[nick_riviera]

Yes I know this is idealist. I'd like people to act responsibly and consider others but to be honest this is beyond a not insignificant proportion of the population. I live in the UK. This class of drug is banned and it should stay so. The police don't go around locking people up - they do slap wrists and that keeps it under control.

When it gets too much or puts people in danger, through drug driving or mindless paranoia caused violence, they have the power to say "stop - that's enough" and solve the problem there and then through the courts. If legalised, that power diminishes into a non-absolute method of control.

We have laws against drinking and smoking in certain places as well already and things have improved massively since these were introduced.

The deep problem we all know, and this is written in many a paper freely googlable, is that smoking, alcohol and drug consumption have observable and statistically obvious negative health effects and negative effects on society. In the UK, this means healthcare budget being sucked up.

[mjburgess]

Comparing the UK and the US here is absurd. I live in the UK too and pratically speaking marijiuana is decriminalized. The police do not prosecute ordinary users and "small time growing" is often a warning or a fine.

Compare that to america where a tremendous number of college-age kids are imprisoned, where vast swathes of the black population are put away, where police meet their targets for funding by prosecuting weed smokers. It's a completely different world.

The "drug driving" is not being legalized anywhere. Illegal things are still illegal. "Mindless paranoia caused violence" is, as far as any one can tell, a myth. But even so, that's a HEALTH issue - not solvable by police.

As for "negative effects on society" and "health care budget" - these are phrases meant to restrict lifestyles available to people on the basis of your own fear, self-interest and jealousy. "Freedom" if it is to mean anything is the ability to enjoy: to have your life be - to you - enjoyable and worth living.

[nick_riviera]

Fair points.

Regarding your latter points, I assume you have never talked to NHS mental health staff who have to deal with addicts on a regular basis? Not a pretty job and actually puts you right in there to see the effects in action.

I fear no one, but "freedom" should always encompass the ethic of reciprocity.

That point is what's missing from all discussions on the subject otherwise it is just self-interest.

[throwaway5752]

"The police don't go around locking people up - they do slap wrists and that keeps it under control"

Perhaps that is why you were downvoted. Note the NYT is an American newspaper, and was addressing marijuana policy in the USA. You may be unaware of the consequences of drug prosecution here (losing voting rights, prison time, lost professional opportunities, propery seizure, and so on), but given the difference your blithe dismissal sounds ignorant and insensitive.

[asgeir]

It annoys me when people use healthcare cost as something to be counted against recreational drugs. It seems to me that this reasoning could equally be applied to every avoidable burden on the health system.

As an analogy. As far as I know heart disease is one of the main causes of healthcare costs and death. Obesity leads to an increased risk of heart disease. Does this mean that we should have a government mandated diet to eliminate obesity?

[nick_riviera]

Very much so. Isn't public health about reducing avoidable risks and keeping the population healthy?

[asgeir]

I for one do not want a nanny state. I would much rather have personal freedom to do what I want with my body rather than sitting down to a nice hot government ration #323. There are some things that make life worth living and not all of them are good for you. If that means that I have to pay higher taxes then so be it, that is already the price to pay for living in a welfare state. In any case any perceived burden can be offset with a vice tax.

[dgacmu]

Isn't the goal of public policy to balance the interests of all of the involved constituents? Public health is about taking effective measures to keep the population as a whole healthy, and part of that is finding effective ways to reduce those bad things.

In that context, you're getting slapped because you're ignoring the fetid mess that the US drug policy has caused, and that our current drug policy is not being very effective for public health or public spending: (a) It's horribly racially biased: https://www.aclu.org/billions-dollars-wasted-racially-biased...

(b) It's incredible expensive (ibid), to the tune of billions of dollars per year in paying for enforcement, incarceration, and lost productivity;

(c) It doesn't obviously reduce use rates! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448346/

You don't have to be a fan of drug use to appreciate this mess. I'm not - speaking personally, I'm about as negative about the issue as one can get, for drugs, alcohol, and tobacco all together. But that's not the point. Barring some actually worthwhile, cost-effective, and fair method of enforcement, which nobody in the US has stumbled upon yet, we need to stop pissing away money putting nearly 1% of our population in jail [1] where not only do we burden them forever with a criminal conviction, we introduce them to a lot of real criminals and set them on the path to real crime.

Putting someone in jail in NYC for a year costs $167,000 [2]. Surely we could do some more effective prevention and education with that money. Or take it and try to reduce alcohol DUI fatalities or tobacco use, both of which are currently more deadly than pot use.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost...