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Opinions on Marijuana Legalization or on Cannabis in general?

I can definitely understand peoples’ issues with it being consumed, especially in a political context, but how do yall feel about “weed”? I won’t hide my feelings, I am very much pro-weed, it’s not great that I started in my mid-teens but in my area it’s FAR from uncommon. I don’t smoke daily or anything, I’m not addicted to it (people say it’s non-habit forming but any drug can be addictive with enough frequent usage) but I do smoke and dab w/ friends often. That’s not why I believe in legalization tho, my main thing is you shouldn’t make a naturally occurring plant an illegal substance. I’d point to the DEA’s destructive (legal) burning of thousands of naturally occurring marijuana plants found in nature; This seems eco-fascist to me and to deny the uses of hemp as a production material seems dogmatic to me. The USSR used hemp for industrial purposes during the war and it helped in a major way. I’m sure most of us are familiar with the badge given for Hemp growers. If you have any criticisms, I’m more than open to it, but I feel that marijuana won’t be easy to get rid of in future society and would probably be put to use in different more productive ways.

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74 comments

  • Prohibition doesn't work. Enforcement is costly and never ending. Those who want to get their hands on drugs will do so whether it's legal or not. The major difference when cannabis was legalized here in Canada is that you no longer have to maintain some sketchy contact and be forced to hang out with them on occasion in order to get your hands on it. It certainly hasn't broken down society.

    Most of us live in places where alcohol can be purchased legally. Well, alcohol is a drug too. Why should it be treated any differently?

    What are we going to do when the state withers away? Will all sections of society continue prohibition? We should instead focus on education and providing support to those who become addicts. The idea that we can solve all drug problems by banishing drugs from society is utopian thinking.

    • Prohibition doesn’t work. Enforcement is costly and never ending.

      it does work, look former socialist states in Europe (never had a drug problem which instantly exploded in like a year when capitalism shown up which in turn strongly indicate it was purposeful).

      It does not work in countries like USA where the government itself use drug cartels to put millions of people into jail slavery or where CIA turned entire country (Afghanistan) into one huge poppy plantation to achieve the mindbreaking result of USA with its 4,5% of world population consuming 80% of world's opioid consumption.

      • 2nding this. All socialists countries went and still do go hard on dismantling the drug trade, not from the bottom up by criminalizing and imprisoning poor ppl, but from the top down by imprisoning the capitalist drug kingpins, and tearing down drug markets. Capitalist countries prop up the drug trade by using it to impoverish and decimate poor and minority communities, and take a cut of the proceeds.

        Ppl are usually staunchly for legalization because they've only experienced how capitalist countries like the US use the drug war as a tool. They don't know what an earnest dismantling of the drug trade, done for the betterment of communities, looks like.

        Weed specifically tho i'm ambivalent about... outside of medical use, the weed industry serves little to no societal value, but it's a pretty minor vice, maybe along the same level as unhealthy food.

      • I'm not sure that I agree that this is a result of prohibition. There are many factors that play into the cause of drug epidemics. The opioid epidemic for example is a direct result of the profit motive taking precedence over the good of society. The drug in question here is prohibited to those without a prescription. Many people also turn to drugs to escape the horrendous conditions that capitalism creates for them.

        Additionally, prohibition creates unregulated black markets. The only way to do away with this is by regulating access through legal channels.

  • Imo all drugs should be legal but none should be normalized.

  • Drugs, in general, should be regulated according to public health and safety.

    And there's no compelling public health or safety case for cannabis prohibition.

  • Weed is one of the safest drugs, if alcohol and nicotine are legal, weed should be too. Plus prohibition really isn't working, the product you buy can be laced with harmful stuff and it's often low quality, bringing it under control of the state would help significantly reducing risk, and could finance the health sector and addiction recovery.

    • I tend to think of these "soft drugs" on the same level as unhealthy foods. Yes they serve no societal value, and do some harm, but overall it's so minor as to not be worth it. Might as well make twinkies illegal.

      Harder drugs tho can decimate communities, which is why socialist countries historically have ruthlessly dismantled the drug trade from the top down.

