It’s simple don’t put Me and others like Me in prison that hold’s murders, rapists and other such violent degenerates, Just Because we want to smoke a little dope, Eat a few bags of Doritos and binge on Adventure Time.

@Ponka Pie  

 
My reasoning is, among other things, that imprisonment is good business for the prison guard union. That’s why I wrote “At least for a few people”.  
It’s not about what best and most effective for everyone in society, it’s about political viability.

@AlsoSprachOdin
 
Opportunity and social costs are a lot broader than “special snowflakes”. Children growing up with a parent in jail have a lot more problems - that’s a social cost. The development of a culture of mistrust of police is a social cost.
 
Opportunity costs are the cost of not doing something else. Many (but not all) prisoners could make more money and pay more taxes outside of prison. Prison labor is not very productive.
 
Selling drugs is hard, dangerous work. If they really were “useless, criminal, unemployable dumb-asses”, they wouldn’t be dealing drugs. I’d actually argue that mass incarceration creates these people. Sending a nonviolent offender to jail increases their chances of committing a violent crime substantially.
 
I mean, who would have thought that when you spend every day talking to criminals, working with criminals, and living with criminals, you start to think like a criminal?
 
And then, when they get out, they’re stuck with a criminal record that makes them virtually unemployable. So your reasoning is completely backwards.

>investigating, trying, and imprisoning  
But all of that is offset by the money you make selling the drugs in the first place, or putting those prisoners to work. At least for a few people. Corruption is just one of those aforementioned contexts.  
>opportunity and social costs  
Not everyone is necessarily a beautiful and unique snowflake that society absolutely needs. Sometimes there are just too damn many useless, criminal, unemployable dumb-asses around and you have to fight a little war to get rid of them. Think India-Pakistan. In other countries with different contexts, circulating money with drugs is the path of least (economic, social, political, etc) resistance, and so it happens.  
I’m not saying you’re wrong about the ideal way of dealing with drug abuse, I’m saying we don’t live in an ideal world. Just thinking out loud.

@AlsoSprachOdin  
The costs of investigating, trying, and imprisoning drug users vastly outweighs the costs of decriminalization, even before taking into account the long-run costs of mass incarceration. A 60-day stay in rehab costs about the same as a year in a minimum-security prison, even though American prisons are ridiculously underfunded. That’s before taking into account the enforcement costs, the foregone taxation from drug-related income, the fact that most marijuana users don’t need rehab, and the opportunity and social costs of leaving people to rot.

@Cirrus Light  
Problem with decriminalization is that the necessary rehab clinics, police hours, health professionals etc. to keep the system running efficiently, cost money - and Portugal is running out of that.

@AlsoSprachOdin  
The decriminalization isn’t legalization, though, it’s just that they treat people who do it like people who need rehabilitation, not prison sentences.
 
Or am I thinking of Spain?
 
Either way, that’s a policy I agree with. Prisons are just a bad idea in general, IMO. They create this loop of trapping people into a lifestyle, and making people who’s lives suck, and make them even worse which only drives them to crime more. I mean, how can you expect them to get out and become outstanding citizens when they’ll never be able to get a job, now? Of course they’ll go back to crime, they’ve often got little choice if they want to survive.
 
And life sentences? That’s a fate worse than death, IMO.
 
In any case, I think rehabilitation is a much better course than prison time.

@Background Pony #D9C0  
>Which is probably why you shouldn’t be buying it.  
Where does this come from? I never suggested it was a good thing.
 
>There’s a difference between a private citizen funding criminal behavior and the government doing it.  
That’s not what we’re talking about. When a government allows certain substances, no criminals need be involved. But if I had to choose between private citizens funding criminals, or the government funding criminals, I’d prefer the former.
 
>It’s wrong either way, but it’s a reflection on the government when it does it.  
It can reflect all sorts of things, depending on context. The British sale of opium to China was exploitation and war. Decriminalization of users in Portugal hasn’t made the problem worse, with people doing drugs at an older age and going to rehab more, and they don’t go to prison for what they do to themselves. In the Netherlands, mostly marijuana tourists make a nuisance of themselves (or, they used to. Since they got banned the pushers became the nuisance).  
The the other hand, prohibition was a fucking retarded catastrophe, and the “war on drugs” is another catastrophic failure that was never intended to work anyway.  
The Italian fascists are the only ones I can think of who ever effectively removed the sort of organized criminal organization that supplies drugs, and they did it by simply shooting the mafia with a minimum of legal fuzz.  
Very different reflections.

@AlsoSprachOdin
 
Oh, and I should point out that, even though cigarettes and alcohol are legal, there are still illegal sales of them that fund criminals. I’m fairly certain the same is true of legalized marijuana.

@AlsoSprachOdin
 
Which is probably why you shouldn’t be buying it. Funding criminals and all. There’s a difference between a private citizen funding criminal behavior and the government doing it. It’s wrong either way, but it’s a reflection on the government when it does it.

@Cirrus Light  
>is the law for justice, or for discouraging degeneracy?  
These are mutually exclusive?  
At least, you have to prove that smoking weed really does impact negatively on society, and not just the users and abusers.
 
@Background Pony #D9C0  
Outlawing it inevitably funds criminals, too.

i agree with her reasoning, but could you possibly be more agonizingly overbearing?

@qmm1337
 
The crazy eco-communists that live down the road from me would firmly agree with the OP, along with hating social contracts, private property, capitalism, nation-states, and shaving (70% of them are women)

@Cirrus Light
 
I think OP actually became a duck.

Yo
 
Note that the reverse works in states that have not legalized marijuana (buying it funds violent crime).

@Cirrus Light  
No but we can sure cheer on the sidelines :D

So Twilicorn was part of the jury for both the Micheal Brown and Eric Garner cases? That makes sense.

OP is guilty of using ponies as a mouthpiece. Sentence: A duck must sit on OP’s head.
 
@RainbowDash69  
And this is why people in power should not have fetishes, or people with fetishes like that should not be in great power :p
 
 
@Crystalis  
Is the law about making justice, or is it about setting up a system where certain actions are discouraged because they’re harmful to society?

“But I am still confiscating the drugs.”  
“WHAT?!”  
“You heard me. Eminent domain. Bailiff, cut the defendant a check for 210 bits and let’s call it a day.”

I think ponies in cages for stupid reasons is the best.
 
No victim, who cares? Lock em up!!

Oh good, libertarians.

@Background Pony #CBAE  
So you’re punishing the victim then. Isn’t that like the opposite of justice?

But there is a victim; that victim is yourself.

Using ponies as mouthpieces for political arguments, eh?