Benjichang wrote: I disagree that alcohol is a separate thing. I drank before I ever smoked pot. In fact, I'd probably say if I didn't drink, I would have never smoked pot.

personally ive never touched drugs, smokes, or alcohol. I hvae friends that do all of them though, after watching one get drunk and get knocked up (pregnant) THAT convinced me not to drink, watchin another get high, jump off his roof and almost lose his kneecap when he landed on a rake, is what made me not want to touch drugs, and seeing my grandfather die of lung cancer due to cigarettes ( he was the best thing in my entire life till he died, is what convinced me not to smoke

Carl, stop being such a douche.

I like smoking pot. In fact, a lot of people like smoking pot, and now watch me as I get on my "america are teh cool" high horse:

If we assemble enough people to get a bill started in the first place to actually "decriminalize" marijuana, then we're just exercising our rights as American citizens. So you can **edited** and moan all you want, but in the end it comes down to the majority. And it seems to me like you're the only one here that has such a huge problem with MJ that you're actually basing all your arguments off of unsubstantiated claims and wiki-words. You're the minority, and you're wrong because I, and everyone else says you are. Now sit down and shut up.

MJ should be legal. It is undebatable, It's close to the same effect as alcohol, you in inhale tar filled smoke, like cigarettes. It would be hard to tax, and would possibly take money from the tobacco companies. That's why it's not legal.

Also, the age should be 18, or 21 and if your in the armed forces 18.

This is a horrible bill.

If it became law, it would lead to increased gang violence, increased gun violence, greater ethnic segregation, and all kinds of other social ills.

gg, Barney.

Of course, it has not chance of even making it out of committee, so whatever.

I don't think oreomann should conclude/assume that there have been no negative effects from criminalization elsewhere...

But more importantly, all places are not the same.

In this case, for this country, with this bill, I believe the results would be negative.

This bill decriminalizes USAGE of marijuana.  It allows for SHARING of your stash.  This will have the presumptive result of increasing demand for marijuana.  This will place greater pressure on supply sources, and higher street prices for marijuana.

At the same time, this bill does nothing to alleviate the rather harsh penalties for importing/growing/selling/distributing marijuana, which means that no new categories of supply will open.  Instead, there will be greater opportunity for the existing sources.  In the US, this overwhelmingly means organized crime of various kinds.  More money into the MJ trade means that MJ is more lucrative, which means that there will be more to fight over, which means that there will be more fighting.

That means more guns in the hands of inner-city gangs, which means more gang-related gun violence, even beyond MJ-related violence.

And so forth.

Basically, this bill takes a bad situation and makes it worse.  Existing laws at least have a somewhat suppressive effect on demand as well as supply.  Barney's bill would take the lid off demand while restricting supply, which almost inevitably leads to organized crime.

I would prefer full legalization of both supply and demand, but given a choice I would rather legalize supply than demand.  This is the worst of both worlds.

"legalization" and "decriminalization" are buzzwords without meaning.  You have to look at what the actual statute says.

Advil is both legal and decriminalized, but is still regulated.  These words themselves cannot be taken to have any particular meaning.