Marijuana

Re: Marijuna

Wessexman said:

If it is completely up to each person to pick their spot in society then surely that makes society something very superficial and unimportant to individuals who would be self-reliant and formed outside society? Sort of sounds quite atomistic to me. A basic plank of a non-atomistic view of society is there are elements that are not simply choice.

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Actually, it's quite the opposite. As people like Adam Smith and Fredrich Hayek have pointed out, when people are allowed to pick their own spot, they have greater incentive to join in and support society.

Wessexman said:

And again you resort to the simplistic 'we do not need government controlling our every move' line. As if I ever suggested any such thing. I'm quite a decentralist, I'm hardly going to advocate for what you keep suggesting.

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You are arguing for government intervention in this case, and making broad arguments to support it. I'm simply using a broad argument to rebuttal.

Wessexman said:

I provided analysis of why we must use a broader evaluation of those places before we come to any firm conclusions.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/116356-marijuana-26.html#post1060101107

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You have not shown how legalizing prostitution would cause moral decay. You have spoken in broad generalities that you say apply based on no real-world evidence.

Re: Marijuna

DrunkenAsparagus said:

Actually, it's quite the opposite. As people like Adam Smith and Fredrich Hayek have pointed out, when people are allowed to pick their own spot, they have greater incentive to join in and support society.

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This doesn't answer my point. Hayek actuall=y argues why we can't simply choose all aspects of our social relationships. You don't join society, you are already born into and regulated and formed by it. By suggesting society we simply pick our own spot you are describing an atomistic view of society, one where self-sufficing, fully formed individuals just decide what interactions they want with society.

Voluntary associations are important for society, of course, as is flexibility in our associations often. But we do not simply pick our own place. Robert Nisbet must rank as the premier conservative author on social associations. As he put it;

The conservative philosophy of liberty proceeds from the conservative philosophy of authority. It is the existence of authority in the social order that staves off encroachments of power from the political sphere. Conservatism, from Burke on, has perceived society as a plurality of authorities. There is the authority of parent over the small child, of the priest over the communicant, the teacher over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, and so on. Society as we actually observe it, is a network or tissue of such authorities; they are really numberless when we think of the kinds of authority which lie within even the smallest of human groups and relationships. Such authority may be loose, gentle, protective, and designed to produce individuality, but it is authority nevertheless. For the conservative, individual freedom lies in the interstices of social and moral authority. Only because of the restraining and guiding efforts of such authority does it become possible for human beings to sustain so liberal a political government as that which the Founding Fathers designed in this country and which flourished in England from the late seventeenth century on. Remove the social bonds, as the more zealous and uncompromising of libertarian individualists have proposed ever since William Godwin, and you emerge with, not a free but a chaotic people, not with creative but impotent individuals. Human nature, Balzac correctly wrote, cannot endure a moral vacuum.

You have not shown how legalizing prostitution would cause moral decay. You have spoken in broad generalities that you say apply based on no real-world evidence.

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You mean I have used reason and common sense. We must get our thoughts and basic conceptions right before we can start leaping onto to specific examples,

Re: Marijuna

No good options really. We don't have a war on drugs now, we have a media campaign on drugs. We need to get serious and put all dealers to death on the first offense. That will seriously put a damper on the drug trade.

Re: Marijuna

After living in India for 8 months and smoking pot and hash with sadhus, I would say my morality did the opposite of decay. It's not enough to simply compare pot to alcohol and cigarettes; neither of those have any spiritually redeeming qualities. Pot does. Rastafarians, Hindus, Yogis, Jains, and many other spiritualities the world over smoke the subspecies cannabis sativa to uplift their consciousness and arrive at spiritual virtues. But oops, sorry, I guess that's not Judeochristian enough so it doesn't count, right? Nobody wants to hear that you can smoke up and read, you know, actual holy books that elevate your consciousness? Plant based substances are not merely hallucinogens or psychedelics, they are ENTHEOGENS that people have been using for thousands of years to map existence. Their natural actions are built into human biology, and culture.

