If that were the case, we wouldn't be on our way to legalizing marijuana. I'm sure it feels really great to rage against the "system" but it doesn't seem right in this case.
It's important to note the in the strictest sense, marijuana is still 100% illegal everywhere in the United States. The federal gov't is currently taking a watch-and-wait stance, but that can change in a single election.
No, it's not about "raging against the system", that is actually the reason why drugs won't be decriminalized in the US anytime soon. It's a lot of money that no one will let go of easily. And that's without mentioning all the civil liberties that we've lost where the war on drugs was used as the reason.
"that is actually the reason why drugs won't be decriminalized in the US anytime soon" (emphasis mine).
Well, I think you could say that it is a reason, but I don't think you can say it is the reason.
There are still a lot of people in the United States who believe that doing these illegal drugs is morally wrong, and that making them legal would increase, not decrease the damage.
I'd bet that this is driving the resistance to decriminalization/legalization much more than people trying to keep their jobs (and no, I'm not denying that there are people who resist it for that reason).
I would love to see how such people answer the question "beyond legal status, what factors do you consider affect the morality of ingesting a substance?"
> beyond legal status, what factors do you consider affect the morality of ingesting a substance?
Whether ingesting it makes you a danger to others due to intoxication or other loss of reasoning ability and whether ingesting it causes an addition that leads to the loss of ability to support yourself are likely to be two of the biggest concerns. Note in particular that the loss of ability to support oneself, combined with addiction, is known to drive other criminal behavior (muggings, theft, etc.) to support the habit.
This, incidentally, would be why more people are willing to be flexible with pot where there are few such dangers and less flexible with things like meth.
Continuing to play devil's advocate with the moral objectors: While these surely _are_ dangers of someone ingesting some substances, which of these dangers is prevented by making them illegal? On the whole, none are prevented. Those already addicted will use regardless of legal status. Those not yet using illegal drugs are doing fine putting others in harms way by casual use of legal substances like alcohol. The dangers you mention are in fact dangers, but the risk factor to others doesn't change much with legalization.
I do agree there are many who will object on these moral grounds though.
I don't think of "prevented" as a binary status. It's clear that at least some are prevented and the others are simply taken off the streets, making some of the aforementioned issues smaller, with certain other tradeoffs. I do not expect there to be a perfect solution any which way society goes about this. I have not seen much debate well informed enough to give more than opinions about the actual magnitude of many of the costs and tradeoffs, though I am interested in some of the talk about decriminalization (which is sometimes confused with legalization) combined with expanded addiction treatment programs.
