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Comment by slowhadoken | Hacker News Reader

It’s political. The same thing is happening with marijuana. A state legalizes it and then functional junkies show up from conservative states to smoke it in doors. Places like Colorado have laws to regulate it but they don’t. Police and judges follow suit because mayors don’t want to create a precedent that would scare potheads. This keeps the drug money coming in and crime stats low. It’s crazy because regulation is a liberal practice but they’re just not being enforced and no new explicate regulations are being written which is a conservative tactic. All of this emboldens criminal use of marijuana under the pretense of preventing persecution of drug addicts by dressing them up as medication recipients.

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If the state legalized it then it’s not a crime as far as the state is concerned. The feds still have it illegal but states are not required to enforce or even help federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws. They can choose to do so but it’s not an obligation.

Your comment is coming from the perspective that they are criminals because you don’t like the activity, not because they broke the law. Lobby your state representatives and run an activist campaign to make it illegal again if that’s how you feel.

Even if a state legalized marijuana it’s still illegal to possess a lot of it, to sell it without a license, and can violate tort, municipal, state and federal laws about drug smoke outdoors or indoors. It’s not my opinion, it’s regulation based on scientific evidence to protect public health. A lot of this is understood in California but cash poor states with huge budge problems look the other way. Potheads know this, they use these facts to pressure cities and states to take their dirty money. Since the revenue from taxing marijuana isn’t going to K-12 schools a lot of locals are getting tired of the bad money coming from pot. It’s a trade off like legalizing gambling but with no benefits. Smokers make up a fraction of the total population so you’re going to see pushback very soon.

Then have pushback, that’s how democracy is supposed to work. If your complaint is that enforcement isn’t 100% perfect then you’ll find most laws are lacking.

I say this as someone who also hates public pot smokers but I’m not talking about them like they are “dirty money”. People commonly want to do something with negative externalities. Enforcing regulation against that is a tradeoff between cost and benefit.

Right, not enforcing laws is criminal. It’s like you’re agreeing with me but you’re depressed and apathetic about it. It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads. I grew up with hippies and didn’t have a problem with it until normies started abusing it. Legalizing drugs or gambling is a trade off, it’s dirty money. Politicians know this, they have meetings about how high crime will go up afterwards. Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”. I’ve studied political science. My observations easily fit within an Isaiah Berlin‘s concept of liberty.

Not enforcing the laws isn’t criminal in the United States, although I wish it was. The police in various jurisdictions have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that[1][2]

> It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads.

Cool, but you or anyone else being grossed out by someone’s activity doesn’t automatically rise to the level of criminality. I, and many others, am grossed out by devoutly religious people, do you think they are criminals based on that fact?

> Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”.

Your comment included people being “grossed out” by others activity. That is literally your feelings and not objective fact.

> I’ve studied political science.

Oh hey, me too, even got a degree in it. Several of my classmates who studied it failed. Studying the topic doesn’t make you correct, only more likely to be well informed. Since I also have studied it we can remove that as a common denominator between us and stick to arguing our differences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...

Everything you’re saying I’ve heard a thousand times before. People tell me this kinda stuff all the time. I’m just good at predicting things. People talk in circles like you’re doing or laugh and then they see. Good luck.

If you are incorrect, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that everyone else will claim you are also incorrect.

If you go through my comment history you will find that I am fully willing to declare hills I will die on and can respect the energy. All I am asking of you is a logical argument or proof.

Everything you’ve stated so far if presented as an “ought to be” argument is unimpeachable. But you’ve presented it as an “how it is” argument, which is impeachable.

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