Marijuana

This link has quite a bit of good, honest discussion, with an acknowledgment of the complexity of the issue. I think I've pointed out in the past here, that I think it should be legalized, and heavily taxed (also probably regulated for potency).

I do want to say that Norm Stamper starting out with "Any law disobeyed by more than 100 million Americans [...] is bad public policy," is really not true. That statement could equally be applied to speed limits. The number is not irrelevant, but its primary relevance is for different reasons: 100 million people who have not paid a dime in taxes on a product that could easily be taxed at if not above cigarette levels, is a huge amount of dollars.

What I really wonder, however, is if it were legalized and all the tobacco companies started selling and marketing marijuana cigarettes, what would the result be in terms of public support and laws? It seems that aside from the libertarians a large fraction of the pro-legalization group are also pro-anti-smoking (laws). That is a conflict. Smoking tobacco is bad for you. Smoking marijuana is also bad for you--maybe less bad, maybe worse. There may be benefits to smoking pot, and there may be benefits to smoking cigarettes (nicotine may help to maintain brain function). It's pretty damn hard to imagine that inhaling the smoke from any smoldering leaf is going to produce a net benefit.

I have a feeling that if marijuana is ever made legal it will in short order demand the same bad reputation (and restrictions) as tobacco. This wouldn't be entirely fair, as hemp has many uses as a cash crop besides drying and smoking, but it seems likely. I doubt if people would be any more ok with having pot smoke drift into their section of a restaurant than cigarette smoke. (The restaurants would love having patrons toking and getting the munchies right there.)

There is a rather bizarre tendency in this country to make laws as either fixes to small problems or to establish good morality/behavior. Smokers (and dog owners) seem to bear a large fraction of the brunt. For example: because we don't want to step on dog poop we make owners pick it up, and that is almost always with plastic bags that then go into a trash can and something that could have served as fertilizer for a patch of flora is now destined to sit in a landfill for decades if not centuries or longer.

Cigarettes are bad, so we tax the hell out of them and restrict where people can use them. I am really curious to find out what would happen if pot were legal.