      • If we enter in nerd emoji mode, cannabis is better than fast foods in the fact that It doesn't cause as big as an addiction.

        I will nerd emoji myself 🤓

  • Cannabis was made illegal by racism and cause the paper industry didn't wanna lose out profits to hemp.

    It's quite literally medicine for me, it should be legalized completely.

    Edit: I have autism and ADHD, the former of which there are no drugs to treat. It certainly doesn't make you "lazy" if anything it makes any kind of work bearable. I feel like these anti-cannabis stances are just regurgitated propaganda to keep it illegal, because it would do a lot more good than prescription drugs.

    • I think some comrades get so caught up in theory and societal structure that they forget that the primary goal of all of this is to have some fucking fun! If doing drugs on your days off is how you want to do that I support you. As long as you're able to be educated on the correct usage and side effects beforehand. And if you feel like it's becoming a problem and you'd like some help and support then the state should provide that for you. This is all much simpler and effective to implement than prohibition btw.

      And of course, medicinal use is a whole other reason as you mentioned.

      • haha seriously tho, weed is such a minor vice, on the same level as unhealthy food, that it's not worth spending too much time talking about. There are harder drugs that actually do serious harm to communities that would have more worthwhile discussion about how socialist states should deal with them.

    • Hey man, I also medicate for similar reasons and agree that people don't understand marijuana well enough to make informed judgment.

      The Marijuana plant is composed of 10s of terpenes, cannabinoids, flavanoids, and there are tens of thousands of varieties with new ones being created everyday. The composition of each strain can be vastly different, and have a wide spectrum of effects. Not all of which are the classic "stoned" that people associate with weed.

      There are non-psychoactive strains that can help with anything from anxiety, to inflammation, CFS, IBS, pain, and more.

      For ADHD, Sativa strains high in CBDv, THCv, and CBG. Terpenes: Limonene, Terpoline. Caryophyellene, Pinene, Linalool. If the strain doesn't have much CBD or CBC, consider adding some CBD flower to keep the anxiety/ paranoia down.

    • Yep I use those strains colloquially referred to as "green crack", my favorite is what dispos call Jack Herer -- the idea that all weed makes you lazy would be shattered in an instant if y'all saw me light up then clean my house like a maniac (because it doesn't hurt, and I'm able to make new connections in my brain, like learning how to love labor for its own sake!)

  • I personally think habitual heavy weed use is bad. I was an incredibly heavy user for a few years.

    I used to think it should be illegalized.

    I think now it should be "material conditions"ed out of harmful existence, if that makes sense. If we can create a socialist society with good mental health resources, good childcare resources for developing minds, and easily available stigma-free resources for people who struggle with dependency, that would check most of the boxes for me.

    I don't think we talk enough about the negative effects heavy weed use has on developing brains, or on the brains of chronic heavy users. I think more research on that side, by a socialist government, would be good.

  • I think all drugs should be decriminalized at the very least. I also think we should normalize talking about them and understanding what they do and how they affect you. Education is key. I think this should however also be done in a society that seeks to eliminate poverty. Stress, poverty, and desperation is why most people turn to drugs as a form of escape.

  • weed being illegal and demonized was always an excuse to disproportionately arrest black people for cheap labor in prisons. theres really no argument for it to be criminalized from a proletarian standpoint.

  • Banning hemp is so stupid. It’s such a useful plant, from nutritional supplements to bio plastics.

