I'm fairly convinced that the fact that marijuana is illegal (federally) and alcohol/tobacco are legal without a prescription has more to do with the populations who typically used them than with any medical or scientific basis on dangerousness.
Sure, and that's another thing that wouldn't show up in statistics directly.
Although it's important to note that alcohol was illegal, and tobacco is becoming increasingly low-status and accordingly restricted.
The end of Prohibition meant that the enforcement apparatus for it needed something new to do. I believe this was another contributing factor to continuing the broken logic of Prohibition with new substances.
That's... actually pretty interesting concept to consider.
Sometimes I do wonder how much better we could all get along if some substances had relaxed or dropped restrictions.
When you think about it, there's the mental toll on users about public disapproval amplified by the legal status. On top of that, the divide on the non user side about someone being a "lawbreaker".
Just seems to cause a lot of division. On top of the illegality of harder drugs leading to the rise of cartels and gangs.
Just thinking out loud. What if the US said 'screw it', try making everything legal for 5-10 years, produce what it can locally, and just see what happens. The hope with this idea is that one could starve out the cartels while perhaps providing a path to rehabilitation.
All of that said, I am still a believer in the Rat Park experiment. If we solved some of our more real problems people perhaps wouldn't need to turn to such substances, as examples by the reports of drug use increasing under lockdown conditions. Reality seems to match the experiment. The thing about that experiment, they found if the rat's other needs were met (food, shelter, socialization) they actually would start to prefer normal water to drugged water again.
I worry that we have raised a bunch of people in the mindset of "if the government allows it, it's safe" and rather than thinking critically about it may assume that they just figured out it was safe. The more drug-tolerant cultures (such as the Netherlands and Portugal) have "evolved" an understanding of drugs culturally such that you don't see a bunch of locals stoned out of their gourds in the coffeeshops all day. I hate the "war on drugs" and the terrible costs it has imposed, but I think that flipping the switch to anything goes is unlikely to end well.
If it’s just about social issues specific to the US, why is it exactly the same in so many other countries? In fact the US did try to make alcohol illegal but it was a shitshow. In my country they’d NEVER touch alcohol yet weed is illegal. Even though it’s the same ethnic group using both.
https://www.businessinsider.com/racist-origins-marijuana-pro...