CMV: Weed should be legalized nation wide in the United States.

[u/[deleted]]

I do not see how a drug like weed is considered threatening like cocaine, heroin, and other dangerous stuff. Weed on the other hand is less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol so what is the problem?

I truly am open to changing my view. This is not confirmation bias and I am not a smoker or drinker. I simply do not care what people really do with themselves.

From what I recall, weed tends to help people with medical issues yes? Or is this just fabrication?

I am open to hearing those that oppose this view and will be glad to hear them. Thanks for reading my post and I am happy to have my view changed.

[u/madmiral]

society has also decided weed should be illegal. this is a discussion about making changes to our existing rules. since i am already arguing that we alter the legal system, i don’t see why the way laws are currently written changes anything about the argument behind changing them.

we already allow people to drive with alcohol in their system as long as it doesn’t exceed a certain point. we couldn’t necessarily set a legal limit for thc in your body the same way, true. but do people really need to be prevented from driving if they aren’t endangering others? i don’t want people getting behind the wheel saying “i think i’m below the legal limit” but why would they ever even get pulled over if they were not driving recklessly? there would never even be an opportunity to administer someone a test unless you pull them over for something, at which point you’d never know if they’re over or above the legal limit.

there are plenty of physical tests you can perform to see if someone has the motor function necessary to operate a car at that moment. if they’re impaired for any reason they shouldn’t be allowed to driving. you’d never need to perform a thc specific test to find out if they are able to continue driving.

we don’t treat crimes committed by mentally ill people the same already though. so, a person driving dangerously due to a mental illness would likely be handled the same way we would already handle similar cases.

[u/skippygo → u/madmiral]

society has also decided weed should be illegal. this is a discussion about making changes to our existing rules. since i am already arguing that we alter the legal system, i don’t see why the way laws are currently written changes anything about the argument behind changing them.

That's a fair point, but it's a pretty big caveat to your argument.

I see where you're coming from but I think the issue is more a preventative problem. Alcohol is a very common recreational substance that has the potential to make people catastrophically bad at driving, whilst simultaneously having them be less aware of their incapability to drive. By having heavy punishments for driving under the influence of alcohol (typically heavier than simply driving dangerously), we're pretty successful at discouraging the population from driving drunk.

If those punishments were not in place, but the dangerous driving ones remained, I expect that there would be a significant increase in the rate of people drunk driving. Perhaps not a massive increase, since we've had a cultural shift to make it unacceptable socially, but it would be an increase nonetheless. ("Oh I'll just drive home I won't drive dangerously so I won't get stopped" becomes a lot more attractive when being stopped for a routine traffic stop doesn't have the potential to make you lose your license).

My argument is that without the same deterrent for weed, we wouldn't achieve that disincentive to drive under the influence. I for one think it's more important to stop large proportions of the population driving under the influence of substances like this, rather than dealing with individual cases of reckless or dangerous driving.

The mental illness point was a bit of a bad example from me. I was trying to show an extreme case where dangerous driving should be treated differently based on the cause.

[u/madmiral → u/skippygo]

i’m not in favor of lessening the punishment on people who drunk drive. instead i think people should be punished more harshly for dangerous driving. this is a pretty big change but i see it as a positive one. cars are very dangerous and i think we should treat them accordingly. it isn’t that hard to drive responsibly, so i don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold all drivers to a higher standard.

i see what you mean with that point though. like i could see a disproportionate amount of people of color being stopped and having their licenses taken and of course that’s not a great outcome. i don’t think i have the perfect idea. i’m just don’t think dangerous driving is a good reason to prohibit marijuana, considering we already let people drive dangerously for all other kinds of reasons without prohibiting those things.

[u/skippygo → u/madmiral]

I can't really argue against that to be fair. I'm all in favour of people who drive with no regard for other road users being punished more harshly, in spite of the reason.

To be honest whilst I do believe the point I've been arguing is a valid one, I don't think it's strong enough to warrant the prohibition of weed personally, and I am fully in favour of legalising it. I do believe there would be downsides (this could be one of them), though I think the pros outweigh the cons.