    • I remember seeing videos of old car prototypes that used Hemp and they were surprisingly cheap to make and very durable. I think they claimed it was “10x stronger than steel” which is probably just an old timey way of saying it is very strong, idk if they actually did the math on it

  • i'm a regular user and have also struggled with dependency of it, i believe it should be completely legal and available to the same degree alcohol is. additionally, all people with criminal charges relating to it should be released from prison and have those charges removed. it can absolutely be used responsibly such as alcohol can be, and it is significantly less harmful than alcohol and other vices commonly found in society. if someone is allowed to have a drink at the end of the day or at a gathering with others, i don't see a reason why they shouldn't be allowed to also smoke at the end of the day or with others. obviously it can also be used irresponsibly, and i know what that's like personally. but i also know that irresponsible use is almost always a symptom of a greater issue in someones life (unmitigated health issues, anxiety, depression, etc) that can be solved. i honestly have yet to hear a reason why cannabis should be criminalized that isn't about overuse or about children using it way too early in their lives (which is harmful but can be avoided with ACTUAL education that isn't just drug war propaganda from the DEA). also, it should be properly regulated in terms of production to maintain certain standards of quality (e.g keeping dangerous additives out of vape cartridges).

    • I couldn’t agree more. The DEA-approved drug talks they gave in public schools (I attended) made people CURIOUS instead of skeptical of drugs because they would make it seem like 10 joints in a lifetime is equivalent to shooting up heroin everyday of your life. Kids obviously had older brothers or cousins that had smoked pot and never died, so they’d try it. If I can find it I’ll add the link in and edit, but there was a great video on how the D.A.R.E. Program completely backfired because it overhyped how dangerous drugs were instead of just being real about how harmful drugs can be.

      • yup. those times the cop would come to school and talk about drugs made drugs sound so awesome.

  • Drugs are the number one thing that I struggle to approach from a balanced Marxist perspective by far. The way that drugs are pervasive in western society, especially for those of us who grew up in very working class urban areas in North America, makes them a difficult topic for me. I have been exposed to drugs my entire life, bought, sold, consumed them, ect. I have been thinking for a while now that we need a good struggle session on the grad about drugs, usage, access, legalization and what not. I very much want to hear the perspective of comrades that come from places or backgrounds where they are not so ubiquitous.

    Specifically in terms of weed, I struggle with it a lot. On one hand, I have been addicted to smoking weed for the best part of the past decade on a near daily basis, and it has definitely impacted my life in negative ways. On the other hand, it also saved me from alcohol and amphetamine abuse basically. I often think about the Frank Ocean album Blonde, where there is an interlude that talks about how marijuana makes you "lazy stupid and unconcerned" or something along those lines. That is absolutely the truth I think. I could have accomplished a lot more in my 20s were it not for the comfort of going home to smoke weed, I think anyway. I'm very sympathetic to arguments both for and against its place in society.

    Putting people in prison or ruining their lives over it is obviously terrible, especially in regards to the way it has been used in the US to target the black population. That being said, I don't think that it being a thing that most every young person gets into is good either. There must be some balance to be found, but right now I am not sure what it is. And this is just weed, that's not even talking about harder drugs which I think are a similar but different topic.

    Very interested to hear other comrade's thoughts on this anyway, thank you for the post.

  • Marijuana should be treated like many other drugs. Legal but with education and addiction treatment extremely available. I don’t want a revolution without dancing. I’m not the ideal proletariat and you won’t make me into a better one by banning my vices. If I want a glass of whiskey, or to smoke a bowl with some friends or after a day of work and exercise, or to spend a day tripping, banning it won’t make me spend that time reading theory or engaging in mutual aid. It will however make me resent the person or group that banned it as I either do it anyway or use that time in a different non productive pursuit of enjoyment with a similar aim.

    Want to know how to make me a better proletariat? Make it so I’m not too tired after work to exercise and I have easy access to resources and community to do it (an anarchist bike coop did more for my physical health than any drug law). Want me to become more educated in my free time? Make classes easy for me to access in person and make it a fun thing to go out and do with my free time. Also encourage use of the skills I learn there, languages are great for this. Want to get me engaging in culture more? Make culture easy and welcoming to access.

    And after all that, some nights, I’m still just going to want to enjoy a vice and turn off my brain or chat about anything and nothing with friends. But that’s ok. And freedom is the right to make the worse decision. And strong communities can and historically have coexisted with cannabis use. Hell a pot circle is a great place to discuss philosophy. Why shouldn’t the likes of Marx and kropotkin and Lenin and Trotsky and Davis be discussed there too?

