LDs At Their Best: Legalise Cannabis/Ban Smoking

Where is your evidence for such a groundless slur? I have freely admitted that I used to smoke the stuff when younger but havent done so for decades and have no intention of ever touching it again even if Tesco starts selling it. I fully acknowledge that it can be harmful to mental health which is a very good reason why I intend to go nowhere near it. Just because we can see the wood for the trees and reach logical conclusions which you dont like is no excuse whatsoever for you trying to label us potheads.

That is in fact a personal attack upon everyone who disagrees with you.

Your supposed pro-cannabis clique is actually a pro-logic, calling out of emotively driven double standards clique. 

And incidentally, as well as logic and consistency I have past experience to support my arguments.

Are your double standards motivated by you being pro alcohol and part of an alcohol using clique?

If you are going to throw un-evidenced accusations like the above at us, you really do need to disengage your emotions and use your logical brain to actually understand what we are saying.

That argument is one I have heard before. But the vast majority of even illegal sales are to adults. There are simply not enough under 18s in the market to keep the dealers in business, likely resulting in there being far fewer of them and making it far harder to get hold of illegally. Supply and demand will diminish the problem greatly if the illegal market is restricted to under 18s. Plus because they will be much more readily identified as selling to children, public opposition to them is likely to be much greater making it harder for them to function. The problem would not disappear but would greatly diminish. Unless you think my argument has a logical flaw in it that you can point out.

We know some types of cannabis are more harmful than others, but how leaving the supply in the hands of criminals is supposed to help is not clear.

And it remains the case that alcohol does even more harm to even more people, so why you feel one is so much more terrible than the other has never been made clear logically.

Could you not bring yourself to make the obvious argument? That the usual stuff should be legalised with only the super strength stuff remaining illegal? Because it is logically viable to argue that this might diminish the use of the strong stuff, if people can buy the normal stuff more easily.

But you seem too wedded to emotively driven "just say no" arguments to be able to draw logical conclusions such as that.

The 'usual stuff' is the high strength stuff now - see link given above (94%).

IS there any evidence that places that have legalised cannabis have managed to in effect drive out the super strength versions?

But you are not debating logically but emotively, refusing to engage with the points being made, or give a logical justification for your own double standards, and resort to calling us potheads because we are using logical arguments you don't like but thus far cannot refute logically.

All your evidence thus far consists of emotive individual examples - eg a stoned driver killing someone. Your failure to use the example of a drunk driver killing someone in the same way is again however just a glaring example of your logical double standard. And such examples are not anything anyone disputes. I do not dispute that a stoned driver killing someone is bad, though I think a drunk driver doing so is equally bad. I fail to see the logical consistency behind the former being used as a justification for pot being illegal but the latter somehow not a justification for alcohol being illegal. In any case, were cannabis to become legal, driving under it's influence would still be illegal, so the evidence you cited would still actually be a crime.

Seriously, we are not going to get anywhere if you cannot disengage your emotions and think and debate logically on this one.

And there we have it. An actual user of alcohol who has a vested interest in the same standards not being applied to it.  I gave up cannabis decades ago and can go months on end without having a drink. Apparently your need to use alcohol is greater than mine. Funny that. I also note that I found it far easier to give up cannabis than you apparently do to give up the drug of your choice. Make of that what you will

As for the figures, it is too late in the day for me to be arsed to research them now as I am tiring and might give this forum a miss for the rest of the evening. What I am certain of is that in absolute terms alcohol has caused far more damage than cannabis. But it is also true that many more people have been regular users of it. What we really need is some measure of damage in proportion to the numbers using each. I don't know how easy such evidence will be to find.

The two intoxicants tend to damage or cause harm in different ways. Though this has not been decisively proven yet, there is the distinct possibility that cannabis smoking is far more carcinogenic than alcohol drinking. Certainly it is often smoked with tobacco which is definitely carcinogenic. There is also a proven link between cannabis use and mental illness in some people, and this risk appears to be much greater with younger people. And as with all intoxicants, driving under it's influence is extremely inadvisable. Cannabis acts upon that part of the brain responsible for dopamine and produces sensations of euphoria which can be psychologically addictive.

Alcohol is far more readily than cannabis a factor in violent crime and domestic abuse. Stoned people most of the time cant be arsed with fighting but certain people can become very aggressive and violent when drunk. It is also much more physically addictive than cannabis, and is associated with damage to both the brain and the liver.

It seems to me that which of the two is worse is a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. Cannabis is likely to be the more harmful of the two for some people, whilst alcohol is more likely to be for some others. Neither is harmless. Both are harmful, though in both cases less so in moderation. What is not clear is how an ineffective ban would make things better and in what way prohibition actually helps when there is ample evidence that it often just makes things worse.

Well, it would be a lot easier to compile figures if the industry was legal and regulated but here's the government's best guess.


''They suggest that as many as 7.5m people aged 16-59 in the United Kingdom have used cannabis at least once, and that between 1.5m and 2m take the drug at least once a month'' 

publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldselect/ldsctech/151/15108.htm#:~:text=They%20suggest%20that%20as%20many,(cp%20Montgomery%20Q%20559).