Question for those of you living in a country where marijuana is legal. What are the positive sides, what are the negatives?
If you could go back in time, would you vote for legalising again? Does it affect the country’s illegal drug business , more/less?
OP, please change the title to make it less vague what the question is about without having to open it.
@oyzmo@lemmy.world
Done, thanks 🙂
Legalize it
Tax it
Regulate it
Why tax it? Treat it like anything else. High taxes just make people go back to the black market.
Pros if properly managed, takes away profits for criminals and helps prevent grow ops causing a lot of problems in communities.
Con Managed poorly fucks over consumers and propogates the criminals by creating a bigger market for them
Pro new tax revenue to pay for services
It’s been legal in Canada since 2015ish. Haven’t noticed a difference, but now I can get better regulated gummies which is nice for my asthma.
There are some minor downsides, you can’t walk 5 minutes in downtown Toronto without smelling weed. I can tolerate it just fine, but some people hate it. Otherwise it has been great.
Is this still a discussion on 2025? I always thought this was a no brainer, just blocked by demonization and the lack of examples of places that legalized and nothing bad happened. We should be discussing how to deal with other drugs. Marijuana is pretty much solved
The widespread legalization, overwhelmingly positive reception, and complete lack of any of the dangerous consequences we were warned about makes you wonder what else “They” were wrong about.
I think that the pros are obvious. It should simply be legal, and other comments have given good reasons.
However, there are some cons that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
It impairs you, so any activity where that is a problem, like driving, may need extra attention or public education.
For smokers, inhaling smoke is dangerous.
Context first:
Canadian and I’m high more often than not, so this will be biased. I didn’t really vote to legalize exactly, it was just part of a campaign that promised voting reform. Only one of the two happened :( I didn’t use weed previous to Justin’s legalization campaign.
That said, I’m pro decriminalization of everything for the end user, and almost all manufacturing for most drugs except the notorious ones wreaking havoc in society. Opioids and meth mainly.
I do think we need to consider unwillful sobriety centers for these specific types of extremely damaging addicts, but that’s a tough conversation society needs to have that it won’t. Ideals over reals. They suffer in the street causing havoc and ruining public transportation all the same meantime. Then you have the Cons basically wishing them to die ignored in an alley without any aid at all and getting in the way of any action. Getting off topic here.
Question for those of you living in a country where marijuana is legal. What are the positive sides, what are the negatives?
Positives:
Not sending functional or good enough people to prison for dumb cruel reasons.
The big fear was the youth smoking more over time didn’t materialize.
Freedumb!1! I like vaping THC quite a lot, selfish positive :)
Cons:
Mainly it’s a few glaring flaws in the Liberal Party rollout. There’s still government enabled social stigma.
Given not a word was said about it in our recent election that I heard about, I’m pretty sure weed being legal is a complete non-issue for pretty much everyone voting except the nutters like MADD. Yet politicians are still afraid to finish the job properly.
Apt name calling themselves MADD, but I don’t mean what it stands for. Treating weed like alcohol for a DUI isn’t scientifically backed and it’s puritan/prohibition minded moral panic theatrics. Then there’s the fact you can still get fired for smoking on a weekend off work if your boss drug tests you week(s) later. That’s fucking bullshit.
Basically I just follow the data. Minimum age is too low. Getting high is bad for developing brains, I think it shouldn’t be legal to consume until the brain is done development. Age 25. That’s unpopular, I don’t care. I say the same for alcohol. That’d also kill most of the alcoholic binge drinking party culture, because 25+ hangovers and being out of grade school/college.
If you could go back in time, would you vote for legalising again? Does it affect the country’s illegal drug business , more/less?
Sure I would. It’s been fine.