    I don’t want to live under Puritanism painted red and replacing god with the proletariat.

    • I don’t want to live under Puritanism painted red and replacing god with the proletariat.

      Fucking this. Holy shit.

    • I'd even argue that psychedelics led me to ML. They opened me up to the idea that I don't actually know shit. That much of what I thought I valued was just programming.

    • I’m not the ideal proletariat and you won’t make me into a better one by banning my vices.

      Want to know how to make me a better proletariat?

      This is not the outlook of communists, to make your political views contingent on what communists can do for you. We are communists because we care about humanity, not because they do shit for us.

      And freedom is the right to make the worse decision.

      This is pure liberalism, bordering on lifestylist anarchism. We communists always value community betterment over personal freedom. Weed aside, this isn't an argument stance you should be taking for or against weed.

      I don’t want to live under Puritanism painted red and replacing god with the proletariat.

      This could have been said by any right winger who values their personal freedom over the proletariat. I'm dissapointed in this community for upvoting such individualist nonsense.

      • End of the day, the pot-smokers will smoke weed whether it’s legal or not, Cheech and Chong made a whole career out of breaking the laws around marijuana, and millions of others are breaking those same laws to this day around the world. If it’s illegal in a future society, I can guarantee that there will still be people smoking weed and it’s very likely it will not affect anyone else but those consuming it. Weed is really not that destructive, it’s used as a medical treatment for many different ailments, like glaucoma, stimulating the lateral hypothalamus for chemo patients, to write it off completely is dogmatic in my opinion

  • I'm for a de-illegalization of drugs persoanlly. Y'know cuz for blackmarkets to make sense, the product has to be illegal. Regulation is key. And in addition to that I'd advocate for a humane school system that amongst other things educates people on drugs in general. I think that's what it comes down to, personally. Although I am not sure how other marxists in general view this topic. I think for most people, taking drugs is a way to escape the harsh reality of capitalism. Would that system be overthrown, there wouldn't be a reason for us to get drunk really. At least that's how I see it.

    • I can understand that, but alcohol definitely has a place in many traditions, some of which religious, and those won’t be easy to get rid of

  • Seeing the word dab knocked three teeth out of my mouth.

    Personally, I can't really talk about it because I have very limited knowledge.

  • I have fibromyalgia and a wack ass unnamed joint disorder - I can dislocate my shoulders and most of the joints in my body.... or they can be dislocated for me, if I hit something wrong, move in the wrong way... and it fucking hurts.

    No medicine has helped me like weed has. I admit to using it every night, whenever I can afford it. I can actually recover from work and be ready to do it all again in the morning. I can work out without it destroying me, which creates a positive feedback loop wherein I wind up hurting less chronically.

    I am grateful for it. I'm grateful I'm no longer worried about pigs breaking down my door just for lighting up, too.

  • I think weed should be legalized in countries where its usage is a significant problem, but not in places where it did not have much presence to begin with. The problem with addictive substances is that once they take root they are extremely difficult to remove, especially if they have managed to become part of the culture, like in USSR, which put a lot of effort into decreasing alcohol consumption among the people, but only achieved meager results.

  • Isnt growing hemp legal almost everywhere?

  • For marijuana, I'm in favor of decriminalizing, and making some avenue for legal access (even if far more restricted than with liquor right now). Though tbh (from a Polish perspective) we should restrict liquor a bit more as well.

  • legalize, but also build growers’ and dispensary collectives so that “big marijuana” doesn’t become a thing.

    the fact that the state violently criminalized black americans and counterculture elements in the war on drugs and is now legalizing/giving control of the legal drug market to bourgeois white liberals is a classic case of enclosure imo.

  • My sister smoked it while we were abroad and she says that it helped her a lot in terms of health. And I can't wait to be older to try it myself but they still didn't legalize it here.

    So yeah, legalize ASAP

  • Trying to quit right now 😁 shit has helped me therapeautize myself but it's gotten to the point where I need to process my emotions sober. I begin to panic after about 12 hours of not smoking. Clear sign I need to quit. This is after about a year of moderate/heavy (relative to me) daily usage. I can feel it like a oily film over my brain. When life was hell it helped me cope and stay grinding away, but now that things have settled it's negatively affecting my productivity.