While I don't smoke pot anymore, I will continue to defend its spiritual aspects. You don't see a group of drunks sitting around talking philosophy, but you do with people who smoke cannabis. It forces you to contemplate your own existence and your own life. It inspires you to turn off the TV and go for a walk, and think about what it means to be human. It is a psychospiritual medicine just as much as it is a physical one; it generates creative thought processes that you would not otherwise have. Pot smokers are the most non-violent substance users I have ever encountered. People who say pot users are violent, dangerous, or degenerates, are spreading lies and fear-based consciousness. I can only surmise that alcohol is legal because it makes people more stupid - and cigarettes are legal because addiction and cancer bring profit. The last thing we want is people actually turning inward and asking themselves what they are finding there. :roll:

This argument is really bogged down by the stupid and ignorant who refuse to open their eyes and be educated on the wide use of entheogens. We have precedent being set all around the world demonstrating that drug legalization is of benefit to society - Portugal and Spain are western examples. It cleans up the addicts and the mentally ill, and it ceases persecution of the recreational or spiritual users. And yet the stupid, ignorant, pious prudes continue to feed us their empty rhetoric about control and domination of consciousness. You have ZERO RIGHT to tell me what I can put in my body on my journey to spiritual understanding in this life - none at all. I am frankly shocked that no one in the public has brought this matter to the SCOTUS on religious grounds.

In the United States, pot is illegal because the war on drugs funds a vast array of law enforcement and authoritarian control. If drugs were legalized, people would lose their jobs virtually overnight. If cannabis becomes legal, there remains no justification for the extremely high taxation on hemp products. The textile, food, and fossil fuel industries would suffer losses overnight. Not to mention, spiritual consciousness can openly elevate, and people can discuss it without fear of retribution. The last thing our government wants is critical and imaginative thinking to increase. Our public education system has made sure of that.

All of the modern research on cannabis shows that it does not cause lasting damage to users - if the ignorant and stupid prudes would care to even look at it, instead of clinging to what their pastors say. I am so enraged by the stupidity of opponents to drug decriminalization that I want them to just roll over and die. That is how little use I think they are to society. They serve no purpose but to further the divide of families and communities, to torment individuals who are harming no one, and to continue the black market corruption and government control over industry and money flows.

People who are opposed to legalization show no morality that makes a damn bit of sense. I would call them the most immoral among us. Their fear and irrationality are completely useless to the greater good. If it weren't for freedom of speech, I would support their silencing. Of all the groups in politics I would say I approach hatred to, it is proponents of continued drug criminalization - and especially of pot. You are USELESS.

Re: Marijuna

Cephus said:

No good options really. We don't have a war on drugs now, we have a media campaign on drugs. We need to get serious and put all dealers to death on the first offense. That will seriously put a damper on the drug trade.

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You're a moron for making such a suggestion. My next door neighbor growing up, who was 16, was a pot dealer. The idea that he should have been killed for distributing a harmless plant just shows the level of stupidity, idiocy, and lunacy endemic to your kind. You don't think before you speak, you just open your trap and shout whatever fear based non-sense decides to come out. You try to come across as an empiricist but you are anything but, since you clearly haven't seen what decriminalization has done to Spain and Portugal.

Keep flapping your gums. You're the reason why so many Americans suffer horrible torment in the penal system.

Re: Marijuna

I'm not sure you should discount the spiritual potentials of alcohol, as Plato is supposed to have said “He was a wise man who invented beer.”. In both Christianity and Sufi Islam wine has a long and important spiritual symbolism.

Cupbearer, it is morning, fill my cup with wine.
Make haste, the heavenly sphere knows no delay.
Before this transient world is ruined and destroyed,
ruin me with a beaker of rose-tinted wine.
The sun of the wine dawns in the east of the goblet.
Pursue life's pleasure, abandon dreams,
and the day when the wheel makes pitchers of my clay,
take care to fill my skull with wine!
We are not men for piety, penance and preaching
but rather give us a sermon in praise of a cup of clear wine.
Wine-worship is a noble task, O Hafiz;
rise and advance firmly to your noble task.
-Hafiz

While I agree that cannabis and certain other substances may be spiritually uplifting, and cannabis can also certainly be similar to alcohol in its social and cultural usages as well, I don't think most idiot Westerners who use these substances do so with any spiritual benefit though, beyond sometimes indirectly through the social and cultural effects. Spiritual development takes effort, it takes preparation and it takes purification. This is why shaman who use entheogens do so in a meaningful ritual. College kids who ingest magic mushrooms do not. It at least takes some grounding in a spiritual tradition and enough of a spiritually qualified mindset.

