A guy who was promoting a book on happiness said the same thing about kids to Colbert. The top two happiness bringers, according to him, were religion (going to church, I think) and marriage.

There's a third, and more compelling reason for legalization that you didn't mention. Drug Prevention among children. This, I think, is our best path toward getting people behind legalization. Not only would regulating it make it more difficult for children to get it, it would also cut the link between the kids and the drug dealer, further limiting any 'gateway drug' potential.

There's a nice analysis of the Iowa court decision over at
http://lawdork.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/our-liberties-we-prize-and-our-rights-we-will-maintain/

Another thing....growing up in the 80's made people think that pot was just as bad as cocaine and heroin. at that point, the gateway drug phenomena was created. Kids would smoke pot and think, well hey, that wasn't so bad, so coke and heroin must not be so bad. if you legalize pot, you destroy the whole gateway drug thing.

It's a public good for people to derive enjoyment and relaxation from a harmless and private pursuit.

Paul Campos had a good bit on this a while back at LGM: http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/11/are-drugs-bad.html

I've tried pot a while back, with friends. Color me unimpressed - we tried a joint, and I probably got more sensation out of a long hookah session than out of that.

"What if all of us decided one day – for the sake of our own personal happiness – not to have children any more? Then chances are that the future will stop at our generation, which is perhaps worse beyond our comprehension."

What then? The dolphins take over. Big frickin deal. Anybody honestly think they would fuck things up worse than George Bush? What a stupid fuckin question.

Hey, let me share with you the secret of happiness. I tried everything to make me happy. Like family, both the nuclear and extended kind, religion, work and career, devotion to great social causes, creating and enjoying great art, focus on personal wellness, meditation, you name it. None of them worked. They were all more or less false gods I was idoling like a fool just because other people said I should. Then I finally found out what makes me really happy, fulfilled, and at peace with myself and this fabulous cosmos of ours. It’s all about getting rid of all the worries, distractions, details, burdens and just kicking back to drink and do whatever drugs I want whenever I want. You could call this place of deepest happiness I found Nirvana in Ann Arbor.

I think you'll find that it's a private good.

Also, why do you think that it should be heavily regulated etc? Given that it's no more harmful than e.g. doughnuts (you can get addicted, and that's bad for you), the only reason to regulate is to ensure taxation receipts (which themselves only are justified by the politics that would be needed for legalisation) and to prevent just anyone selling it, in order to put criminal gangs out in the cold.

What would the arguments for advertising restrictions etc. be?

Here's an interesting question: has an "overdose" of pot ever killed anyone? I don't mean, caused them to do something stupid--I mean, literally killed them. I have certainly never heard of it doing so, and I imagine the event would be highly publicized if it did.

Alcohol poisoning is fatal. Nicotine poisoning is highly dangerous and can be fatal. Can we say the same of marijuana? If not, what the hell justification is there for "protecting society" from it?

"Here's an interesting question: has an 'overdose' of pot ever killed anyone?"

I'm alive, so no.

Not only would regulating it make it more difficult for children to get it, it would also cut the link between the kids and the drug dealer, further limiting any 'gateway drug' potential.

The second point seems sound to me; the first, less so, unless you believe it's harder for kids to get cigarettes than it is for them to get pot. Certainly that doesn't track with my high school experience.

Regarding marijuana toxicity: the LD50 of THC has been studied in animals, giving us some estimate. According to wikipedia, about 1500 pounds of marijuana would have to be smoked within 15 minutes. Of course that's not to say you couldn't administer enough of the drug in a purified form to kill someone. But, as with caffeine, though it's within the reach of anyone who's taken an organic chemistry class (and in this case a big enough budget) to self-administer a fatal dose, it's hard to think of a reason why someone would do so. It's probably safe to say that things start to get extremely unpleasant at doses well below the fatal level, keeping even the dumbest envelope-pushers from going dangerously far.

Yes, yes, great. Highly educated progressive people keep breeding yourselves out of existence or better to say non-breeding yourselves out of existence. That’ll leave the world in the hands of the religious wackos, etc. with their hordes of kids. I don’t remember the person who said this, but he/she pointed out that it’s not unusual for a Palestinian Arab woman to have well over 40 descendants before she’s dead, as in children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and as a useful comparison, the chief bishop of the Episcopal Church, Cathy Jefferts Schori has exactly 1 descendant. The obvious question is which woman there is going to have more influence over the future course of humankind? And does any of us want to live in a world where we’re so outnumbered by the extremists? Thanks for letting tomorrow belong to the crazies.

Here's an interesting question: has an "overdose" of pot ever killed anyone

I don't know. Has an "overdose" of cigarettes ever killed anyone?

The adverse health effects of marijuana, like the adverse health effects of tobacco, are not a matter of toxicity.

The second point seems sound to me; the first, less so, unless you believe it's harder for kids to get cigarettes than it is for them to get pot. Certainly that doesn't track with my high school experience.