  • There's a reason really existing socialist formations almost invariably come down hard on drugs. It harms public health, it harms proletarian culture, productivity, and so on. There's no problem with industrial hemp but conflating this with THC-bearing weed for entertainment is a bit of a trick. Same thing for the medical uses. I admit I'm sceptical, and I suspect a lot of people with prescriptions are in fact using it for entertainment or escapism, but if it has genuine medical applications that's fine, same as it's fine to use morphine for pain management but not just for fun.

    • There’s a reason really existing socialist formations almost invariably come down hard on drugs.

      Ahistorical, the reason why they come down hard on drugs is colonialism.

      The truth of drug use is found in this graph, any drug policy that does not consider it is engaging in IDpol, which is liberal.

      Source is a PHD holder, David Nutt.

      • I understand your point about colonialism but I think research like this raises a lot of questions and doesn't necessarily support your overarching point. I’ve hidden my critique behind a spoiler tag as the details could be triggering.

        The paper is here [PDF]: https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News stories/dnutt-lancet-011110.pdf . I’ve only had a quick skim but I can spot some problems. Mainly due to it not being dialectical or materialist. I note in advance that the paper acknowledges many of these weaknesses.

        CW: Substance abuse

        The authors make a distinction between harm to user and harm to society. There are ‘16 harm criteria’, divided between the two categories. Harm is weighted. For example, mortality is treated as more harmful than damage. Still, to accept the findings means to accept the weightings. I’m unsure if I accept the weightings because of the individualist conception of harm that underpins the entire model.

        Under harm to users:

        • Physical
          • Drug-specific mortality
          • Drug-related mortality
          • Drug-specific damage
          • Drug-related damage
        • Psychological
          • Dependence
          • Drug-specific impairment of mental function
          • Drug-related impairment of mental function
        • Social
          • Loss of tangibles
          • Loss of relationships

        Under harm to others:

        • Physical and psychological
          • Injury
        • Social
          • Crime
          • Environmental damage
          • Family adversities
          • International damage
          • Economic cost
          • Community

        This does not seem dialectical. For example, I would not separate ‘community’ from any of the other types. A drug overdose (OD) harms the community as well as the victim, their relationships, and their family. The model must determine how to avoid double-counting these harms.

        If an OD is counted in both categories, that’s a methodological flaw. If the model avoids double-counting, the basis must be arbitrary: a liberal will be working off very different premises to a communist, so there will never be agreement between bourgeois and socialist societies about what counts as harm and how to count it.

        (On page 1564, the authors admit that they don’t have data for all the sub-categories, either, which causes another problem for comparison.)

        Communists would likely reach a different consensus to scientists in a liberal democracy who are not dialectical materialists and who have been trained within a capitalist system where certain ‘realities’ are taken for granted, such as profit-making pharmaceutical and alcohol industries and the tragedy of ‘gang war’ (US ops), etc, in countries where illegal drugs are produced.

        The graph shows the actual harm caused by drug use across a UK sample of available data; i.e. this is how much harm actual alcohol consumption has caused. The problem is that there are probably thousands of alcohol users to every heroin user.

        The problem with relying on this data to make policy is that the results are determined by the legalisation and strong encouragement to consume alcohol and the criminalisation and taboo of the the others. The authors conclude:

        the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm.

        According to the data, you might say that alcohol, heroin, crack, and meth should be prohibited. Or you might say that if alcohol is legalised, then so should heroin, crack, and meth. The latter would be devastating and, apparently (notwithstanding some mixed messages) not what the authors intended:

        we should note that a low score in our assessment does not mean the drug is not harmful, since all drugs can be harmful under specific circumstances.

        The problem with the graph comes down to a faulty comparison with all drugs against alcohol. The result can be read in so many different ways to justify a range of contradictory policies.

