Why is alcohol legal but marijuana isn't?

RUaPaleolib

Because marijuana leads to other drug use and then crime.

Holy SH!T "Liberty or Death", your on your soapbox big time tonight!

MyChem+TokioHotel=<3

It's legal in San Francisco!

Libertarian56

booze is hard to make. therefore most would rather purchase. Tax the sale. Weed is easy to grow and you smoke it right off the plant. no purchase. no tax. no purchase no ads at football games, no ads in mags, NO BUSINESS!
pot heads will not vote. When pot heads do vote they do not list legalization high on the agenda for legislation. Pot heads dont donate money to organizations the same way gun owners do to the NRA thus are politically non-existant.

guerilla77

Both are hazardous to your health. Additionally you don't hear about people dying from smoking too much weed due to the fact that its less popular, illegal, and therefore less talked about.

If someone dies because they were high and made a bad decision, it may or may not come out in some sort of investigation of the death afterwards, due to the nature of it being an illegal substance (so any family the person has might want to keep it quiet). But kill some other people while you're drunk behind the wheel? Evening News 100% of the time. Obviously the more popular activity regardless of which one is safer is going to be talked about more.

Maxbps

One reason is that smoking one joint is equivalent to smoking an entire pack of cigarettes. You do hear about people who die of smoking MJ. You just hear it as cancer, lung cancer, empheszema (sp?).

Another is that MJ alters your ability to much of anything but eat. So smoking one joint would be like drinking a 12-pack or taking three shots of whiskey.

There are way too many things in life to get high on than drugs like MJ. All My Best!

Aiea Joe

ive been asking that question for years

It was actually a business decision made by payoffs to government officials as well as the taxes generated from certant businesses in the late 1800's early 1900's.

First of all the cotton industry because hemp is much more durable, lasts longer and better material than cotton and other textiles.

The medical Industry had trouble in their beginning marketing their new medications because Marijuana help its the treatment of lost appitie, trouble sleeping, pain, and social use is good for us and is healthier than alcohol. Used in moderation is fine for all of us it's when it's abused it's a problem.

The alcohol industry was loosing money because people prefered marijuana over alcohol.

These industries took it to washington and because the government felt at the time they could make more taxes off all the other industries they made it illegal.

However it was NEVER so seriously enforced 'till our "great" president Ronald Reagan made all these new BS drug laws. Thank him too. LOL

Someday it will be legal

"weed unites the world"
-Bob Marley

P.S. They can't tax something you can grow at home yourself..........

boredwithyou

and one joint causes as much damage as five cigarettes, impairs your ability to function and generally makes you act stupid.

Mel

they tried to legalize alcohol in the 1920 but failed now weed is illegal but very easy to get illegally or legally now the reason for that ...

Justin1989

A little alcohol will show little affects, not causing liver damage or alcohol poisoning. Now, a little marijuana can have a large affect. Not to mention the government can tax alcohol, and can't tax marijuana. Marijuana is also proven to cause brain damage, and so forth.

PhizZingFree

America tried to prohibit alcohol once in our history. It was a total failure. Alcohol has been around for ages. It has been a tool in social events. It has been in religious traditions.
Weed is not...

thatgay

Long story short and the most important reason.. the government can't tax something everyone can and will home grow. Truth.

Dead Fox

This has been asked so many times already.

N&N

this is a state of the art and art of the state question, we live in a controversial world...drivers license at 16, married at 18, drinking and smoking at 21? everyone knows that cigarettes f.i. are hazardous to human being..esp. second hand smoke and also to the environment, what do we do, we depend on insurance, medications, it's all about money making business we are trapped in a vicious circel and there is nothing you can do about it then just either accept it or go to the Netherlands and smoke heavy weed..legally

Sweetpea

What about the cancer cause by smoking and we won't even go into the brain damage it causes.

TJ815

If you want to get messed up, drink like everyone else.

Bush is not conservative

Prohibition only creates crime and related social harms. This was the case in the 1920s with alcohol, and it is the case now with currently illegal drugs. It does not matter if you are for or against people using drugs. Prohibition does NOT WORK, and it costs far too much to continue.

I never really thought it through when I was younger. It was very simple to me: Drugs are bad, therefore they should be illegal. That was all of the thought I put into it, because I did not think beyond the propaganda that I heard every day in school. I did not think about all of the problems that prohibition causes (even though I had studied prohibition at one point), and I think that most people are pretty much brainwashed by the same propaganda, so most of us don't bother to think about the negative impact that the "WAR ON DRUGS" has on our society.

If you do not think we should change the laws, then you support drug UNcontrol. Prohibition means NO regulation, and NO control because drugs are pushed underground into criminality. Prohibition does not stop people from making, selling, buying or using drugs. All it does is make drugs impossible to control. The most optimistic reports show that we only interdict 10-15% of drug traffic. That means that prohibition is 85% to 90% ineffective. That also means that we have NO control over recreational substances.

