Completely Legalize Weed

As long as people aren't idiots and keep it civil, this thread shouldn't get locked. Not sure if E46 has the maturity to do that though. source

What does the brain trust here in the political forum think about the effects of legal weed on the economy? A lot of talking heads seem to think that legalizing marijuana will be the giant beanstalk that grows from the magic seed. Bad analogy, but I am interested in the opinions of those who post here. I'll share my own thoughts after a few responses are made. source

Given what I found in the first two results when I looked up the health effects of marijuana use, here and here , the health effects are not dissimilar from alcohol and cigarettes combined. Of course if marijuana were to be legalized, I would expect limitations such as age and driving restrictions. I would also be interested if the smoking bans that are sweeping the nation would apply to smoking pot. If your town has smoking bans of any kind, and marijuana were to be legalized, would your town include smoking marijuana in the bans? If you support banning smoking tobacco in public, would you support similar bans on smoking pot in public if it were legal to smoke? source

The problem as I see it is, is there is no test, that I know of, that can determine when someone smoked pot just that they have smoked it, therefore making it difficult to determine whether or not someone is under the influence when they are driving a car. As for being around smokers unwittingly, the same cig smoking laws would apply. Undoubtledly pot bars would spring up and of course smoking and driving would be illegal just as having open bottles of booze or beer in a car is illegal. There really is no rational reason to keep pot illegal and booze legal. source

The fact is that drug prohibition doesn't work, period, no matter what drug it is. That and the drug policies have become heavily biased against the poor with things like mandatory minimum prison sentences. That and it is denying the government an alternative set of tax revenues, and legalizing drugs would do more harm to illicit drug cartels than any other type of legislation out there. source