        The problem with comparing anything with alcohol in the abstract is that it forgets the dialectical relation of alcohol to culture. The effects of this will always be skewed. It is incomparable to any other drug. The exception is perhaps tobacco. It would be interesting to re-draw the graph with tobacco counted twice. Once for today and once for before the massive campaign against smoking and the British smoking ban. If ‘old’ tobacco came above alcohol (I’m reasonably sure it would) while ‘new’ tobacco came sixth, the graph would instead show something different. If society suddenly took the same attitude to other drugs, alcohol would fall down the list.

        The data could be used to show, for example, as discussed in this thread, that cannabis is ‘safe’ or at least ‘safer’ than alcohol. But the data do not support that. Because these data cannot tell us (a) how dangerous would be cannabis if it were legalised and encouraged to the extent of alcohol or (b) how safe would be alcohol if it were criminalised and as taboo as heroin. It only shows current harm.

        Emphasis to indicate the authors’ political economic views, which should highlight why Marxists should treat the thesis with caution:

        Limitations of this approach include the fact that we scored only harms. All drugs have some benefits to the user, at least initially, otherwise they would not be used, but this effect might attenuate over time with tolerance and withdrawal. Some drugs such as alcohol and tobacco have commercial benefits to society in terms of providing work and tax, which to some extent offset the harms and, although less easy to measure, is also true of production and dealing in illegal drugs.

        The paper also warns against the general application of these findings:

        Many of the harms of drugs are affected by their availability and legal status, which varies across countries, so our results are not necessarily applicable to countries with very different legal and cultural attitudes to drugs. Ideally, a model needs to distinguish between the harms resulting directly from drug use and those resulting from the control system for that drug. Furthermore, they do not relate to drugs when used for prescription purposes.

        The paper ends: “aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy.” Which means the reader is left with the message that the data are not really about relaxing other drug laws so much as tightening alcohol laws. I’d say that’s a mixed message as they are concerned (subtly) with e.g. the connection between drugs and racial policing, which means using the paper e.g. to decriminalise cannabis rather than to campaign against alcohol. I suppose these aren’t mutually exclusive but, then again, when this graph is usually cited, it’s usually in favour of making cannabis legal rather than prohibiting alcohol.

        I’m not saying this paper isn’t helpful or illustrative. It has its uses. And I’m not making any claims about what should be legalised. I’m arguing that the graph does not show what the paper argues. While I agree that the paper should be engaged with, its use is limited, and its graphs shouldn’t be detached from the underlying study.

        I’m unsure what this means for the broader question of drugs policy under socialism; but I would caution against relying on the graph/paper on the basis that ignoring it is idpol—there are other valid criticisms.

      • im curious what the definition of harm in this study is because cannabis causing almost as much harm to the user as benzodiazepines and mephedrone is a little bit strange to me.

    • I’m sorry to get heated about this but that is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Medical usage in Cancer patients IS helpful. You may be lucky enough to not know what that’s like, but a close loved one passed away and they were not given access to use medical cannabis, they could barely eat a half a bowl of cereal in 2 days time because of chemotherapy and the many pills they were prescribed. I don’t wanna make light of it, but when people talk about getting hungry after smoking weed, that’s not just some Scooby Doo joke, it’s real and affects your brain, specifically the Lateral Hypothalamus. Access to this medicine has been found to be very helpful. Even IF it was a form of escapism, why deny a dying person the basic joy of easing their pain, their symptoms, their unease? What is so wrong with letting a chemo patient smoke a blunt?

  • Drugs should be restricted on a case-by-case basis. If you’re smoking once a week, there’s no need for it to be restricted for you. If you smoke 2 ounces a week, we should maybe look into it. If all you do is smoke all day everyday, we should definitely look into it and restrict how much you can get.

    • solving the reason of why someone is relying on cannabis all day every day is a way more efficient way of handling it than just cutting them off. there is almost always a reason why someone ends up using it that much.

      • Completely agree. Material Conditions> Dogmatic Laws

      • I definitely agree, but we can both restrict access to some while also working to make their situation better so they don’t feel the need to use so much.

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