Surgeon general: No 'value' to locking people up over marijuana use

The problem is when law isn't applied consistently, or when phenomena such as one's net worth making a difference in level of justice received is observed, then that's a strong message to those paying attention that there isn't value in following the rule of law, but rather value in knowing people in the right places or getting as much money as you can.

as a native German speaker it really stands out to me that his name translates to “honest man”...

Different folks have different motivations.

Capitalists want to legalize for profit.

SJWs want to legalize to reduce the prison population.

Libertarians want to legalize because one should be free to choose what they do with their bodies.

Users want to legalize because they don't want to deal with the risk, and prefer above-board retail.

Your characterization of smoking as a "vice" is your personal belief, and personally speaking, I see forcing that belief on others as a vice.

(Anonymous throwaway account because I'm still employed and usually comment from an account from which my identity can be derived)

I'm a habitual user with a hereditary predisposition towards addictive behavior. Moving to the Bay Area for work 7 years ago was the best move for my banking account(s) and the worst move for my life overall. The few years in between the move and the ability for me to walk into a store and walk out with a gram of THC across various products - all obtained above the board - were some of the most productive and socially rewarding years of my life. I was clean and not within hundreds or thousands miles of anyone who could serve me my biggest lifelong vice. I'm too weak. It took a few months after the change for me to cave in. I've missed weddings. I've lost friends because I've had season-long depressive episodes where I just can't bring myself to respond to any messages - all I have the energy and drive to do is crank out JIRA tickets and then go alter reality. I'm actually just past the tail end of one now and I still have a four-figure notification backlog.

Deep in my heart I know that it is a personal problem and it is entirely up to me to defeat my own demons. But I'm the uncaught NullPointerException that surfaced when my community removed the societal defensive programming around marijuana. I wish it were still illegal.

EDIT: and to preempt a "you weren't really addicted if you never went to get a farcical medical card" - believe me, the itch was there. But it was that extra level of indirection that kept me honest and on the straight and narrow. Every time I came close, the non-immediate reward was enough of a deterrence that I could make the rational choice.

> It seems accepted as an inevitable progress.

I see a pendulum in motion. When Sherlock Holmes was written, we had a very different view on drug use. Back then, it was a capitalist/libertarian utopia, where folks could generally cook up, sell, and use, pretty much anything they could manage. In the early 20th century, abstinence movements got popular, and everything including alcohol was criminalized. Today, we've got (depending where you live) legal alcohol, legal weed, open sales of hallucinogens, and safe injection sites for opiates.

Meth, weird to me, doesn't appear to be a big priority and it's huge in organized crime. Opiates are the villain of today, and the result of that may lead to a sharper distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs.

There's a big conversation underway about UBI -- opponents see it as encouraging "laziness," which, any honest stoner will admit, cannabis encourages. That could end up swinging the pendulum back the other way. I don't really see any of this as permanent or inevitable