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by syllogism 4237 days ago
> Marijuana is as addictive as potatoes.

Maybe we disagree on how addictive potatoes are? Marijuana is fairly addictive, with about 9% of users becoming addicted.[1]

Alcohol's quite addictive too. I don't know whether it's more or less so than marijuana. But with alcohol, we have what we have. If I were designing policy and we didn't have the drinking culture that we do, I'd be hoping we wouldn't end up here.

All I'm saying is this: it's actually a bad thing if lots more people end up smoking lots more weed. It's bad in two ways. One, it's bad intrinsically, because I do think that smoking weed three or four times a week demotivates you and keeps you from getting your shit done. Two, we need to learn how to legalise drugs without use increasing massively, because we've got a lot more drugs to legalise.

[1] Number pulled from the summary here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-tha... , citing research here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3371269/ . I haven't read the paper, but I do trust this blog a lot.
1 comments
couchand 4237 days ago
it's actually a bad thing if lots more people end up smoking lots more weed

Nice straw man, but it falls down when you actually look at the rates of usage in places with legalization. For instance, The Netherlands, where the toking habits are somewhat safer than in San Francisco [0].

[0]: http://www1.ucsc.edu/currents/03-04/05-03/drug_study.html

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3beard 4237 days ago
Eating hamburgers is legal both in the Netherlands and the US. But the US has a lot more obese people than the Netherlands. You cannot simply assume that the outcome of drug legalization can be transferred from one country to another.
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couchand 4236 days ago
Sure, but you also can't assume that legalization will necessarily increase incidence of usage. So let's go with what evidence we do have.

Colorado's full legalization has barely existed long enough to consider it a valid sample, but the state's Department of Public Health and Environment has found that use among high school students has gone down since legalization [0]. That's certainly an encouraging trend.

All I really would ask is that you back up the claims you make with facts rather than just sharing your assumptions.

[0]: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-among...

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