Re: Marijuna

Make marijuana a state issue only. Repeal all Federal laws on the matter and then leave it up to each state to decide how they want to handle marijuana. They can criminalize it or legalize it for medicinal purposes or legalize it for all purposes. The bottom line is the Federal government should butt OUT and let each state choose.

Re: Marijuna

Wessexman said:

While I agree that cannabis and certain other substances may be spiritually uplifting, and cannabis can also certainly be similar to alcohol in its social and cultural usages as well, I don't think most idiot Westerners who use these substances do so with any spiritual benefit though, beyond sometimes indirectly through the social and cultural effects. Spiritual development takes effort, it takes preparation and it takes purification. This is why shaman who use entheogens do so in a meaningful ritual. College kids who ingest magic mushrooms do not. It at least takes some grounding in a spiritual tradition and enough of a spiritually qualified mindset.

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That's merely a product of illegalization. Do you think that businesses, individuals, or institutions can openly talk about the spiritual values of pot use without suffering the watchful eye of government?

People's ignorance about how to use entheogens is partially a product of anti-drug culturalization.

I disagree that you need a spiritual tradition to have spiritual experiences on entheogens. I happened to have one in India, but I had spiritual experiences with entheogens before that. And I'm not some hippy. I grew up in a pretty conservative part of the U.S.

I firmly believe that these plants have evolved alongside humans, and that the desire to be altered is built in to our life experience. That doesn't mean everyone does it, but the knowledged gained from doing it is undeniable.

We need to stop bogging this debate down by having "drug" debates and talking about side effects. Those are irrelevant to freedom fo choice. I would rather talk about the psychospiritual implications, and how that could benefit humanity. We live in a culture that is swimming in anti-depressants. Entheogens are a demonstrable answer to that.

Re: Marijuna

I'm not sympathetic to the intellectual/spiritual "uplifting" argument about drugs (including alcohol). I am further reminded of Jefferson who was a bit of a wine drinker (well, snob, really) who considered wine to be the uplifting substance in conversation, stimulating the mind (as opposed to those darn beer drinkers). I can also say, many of my favorite conversations with friends about historiography came not from pot, but from liquor at Irish pubs, and I give no credit to the liquor, but only the people at that table.

Re: Marijuna

Fiddytree said:

I'm not sympathetic to the intellectual/spiritual "uplifting" argument about drugs (including alcohol). I am further reminded of Jefferson who was a bit of a wine drinker (well, snob, really) who considered wine to be the uplifting substance in conversation, stimulating the mind (as opposed to those darn beer drinkers). I can also say, many of my favorite conversations with friends about historiography came not from pot, but from liquor at Irish pubs, and I give no credit to the liquor, but only the people at that table.

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That's fine... but it's not your business to restrict my freedoms based on your own interpretations of substance use. It has those values for others and they are not feigned, but genuine, as I have described with my own experience. Your views do not justify throwing a person in jail for the long term, subjecting them to torment in the penetentary system, or dividing families or communities over it.

Legalization benefits everyone. Except government control, industry, and the black market gangs of course.

Re: Marijuna

Wessexman said:

While I agree that cannabis and certain other substances may be spiritually uplifting, and cannabis can also certainly be similar to alcohol in its social and cultural usages as well, I don't think most idiot Westerners who use these substances do so with any spiritual benefit though, beyond sometimes indirectly through the social and cultural effects. Spiritual development takes effort, it takes preparation and it takes purification. This is why shaman who use entheogens do so in a meaningful ritual. College kids who ingest magic mushrooms do not. It at least takes some grounding in a spiritual tradition and enough of a spiritually qualified mindset.

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If you're saying it is fine to use marijuana for spiritual uplifting, why is it SO completely wrong to use it in a recreational sense? What you're describing isn't what most people that smoke pot do it for anyways. You are more describing the use of alcohol, as a social lubricant. Marijuana is often used to relax, collect thoughts, and of course of spiritual experiences. Not to start a party and feel like a bad a**.

Re: Marijuna

Temporal said:

That's fine... but it's not your business to restrict my freedoms based on your own interpretations of substance use. It has those values for others and they are not feigned, but genuine, as I have described with my own experience. Your views do not justify throwing a person in jail for the long term, subjecting them to torment in the penetentary system, or dividing families or communities over it.

Legalization benefits everyone. Except government control, industry, and the black market gangs of course.

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Don't forget the privatized prison system....

