Ssshhh... don't tell Putin that - he doesn't believe in victimless crimes! He'd like to throw all 70 million Americans who have admitted to using Cannabis into prison so they can be gang-raped and beaten, too.

"I don't have the exact figures, "

Tellingly. Because that 'fact' is made up by the legalization lobby. It's not fact but fiction. Few people are in prison for marijuana use. If that were true half of webdip would be rotting in jail.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/interviews/schlosser.html

"I don't have the exact figures, but I know that a substantial portion of the prison population are serving time for illegal drug abuse, most of which is marijuana abuse/distribution."

Lol. Please.

Well, 16% (as cited in the interview I just posted) is pretty substantial, imo.

You should all come to the NL and have a joint with me.

@Eden/jpgredsox: The interview you just posted do not actually support the argument made.

"Well the fact is that many of the prisons of America are housing countless criminals who committed victimless crimes. I don't have the exact figures, but I know that a substantial portion of the prison population are serving time for illegal drug abuse, most of which is marijuana abuse/distribution."

The term used in the argument above has specifically referred to 'drug abuse'. Drug abuse is specific to drug consumers.

Eden, your article specifies that the lasge majority of people in prison with offences related to marijuana are "growers and dealers".

Growers and dealers are not perpetrators of "victimless crime". The obvious victims are the consumers, although they don't see themselves at that. Moreover, drugs crime is almost always related to other forms of crime - not just other forms of drugs but also prostitution, trafficking, theft, and violent crime.

I don't see why it matters that selling marijuana is related to other crimes in this particular line of argument. If the marijuana dealer is also a murderer, why not lock him up for murder? Why criminalize the sale and production of a harmless drug? All that does is rope in people who legitimately are just selling marijuana peacefully in their neighborhoods.

It makes about as much logical sense to say "Well, some people who kill use marijuana, so let's criminalize marijuana to catch the bad guys killing people" as "Well, everyone who kills breathes, so let's criminalize breathing to catch the bad guys killing people." The fact that there's a correlation between the two in no way implies causation; and where there's a possible causational link, the truth is that driving marijuana underground by criminalizing is to blame *for* that link.

Why is trafficking, theft and violent crime linked to drug crimes? Because it is illegal, pushing it underground. If it was legalised, or at least decriminalised, that would remove the more serious crimes linked to the drug trade as it would be open to scrutiny and/or regulation.

Or the causality is reversed. Obviously, committing a murder is a big thing and taking a joint after a killing spree can be soothing.

Lol whoops, Eden got there before me.

"Why criminalize the sale and production of a harmless drug?"

Well, that's just it. There's not enough evidence that it is harmless. That is a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Why is theft linked to drug crime?

So that people can fund their addictions.

Drugs are addictive. And whilst the middle-class takers can happily pay for your addictions - spare a thought for those people struggling to make ends meet whose drug addiction fills the void: theft is often the easy option. Violent crime is deeply linked to theft, especially when such acts are drug-induced.

Okay... so why criminalize it? Why not legalize and regulate it like the hordes of other potentially-harmful-but-certainly-useful drugs we already have? Or, alternatively, why don't we let adults be adults and decide for themselves whether they're going to take a long-term harmful drug for minimal short-term gain? We do that with alcohol, after all.

Tobacco and alcohol, and the latter is a large cause of violent crime. The former is a huge cost on the health industry. Yet how often do you hear of violent crime being committed by pot smokers? If it is regulated to a similar extent as alcohol (e.g. no operating vehicle while high, etc), then I don't see what is so bad about people smoking in their own time.

Eden, you can argue like that to the sun goes down. Why not decriminalize arsenic?

Let adults choose if they want to take arsenic?

http://www.economist.com/node/12585140

I hear what you're saying re: theft, and it's a valid point. But two thoughts:

(1) On that pretense, do we ban anything else that tempts people to steal? I feel like the notion that we should ban something because it makes people more likely to do x-harmful-thing is a rather precarious one, and that simply punishing for doing x-harmful-thing is the more accurate means of dispensing justice.

