[gnulinux]

> [I personally abused something that's proven to be extremely helpful to millions of people, but because I had a uniquely bad experience with it, I vote for people having harder access to it.]

I deeply apologize for saying this but what an absolutely bizarre opinion. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.

[haswell]

Most people safely enjoy alcohol. No one is pushing a narrative that alcohol is universally healthy and safe, and pushing accounts of alcoholism and other forms of maladaptive use under the rug. Nor do we blame alcoholics for the genes that make them susceptible.

I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the downsides that many experience are described.

I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.

If someone describing their own negative experiences and belief that those experiences warrant more controls is so bizarre, it might be worth exploring why that is.

That doesn’t mean one has to agree that controls are needed, but this notion that “well that’s just your problem, leave me alone” is an unhelpful attitude that does very little to illuminate the reality of the situation.

The reality is that some people form a habitual/addictive relationship with cannabis. The reality is that cannabis severely disrupts REM sleep. The importance of REM sleep is a growing concern as we learn more about the process of sleep and how a lack of it predicts serious mental deterioration later in life.

To be clear, I use cannabis regularly and find that it helps me deal with some aspects of C-PTSD. At the same time, I also find that it reduces the quality of my sleep.

This is a tradeoff I accept because the alternative is less sleep overall, which is worse than the degraded sleep I’m getting now. But if I could otherwise sleep normally, adding cannabis to the mix is something I’d be more cautious about.

The point behind that anecdote is simply that using cannabis involves tradeoffs.

I don’t think access should be further controlled, but I do think education needs to be prioritized.

[jeffwask]

>I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite >problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the >downsides that many experience are described.

>I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a >pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.

I think you hit the heart of the issue. The negatives have been used as a cudgel and amplified beyond reason over the years to block progress on legalization. It's create a knee jerk reaction to anyone who talks about their negative outcomes. (This isn't exclusive to MJ legalization. Try talking about quitting alcohol in a group setting over drinks. Something I had to do because I had negative outcomes with alcohol.)

Very often these points are parroted by organizations that want to block legalization for reasons that have nothing to do with the issues of abuse or health, for example the Private Prison system which is one of the biggest lobbies against marijuana reform.

While at the same time, society happily brushes aside the same concerns about alcohol which proportionately has worse side effects and outcomes. We also still sell cigarettes with glee for the tax dollars while they essentially have nothing but negative outcomes. People pay 8-10 dollars a day to murder themselves and cause undo excess cost and burden on healthcare but no one give a shit anymore.

It's all so performative, inconsistent, and driven by capitalist motivations tangentially associated with the actual issue.

[yucky]

People should be able to smoke in their house, but there is no good reason that every park and beach and other public space has to reek of weed smoke.

[slibhb]

It's not a bizarre opinion.

Consider substances like weed or alcohol that can ruin lives but usually don't. How should our laws treat these substances? I'm not sure but there's nothing absurd about thinking they should be illegal.

Also consider: what are laws for? To some degree they're about discouraging certain behavior. It would be nice to think that we could discourage weed/alcohol without making them illegal but it's not clear that we can do that.

[notch898a]

>Also consider: what are laws for?

Whether laws are here to protect and/or ensure prosperity of society, or whether laws are there to maximize freedom seems to be a huge source of contention in our modern society. Ultimately I think the two ideals, while overlapping many places, are incompatible. Hopefully we can rewind the consolidation of federal powers to allow people with different ideals to move to different states to achieve something closest to their desired way of life. Federal drug laws controlled by unelected beuracrats are an example of making this selection impossible.