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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

While I have no interest in weed, I never understood why people are against it, since cigarettes are also a drug and are far more damaging to heath and the economy, and in the US kills a couple hundred thousand folks a year, or alcohol, which is a drug, and kills tens of thousands of people a year. Eliminating illegality would save in so many ways, and taxes could help offset other taxes. But no, weed is somehow more terrible...

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I don't think we would ever legalize cigarettes and alcohol if they weren't already widespread. You cited the numbers yourself, it would be a terrible decision. But lots of people are already using these substances, and we've seen how well it works to make alcohol illegal... The reason cigs/alcohol are legal has nothing to do with their addictiveness or the harm they do, so a comparison with them.

The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!

(Note: Personally, I actually support weed legalisation, because it eliminates black markets and other problems that illegality brings. But that's a whole other, more nuanced argument. See the frontpage thread about steelmanning...)

Banning tobacco is plausible because it's somewhat difficult to grow the plants. But you can't ban alcohol. Anybody can produce it. You can literally produce it by accident.

Yeast has been genetically modified to produce psilocybin ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109671761... ). Researches have yielded the equivalent of about 60g dried shroom in only 1 liter of solution. When psychedelics become as easy to produce as beer, the world is gonna be a whole lot weirder.

>The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!

This is absolutely NOT the argument against legalization anywhere that I've seen. It's almost universally a claim that MJ is uniquely dangerous and should be kept illegal for that reason.

> The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!

Which is a stupid thought given that even when completely banned and carrying harsh penalties people still partake in drug usage. Draconian laws may diminish the ratio of users but they are still there, and draconian laws only make those people become pariahs in their societies, pushing them into deeper holes.

Singapore, Japan, Sweden, Philippines, etc. still have drugs and users, no matter how draconian prohibition is...

It's possible to have concerns about it even if alcohol is worse. I think most people are reacting to the "it cures cancer" culture which denies any negative effect.

Personally I've seen weed addiction in close friends and family and it's not pretty. It's slowly poisoning yourself while your life stagnates or falls apart. But they're convinced they're not addicted as you can't get addicted to weed.

>But they're convinced they're not addicted as you can't get addicted to weed.

Habit forming, yes. Physically addictive? No.

Recovery from wake and bake will involve withdrawal symptoms and cravings, both of which have a physical basis. You can't expect flooding your brain all day and every day with a menagerie of feel-good chemicals and not expect adaptations which need to be undone.

This is not a fact based judgement. Physical Addiction has an actual basis in biology, not just your opinion.

That doesn't make sense what you wrote. I encourage you to read up on long term maurijuana use and addiction. This Wikipedia page is detailed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_use_disorder?wprov=sf...

It's common sense that your body will physically adapt to most substances consumed regularly. Most of the time that means tolerance and subsequent withdrawal when its removed, which is caused by some physical process. Weed isn't magic.

Cigarettes are stimulating in a way similar to coffee - weed is not, so the lutheran morals dominated cultures (admittedly a quite outdated generalization) look very disapprovingly upon it.

No, sorry. Study history.

Weed was criminalized as a mechanism for white people to control black people, because weed was a Mexican and black person drug when those laws were enacted. It's all in the arguments in favor of the criminalization laws when they were passed.

nothing to do with the Protestant Work Ethic.

Sorry if the phrase "black person" is offensive, none is meant.

I think you missed the point. Protestant work ethic does not want people "being lazy". In that era when workers were Black and Mexican and smoking, protestant work ethic is what is making white people in power want to stop people from having a little escape.

The point of the protestant work ethic is about splitting society into lazy and hard working.

Any sane person knows that people should decide how much division of labor they want for themselves.

Can you tell us how does your theory apply to the other countries of the globe where marijuana is illegal though?

American hegemony.

Hmm. Perhaps we studied different histories?

As far as I was aware, the criminalization of weed was related to hemp being a competitor to the wood/paper industry.

https://greathemp.net/why-hemp-was-banned-in-1937/

> "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

The war on drugs was purely designed to target hippies and people of color [1]. The sooner it is gone on all levels, the better.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...

