This is the sort of response that makes me wonder: dude, what have you been smoking? Let's start with the whole notion of organizing our society based on some

This is the sort of response that makes me wonder: dude, what have you been smoking? Let's start with the whole notion of organizing our society based on some perceived need to compete with a country half the world away. That's the sort of paranoia combined with hazy connections that I'd expect from somebody who was a bad kind of high. And then there's the concern about addiction. Marijuana is way down the list of addiction potential. Nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine are much stronger and the former two have widespread proven harm: between the two they cause ~600k deaths per year. [1][2] (People debate the latter more, but most of those arguing in favor of caffeine are addicts themselves, and nobody can deny that Starbucks is a plague upon the urban landscape.) And let's not forget sugar, the white powder that causes enormous medical harm and that whole industries work to hook our children on!!1! Jokes aside, I'd note that at least here in California, we already have a "middle ground". Marijuana is only available from a relatively small number of places, with production and distribution heavily regulated. Alcohol and nicotine are much more widely available. If anything, I'd expect legalization has resulted in reduced availability to minors, as this has surely driven a lot of the previous weed dealers out of business. I believe that we have a duty to prevent people from exploiting others, especially to prevent organized commercial exploitation. And I believe that duty is strongest where addiction is concerned, because that bypasses the rational choice that freedom depends on. But on balance I think we do a much better job with marijuana than drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and the legal opiates. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...