Re: Marijuna

Was doing some Google scans on the matter .. and came across this: Street Pot Is Irrefutably Deadly

Oh my!

The OP goes for the jugular .. and thus the thread understandably bleeds profusely. Avatarishly speaking, I'm, of course, drawn to the letting.

Re: Marijuna

Wessexman said:

This doesn't answer my point. Hayek actuall=y argues why we can't simply choose all aspects of our social relationships. You don't join society, you are already born into and regulated and formed by it. By suggesting society we simply pick our own spot you are describing an atomistic view of society, one where self-sufficing, fully formed individuals just decide what interactions they want with society.

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I'm not saying that society has no influence over people or shaping them. That's why we don't need government enforcing personal morality. Society generally does a far better job.

Wessexman said:

Voluntary associations are important for society, of course, as is flexibility in our associations often. But we do not simply pick our own place. Robert Nisbet must rank as the premier conservative author on social associations. As he put it;

The conservative philosophy of liberty proceeds from the conservative philosophy of authority. It is the existence of authority in the social order that staves off encroachments of power from the political sphere. Conservatism, from Burke on, has perceived society as a plurality of authorities. There is the authority of parent over the small child, of the priest over the communicant, the teacher over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, and so on. Society as we actually observe it, is a network or tissue of such authorities; they are really numberless when we think of the kinds of authority which lie within even the smallest of human groups and relationships. Such authority may be loose, gentle, protective, and designed to produce individuality, but it is authority nevertheless. For the conservative, individual freedom lies in the interstices of social and moral authority. Only because of the restraining and guiding efforts of such authority does it become possible for human beings to sustain so liberal a political government as that which the Founding Fathers designed in this country and which flourished in England from the late seventeenth century on. Remove the social bonds, as the more zealous and uncompromising of libertarian individualists have proposed ever since William Godwin, and you emerge with, not a free but a chaotic people, not with creative but impotent individuals. Human nature, Balzac correctly wrote, cannot endure a moral vacuum.
You mean I have used reason and common sense. We must get our thoughts and basic conceptions right before we can start leaping onto to specific examples,

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I never went against these social bonds. This is because they are largely voluntary. They may influence people and attract them toward certain paths, but they differ from government force, in that they are not coercive. That's my point; these bonds make government force largely unnecessary. Right-Libertarianism is not against all authority and hierarchy, but coercion. It is a subtle distinction, but an important one.

Re: Marijuna

DrunkenAsparagus said:

I'm not saying that society has no influence over people or shaping them. That's why we don't need government enforcing personal morality. Society generally does a far better job.

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You have to remember that the law is supposed to be the enforcement arm of society. It's illegal because society has deemed it impermissible.

Re: Marijuna

DrunkenAsparagus said:

I'm not saying that society has no influence over people or shaping them.

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You strongly implied it.

That's why we don't need government enforcing personal morality. Society generally does a far better job.

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Government is an important part of human interactions, it is intertwined with many areas of society and culture and therefore has a social role. Government can certainly encourage and support morality. Not in the sense that it completely enforces, but it can certainly has some cautious, but not insignificant role in this area.

I never went against these social bonds. This is because they are largely voluntary. They may influence people and attract them toward certain paths, but they differ from government force, in that they are not coercive. That's my point; these bonds make government force largely unnecessary. Right-Libertarianism is not against all authority and hierarchy, but coercion. It is a subtle distinction, but an important one.

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They are not completely voluntary, far from it. Many of the bonds are partially not chosen, such as family. Government has a role in society, it must be careful not to undermine these bonds, that is why I'm in favour of decentralised and relatively small government. But the idea it can have no moral role is simply an a priori and unsupported assumption and makes no sense. Government as an important aspect of social order and social and cultural consciousness, to be morally and culturally neutral would be to act against social and culture values and beliefs and there is no reason why encouragement of these values and beliefs should not sometimes be supported by law.

Re: Marijuna

MaddieGreenwell said:

If you're saying it is fine to use marijuana for spiritual uplifting, why is it SO completely wrong to use it in a recreational sense? What you're describing isn't what most people that smoke pot do it for anyways. You are more describing the use of alcohol, as a social lubricant. Marijuana is often used to relax, collect thoughts, and of course of spiritual experiences. Not to start a party and feel like a bad a**.