Big dent, not totally dead. I mean we can grow our own too. Black market is still cheaper, but they’re not selling me 510 carts. I don’t smoke weed anymore it’s disgusting. Smell, smoke, tar, cleaning, bleh. Vape. Dry toaster vape instead if scared of glycol. That works well and I used to, but it’s pretty wasteful/inefficient for a chronic user I find compared to 510 carts. Plus I can control dosage way easier. I hate being too stoned by accident. I couldn’t do this when it was illegal, so my bad habit is made a little less harmful made legal. I got options now.
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Pro
But Bill Maher is a walking testament to why it matters a great deal how often you come back to the surface.
Thank you for all the answers! :) It seems like most replies are positive to legalisation. The (amount of) stores is mention by a few to be one of the negatives. Perhaps government-owned stores (Like those some Nordic countries have for alcohol) could be a better solution? They have trainer employees and very strict rules both for opening times and age controls.
Government stores is how it works in Quebec Canada and I found that to be the best experience for sure
weed smokers are not cool anymore, like wow bro you’re going to go home and follow the law. Lame
My state has 10 million people and made over $300 million in tax last year distributed around $100 million each divided between roads, schools, and local municipalities/community organizations.
I’m going to go against the grain here a little. First of all, it should absolutely be decriminalized. No one should spend time behind bars for using or selling it, obviously.
But it got legalized here back in 2022 and while it was great at first, weed sort of sucks now. Because of legal limits to how many plants you can grow, CBD disappeared. Every strain is somewhere between 20-30 percent THC and just makes your brain numb, doesn’t get you high the same way. Everything is way more expensive because every few years they vote to increase taxes on it, so strains that were 5 bucks a g when it was illegal are 10-11 now. Edibles have concentration limits so you’re paying out the ass now for 100 mg, which someone would before make in their kitchen and give away for cheap.
Not to mention that there is one. On. Every. Street. Corner.
It’s insane. Every business that closes down turns into a dispo and the added competition does not lower prices. Out town is losing cafes, art stores, all sorts of businesses because the cancer that is a dispensary keeps spreading. On a personal note, I’ve been trying to cut back for years and honestly I think if I still had to call “my buddy” to pickup i would have stopped a long time ago, but now it’s in my face everywhere and tbh, it just sucks. It just gets you high. That’s it. I can’t explain it, it lost so much heart.
Now it’s probably cleaner, safer, more ethical. But from a consumers perspective, it kind of sucks now.
The taxes are a benefit though. While I agree pot should be legal, it is a vice and vice taxes seem like a good approach to discouraging a bad habit.
And yes as someone who moderately drinks, I whole heartedly agree the same is true with alcohol. Let’s increase those vice taxes. And cigarettes. And gasoline. And drink cans
Having lived in both, absolutely legalize.
I don’t personally care for it and I get annoyed by the public smells, the tacky and run-down stores that make neighborhoods feel trashy. But that’s all personal preference.
The one legitimate issue is that it is very difficult to regulate and enforce impairment. Someone driving or operating machinery high is just as dangerous as someone driving drunk. With alcohol, there are a number of different tests and impairment is well correlated with BAC. For marijuana, there is no quick and accurate way to assess how high someone is at a given time.
Impairment is impairment and being tired or distracted by phones/technology is often even worse than being intoxicated or high but we tend to love using BAC because it is easy to measure. Locations that legalized weed didn’t have an increase in impaired driving last time I checked, because most people don’t go out driving when they are high while people often drive intoxicated after drinking at bars.
BAC is also well correlated with impairment. Obviously it varies from one individual to another, but it is related strongly related enough to have fair and consistent enforcement.
AFAIK, blood tests that measure the presence of marijuana are relatively cheap, but measuring the concentration is slightly more difficult and is not well correlated with impairment. That means enforcement is problematic and subjective.
Someone driving or operating machinery high is just as dangerous as someone driving drunk
You have a source or anything to back this idea up?
I delivered pizzas in downtown Seattle for a couple years, and most of my coworkers were constantly stoned. Many weren’t just hitting pens or joints, they would hit a fat dab with a torch lighter and then hop in their vehicle and make a delivery.
