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Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

pewresearch.org

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Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#121

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

mcny wrote: post #91
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what's wrong with California regulating emissions? People have rights. And the most straightforward way to cater for these rights is to split people into groups. If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them. Save the vigor for what's really important.

> Sorry, what's wrong with California regulating emissions? Nothing. Ideally it would be at the federal level so California wouldn't have to do it though. > If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them. No. The hypothetical ninety percent of people in Alabama have no right to restrict the rights of the other ten percent. It doesn't affect them. They should stay out of it.

> The hypothetical ninety percent of people in Alabama have no right to restrict the rights of the other ten percent

My castle - my rules.

I have close to 100% right to restrict smoking in my home.

I have close to 0% right to restrict smoking on the whole planet.

The boundary is somewhere in between.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#122

Post by ddingus »

ike0790 wrote: post #120
ddingus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primary health care, as a market, is illegal in much of the world. Most of the world disagrees with what you put here and performs better than the US.

False. America’s healthcare quality is the best in the world despite current issues with affordability. Most developed countries with socialized medical care are far smaller then the US. Most are smaller then just LA or NYC alone. Every market the government enters by subsidizing cost creates market distortions that have contributed to multiple financial crises in this country(mortgage and higher education). My compr…

Quality does not equal performance.

For a few, the quality is amazing, but even Cuba does better at keeping its people healthy than we do.

Cuba regularly contributes to medicine same as we do and doctors are a national export, recognized around the world.

And just what is an "economically productive" person?

You do realize those numbers come from tons of other people, who work hard and too many of whom have no meaningful access to that quality medicine?

No, probably not.

Finally, there is how health care is funded, who has access, and how care, medicine is delivered.

Socialized medicine is the VA, and that is not what Medicare is.

Medicare is funding health care, not socialized medicine.

It is hard to consider your other points given these basic misalignments.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#123

Post by triceratops »

akvadrako wrote: post #116
triceratops wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But both parties are against it. The Senate is split 50-50. It's fair to say one half of that is more strongly opposed to it than the other since their states even rejected the Medicaid expansion accompanying Obamacare. So it sounds like the Senate is doing a poor job of representing the people. Which leads to the obvious question: why have a Senate at all?

The Senate represents the states, not the people.

Doesn't answer my question. Why is it important to represent a "state"?

Hypothetically if you had only two states, one with 20 people and the other with 20 million (entirely feasible with the Constitution), would it be useful to given them both 2 Senators each? Would the federal government's laws and actions faithfully represent how the people in the nation actually feel?

This isn't a hypothetical concern. See the laws on marijuana for why "representation for states" isn't ideal. For further evidence, see action on climate change.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

GeekyBear wrote: post #118
dragonwriter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to be discussing a different Biden than the one we have. No, I’m discussing the actual one we have, and the actual concrete positions he has taken, starting in the campaign, and reiterated yesterday by his press secretary. You , on the other hand, are relying on a heavily-spun media conflict narrative that does not accurately portray the positions he has taken (claiming he supports “only decriminalization”…

Sorry, but Vox is not fake news, and you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization. My point remains. Biden is a larger obstacle to full legalization than Congress.

> Sorry, but Vox is not fake news,

I didn’t say “Vox is fake news”.

I said that article youn cited is misleading and distorts the facts to push an exaggerated conflict narrative.

> you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization.

Well, I mean I could, it would be no harder than spinning medical legalization plus federally-protected state-choice legalization plus rescheduling plus decriminilization plus automatic criminal record expungement as “only decriminalization”.

But I didn’t. I did point out that the only practical difference between what Biden advocates ans what Schumer, et al., advocate is that the shrinking number of states that don’t choose liberalization woild have federal support for their internal policy. Which, while a significant difference, isn’t a wife enough gap in preferrred policy to stop a bill from being passed somewhere in the space, inclusive, between the two endpoints, largely dependent on where the support is in Congress. Whichever side doesn’t get what they most prefer (which might be both) would no doubt paint it as imperfect, but that's different than blocking it.

