Problem with you who are used to USA is that to you making drugs illegal means putting random people into prison for years. For me it means the kids who go out to smoke weed maybe get caught once every few years and gets a slap on the wrist and a small fine. I see how the first creates more problem than having things legal, I don't see how the second creates problems for society and I'd suggest you try that before you progress further.
You are not a US citizen nor living in the US. But you would like me -- an American citizen who is living in the US and spent many years living in California -- to defer to your personal opinions about how best to manage the problems in my country.
I'll pass, thanks.
We have a several hundred year history in this country of crapping all over Natives and people of color and they tend to be the ones ending up in our prisons for years and years on end on BS excuses and to my mind this is a vastly more serious problem than some kid no longer living in fear if he tries mushrooms or something that it will leave him with a criminal record, which may not stop him from trying them and may, instead, begin his descent into a life of crime as he gradually figures out how to get away with more crap in a system that he knows for a fact is out to get him.
> We have a several hundred year history in this country of crapping all over Natives and people of color and they tend to be the ones ending up in our prisons for years and years on end on BS excuses
Those problems would mostly go away by just reducing the sentence from years in prison to a small fine. Viewing this as choosing between punishing them with years in prison or making it legal is ignorant.
> You are not a US citizen nor living in the US. But you would like me -- an American citizen who is living in the US and spent many years living in California -- to defer to your personal opinions about how best to manage the problems in my country.
This is a discussion, not me trying to force your country to enact some specific law. If you only discuss with Americans then you are ignorant and ignore the diversity of views and experiences from the rest of the world.
I think the argument was that drugs should be illegal the same way speeding is illegal. A strike system where most of the time you get away with a small fee. However, in my opinion this is missing rehabilitation based on reducing dosages every month, which is absolutely necessary to quit drugs that cause chemical dependence.
The tar and other additives in cigarettes cause chemical dependencies. Vaping removes the additives and replaces them with a controllable amount of nicotine. Over time you reduce your exposure to nicotine and at some point you just quit entirely when the dosage is very low.
It's always inherently problematic to try to figure out what will work well for a community you are not actually a part of and have no first-hand experience with.
The US desperately needs more family-friendly policies. If we don't successfully address that, a lot of our efforts simply won't be very effective.
You need fertile ground to grow something good. We lack that because we lack some basic essentials in terms of nurturing our people.
