The problem with the test for marijuana is that it shows up in the system for 30+ days after use. A person is not impaired for those 30 days, but the drug shows up nonetheless (principally because it is fat absorbed, rather than water absorbed like alcohol). This is a problem because while studies have shown impaired motor and cognitive skills for up to 3 days after using marijuana, the test has no time signature for impairment. What I mean by this is that if one were to use the drug, get pulled over a week later for impaired driving, you would test positive for marijuana even though you were not under the influence while driving. You would then get convicted of driving under the influence of the drug when you actually weren't. A state supreme court (I don't remember which, but I am pretty sure it was a state supreme court, though it may have been a federal appellate court - do a net search if you care) recently prohibited the use of this test in obtaining convictions for precisely this reason - it cannot accurately tell if you were under the influence during the driving incident. Since there is, to my knowledge, no test out there that can actually ascertain the level of marijuana intoxication (analogous to the BAC from a breathalyzer), legalizing would pose a significant problem for "high driving" enforcement.
Of course, pro-legalization folks say that there is no "high driving" problem, and that alcohol causes way more accidents than pot, etc.; these are not good arguments for legalizing pot, they are better arguments for criminalizing alcohol. As the drug is legalized, its use will become more widespread (virtually inevitable - people who might not have tried it when it was unavailable to them may consider it if it is legal) and we may actually start to keep records of marijuana related driving incidents (I don't believe we currently do keep those records - I may be wrong, but I don't know of any).
I already referenced the second reason for maintaining marijuana's current illegal status - it is a fat-absorbed drug. A person stays under the influence much longer and has impaired motor and cognitive functions up to three days after use. Obviously, the impairments grow less severe the further you get from the use date, but the fact is that you remain under the influence of the drug for much longer than alcohol. This is why marijuana is such a powerful psychologically addictive drug. You are seldom not under the influence of the drug if you use even as infrequently as once a week. It does not flush out of one's system easily like alcohol, and consequently, frequent pot smokers never have the "morning after" regret that many alcohol abusers have.
This is what makes alcohol very addictive, because you use more to avoid the regret, but it also is a mitigating factor against addiction - you feel bad after use when the alcohol is out of your system, and you decide to abstain for a while. It is a factor that allows people who generally don't have addictive/compulsive personalities to avoid falling into chronic use.
Marijuana does not clear the system that rapidly so people generally do not get the same regret feeling they get after a binge with alcohol; since the drug lasts in the system so long, and clears out very gradually, the dividing line between the "high" personality and the "sober" personality is blurred.
I do not know any of this from personal experience; those of you who know me know that I have never had a drink or done pot (or anything else for that matter), and some would say that this invalidates my opinion (pure foolishness - I have never raped anyone, yet I still contend that rape is bad). You do not have to engage in a behavior to condemn it, it is a weird kind of antihypocrasy at work in this argument - you don't know the experience so you can't judge... but if I had done it and then deemed it bad, I would be a hypocrite for having done it.
That notwithstanding, I would like to address a couple of the things that I find irritating in the pro-legalization left (particularly the left because it is incompatible with other views of the California left - the pro-pot right, libertarians mostly, irritate me but are more consistent).
- Legalizing will reduce crime - yeah, I guess, in the same way that legalizing anything reduces crime - that act is no longer criminal. As far as any other impact, drug cartels will still bring in heroin and cocaine, whatever pot they bring in they might still to avoid the taxation, but it is just as likely to be replaced with another drug in the shipment - besides, a lot of pot is grown here (ask anyone in Marin) so it will not impact Mexican or Central American cartels.
- Legalizing is a good revenue source - Again, doubtful - if you make the tax too high, there will be a black market for it (hell, there is for cigarettes already to avoid taxes). Why would anyone pay a tax on it if they can grow it themselves, or buy from someone they know with a growing operation - are we going to licence everyone who grows, or will it be illegal to grow, or illegal to sell what you've grown, etc. You open up a can of worms on creating a bureaucracy to just deal with the fact that it is legal. Don't be surprised if it is legalized if the revenues are not as high as you have hoped.
- Kids will not be able to get it - because it will be more available being legal, underage kids won't get it, the same way they don't get alcohol. If you believe that you must be high. Of course kids will get it - they do already, if it is legal, it becomes more available to them, not less.
- It is natural, so it can't be bad for you - Another high thought. I just checked, cobra venom, opium, belladonna, poison oak, poison sumac, trans fats, and a whole crapload of other things are natural - natural does not mean good or bad, just stop saying that pot is natural, man - it just makes you sound stupid. You like getting high because it is fun, it has nothing to do with it being natural. Fess up and move on - that is a perfectly good reason to like getting high.
- First contradiction for the Left - do you know how much fossil fuels are used for the cultivation of marijuana - grow lights, hot houses, etc. That plant is mainly tropical (native to China and India) - to grow it here requires a big indoor operation that sucks up a lot of power. It is not environmentally friendly, it is generally environmentally horrendous. Even outdoor grow operations tend to be bad because of the combinations of fertilizers and pesticides used to maintain the valuable crop - Marin has severe environmental problems from abandoned grow operations, though this may be mitigated if it is no longer illegal (less people will abandon their operations, leaving less environmental harm). I don't believe in the whole anthropogenic climate change thing, but if you do, Mary Jane ain't helping, and you should stop its use just to save the environment.
- Second contradiction for the Left - The federal government has primacy over state governments. This is a big argument as to why Arizona can't have its own immigration policies, why nationalized mandates for health care purchases are fine, antidiscrimination laws, and a whole host of other things. Of course, Arizona can't make a law that deals with immigration (even if it is remarkably similar to the federal statute), but California can make laws in direct opposition to federal law? At least try to be a little consistent. Personally, I think that the federal government may have overstepped its bounds in criminalizing drugs, but the interstate commerce clause could be used as justification. (interestingly enough, the only president who presided over an administration where more money was spent on treatment rather than on enforcement was Richard Nixon - put that in your pipe and smoke it ;)
- Third contradiction for the Left - the war on drugs and its cost. The general way that this has been put has been akin to "we spend too much money, yet drugs are still a problem, people still use, you are filling the jails with people whose only crime was the drug, etc". The gist of the argument is that we do not get enough bang for our buck - this seems to be the only place where the Left is fiscally conservative. The same argument could be made for Johnson's War on Poverty - we have spent a ton of money on welfare programs, and people are still poor. We should stop trying to make people not poor. Of course that would be ridiculous, but it is the exact same argument used against the War on Drugs. Stop demonizing poverty, allow those people to choose to be poor, the war on poverty is an abject failure, and we shouldn't waste our money on it. The answer the Left sees is -continue spending inefficiently on the war on poverty, even though the ideas haven't worked, stop spending on the war on drugs, even though the ideas haven't worked (obviously, the right is guilty of similar folly, but I would argue that some aspects of the war on drugs have worked, but that is for another time). A similar issue is in the criminalization of firearms - we have strict laws, yet there are still gun crimes. What's the answer - more gun laws - the exact opposite of their conclusion on drug laws. And guns are specifically enumerated as protected in the Constitution.
I could go on, but I am not going to, because I am bored of writing. The last bit is just a tirade against logical inconsistencies I perceive on the Left. Yes, I know that you could point out similar inconsistencies for the Right (but not for me, I would hope), but that does not invalidate the illogical stances of the Left (arguments of "you do it too" are fallacious and do not actually render the point of contention moot, much as people may like them to).
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