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Obviously this isn't legalisation. But as more and more countries/states legalise recreational marijuana, hopefully politicians will see the light and see that
by toomanybeersies 8y ago
Obviously this isn't legalisation. But as more and more countries/states legalise recreational marijuana, hopefully politicians will see the light and see that there's little demonstrable harm in legalisation, and that legalisation results in far more benefit than harm.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely. At least in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Politicians aren't opposed to drug law reform on the basis of safety, they might say they are, but in reality they're opposed to drug law reform because they believe that drug use is a moral sin. There are a significant number of politicians (in particular the religious ones), who believe that it's a sin to alter your mind, whether it be by alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms, MDMA, etc. etc. And they believe that it's their God-given duty to stop people from committing these sins.
The sad thing is that there are a lot of people in society who agree with them, hence they keep getting voted in. Just look at the comments on Facebook on any news story about somebody dying at a festival from drug overdoses, and there will be a slew of people literally saying that they deserved it for taking drugs in the first place.
And in Australia, I can't help but think that some politicians are using the war on drugs as a weapon in a fight against alternative culture. In Sydney, they have drug dogs at train stations, in particular in the Western Suburbs (the poorer, more ethnic side of the city), despite the fact that drug use is constant through the socioeconomic scale. Run a sniffer dog through the investment bankers' offices and see how much coke they'll pick up. They'll also use sniffer dogs at music festivals (especially non-mainstream events, like techno festivals), but they won't deploy them for the horse races, despite the fact that drug use is rampant at both.
- wickedwiesel 8y agoYou can make this point about these "side effects" for other countries as well. You will find plenty of commentators making the point that the US' War On Drugs has effectively been institutionalizing racism against blacks in the US, like the ACLU [1] or individual civil rights scholars calling it the "New Jim Crow" [2]. Others even claim that it may have had roots in a motivation to target "blacks and hippies" [3]. Whatever the reason, statistics describing the outcome of legal disparities between crack and cocaine in the US [4] seem to support the claim that the US justice system and drug laws in particular tend to reinforce racism and social exclusion. Whatever the war on drugs was supposed to achieve, it certainly seems to be achieving something different altogether. [1] - https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow [3] - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-war-john-ehrlichman_us_56f58be6e4b0a3721819ec61 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-war-... [4] - https://americanaddictioncenters.org/cocaine-treatment/differences-with-crack/ https://americanaddictioncenters.org/cocaine-treatment/diffe...
- jazoom 8y agoI don't think what you're saying is correct about Australia. Queensland just joined the ranks of states to legalise elective termination of pregnancy. If "murdering babies" and gay marriage can get through the morals of many politicians, I'm sure smoking a bit of weed can too. The difference I see is there really aren't any big movements from the citizens to push the marijuana agenda, as there were for the other two I mentioned. Edit for clarification: this is addressing your point about their religiosity. I wasn't commenting on your last paragraph.