[shitehawk]

>It feels a bit like government are more in favor of drugs than they want to pretend, not only for the good of drugs being legal, but because someone who is under influence of drugs - any kind of - is less likely to be politically active or reject orders. This has been used in military and in many authoritarian governments.

[tete]

As for the government being more in favor than they want to pretend: I live in Europe. Here every now and then the legalization of marijuana comes up. However when a politician or a political party agrees the public opinion about that person tends to go down, because he gets that "drug junky" image that has no important topics to talk about. Happened like three or four times in the last decade. Therefor if you are a politician you don't want to look like active supporters. I guess in the US it is similar.

The second part of the statement was that it has been used in military and to calm populations. If you think that statement is bold already then you probably don't know about various projects like MK Ultra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Oh and the effect of drugs being illegal can again be read up in history. There has been prohibition.

If I sounded like marijuana was a conspiracy I am sorry. That's not what I meant. Like I said I just think that the image of a politician who publicly states that marijuana tends to drop. I think that is because a big portion of the population doesn't have a really strong opinion on that topic, but are careful about it. That's a theory now. ;)

There also was a something on political activism of population in relation to the state of legal (or cheap/available) drugs here on HN at some point.