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Going to go with the unpopular opinion here, but I don't understand the comments saying "Japan/Korea is so backwards/archaic, cannabis tobacco and alcohol are a

• intertextuality 8y ago
  1) Drug problems still exist in those countries. Albeit it’s different than say, the US, pretending that it doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 2) I’m not saying the attitude toward weed in japan should be the same as in the US, but having this amount of social stigma is ridiculous. It’s absurd when you consider just how much Koreans and Japanese people drink. It’s way more than Americans, and at least in Korea it’s mandatory after work for a lot of people. 3) Legalizing marijuana (even just for medical use) will not create or worsen any existing drug issues.
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  • vhb 8y ago
    1) That's true. Let's that it's barely a problem. 2) According to the WHO, Korea only drinks marginally more that the US, and Japan less: https://www.who.int/gho/alcohol/en/ https://www.who.int/gho/alcohol/en/. TBH, this is a bit of a stereotype. I'm confused by how to interpret 3. Are you saying: - "If it's only for medical use, then it will not worsen the situation". I would overall agree with you on this. - "Even if it's freely available it will not worsen the situation". I don't believe this. I don't see how going from a situation where smoking is 1: illegal, 2: actually complex (unlike in Europe/North America), 3: extremely risky on the legal side, 4: socially taboo, to a situation where you can have shops on the street would not worsen drug issues. I can't find any studies has been conducted in any comparable societies, so we are both speculating, but I just find your point absolutely unbelievable.
    • intertextuality 8y ago
      > TBH, this is a bit of a stereotype. I live in Korea. The amount of people who binge drink often and are hard drinkers in general, is higher than what I ever saw in the United States. It may be a bit overstated as a stereotype, but it is absolutely true. Also, in the US, you do not have to go drinking with your colleagues/boss after work, out of social pressure. This is still common in Korea, especially for older workers. It's only now changing for the younger generation. > socially taboo, to a situation where you can have shops on the street would not worsen drug issues. These already exist, they're called "bars". One can pay money and enter a stupified state of consciousness, either quickly or slowly. Unlike other drugs [including alcohol, a drug], marijuana is not physically addictive. I'm not advocating for hard drug stores to be present like bars are; I'm saying I don't have a problem with say, Colorado's style, so far. Making marijuana easier to smoke in Japan or Korea wouldn't be as dire as you're making it out to be.
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  • imetatroll 8y ago
    I have to assume that increased use of a drug means that the situation has worsened. If you legalize it, it will worsen by definition.
• leggomylibro 8y ago
  Okay, I will call you old-fashioned. These things exist, and you cannot bury your head in the sand. Do you know what happens when cannabis is illegal and people decide to skirt that? People synthesize technically-legal alternatives, and give them acronyms like 'JWH', and sell them online. It may not seem too harmful, making the products of public research on the effects of cannabinoids on rodents available to the public. But the legislatures will catch on eventually, because it is a clear end-run around the law, right? Fast-forward a few years, and look at all the harm that this causes; it's like heroin -> fentanyl. What is wrong with the principles of harm reduction?
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  • fiblye 8y ago
    That’s true in a society where drug use is a major problem. It’s not true in a society where, statistically speaking, nobody cares about drug use. Make something widely available and legal to a society that doesn’t have experience with it and doesn’t know the risks, and you end up with a chance of that community being absolutely ravaged by it. People just up and wasted away wherever opium was introduced. The northern territories in Canada have huge problems with people bringing in cheap liquor. What’s right and reasonable in one society may be absolutely destructive in another society, and westerners in particular refuse to accept that possibility.
    • leggomylibro 8y ago
      If nobody cares about something, why would there be a law against it?
      • fiblye 8y ago
        Nobody cares, as in nobody cares about using it, much less legalizing it. Most Japanese people who’ve tried it did it once while traveling to Canada or America.
• balfirevic 8y ago
  > Call me old fashioned No, its not really a matter of being old fashioned - it's a matter of being authoritarian. > but I do not think that a society that smokes weed is better than a society that does not. The society that doesn't forbid people who want to smoke to do so is better because it is more free. That is valuable in itself, although this point seems to have fallen out of fashion on HN these days.
  • markdown 8y ago
    > is better because it is more free Citation needed. Freedom isn't all it's made out to be. I'd much rather give up the freedom to consume hard drugs than live free in a society filled with drug addicts. Likewise I'm happy to forgo the freedom to own a gun if it means nobody else in my community has one.
    • shar3333f 8y ago
      > I'd much rather give up the freedom to consume hard drugs than live free in a society filled with drug addicts. Except western society is filled with drug addicts despite having the freedom to consume removed. People are going to consume drugs and develop maladaptive coping mechanisms of one sort or another regardless of what's legal or not. Personal freedom is great because people aren't punished for having personal issues.
    • mikekchar 8y ago
      This exchange is really interesting to me because it's really exactly the exchange that I've seen between Americans and Japanese people when they talk about a variety of topics (not just drugs). Americans (and to a certain extent people from some other western countries) seem to really value freedom culturally. It is to the point where even contemplating exchanging some freedom to gain something else is just obviously morally wrong without having to go through the necessity of justifying it. I often say that one of the reasons why many Americans (and British people as well) have difficulty in Japan is because both American (and British) culture are heavily moral, but that they have completely different values than Japanese culture. Both think the other completely immoral at times. The general Japanese response to the general American comment that people must be free is that individual's must not be selfish. The idea is that you decide as a community what kind of society you want and everybody has to be unselfish and give up some personal freedom to achieve this. I get along well in Japan mainly because this is the kind of culture I enjoy. I get very frustrated in the freedom loving, but ultimately comparatively selfish environment of my origin, Canada.
• voldacar 8y ago
  Do you really think it's ethical to use violence against people who consume a certain plant or substance merely because they happen to live in a culture that doesn't approve of that? To me it seems extremely likely that drugs and their legalization will ultimately be put in the same category as the legalization of homosexuality or the freedom of speech
  • andrei_says_ 8y ago
    Exactly. The phenomenon exists, either way. The only difference is society’s attitude toward it.
    • ak217 8y ago
      The phenomenon also results in huge costs that the individual ends up imposing on society. I'm not saying that means the substance must be banned. But clearly there's a difference between freedom of speech/association, and freedom to consume addictive substances, and maybe that freedom ought to be modulated according to how addictive the substance is.
      • andrei_says_ 8y ago
        The huge costs are close to 100% related to policing something extremely difficult to police. And of course these costs are somoene’s profit. The DEA still insists that cannabis should be a schedule I drug, but to them these costs are profit and job security, another example how measuring success via profit corrupts then original purpose of an institution. Similarly, if we were to outlaw red underwear or parsley, individuals who chose these things would incur similar costs. Or were you referring to something else?
• 3131s 8y ago
  You're not "old-fashioned", that's far too nice a word for someone who endorses violence and incarceration for people who like a drug that you disapprove of.
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• imetatroll 8y ago
  I agree with you if that means anything to you. The fact that drug problems in a country like Japan are far diminished relative to a country like the US means, in my mind, that the culture should attempt to maintain that purity, which can only be reasonably done by preventing people from partaking. Take fast food for instance. The Americanization of the Japanese diet is leading to increased obesity in what used to be a very healthy society. It is the mere exposure of these addictive foods that has lead to this. Honestly, it makes me a bit sad.
  • erikpukinskis 8y ago
    According to the original article there are known flaws in the drug use statistics in Japan so We actually have no idea how big a problem it is.