re: #154 Rightwingconspirator

To answer your last line/question-
Because prohibition failed. Failed with booze, and failed with cannabis. Legalization and regulation is a simple admission of that fact. We waste legal efforts and law enforcement resources on the least dangerous drug.

Your quote- “Every bit as serious as alcohol.” Which for adults is perfectly legal.

In a place and time where cigarettes and alcohol is legal, advertised and accepted at every adult social level cannabis is just an obvious victim of reefer madness propaganda. In the spirit of consenting adults it should be legal.

Please for goodnes sake leave this hackneyed 1950s garbage out. It does not add weight to your argument. No one here thinks that movie is anything but a campy romp through paranoia land.
Prohibition…that’s a book of an argument. I can’t possibly address it completely here. Let me just say three things 1) Two wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t care that we made 2 mistakes. Lets not make a 3rd. 2) Alcohol has been an integral part of our history for all of recorded human history and probably before. Not so marijuana. Nor is marijuana such an entwined part of our social structure now. There is no reason to make it one. 3) Prohibition was a half assed after the fact attempt to stop something already accepted in our society which was never supported by even a slight majority to include many in law enforcement and the President himself. There is not really a comparison between Prohibition againt alcohol at that time and the existing laws against marijuana possession now. If prohibiting things didn’t work, we wouldn’t prohibit anything. We do. It works most of the time and reduces the number of violators to a number which can be dealt with. Take for instance, theft. It is prohibited. People do it, but not many. And there are legal options to deal with it. It can be controlled to a tolerable level in part due to the prohibition. The prohibition itself doesn’t stop you, the consequences for violating do.