[90] in libertarians
Re: Atlantic Monthly on Marijuana
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (solman@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jul 15 03:31:19 1994
From: solman@MIT.EDU
To: vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu (Vernon Imrich)
Cc: seelig@MIT.EDU, libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 14 Jul 94 20:09:36 -0400.
<9407150009.AA14176@flying-cloud.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 03:29:16 EDT
> >Marijuana, like all drugs (including many prescription and over-the-counter
> >drugs), ARE potentially dangerous if misused.
>
> Agreed, though it happens that for mj the dangers are about the same as
> for tobacco and the same if not less dangerous than alcohol. (I been
> around pot abusers and alcohol abusers at parties, I'd much rather deal
> with the potheads.)
Lets not get confused here. The marijuana that is sold on the streets of the
US today is substantially more dangerous than tabacco. The problem is that
the potency of marijuana has increased by a factor of between 5 and 50 over
the past 30 years (depending on who you talk to). This has been one of my
key arguments for legalizing drugs. In the freemarket you have an
incentive to minimize the aspects of a drug that are detrimental to the
user's health (hopefully without reducing the psychoactive properties.)
In a market in which drugs are illegal, you want to maximuze the adictive
power because:
A) users can't shop around as much [so there is minimal pressure on
reducing adictiveness] [plus violence can be used in illegal
industries to discourage competition, not so in legal ones] and
B) It is difficult to get a new customer so you want to be damn sure that
they're going to be compelled to come back.
Now yes, people who are growing their own marijuana are doing something
that is about as unhealthy as using tobacco, but that is NOT what most
American hemp users are doing.
JWS
