[August]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

It is only dangerous because it is legal, available on every corner, event and every commercial for football game.

That's just not true. When alcohol was illegal it was just as available as it is now, but there were far more associated problems. You had all the normal costs associated with alcohol. The health issues, domestic problems and societal woes etc, but you also had the added problems of people going blind or even dying from drinking bathtub gin because the state can't regulate what it prohibits.

That's because prohibition turns the entire trade, including quality control, over to gangsters. Al Capone and his ilk went from two bit pimps to running vast criminal empires with millions of dollars in assets nearly overnight because of prohibition and we see the same thing happening today with the drug cartels and both extend their criminal tendrils into many facets of society, corrupting and converting everything from trade unions to politicians to professional sports.

I'm sorry but I reject the concept that some Dutch smoke shop owner with a tendency toward thuggery could ever compare to the St' Valentines Massacre or the many other bloody gangland wars our country had to endure during the era of Prohibition.

Not only does prohibition make criminals rich and powerful it creates an enormous and costly government bureaucracy who are supposed to fight it but whose true objective is not to actually win their war against drugs but to maintain a antagonistic but symbiotic relationship with the criminals so as to continually justify their existence and expense.

Pot would end up being the same thing. Alcohol is a depressent. Pot is a depressent. Mind is clouded and the central nervous system is put to sleep. Not much of a difference except you do not take a leak as much. However, you have unexplain cravings for 6 McDonald's hamburgers also known as the munchies.

And if alcohol and pot are both depressants then they effect the user in completely opposite ways. Everyone is familiar with the anger and violence caused by alcohol. Some people get really mean when they get drunk. Fights, murders, assaults and rapes, all violent crimes commonly involving alcohol, but it is quite rare to hear of those crimes associated with pot smoking and even then alcohol abuse is usually involved as well.