But the real question is: does the societal harm done by drugs outweigh the societal harm done by trying to prevent their usage? The experimental prohibition of alcohol in the US suggests no. The failing war on drugs suggests no. The successes of Portugal's decriminalization and the drastic reduction in the number of addicts in that country suggests similar laws may work elsewhere. Not to mention most of the damaging aspects you've cited apply mostly to drugs other than marijuana.
Hopefully without making it seem like a personal attack, I'd also like to point out the discrepancy in your chosen language. By comparing drug and alcohol addiction (not usage) to "a single plastic straw" (not the millions of straws that are used every day) your argument seems rather biased.
I don't want to be redundant on some of the points I made in my last post, but I would be curious if you had opinions on any of them.
The reasons for legalizing marijuana that one typically encounters aren't pragmatic reasons, they're usually a more philosophical point that "the government has no right to tell you what you can and can't do with your own body". I'm very sympathetic to that argument and it applies just as well to alcohol as it does to marijuana and other sorts of drugs and counter arguments discussing addiction and similar don't really address it because even addicts have rights, certainly the right to do what they want with their bodies.
We are getting a bit off topic but the point I'm trying to make is that while the point about bodily autonomy is a very strong argument, there are absolutely externalities to "personal" choices, and that the societal harms of alcohol and drugs are rather more immediate and undeniable than the harms of a person using plastic straws. The drug war really does seem like a failure and encroaching tyranny when we hear about people being imprisoned for smoking a single joint they bought on the street in broad daylight, but just imagine the other way around... someone being fined or imprisoned for using a plastic straw. There's already pushback from the political and cultural right... even I have seen the "come and take them" memes.
I do admit the comparison of a single plastic straw to drug addiction is kind of unfair but I'm doing it to illuminate a point. There absolutely are millions of plastic straws used every day and that is a problem, but there are millions of alcohol and drug addicts in the US and as "personal" as their choices are, the ramifications are felt by many of us in the forms of socialized medical treatment costs, domestic violence, DUI deaths, etc.
I don't think I have heard of any lives being lost to drivers under the influence of marijuana yet, and even if I did I would probably lay the blame for that on the combination of marijuana and driving, not simply personal use of marijuana. If marijuana use is found to impair driving ability then I'm all for doing whatever we can to prevent that, but I don't think that includes prohibition. I also think that this is probably already covered for the most part under DUI/DWI laws.
I mean yeah, people aren't going to get killed if no one ever uses marijuana and gets behind the wheel of a car, but the fact is that if you have enough personal users of marijuana, there are going to be DUI incidents (unless personal use is done in highly controlled environments, which is not the case).
Why not prohibit something if the social costs are higher than the benefits?
I can kind of see your point on health care cost, although I would need to see evidence that marijuana use actually increases health care costs before agreeing completely. If I recall correctly, most of the studies that I have seen have indicated that it isn't actually all that bad for you, particularly if your not smoking it. I believe that some even indicate that there may be health benefits to marijuana use. Are you aware of any studies that would contradict my current understanding?
There are absolutely health risks to using marijuana, although research on the matter is limited due to its scheduling. And I think controlled, medical use of marijuana is a rather different thing than no holds barred recreational legalization.
I don't see users being less economically productive as being a necessarily bad thing, but maybe I'm missing something here. Could you explain why you think this is bad for society?
I'm also not aware of much violence being caused by marijuana that can't be traced to prohibition. Do you know of any studies that show that marijuana increases violent tendencies or anything similar?
I kind of feel like your conflating alcohol and marijuana here. To be clear, I think alcohol is probably much worse than marijuana. I honestly think we need to increase restrictions on the use of alcohol and reduce restrictions on the use of marijuana.
I think we're getting lost in the weeds here. The point I'm trying to make is that Washington state has accepted that the government has no right to police what people do or don't put into their bodies, as far as marijuana is concerned. In other words, in defiance of the federal government, they have accepted that people have rights and their freedoms ought to be respect, because in a free state, you can live and potentially die by your own will. I say good on them, however, the argument works equally well for other drugs, and if Washington state is to be consistent about its respect of freedom, it seems absurd to abandon the policing of marijuana use (for which there absolutely are externalities) and start to police straw use.
Let's focus on this particular quote:
"If the government won't even allow you to do something so insignificant (using a straw), I fear for the future of freedoms to do things which actually matter and are controversial, and arguably have more direct victims."
There's a dissonance here... the government has no right to tell you not to use marijuana, but it does have a right to tell you not to use straws? Or, put another way, if the government can decide the way you sip a soda, why would it be wrong for the government to decide how you do other things, which have far more significant consequences than using straws?
I think an upstream approach to taxing plastic manufacture is a lot more reasonable because plastic pollutes and it's only fair that polluters clean up the messes they cause.
Not really. It's inevitable once the final parts of the natural Earth are left to fight over. I think it's important that people know where we're headed. It'll be easier to accept if prepared for what's going to happen.
I don't like it when people are ambivalent (or welcoming?) to encroaching authoritarianism. I urge you to reconsider and imagine how you might feel if a right wing fellow was as ambivalent as you seem to be towards an "inevitable" religious totalitarian state.