(2) While I understand it's not entirely unavoidable - certainly at least some of the poor shouldn't be indulging in habits they can't afford? Drugs are a luxury, let's just get that out in the open, they're by no means essential to continued existence. But just as it would be absurd to ban the sale and production of yachts because I might ride a yacht one day and become so obsessed with the idea of having my own yacht that I start a life of crime to pay for it, I think it would similarly be absurd to ban marijuana because people might steal to pay for their addictions. And yes, I know, addictions are certainly different from mere covetousness, but the logic from the justice system perspective holds, imo.

(Further, my understanding, though I could be wrong, is that marijuana is a non-addictive drug.)

^Put real criminals in prison, people who fire guns and everything. Cannabis, no matter how "hot" a topic, is just a relatively innocent drug. Dangerous to the body, but yeah, smoking 50 cigarettes a day is also dangerous to the body and no law forbids it.

"Eden, you can argue like that to the sun goes down. Why not decriminalize arsenic?

Let adults choose if they want to take arsenic?"

...why not?

Furthermore, people keep linking alcohol and marijuana as if they are equals and should be legalised to represent that.

Alcohol has been present in western culture much much longer than marijuana. There are many historical reasons why alcohol use is so prevalent in our culture. Marijuana was originally imported into western societies. The relationship is very different.

Correct, but why should the cultural differences matter from a legal perspective?

"...why not?"

Why not? Because society needs to be about balancing the needs and freedoms of its members with protecting the vulnerable.

Arsenic is conducive to very little positive effect in society. The same case has been made for marijuana, whether you agree with that or not.

Alcohol has had a place in western society far longer than marijuana. It has a much deeper cultural significance. It is not the same.

"but why should the cultural differences matter from a legal perspective?"

Because culture is essential to society formation and the laws of a society reflect that. That is not rocket science, that is obvious.

"but why should the cultural differences matter from a legal perspective?"

Because culture is essential to society formation and the laws of a society reflect that. That is not rocket science, that is obvious.

Look at your constitution - a great many details of it are culture. Gun use? Cultural.

But what vulnerable people are affected by the legalization of various items, like marijuana or arsenic? That's what I'm not following. You can criminalize putting arsenic in food for consumption without proper labeling, for example, and ensure that it's not legal to harm people with arsenic. Truthfully, with respect to arsenic specifically, it's an extremely moot point, because no one would buy arsenic for consumption...

As for marijuana, again, what vulnerable people are hurt by it? If it's addiction, again I gotta point to other legal things like alcohol. This link from alternet discusses the question of marijuana addiction, and cites a report supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse claiming that only some 9% of marijuana users become addicts, compared to 15% for alcohol and a whopping 32% for tobacco, another legal drug. ( http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151991/is_marijuana_addictive/ )

I'm still not following the cultural argument. Culture should not affect the legality of drugs. If you're talking about culture to explain why it's the case that some drugs are legal and some aren't, okay, I buy that, but it doesn't affect whether it *should* be the case.

"Because culture is essential to society formation and the laws of a society reflect that. That is not rocket science, that is obvious.

Look at your constitution - a great many details of it are culture. Gun use? Cultural."

Again, my question is why *should*, not why *does.*

And yes, there's a marked difference in gun laws between Britain and America. This is, indeed, ultimately due to culture - because culture shapes the moral values that guide lawmaking.

My question is *what moral values* justify making alcohol, by all accounts a more dangerous and addictive substance, legal, but marijuana illegal?

Funny how in America there's a war on drugs, but no war on guns. Culturally, being European and used to wars involving lots of guns and very few drugs, that is just hard to grasp :-)

"Truthfully, with respect to arsenic specifically, it's an extremely moot point, because no one would buy arsenic for consumption..."

You miss the point. The suggestion was not necessarily that people would buy arsenic to consume it personally but that it could be used on others as well. It's not a moot point at all - legalising arsenic would be highly dangerous.