Both years I worked there, our delivery team got an annual award for having 0 vehicle accidents.
Obviously this is anecdotal, but if you run this same situation back with alcohol instead of weed, I am confident there would have been many accidents.
I probably overstated by saying it is equally dangerous with somebody driving drunk. However, there are lots of studies that show it causes serious impairment.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2788264
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9940647/
https://jcannabisresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42238-023-00202-y
run-down stores that make neighborhoods feel trashy. But that’s all personal preference.
The dispensaries around me are really nice looking and always spotless
I live in suburbia and the cannabis stores cater, in part, to suburban moms. They are clean, well lit, and the staff are very approachable. It’s fascinating to see.
Look, I feel the same about liquor stores and mattress stores, to name a few. There are some nice examples, but most I don’t like to see.
Again, that’s my opinion and does not deserve any legislation. I’m glad other people feel differently. Businesses serve the needs of a community, not the feelings of internet randos. OP asked for our honest opinion and that’s just mine.
Level-headed response and you’re right that local zoning is handled locally.
If the community doesn’t want a business around they have to show up to the city council meetings and organize their neighbors against it. That’s how it works and I can speak from experience that it does actually work sometimes, at least with bars in mixed-use areas IME.
I’m sure it varies by location, but I mean like literally every single one I have ever seen in my state has been really nice. None of them look like liquor stores. It’s much closer to walking into a high-end jewelry shop, no joke. And I do not live in a great area by any stretch.
The ratio is the opposite of what you’re saying. A spotless liquor store is the exception, not the rule. Same goes for a grimey dispensary (assuming any exist at all in my state).
I think we should criminalize driving. It kills way more people than weeds and it smells way worst
I certainly don’t advocate people driving under the influence of any mind altering substances, and I believe if someone is found impaired at the time of an accident, the law should account for that.
However, and this is anecdotal, I grew up in a house where I knew from a very young age that my parents were smokers. There were far fewer days that my parents were not high. They performed all necessary driving without issues. They maintained focus and followed all (other) driving law and never got into accidents. I don’t partake at all now, but when I did, I drove regularly and never felt unsafe. There were instances where quick reaction time was necessary (swerving to miss an unexpected obstacle on a dark windy road in the rain, accidents involving other vehicles in front of me, etc.) and my conscious effort to focus on the task was way more important than whether or not I was high.
Now I ride a motorcycle and am much more aware of what is going on with drivers around me. The amount of people I see in their cars on their cell phones or busy talking to their friends or just generally not paying attention, I want to say that is the bigger issue. Alcohol disables your ability to choose that focus, and at least for me or the people I’ve been in a car with, cannabis does not. I’ve ridden in cars with friends that touch their phones while behind the wheel and it has always made me feel much less safe.
But this is just my experience, and I wanted to share. You aren’t wrong and I know it makes more sense advocating driving without influence, but to say it is just as dangerous as alcohol seems a stretch in my eyes.
I’m happy with legalization and would do it again.
- the health impact is similar enough to alcohol and cigarettes so we should treat them similarly
- even before I agreed with legalization, the legal consequences seemed cruel and unusual, way out of proportion
- law enforcement needs to focus on things with more impact on our safety
- for-profit prisons? wtf
- I don’t know about medical benefits but how was pit so illegal that we could never even investigate such claims?
- smoking is a serious health hazard but now it’s easier to get marijuana products that do t involve smoking
The one thing I’d do differently is stricter regulations against secondhand smoke. Now that cigarettes have seriously declined, it’s easier to appreciate just how much they stink. But we’ve backslid: smoking pot stinks worse, and has a lot of the same second hand smoke hazard.
Disagree on first and last point. MJ is NOT comparable to cigarettes. At all. This is coming from someone who has partaked in both. Both produce smoke but are not equal.
Cigarettes are WAY worse for your chest, and far more addictive, and easier to access/cheaper.
