money from the illegality of drugs and stop drug users committing huge amount of crime to fund their habits.

Alcohol is legal.  So is tobacco.  Criminal groups make tons of money with contraband, due to being able to sell cheaper stuff.  Heck, the tobacco companies made tons of money by supplying smugglers.  I can't see how it is better, or even how it is different than the usual business of organized crime.

[viper37]

Heroin was freely available in the early 20th century, it didn't stop people from consuming it.  Just as with cocaine, it was made illegal/heavily regulated around the 20s, maybe late 1910s.  Crack didn't appear until the 80s, when the technology to create it was available to just about everyone. 

This is a joke, right?  The "technology to create" crack cocaine consists of, what, a candle, some baking powder, and a spoon?  When was the candle "available to just about everyone?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_base

Freebasing can also refer to the consumption by smoking of free base cocaine (crack cocaine) or heroin. Freebasing became popular in the United States during the 1980s, mainly because of the fear of diseases such as HIV and viral hepatitis, since users did not have to share hypodermic needles.[1]

Nothing to do with the illegality of cocaine, wich was illegal since before WW1 anyway.

And of course heroin was consumed by people when it was legal.  In fact, it was sold as a cure for morphine addiction!

cocaine was sold to cure morphine addiction.  Heroin, I think was just a substitute.

But that is neither here nor there; no one claims that making alcohol any drug legal will make people stop using it.

then what are the benefits of legalizing dangerous products for everyday use?  Taxing them like tobacco&alcohol?  That won't stop contraband and it certainly won't stop related crimes.  I could still buy illegal cigarettes and illegal tequila if I wanted to.  Same applies to gun, really, despite strong anti-guns laws.  Should we legalize all type of guns because the Hell's Angels and the mafia makes tons of money trading weapons?  Is that a reason to keep guns freely available in the US, because otherwise the organized crime would profit from it (as if it didn't right now)?

[chipwich]

Maybe it was Soros who I once heard advocating a plan of legalizing basically every drug, by distributing them heavily supervised from government-owned shops, at a cut-back rate in order to destroy the drug cartels by making it impossible for them to turn a profit.

I don't think it's conscionable for the government to sell things that are basically poison and serve no social purpose. It'd be really weird to have a store where the employees would have to wear a protective suit for the fumes that would be emitted by meth and whatever.

[Ideologue]

But those suits look so cool.

Anyway, what about the lottery?

[chipwich]

But those suits look so cool.

Anyway, what about the lottery?

The lottery is proof that just because something is run by the government doesn't mean it's not exploitative. There may be some ethical differences between state lottery and a mafia casino, but I don't know enough about gambling to identify them

[Ideologue]

Aw, the lottery's fun.  Just like meth!

[citizen k]

Anyway, there's no ideological contradiction with you: you're a statist, like me.

[Ideologue]

  What is that?  Photoshop?  I don't know if I get it.