#137 - Mind Altering

Wow Guys,

So the video below is an appearance by Ron Paul in a segment about giving drug regulation back to the states. As usual Ron Paul makes the clear point that state rights need to be respected, and that federal regulation of medical problems create unwanted blowback (i.e. underground drug market, burden of holding prisoners, etc.). Where it really grabs my attention is when the lady after Ron Paul saids some realllllly off the wall stuff which I'd like to address.

First off, she saids you can't compare Marijuana to alcohol cause Marijuana is mind altering drug....

(disclaimer: outside of undergraduate experimentation, I don't smoke and VERY seldom drink)

I can never say that I've blacked out on pot, or not been able to remember what I did the day prior, but on alcohol this has happened to me once or twice. So implying that alcohol is not a mind altering drug makes this lady lose a lot of credibility with me right there.


Then she sites some statistics of places where Pot was made legal and drug use went up...

Ok, I got two responses to this.

1) When something prohibited is no longer prohibited be sure that you'll see a short term increase in use, cause those used to the old law will react. It's like the release of a new product, it initially see big sales which taper off as the novelty wares. Same thing happened after prohibition was overturned.

2) as far the increase in heroine use she sited, remember when you legalize a drug you steal it away from the underground market. The underground market isn't going to sit idly and take the loss, they will begin to push a new product so this statistics makes sense to me since I would figure the drug dealers would need to peddle different drugs if pot is no longer illegal.

This is why, the war on drugs doesn't work, and making any of these drugs illegal only results in increased underground pressure and crime. Make them all legal and there is nothing the underground syndicates can fall back on. Sure, doesn't mean states can't regulate the use of the drugs, but I think the world would be better off with state regulated legal use where users can purchase from safe places at lower prices.