Steven Crowder: I Don't Mind Arguments In Favor of Pot Decriminalization, But I'm Not a Fan of Dishonesty and Ignorance

Via Hot Air, which also notes the New Hampshire legislature just "endorsed" a pot legalization bill by a narrow vote of 170-168. "Endorsing" the bill means... that they vote on it again, this time for real.

I don't know why they do it this way. I suspect it's because they're taking the pot.

Crowder doesn't make an argument pro or con about drug legalization so much as he makes an argument in favor of informed and candid debate.

And I think virtually everything he says here is true (with one caveat):

No, legalizing pot will not reduce criminality. It's not the case that drug dealers are in the pot trade because they have a long family tradition of selling pot, and then the government just up and went and made their family business illegal.

They are selling pot precisely because it is illegal -- you can charge a premium for contraband. If they are not exacting a criminal premium on their drug endeavors, they will find a new avenue of criminality which does pay them that premium.

No, pot is not harmless. Of course it's not. I don't know if it's more harmful than alcohol or less, but no frequently-taken drug which directly affects your mind (and your personality) could possibly be "harmless."

One harm pot doesn't expose people to is the pain of a hangover. But alcohol's hangover effect may be a feature, not a bug, in as much as it provides a direct and potent biological negative feedback telling the drinker "Maybe slow down next time, huh?"

One thing I question is the claim that pot increases the incidence of, and exacerbates the severity of, schizophrenia and psychotic breaks. Correlation does not prove causation -- and I hope I'm not too out of line in suggesting that people strongly drawn to any kind of neurochemical escape, be it alcohol, pot, or pills, tend to be a little fucked up.

That is, people seeking illicit drugs are often basically self-medicating, and that introduces the possibility (or probability) that they have a pre-existing condition they feel the need to medicate.

But while I question that, I don't actually dispute it-- I just don't know.

posted by Ace at 03:16 PM

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