h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think that we should put this up for a vote. It's amazing that after hundreds of years, we still cannot agree on what is good or not good for us! In my opinion we should legalize everything, then start making things illegal when we see what effects it has on society. For instance, we now know that cigarettes are bad for you and even people who don't smoke can get cancer from the secondhand smoke. So let's make cigarettes illegal, and bring pot into the foreground as a new form of cigarette.

Of course there is the downside that law enforcement agencies will have to actually work instead of popping people going 5 miles over the speed limit with tickets! But isn't that what they're paid to do to begin with?

Making cigarettes illegal would be very nice if it would actually work. There are two stages to law -- making the law and enforcing it. Banning tobacco would be a bit like banning rain. Everyone would smoke tobacco anyway, so the law would have a mockery made of it.

Of course, the same argument applies for marijuana, the only difference being that it actually is illegal and the law actually is having a mockery made of it.

but your forgetting that we would have good old marijuana as a substitute, of course we whould still have tones of illegal smoking to begin with but eventually people would switch to marijuana as their daily depressant because it is much less harmful.
On top of that the main reason that most people smoke tobacco over marijuana is because its legal and their for (supposedly) cannot be all that bad for you.

My point exactly. My suggestion is to start with a clean slate, and then work out the kinks. In this case the kinks being the stuff that's really bad for you. I think people would tend to drink alcohol less if they had access to marijuana legally...Well, that's just a theory, but I would like to see what would happen!

Problem is, would the current governments let anyone try anything different… no of course they wouldn’t, because it would totally screw them over. This is a theory (and a good one at that) but sadly in our present (f**ked up) society that’s all it can ever be.

Well, supposedly that's why the United States has a democracy...However, you are very correct on that. NO government is going to try to start anything new like that first. Sometimes it takes a little push in the right direction...

"but your forgetting that we would have good old marijuana as a substitute"

Unfortunately, nobody would ever get anything done. Marijuana may or may not be less harmful, but it IS a lot more powerful than nicotine. You can't check database entries when you're giggling like a hyaena and concentrating on how beautiful the world is, craving Wotsits, etc.

"eventually people would switch to marijuana as their daily depressant because it is much less harmful. "

The jury's still out as to whether it's less harmful or not. Also, people wouldn't simply switch just like that -- nicotine addiction is a very, very powerful beast.

It'd still be nice to see marijuana legalised though.

It’ll take more than a push. Ha, ha, more like a nuclear holocaust that’ll take out at least three quarters of the world’s population. And even then well have the spuds who don’t know whether or not something’s good for them, and are too freaking stupid to go find out. If this social refurbishing is ever going to happen, I very much doubt that it’ll happen in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our great grandchildren for that matter, why? Because human being have evolved an utter ridiculous aversion to change even if it will be an obvious betterment.