This is such an US centric take, on an article about Germany.

I'm German. The complete ban on cannabis and the begin of the full blown war on all drugs and not just opiates in Germany came in 1971, three years after the mentioned events. We only have cultural hegemonism of the US to "thank" for that.

Bullshit. That quote came from Baum in a 1994 interview of Ehrlichman. Baum was writing a book about the war on drugs, so why did the quote only come out in 2016? Why not put it in the book?

> "because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author."

The worst lie I've ever heard. The quote is gold for a backroom discussion.

Then Ehrlichman dies, and the quote comes out more than a decade later, when he can't dispute it; with zero corroboration except Baum, and no recording! (No recording for a book background interview of an influential US political actor?)

The quote is reddit-catnip but only spreads because of low-integrity operators in the media. Golden rule: don't put words in people's mouths after they're dead.

For me hemp has always been an incredibly valuable industrial crop. It is an amazing construction material. One hectare of hemp is enough to grow material for a single family home every year.

Anyone can grow weed and that would cut into tobacco profits, a powerful lobby. You don't honestly think legislation is about health

Nonsense. Are tobacco companies not allowed to own a cannabis company? They'll jump on that shit as soon as they can.

I think GP was trying to say that it is easier to grow cannabis than tobacco at home, which puts an upper limit to prices.

Cigarettes are only expensive because of the taxes.

Anybody can grow tobacco too. I do it most years just because of the pretty flowers.

Much easier than growing cannabis, actually.

The curing process is a bit of work, but for cigarette (as opposed to pipe or cigar) quality tobacco not so hard.

That's great that you as an individual have the knowledge/capability but simple observation shows that doesn't make a difference in practice

Canada: >Growing cannabis (either growing their own or having it grown for them by someone else) was a supply-source for 14.2% of consumers in 2020

I can't find stats on tobacco users who grow their own supply for Canada because I suspect it's vanishingly small next to that 14.2%

The trouble is that skunk is now prevalent and much, much more powerful than standard weed or hash - and the stronger it is, the more likely that it will trigger serious mental health problems like schizophrenia in a percentage of users. Also, setting aside the acute and dramatic consequences, take a walk around pretty much any reasonably sized town in the UK and before long you'll smell the characteristic smell of skunk-type weed. No matter how lenient one is the question has to be asked: is it really healthy for a society to have a good proportion of its citizens in a permanent semi-baked state? I certainly would prefer the doctor, driver, pilot or teacher for my children that does not smoke skunk, given the choice, and all else being equal.

There is no flower available which is stronger than hash.

If you think about it for a few seconds, you'll see why. You didn't because it undermines your argument, since the UK has mostly smoked hash historically.

It took me literally a few seconds to find this:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/16/skunk-cannab...

'Smoking powerful skunk cannabis triples the risk of suffering a serious psychotic episode, scientists have found.'

'Those who reported smoking milder forms of the drug, such as hash, did not appear to be at increased risk, for instance. Murray said that, in line with this finding, he recommends hash to patients who are struggling to give up smoking altogether.'

What if I'm against weed, cigarettes and alcohol?

Then don't use them.

I don't use any of them. Doesn't mean that I'm not affected by the harmful effects of them.

Particularly weed, what negative externalities do you experience?

Not that many at the moment, considering that it's an illegal substance and <2% of the population consumes weed monthly (<0.2% daily), meaning that it's consumed a lot less than cigarettes (approximately 12% of the population between 20 and 64 smoke daily). It's also primarily used by young people here, meaning that long-term effects are not yet visible. But obviously there are health factors to consider with smoking weed (heart infarcts, lung issues/cancer, mental health issues, etc) that will be subsidized by the rest of the society. I'm also concerned about the affects of weed on driving if it becomes legal and its consumption increases, as alcohol is involved in every fourth fatal car accident and weed increases risk factors for car crashes.

Pfizer and their ilk prevent it.

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