okay there will be 2 outcomes of legalizing weed. The first will be that it will be like alchol making it harder for our kids to get their hands on cause a lot of people will stop selling. Second weed is popular with teens cause its seen as taboo and they want to be cool and fit in. There are only a small handfull of "true stoners" at schools, not the pussies who toke cause its cool. If parents are all toking then kids really arent gonna see it as the cool thing to do and most likely go back to sniffing spray paint and stupid shit like that. and im not talking bout college students or anything cause they are old enough to hold their shit, but I really dont think kids at the age of 10-15 shouldnt be smoking anything...well there are certain exceptions (like starting toking at like 14..if your not a dumbass and dont announce it to the world)
I hope so lol cause as much as I love the ganja I definitely dont think young children should be doing it
The thing is, I don't think that kids will stop smoking if it gets legalized. Sure, the taboo aspect adds a lot of appeal to it, but even if it's legalized it still won't be available to people under 21 (according to the current bill, at least). So it'll still be plenty taboo for them. A similar case is alcohol: a legal product that people under 21 are prohibited from buying. True that there are few true stoners in high schools, but I knew a ton of kids at my high school that drank, and drank a lot. I see no reason that pot would be any different. Second, as for the fewer sellers idea, I think that that is unlikely to be true as well. There is a thriving black market already well established for pot, and while commercial companies would eventually edge them out there would still be plenty in place in the short term to provide for those kids, particularly because it would no longer be so dangerous to grow and distribute on your own. I'm all for legalization for a variety of reasons, but if it comes about because people have made promises that more than likely will not hold true I think that the backlash could be even more severe than the current prohibition.
I remember my days in Jr High & High School. We could get beer, booze & weed. All of which were illegal for us to have. Weed was the most readily available. at 16 I knew several places to get weed. Nobody selling cared how old you were. Beer was a different story. If we wanted beer we would hang out in the 7-11 parking lot and ask strangers to buy for us. Sometimes we would score sometimes we would strike out. Things have changed a bit. Weed is just as available but laws against providing alcohol to minors are tougher and more effectively enforced. If we move weed from the black market to the liquor store we will in fact making it much less accessible to minors. IMHO: Most people don't reach a point where they are making good life decisions until they reach somewhere between 18-25 years old. I have met some very sharp & mature 17 year old's and some very immature 40 year old's. In general I think 20-21 is a point where most of us become marginally able to make good decisions regarding consumption of intoxicants.
i dont think so, they said legalizing it "might" reduce the street game by 50% but i doubt that, people will still grow legally and make money either way, that wont stop them from selling to 18 year olds who will sell it to people younger and younger, thats how it all works doesnt it? The source hands it to the middle mans who hand to whoever lol thats how i always saw the game when i was in it, but think about it legalization, and if they get the FEDS TO PASS IT THE WHOLE COUNTRY WILL BE LEGAL, im pretty sure?
Theres always going to be abuse of marijuana and every other drug but the biggest problem is the lack of education about drugs. I think we should also increase penalties for trafficking to minors and trafficking in general. Also if marijuana was legalized it would completely destroy the black market because the price is going to drop so much that it wouldnt be nearly as profitable as it is now. Right now the risks are worth the $$ you bring in, but if your only making an 1/8 of what you used to its no longer worth the risks of getting busted. No one brews beer or grows tobacco and sells it on the streets.
What he said.... Very well put. I brew occasionally for fun but mostly I buy my beer at the market & pay taxes on it. Now if this was 1925 I could be selling my brew for a greatly inflated price due to the risk involved.
True enough that legalization would make the black market shrink, but the fact is that it'll be extremely difficult to get busted. If legalization happens, you can grow in your house, nothing illegal about that, and you and your friends could have weed on you, nothing illegal about that either. But the illegal act would be selling without paying taxes, etc. on the bud, and there will still be people who grow and sell to their friends. It won't be the huge business that it is now, but distribution will continue regardless, and because the only illegality would be the actual act of selling, which would be very difficult to catch (so there'd be very little risk). But there's not really any reason to think (at least none that I've been presented with) that legalization would reduce the number of minors who use weed. Education is always valuable, but how much alcohol education is there already today, and how many minors still do it? As long as marijuana makes people feel good when smoked, they're going to do it, whether of age or not. Increase penalties as much as you want, but people will still traffic to minors because where there's a demand, there'll be a supply.
I agree, it will definitely get sold between friends but theres nothing wrong with that, no different than me selling a car part to a buddy. But im not gonna go selling to minors or people i dont know because the profit wouldnt be worth the risk. I believe we should try to keep marijuana out of the hands of minors but abuse can happen to anyone and i dont think age has much to do with whether a person is going to abuse a drug or not but rather education. Americas education program is fucking horrible, its really sad.
So no minors smoke in the Netherlands, ever, at all? And bear in mind that the Netherlands is much smaller than the U.S. Agreed, kids shouldn't have marijuana, and education is the key to keeping them away from it, and that the American education program is awful, and that a person of any age can abuse any drug. And I applaud you for not being willing to sell to minors, but you said right there that the reason you wouldn't do it is because the profit isn't worth the risk to you. Assuming that you didn't mistype, that means that for the right amount of money, you'd do it. There are certainly people who would do it for smaller amounts of money. And even if you wouldn't do it at all, there are other people who would. Older siblings buy stuff for younger, people have fake I.D.'s, kids ask people walking into places to buy it for them, etc. If a kid gets alcohol, he or she can get weed. Period. You can't keep kids from doing something. I used alcohol as an example, because lots of kids drink even though it's illegal. They get the alcohol from somewhere, and use it. There is no reason to think that the same wouldn't be true of weed, if legalized. After all, lots of kids smoke it right now, even though it's extremely illegal for them to do it (even more so than it would be for them to smoke it after it were legalized). I absolutely think that legalization is the right way to go, because the prohibition is a terrible idea for a lot of reasons. But I think that saying that legalization will stop kids from toking up is extremely unlikely at best, and I have yet to see a reason that it would.
What? Minors smoke everywhere regardless of policy. The facts are that the percent of youth population of the netherlands use marijuana less than they do in the United States. And size has nothing to do with it.
Right on, and im not saying legalization is going to stop kids from getting marijuana but by educating we can definitely prevent abuse of it, which is what im worried about. Most kids that drink dont do it everyday, usually just on the weekends, and socially. I feel much more comfortable seeing kids rippin a bong load than guzzlin down a 1/5 of liquor. People do some stupid and dangerous shit when there drunk. In the end, if someone wants to smoke some weed there gonna find a way to get some
Sorry, I misread your post. But the fact that youths smoke less week in the Netherlands isn't conclusive proof of your point. You'd need a comparison between how many minors smoked before it was legal there compared with how many do now, and then I'd be convinced. You're right that minors will use substances regardless of policy, but I still don't see any direct connection between legalization and a reduction in use, that's my whole point. You can't relate the smaller percentage of underage smokers there with legality- after all, there are fewer smokers in Europe in any age group than there are in America.