Quote:
Originally Posted by Tronic
Its not going to be a very beneficial thing to do as it would defeat the purpose in many regards. A lot of college and university users (and no, I don't mean casual users, just once in a while sort of thing; during partying et all) won't be too happy with such laws tracking them. Main reason, if not anything else, is culture. Most of the partying, drinking or smoking (whatever) is done away from the knowledge of the people's families and mostly it happens on university or college residences. So if there is such a thing as keeping records of people who would go to the store and buy some mj; it would only mean that they would be again looking at others to purchase it from. Hence, defeating the whole purpose of regulating the drug.
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No question there are downsides to the plan.
We could of course continue on the same path we are on, suffer the economic drain, keep putting offenders in jail, and watch the cartels grow in an ever increasing cycle of violence, and so on. Or, we could end all that and take on the problem of working to keep people from cheating on the new rules. Like gungrape points out underage users will look for adults willing to buy them some stuff, although with a limit to each purchase and a time limit on the next, adults might be reluctant to help anyone else.
There's always a tendency to hold back from doing anything new because of problems we see in it. Humans are ambivelent when it comes to new ideas. They tolerate imperfection in the real world, but demand perfection in ideas. We would not be driving cars today if we had acted on the fear that they might cause deadly accidents.
We have a choice. In the long run, we can enforce one system or the other. Either we use our law enforcement assets to continue the war on drugs or we use them to prevent cheating under a system of legalization. To me it's a no-brainer. Legalization will take far less money and manpower to enforce than the billions we are now throwing at criminalization, and it will be self-sustaining from taxes on drugs.
The first step in controlling the drug problem is to move it out of the shadows of criminalization and into the light of legalization. That won't end the drug problem, insofar as consumers are concerned, but it will do away with all the bloodsuckers associated with it. Once out of the shadows, we can begin educating users and, in time, cut down on drug use.