[jammies]

I'm seeing the same arguments confusing whether people *should* smoke marijuana with whether the government should legalize it. Although peter12, for a change, makes cogent arguments supporting his position and Frequitude valiantly defends prohibitionism, it remains fact that millions of Canadians already smoke up, legal or not.So the questions are really "by what means can we minimize the risks of pot smoking?" and "are there any benefits to be derived from legalization?", and not "is it morally correct to get high, and if not, why would we legalize it?"

That being said, the idea that it is immoral to seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is highly debatable. The social good of alcohol does exist - people like to get inebriated and interact with other inebriates, and happy people are good in and of themselves. The same with marijuana, if you want to hang out and play video games while eating munchies and smoking doobies by the half-dozen, who am I to say that isn't a valid use of your free time?

The world has room for relaxation and foolishness along with hard work and seriousness. Overly puritan moral codes just lead to hypocrisy and misery, which is no better than overly lax moral codes leading to lawlessness and indulgence. We've tried the overly harsh with this issue, and it predictably hasn't worked, so it only makes both practical and moral sense to loosen up. .