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I see little reason to keep marijuana illegal. Marijuana, like alcohol, is used both legitimately as an aid to positive human activities, where it doesn't usurp the experience, and in a silly way, like binge drinking, where the purpose is to mostly get intoxicated and perhaps engage in some dubious activities. But I wouldn't ban either simply because of this.

Re: Marijuna

Cephus said:

You have to remember that the law is supposed to be the enforcement arm of society. It's illegal because society has deemed it impermissible.

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Very true. The relationship is complex. The role of law isn't simply to ban what is looked down upon, and should be, socially and culturally. But that there can never be a role for government to enforce social morality seems arbitrary and indeed wrong.

Re: Marijuna

Legalize it on the State, rather than Federal, level and don't tax or regulate it.

Re: Marijuna

Wessexman said:

Very true. The relationship is complex. The role of law isn't simply to ban what is looked down upon, and should be, socially and culturally. But that there can never be a role for government to enforce social morality seems arbitrary and indeed wrong.

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It certainly be, but you're right, it is complex. The law tends to reflect current attitudes of society. When society collectively changes it's mind, people vote for laws, referendums and politicians that reflect their new attitudes and those laws change. I get really tired of people who act like the law, the government and the system are their enemies. No they're not, they're your fault! You voted to have them implemented that way!

Re: Marijuna

Cephus said:

No good options really. We don't have a war on drugs now, we have a media campaign on drugs. We need to get serious and put all dealers to death on the first offense. That will seriously put a damper on the drug trade.

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I am astonished. Yet another person who believes in using Draconian punishments against non violent citizens. And what punishments would you have in store for jaywalkers. :roll:

Re: Marijuna

evanescence said:

I am astonished. Yet another person who believes in using Draconian punishments against non violent citizens. And what punishments would you have in store for jaywalkers. :roll:

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"Non-violent citizens".

Such visualizations can be deceptive.

Arms dealers, themselves, are non-violent, and, they can be citizens. And, like drug dealers, they're just engaging in commerce with other citizens, other citizens who, if they're the end users, inflict criminal damage on others and often with deadly repercussive results to themselves.

But the arms dealer? Was he violent? Not really.

Does it matter that his beahvior was non-violent in setting off the understandable damaging reactions? Again, not so much.

His non-violentness is irrelevant.

Does it also matter that he was a citizen? Again, no, not at all.

His behavior is what it is, and the fact that he's a citizen is meaningless.

I'm always a bit amused at the irrelevancies people state in defense of behavior that's void of any redeeming value, behavior that directly leads to severe damage to others.

If you want to say that pot doesn't do brain damage, doesn't trigger pychologically or physiologically addictive reaction in the many millions so predisposed who are often children, doesn't cause deadly traffic accidents, etc., etc., well, that's fine. Those are straight and relevant statements that can be straight and relevantly debated, on-topic.

But that some drug dealers themselves might be behaving non-violently and they might be citizens -- that's all pretty much irrelevant divertive subterfuge, argumentationally speaking, a form of sophistry, I would imagine.

Non-violent citizens are rightly indicted, convicted and sentenced to incarceration for behavior involved in inflicting severe damage on others. And depending on the nature of their crime, they are sometimes even sentenced to death.

The fact that they were non-violent and citizens, does in no way excuse their crime.

And that's a good thing .. from society's perspective.

These criminals may not be end- murderers, kidnappers, child-abusers and the like.

But they still prey on people, illegally, against society's wishes.

We thus lock those so convicted behind bars.

We do that to punish them ..

.. And we do that to get them off our streets, so as to protect ourselves from their damaging behavior.

Re: Marijuna

Ontologuy said:

These criminals may not be end- murderers, kidnappers, child-abusers and the like.

But they still prey on people, illegally, against society's wishes.

We thus lock those so convicted behind bars.

We do that to punish them ..

.. And we do that to get them off our streets, so as to protect ourselves from their damaging behavior.

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You clearly must not know much about marijuana. Legalizing marijuana wouldn't cause people to engage in "damaging behavior" or want to start doing other illegal things. I have friends in ivy league colleges that smoke pot, and you think because they smoke marijuana that they the kind of people you think that are damaging today's society and making it unsafe? *rolls eyes*

Re: Marijuna

MaddieGreenwell said:

You clearly must not know much about marijuana.

