marijuana, legal? Options

[ghjgfkgfk]

i know there this topic about this in lounge but i wanted only serious reponses, and i'm asking something different anyway

do you think pot should be legal?
if yes, what good will come out of it?
do you aprove people using it?
have you ever tried it?

i tihnk it should be legal because there is good that will come out of it:
*it would be safer. people would not have to buy from dealers where they didn't know where it had come from.
*there really won't be any dealers. do you see alcohol and cigarettes dealers on the the side of street? you don't
*there would be less pressure to do it
*while the police are busting the marijuana deal, they are missing the crack or herion deal over the next street (okay, that's an exaggeration)
they could focus on the bigger issues.
*taxes!
*cigarettes and alcohol do more damage than marijuana, but they are legal
*most people don't it to be 'cool'. everyone has different effects on it. some peopel said they do it because it helps them eat, sleep, foucus, and get rid of stress.
*illegal drugs are more tempting to do, well i think.
*free up jail cells

what do you think?

[ComradeRed]

After you are in jail, it is on your record forever. It will be basically impossible for you attend a good college, or get a decent job. Most people, after leaving jail, end up on government welfare, where we taxpayers pay their way for the rest of their lives. While in jail, they might learn to be violent criminals, and commit REAL crimes down the line, which further causes social harms and harms themselves as well. As nice in theory as it is, very few people manage to put their lives together after spending a long time in jail. On the other hand, a lot of people manage to put their lives together -- on their own -- after using marijuana. Some of them ended up being President of the United States (you know, if you abbreviate President Of The United States, you get POT US). Moreover, a lot of people are punished by civil asset forfeiture in addition to jail -- In other words, the government TAKES ALL YOUR PROPERTY AND DOESN'T HAVE TO GIVE YOU A LAWYER. It's almost imopssible to rebuild your life when you own nothing, are on the street, and have 10-year-jail sentence behind you. Even worse, many pot smokers are actually given LIFE sentences now. How do you put your life together when you are in jail for life? Look up the cases of Lonnie Lundy and Debbie Vineyard.

Plus, the ONLY way to enforce laws against drugs is to invade people's Constitutionally-guaranteed privacy. Drugs are a victimless crime, after all. In other crimes, you have a victim to report the crime. But there is no victim in drug abuse. So the only way to conduct a war on it is to vioalte people's rights -- which in the end causes more harm than drugs do. Remember, ALL drugs were legal up until the 1960s. In the 1920s, we tried to launch a war against one drug -- alcohol -- which ended in a bloody failure. Since the War on Drugs began in the late 60s, the poverty rate has jumped from 5% to 15%, the murder rate has doubled, and the rate of Americna in jail has climbed to 0.7% -- more than any other country, and most of the people in American jails have never harmed another human being. Drugs have been legal for 200 years -- and our country did fine. The War on Drugs is as Unconstitutional as it is Unamerican.

“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
--President Abraham Lincoln