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair comparison, since the age of legal purchase for cannabis would almost certainly be 21 rather than 18 (as is the case for tobacco right now). It absolutely was the case when I was in high school that it was much, much easier to procure pot than it was to get my hands on alcohol.

But, acquiring alcohol was still possible, and undoubtedly cannabis will be just as acquirable under any legalization scheme, so the argument to which you are responding is still probably a poor one. It may be marginally harder for kids to get their hands on pot once sellers have a reason to only sell to adults, but it will hardly be impossible.

Pot can probably be fine for alot of folks. But, more reading and research IS in order.

http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html

Check it out thoroughly. and I'm not some foaming @ the mouth far right, anti-drug freak. Michael Parenti is a favorite read of mine, so that you should tell you something about where my head it. I don't necessarily think pot should be illegal - not @ all. But FULL info needs to get out there about its risks - especially for alot of folks with genetic loading for mental health issues.

Good advice, Polly Gravid: because uneducated rubes keep churning out the kids, that means I have to, and put up with all the same misery as religiously-brainwashed underdeveloped wastelands like Africa, Asia and the american slave states. Here's an idea - you do it. Knock yourself out with your womb of steel, outbreed them and let me know how it turns out. Your kids will wind up poor, dumb and toothless thanks to your demographic hysteria.

Human x, you’re exactly right that we shouldn’t have to crank out scads and scads of rugrats just because the nutjobs are. That’s why we have better weapons than they do so we can kill more of them with one push of a button while they’re trying to get us one by one with explosive belts and hijacked bulldozers. And it’s stupid to worry about little Palestinian shits most of all because Israel has an ongoing project for eliminating the excess population, and the way the way the Palestinians are excreting the jihadis it’s probably about time for the IDF to go back into Gaza again. Ever seen a better use for cluster bombs and white phosphorus?

P.S. I'm not kidding since it really is us or them, and I'm 200% on the side of us which means I'm 200% against them and 200% for killing them, the faster the better.

You could have just wrote that you went to UC Santa Cruz, and you would have said the last two paragraphs would have probably been covered by that.

And the way we eradicate losers like you, demog control, is we fire you and beggar you and dun you and evict you until you flip out and take your little popgun and shoot it out with six dozen militarized ATF agents in tanks. Darwin in action.

Wow, Middle East politics can ruin any thread at a moment's notice. Maybe you guys ought to go smoke some pot and calm down...

I’m in a kind of profoundly altered state now, and things look pretty much the same, meaning they look pretty mch good. Human x, your feathers are easily ruffled, so you yourself are needing some dope probably, and besides I would never take arms against legit authority like the U.S. govt. or any branches therein. After all, those guys along with other govts. like Israel are doing the work we need done, and here’s where I must give a shout out to Presidents Bush and Obama and Prime Ministers Olmert and Bibi and our new Foreign Minister Lieberman, go get em, tigers. What Lieb lacks in the gam department, comparing to Livni, he makes up for in the pure spunk dept. which is not a pun. It is all rather Darwinian, survival of the fittest, struggle for existence, red of tooth and claw, and all that. And I’m not surprised you take on yourself guilt for nurking the lives of tens of millions maybe hundreds of mill. I’m sure though it’s more Eichmannlike guilt, behind a desk giving orders along with fantasies of Wagnerian destruction and all playing in your head, just please keep your black breeches up when your fantisizing, please. And again I say please. Thank you for your support.

M. Lewis :

Interesting read, and over the years I have seen other research articles about severe mental illness and exposure to street drugs. Of course they are a population that has virtually no tolerance for pot - but then again, a person with psychotic tendancies can be triggered by any number of seemingly benign stimuli. There is a reason that those hyperbolic tv evangelist programs are usually restricted in psychiatric dayrooms - they will generally set off a patient like a firebomb. There exists a fair amount of research that links corn syrup sweeteners to exacerbations in mental illness. Pot is such an obvious choice to pick on, but there are hundreds of other things in the everyday environment that do far worse for someone barely compensating.

Pot remains illegal for no reason other than legislative inertia.

There's no principled distinction that can be drawn between pot and alcohol in terms of danger to the user or to the public. Pot is clearly a less destructive substance.

It's also unclear that there is any social benefit to laws banning pot that justify the social cost of enforcing these laws.

Ultimately the best argument for paring back the war on drugs is the cost and the benefit; it's a fundamentally conservative argument. It's about anti-waste, not pro-pot.

These laws are ineffective, and even if they were effective, the public safety benefit of removing pot is insignificant, assuming alcohol is used as a substitute product.

Arguments like Wilkinson's, and anything that claims that pot has merit of any kind, are not going to convince anyone who isn't already converted, though.

I think the study about whether having kids brings happiness is bunk.

My evidence is anecdotal, and I don't know how you'd devise a way to measure it. I know from my own experience, and from speaking to countless people over the years. Raising kids is hard work and can be stressful, but does it bring happiness? You better believe it.

Ask parents what's the one thing they are most happy about with their lives, and I'd bet the answer you'll get more often than any other is their children.