- Position1 of 3›
- Recreational marijuana should be legal
The composition of legal cannabis can be guaranteed by a trusted organization (a state or an association for example). Thus, the consumers will be protected from added substances present in street cannabis.
The argument
Proponents of legalisation argue that the central practical difference between a legal and an illegal market is not whether marijuana is consumed but whether anyone is answerable for what it contains. Under prohibition there is no mechanism by which a buyer can establish the composition or strength of what is sold: marijuana bought illegally may be mixed with any other sort of substance and may therefore be actively harmful in ways the user cannot detect or anticipate. An illegal supplier has no licence to lose, no label to stand behind and no inspector to satisfy, so adulteration carries little risk for the seller and all of the risk for the buyer. Legalising marijuana, on this view, would bring it within the same apparatus of standards that governs other consumable products: the government would be able to specify what may be sold, test whether those standards are met, and penalise suppliers who fail them. Supporters hold that this is a public-health gain even for those who regret the consumption itself, because it removes a layer of harm — contamination — that is a product of prohibition rather than of the drug. The second strand of the argument concerns who controls supply. Because production and distribution are currently unlawful, they fall by default to those already willing to operate outside the law, and the trade has to be facilitated by gangs and criminals who cannot settle disputes through contracts or courts and so settle them by force. Legalisation, on this account, takes marijuana out of the shadow economy and makes it legitimate, transferring the trade to businesses operating in the open; proponents argue that this drains the revenue sustaining criminal networks and removes the occasion for violence between them. Advocates add that legalisation has been shown to bring a significant drop in violent crime. Taken together, they conclude, a legal market is a controlled and regulated market, and that is reason enough to legalise recreational marijuana.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Legalising marijuana will not stop it being spiked or the production being run by gangs and criminals. Instead, it will legitimise their endeavours as well as producing more users for these groups to pray on.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] Legitimising the marijuana trade will not stop the current links it holds to the crime world.