What is a real barrier is votes in the Senate, where Democrats certainly have most of their caucus but jave a couple wildcards, but very lolely don’t have the Republican votes to clear a filibuster even if they can reach a majority (and definitely don’t, unless Manchin can be broken down, have the votes to reform thr cloture rule to make the filibuster less of a barrier.)

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#125

Post by akvadrako »

triceratops wrote: post #123
akvadrako wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Senate represents the states, not the people.

Doesn't answer my question. Why is it important to represent a "state"? Hypothetically if you had only two states, one with 20 people and the other with 20 million (entirely feasible with the Constitution), would it be useful to given them both 2 Senators each? Would the federal government's laws and actions faithfully represent how the people in the nation actually feel? This isn't a hypothetical concern. See the la…

Because that was the condition on which the states joined the union and it's what many states, and the people in them, still want. They want local control, not to be forced to follow what the majority in bigger states decide. That's because local control gives each person more power over their own life.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#126

Post by protomyth »

paxys wrote: post #85
protomyth wrote: post #44

I still don't understand how DUI is going to work? The testing doesn't seem to have kept up with the desires of the public.

I don't think anyone has been able to conclusively say that marijuana legalization actually increases the percentage of smokers in any state where it has been implemented.

I really don't care about the increase. I care about disproving / proving DUI in court. Without a valid blood test / breath test and some standards, its going to be a rough go.

As to if high people are bad drivers, then yes they are. I don't even know how that's a debate. What constitutes high is the real debate.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#127

Post by dumbfoundded »

wwweston wrote: post #108
dumbfoundded wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty silly way to think about the issue. Loud music, dogs barking, kids running around on the floor above you, smoke of any kind, a bed frame hitting the wall repeatedly. I wouldn't rethink the legal status of music, dogs or children because of some bad neighbors.

Noise ordinances are absolutely a thing, and common. Smoke ordinances would be at least that reasonable.

Yes, that would be very reasonable. The current status of cannabis as a schedule 1 substance is a completely different subject.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#128

Post by paxys »

protomyth wrote: post #126
paxys wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone has been able to conclusively say that marijuana legalization actually increases the percentage of smokers in any state where it has been implemented.

I really don't care about the increase. I care about disproving / proving DUI in court. Without a valid blood test / breath test and some standards, its going to be a rough go. As to if high people are bad drivers, then yes they are. I don't even know how that's a debate. What constitutes high is the real debate.

My point is that all of this is already a problem. Legalization will, if nothing else, make it easier to conduct research and get funding to fix some of this.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#129

Post by GeekyBear »

dragonwriter wrote: post #124
GeekyBear wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Vox is not fake news, and you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization. My point remains. Biden is a larger obstacle to full legalization than Congress.

> Sorry, but Vox is not fake news, I didn’t say “Vox is fake news”. I said that article youn cited is misleading and distorts the facts to push an exaggerated conflict narrative. > you cannot spin decriminalization into full legalization. Well, I mean I could, it would be no harder than spinning medical legalization plus federally-protected state-choice legalization plus rescheduling plus decriminilization plus autom…

> What is a real barrier is votes in the Senate

If the real barrier were the Senate, it would not have renewed the ban on prosecution in states where Pot is legal while the Republicans held the majority.

The real barrier to full legalization is the fact that Biden opposes full legalization.

Re: Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal

#130

Post by sneak »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #97
sneak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also can't realistically expect recreational alcohol use with no long-term issues either: alcohol kills about 100k people per year in the USA. That's not a reason to ban it. The issues are caused by the user, to the user . If users are causing issues to others (violence, theft, drunk driving, et c), those are separate and already-illegal things that can and should be enforced. Arresting people for possession is ba…

Probabilities matter. Cost-benefit matters. You can't just dismiss it with "well, some people don't commit crimes, therefore it's immoral to restrict freedoms." It's a gradient, and the people on the whole reserve the right to determine where the hard line is. This is one of the beautiful things about the fact the US has many states--each state gets to decide where they draw that hard line. If you don't like it you c…

> It's a gradient, and the people on the whole reserve the right to determine where the hard line is.

Yeah, except when those hard lines intersect the bodies of others. Nobody has the right to tell me what can or can't go in my body: that's exclusively my decision.

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