Considering it was racism that made it a policy in the first place, it only makes sense to legalize it now that America isn’t even pretending to not be racist anymore.
The one populist policy everyone can agree on: just let us smoke weed ffs
Until you get behind the wheel or any other situation where being cognitively diminished can cause you or someone else harm.
Well sure, but that’s true of so many things. We have a special law and rules around driving while impaired.
When people say something is safe they mean when used normally the thing itself won’t cause harm as a result of using it.
May as well say marijuana is safe unless you drop a large quantity of it on someone.But people break that law everyday. They think “I’m not like others who drink and drive…” then kill a family of 4. The substances may be safe by your definition, but the push to have yet another substance that inhibits function be even easier to obtain is problematic because it relies on idiots to make smart choices.
Driving while impaired isn’t the same as drunk driving. It also covers things like antihistamines.
If your concern is harm reduction, you prevent more harm by letting people have marijuana and not shutting them out of job markets, taking their money or throwing them in jail.
I’m incredulous that the “too far” line happens to fall precisely here. NyQuil, Benadryl, alcohol, Valium, Vicodin, motion sickness drugs, large meals, staying up late, working long shifts, being diabetic and any number of other things are all legal and we let people manage themselves. But marijuana? Nope, that crosses a line. Better to throw someone in jail than to risk them doing something dangerous.
If you’re going to build your own definition of “safe”, you need to defend it, and explain what makes marijuana special under this definition.Traffic fatality data for marijuana is inconclusive. Legalization sees an increase of detectable THC present at accidents, but it’s much harder to test for impairment via marijuana as opposed to alcohol, and so usage days before the accident can have detectable levels, despite being well under the threshold for impairment.
Additionally, some studies show marijuana legalization reduces accident injuries, either due to marijuana not causing the same type of motor or judgement impairmentbas alcohol, or by that and functioning as a substitute for alcohol for some portion of people.
(Marijuana users tend to drive slower and with undue caution, and if 20% of the possible impaired driving population decide to use marijuana instead then you’ve reduced the lethality of your accidents) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095539592300049XYour argument seems to be that a law is insufficient to keep people safe, so we need a different law. What would keep people from breaking the prohibition? And why not outlaw alcohol again, since it’s significantly more impactful? Or cap vehicle speeds at 35mph? Hell, outlaw cars. A sober person can get into a car crash, but no matter how inebriated they are a pedestrian just can’t.
Oh OK.
Sounds like we need to make getting a driver’s license more difficult then, since that seems to be where the danger is.
Especially since driving kills so many more people by itself anyway. Maybe make it so that if you ever get done for impaired driving, you can never drive again. In fact, let’s make it more difficult to purchase a vehicle. That will make sure that you cant drive impaired in the first place.
Yeah!