Originally Posted by DarkEmber

Firstly, I'd like to clear something up: yes, some of the active ingredients in cannabis have medicinal properties, and these active ingredients are used in some prescription drugs. According to the NHS website, the UK'S National Health Service, drugs containing these are used to relieve pain caused by muscle spasms as a result of MS, or to relieve sickness in chemo patients, and it may have other medicinal properties, although it cannot be said for certain. However, although it may be effective at treating these things, that does not mean that taking it recreationally is healthy. This would be like saying crushing up and snorting paracetamol tablets is healthy, because paracetamol has some medicinal properties. That is ridiculous. Unless you're going through chemo, or have MS, the active ingredients of cannabis are not healthy (unless trials prove that it can treat other disorders). On the contrary, recreational cannabis use likely does more harm than good.

NHS article if you're interested.

Cannabis usage would increase if it was legalised/kept legal (depending on where you live). If you could just hop on down to the supermarket and buy yourself a joint, as easy as that, it is inevitable that consumption would increase - you see this in America with guns as well, pretty much anyone can source a gun legally, and gun ownership is scarily high, with scarily high gun homicide rates too. As pointed out above, cannabis is not healthy, it makes sense to keep consumption as low as possible. It is more difficult to source cannabis illegally, and this would likely decrease consumption.

It is often argued that the taxation of cannabis would bring a massive amount of revenue for the government. While this is true, at least of legally sourced cannabis, this does not account for the costs of readily available cannabis: to the healthcare system and productivity. I live in the UK, so the health service is, for the most part, funded by the government, paid for by taxation etc. A higher prevalence of cannabis would lead to a higher prevalence in disease and illness caused by, in part or wholly, cannabis consumption. This would have to be paid for by the government. This would be less significant in the US, and other countries with private healthcare, since it would be you out of pocket. There would be a loss of productivity too, since employers would have to cater for smoke breaks, and they could potentially have their workers high afterwards - not good for productivity, nor for the government's wallet.

Keeping cannabis illegal would not only protect you from its dangers, but it would also protect others. If others were unfortunate enough to be within a close enough range of you while you smoke a blunt, they would inhale the smoke from it, and be subject to many of the risks you are subjecting yourself to. It could also cause an indirect risk to others, as it would likely increase the prevalence of driving under the influence of drugs, in turn increasing the risk of motor vehicle accidents.

With all of that said, needless to say I'm in favour of banning tobacco and alcohol also, for similar reasons.

As much as I'd like to say that it is your body, you have the right to do what you want with it, I feel that it is not just you that is being affected.


TLR - drugs are bad, they should not be allowed.