Ask Lemmy

Thailand legalized it not too long ago and I'd say it's 90% positive.

• loads of direct and indirect business opportunities
• reduction in alcohol related issues. Stones are generally much more chill than drunks and impairement for vehicle operation etc is much lesser.

There were a few populist issues like catching kids with weed etc but imo that's actually a positive as people starting to actually talk about kid safety when previously they had all these drugs and worse.

Personally I'd say the only danger is high concentrates which are illegal here and not very desired by the market either way. Mostly tourists and locals just want to smoke normal mid tier weed and enjoy the nature and thai food which is a win-win for everyone. I've seen some gravity bongs and a bit of oils (never seen anyone dab) but I'd say 90% of users just smoke mid tier 5$/g weed of 28% thc or so mostly mixed with tobacco too.

My favorite change is just the culture shift. Stoned tourists are just so much nicer and the party scene has changed a lot around this.

Legal weed as been huge for business here. Thai people are incredible entrepreneurs and were really quick to develop the industry to the point where the government tried to reverse legalization a year later but it was too late already.

I just wanna note that we're ~~basically blind~~ when it comes to the health impacts, positive or negative, of cannabis right now. This will change in the coming years, but for now it's impossible to tell what the cons are.

Edit: Turns we're not blind, just mildly visually impaired.

I think that the pros are obvious. It should simply be legal, and other comments have given good reasons.

However, there are some cons that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

It impairs you, so any activity where that is a problem, like driving, may need extra attention or public education.

For smokers, inhaling smoke is dangerous.

Legalize all drugs. Addiction is a severe mental health disorder, not a crime. Literally end of discussion.

If you think weed should not be legalized, then you should be consistent and apply the same to alcohol and tobacco. Both of these substances do far more harm than weed with far fewer medical properties.

Pretty sure weed causes far less harm than organised criminal groups.

It costs more to police it. It is profitable otherwise. No one genuinely cares. I haven't smoked since college. It eventually gets boring. It's a business. That's it. Sorry there isn't a mystical description for it. It's money.

Pros if properly managed, takes away profits for criminals and helps prevent grow ops causing a lot of problems in communities.

Con Managed poorly fucks over consumers and propogates the criminals by creating a bigger market for them

Pro new tax revenue to pay for services

I don't know much about the effects of legalization on society as a whole, but I personally feel I have benefitted from weed being legal. I find weed to be useful in helping me sleep and manage stress. That said, people should also be educated about the potential dangers of weed. Using it too often can lead to neglecting one's responsibilities, and people underestimate the danger of driving while stoned. I also find, since I've gotten proper therapy, I don't need weed as much as I used to.

On principle, I think drugs should not be treated as a criminal issue. At most, drug addicts should be made to get treatment. Governments should focus on education and treatment instead of harsh punishment. People who are on drugs should feel safe admitting to what drugs they're on in the event of an emergency.

Cons: capitalism is already ruining it with monoculture strains and subsequent crop loss from one little thing wiping out everything. Industry trade groups are forming to be the next generation of lobbyists. For now, they're on our side by focusing on legalization, but they won't be on our side forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)

It's not completely safe. Regulation makes sense. Especially for protecting developing brains from long-term negative damage.

If you look at it as an illegal drug, it's obvious that it doesn't work to criminalize. It seems much more appropriate and effective to legalize, regulate, and have information and support programmes in place.

In Germany, it was legalized, but only in a very limited form, to get it through the coalition government. I think the current form is too bureaucratic, too restrictive. The most important thing is that it legalized holding personal consumption belongings.

Never smoked anything in my life, having one side of the family wiped out prematurely by nicotine, all of them.

Lived in Colorado. The pros outweigh the cons a million to one. The biggest positive was the massive reduction in DUIs, since people drink in bars but smoke weed at home. There may be a reduction in harder drugs, too, given how much easier and cheaper it is to get weed. The tax revenue from weed sales is huge (was bigger, though) and because the laws were changed after Colorado turned liberal-ish, the money was mostly allocated to great causes.

Government loves having a law that can be selectively enforced and is broken by a lot of people. Taking it away is a huge plus, especially in times where the government is looking for easy ways to control the population. Even before now, White people caught in possession or smoking marijuana rarely got more than probation, while some Black people were three-striked for the same.

The only downside is that it still smells bad, and I am still not sure that hacking up your lungs is all that sane or safe.

Yes, it appears that young humans can have very negative reactions to weed, and that it can affect their brains negatively. That would absolutely be a problem if legalization increased week use among teenagers, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

There are no negatives.

Pros: I don't have to sneak around like a criminal just to get a plant.

I don't partake, but it's been legal in my area for a couple years now and I haven't seen any negative effects on society. More gaudy smoke shops is about it. They remind me of the payday loan places. I'm sure some people have a dependency on it, it can form a habit like anything else.

Is this still a discussion on 2025? I always thought this was a no brainer, just blocked by demonization and the lack of examples of places that legalized and nothing bad happened. We should be discussing how to deal with other drugs. Marijuana is pretty much solved

I'm going to go against the grain here a little. First of all, it should absolutely be decriminalized. No one should spend time behind bars for using or selling it, obviously.

But it got legalized here back in 2022 and while it was great at first, weed sort of sucks now. Because of legal limits to how many plants you can grow, CBD disappeared. Every strain is somewhere between 20-30 percent THC and just makes your brain numb, doesn't get you high the same way. Everything is way more expensive because every few years they vote to increase taxes on it, so strains that were 5 bucks a g when it was illegal are 10-11 now. Edibles have concentration limits so you're paying out the ass now for 100 mg, which someone would before make in their kitchen and give away for cheap.

Not to mention that there is one. On. Every. Street. Corner.

It's insane. Every business that closes down turns into a dispo and the added competition does not lower prices. Out town is losing cafes, art stores, all sorts of businesses because the cancer that is a dispensary keeps spreading. On a personal note, I've been trying to cut back for years and honestly I think if I still had to call "my buddy" to pickup i would have stopped a long time ago, but now it's in my face everywhere and tbh, it just sucks. It just gets you high. That's it. I can't explain it, it lost so much heart.

Now it's probably cleaner, safer, more ethical. But from a consumers perspective, it kind of sucks now.

I can't think of a single negative consequence of legalizing marijuana here, while the positives are numerous such as earning the state more money and people having alternatives for pain management that isn't a highly addictive opioid.

giant megacorps can definitely beat out some random shady dealer (indirectly from mental outlaw)