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I don't believe that's an accurate statement or that it could be logically inferred from my previous post. It sounds like you'd like it to be, but empty wishes are fairly meaningless.

Here's something to read on the matter: Street Pot Is Irrefutably Deadly. I've read this OP, among many other presentations about pot, and I've read its links. They're all true. It's about the facts. And, it's about the inescapable logical conclusion about the untrustworthiness of the presentation of those who just want their drug.

So, clearly, your assumption is obviouslly false.

MaddieGreenwell said:

Legalizing marijuana wouldn't cause people to engage in "damaging behavior" or want to start doing other illegal things.

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Well, your statement doesn't mean anything with regard to speaking to what I presented in my previous post.

Whether or not we legalize pot has no effect on causing "people to engage in 'damaging behavior' or want to start doing other illegal things", other than, most likely, increasing such incidence.

Your statement appears to be a confusion.

MaddieGreenwell said:

I have friends in ivy league colleges that smoke pot, and you think because they smoke marijuana that they the kind of people you think that are damaging today's society and making it unsafe? *rolls eyes*

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Again, all I can say to your statement here is "Huh???"

I simply replied to the statement that just because some drug dealers may be both non-violent and citizens is simply irrelevant with regard to the nature of their behavior that society (meaning the great majority of responsible Americans who care about their children and themselves and America as a whole and all) considers very damaging.

Just because the dealers are non-violent and citizens is .. irrelevant.

But, as to your statement about your ivy league friends .. do they push their pot on children? .. are they addicted? .. is the pot causing brain damage to them? .. do they ever drive while stoned? .. etc.?

Due to the social nature of human beings, that such is a considerably large plurality of which your ivy league friends may, possibly, be considered members by some .. well, by understandable definition, if they do harm to themselves wih pot, they're probably thereby damaging society, to some degree, though perhaps small.

When you add up all the psychological/physiological drug addicts acting out, well, then you have a lot of people killed and maimed in auto accients caused by pot DUI .. etc.

But that wasn't really the point of my previous post.

As to any pro-pot arguments people might want to make in reaction to my posts, I'm not really in that much of a mood to debate the matter, as it's all been said before.

Instead, I would love to hear some reaction to that link I prsented earlier here. I mean, with regard to arguments in favor of the status quo, I've simply never read anything more comprehensively winning on the matter.

Re: Marijuna

Ontologuy said:

"Non-violent citizens".

Such visualizations can be deceptive.

Arms dealers, themselves, are non-violent, and, they can be citizens. And, like drug dealers, they're just engaging in commerce with other citizens, other citizens who, if they're the end users, inflict criminal damage on others and often with deadly repercussive results to themselves.

But the arms dealer? Was he violent? Not really.

Does it matter that his beahvior was non-violent in setting off the understandable damaging reactions? Again, not so much.

His non-violentness is irrelevant.

Does it also matter that he was a citizen? Again, no, not at all.

His behavior is what it is, and the fact that he's a citizen is meaningless.

I'm always a bit amused at the irrelevancies people state in defense of behavior that's void of any redeeming value, behavior that directly leads to severe damage to others.

If you want to say that pot doesn't do brain damage, doesn't trigger pychologically or physiologically addictive reaction in the many millions so predisposed who are often children, doesn't cause deadly traffic accidents, etc., etc., well, that's fine. Those are straight and relevant statements that can be straight and relevantly debated, on-topic.

But that some drug dealers themselves might be behaving non-violently and they might be citizens -- that's all pretty much irrelevant divertive subterfuge, argumentationally speaking, a form of sophistry, I would imagine.

Non-violent citizens are rightly indicted, convicted and sentenced to incarceration for behavior involved in inflicting severe damage on others. And depending on the nature of their crime, they are sometimes even sentenced to death.

The fact that they were non-violent and citizens, does in no way excuse their crime.

And that's a good thing .. from society's perspective.

These criminals may not be end- murderers, kidnappers, child-abusers and the like.

But they still prey on people, illegally, against society's wishes.

We thus lock those so convicted behind bars.

We do that to punish them ..

.. And we do that to get them off our streets, so as to protect ourselves from their damaging behavior.

Click to expand...

Yes. Non violent.

The vast majority of violence associated with drugs exists because drugs are illegal. It's supply and demand just like everything else. If the legal market cannot provide, then the black market steps in. This unregulated market controlled by gangs is the source of almost all drug related violence. Legalize it.