It does not matter if you are for or against drug use. Prohibition is an abject failure. If we put a stop to this irresponsible and detrimental "WAR", our country could experience a huge DECREASE in:

-Crime (Crime is higher as a result of the war on drugs. In particular, homicides have skyrocketed - 10 per 100,000 - the only other time the homicide rate was so high was during alcohol prohibition. After prohibition, the murder rates dropped by more than HALF)

-Disease,

-Government Spending (A RAND corporation study showed that each dollar spent on education and treatment is 7 times more effective than a dollar spent on criminal interdiction, yet we spend more than 45 BILLION DOLLARS per year on criminal interdiction and incarceration costs, and less than 4 billion dollars on education, treatment, and prevention.
),

-Prison Population (According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US in 2005 was $67.55. That means it costs states approximately $16,948,295 per day to imprison drug offenders, or $6,186,127,675 per year),
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

-Gangs and Organized Crime (gangs are a product of drug prohibition),

-Corrupt Police (Who wants to live in a police state?),

-Drug Trafficking (obvious reasons),

-Drugs Use among Teens (Drug use INCREASED 7 fold among 12-17 year olds after the modern War on Drugs started. The economics of prohibition favors the targeting of youths. Drug dealers don't ask for ID),

-Graffiti (Gang tagging creates an enormous graffiti problem causing millions of dollars in damage every year. The gangs are a product of drug prohibition)

-Deaths due to overdose,

-car accidents caused by high speed chases (Where a driver is afraid of being caught with illegal drugs),

-divorce rate (parents would not be separated from the family due to petty possession convictions),

-GUN CONTROL - we have increasingly strict gun control laws because the crime wave that rides on prohibition has caused huge public outcry. Rather than focus on the cause of crime (socioeconomic factors of the drug war are a major component), the public and legislators lash out at gun owners. This would practically REMOVE the government's pretext to ban guns!

Since Nixon started the modern war on drugs, use among teens is up 7 times. This is because the black market created by prohibition makes underage teens a very easy target. The result is that illegal drugs run rampant through every high school in America. But alcohol, as a legal drug, is much harder for a minor to obtain.

We must remove the profit incentive in the black market for recreational substances - the only way to do that is to end prohibition and replace it with regulation. Congress is granted the power to "regulate commerce". "Regulate", to the writers of the Constitution, meant to facilitate the proper functioning of, as when someone regulates a clock to keep proper time, or the barrels of a double rifle to hit the same point of aim

The Rand corporation's study showed that every dollar spent on education or treatment programs is 7 times more effective that a dollar spent on criminal interdictions. If recreational substances were made available through a regulated and taxed means, just like alcohol, we could focus far more money on education and treatment and as a result, lower drug use and provide for a healthier society. The resultant reduction in crime will provide safer streets for police and citizens, and allow the police to concentrate on real crimes, such as violent crimes. This was one of the rationales behind the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, and it is still a good idea.

In Holland where both Marijuana and Heroin are legally available, they have HALF the percentage of Marijuana users as in the US, and a THIRD the percentage of heroin users. If heroin were legal tomorrow would you shoot up? No, neither would I. The people that would use heroin already use it, and obtain it through the black market. Available through regulated channels, it would simply end the crime ridden black markets, and promote a healthy environment free of HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis and overdoses.

Prohibition policies are based on fiction. They destroy society by creating an environment of crime and corruption, as well as giving government "Big Brother" powers over the lives, recreational habits, and choices of all citizens.

And prohibition policies create vast bureaucracies. And the lies and propaganda which these bureaucracies must create and disseminate, in order to prop up their fiction, can cause aware and thinking people to develop a tragic deep and permanent distrust of the government, of the hardworking people in law enforcement, and of the political process.

Prohibition and the forces that support it are enemies of liberty and domestic tranquility. While there may be issues with the use, and sometimes abuse, of various recreational drugs like alcohol, those issues and those people that abuse should be dealt with directly, instead of creating an unregulated black market that feeds the mouth of crime. That is all prohibition has ever done, and will ever do.

http://www.drugwarfaq.com/
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm

The first web site is very informative about the considerable number of problems that the "WAR ON DRUGS" has given us. I recommend that you read it in its entirety. I do not agree with everything he says, but there is a lot of good info there.

gem318

well i disagree on wat most of yall r sayin about dis situation well i believe dat alcohol should be illegal an weed should become legal because first of all history is history but theres neva been a proven fact dat some 1 could possible die from smokin weed r hittin too much hey they actually use it in sum doctor offices fa get all da non sence weed dnt wake u do crazY stuff lik drinkin alcohol an liquor .....as long an weed have been around an as many of ppl who does it nothin bad happens an besides weed doesnt have all dem different chemicals such as alcohol does ..... i have no problem wit weed .... it jus relax ya mind an ya body an i kno fa a fact dat wen u r in pain jus hit dat weed a couple of times an u would feel soo good ... but if u drink away da pain u gunna wake up wit a HANGOVER!!!!!!!!! MY POINT WEED NT BAD FA U

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