Why is weed illegal but alcohol and tobacco legal?

Cannabis is a hallucinatory drug and a single dose of this drug may cause an acute mental illness in which serious delusions, high excitement and violence may occur. Long-continued heavy use is widely believed to induce apathy and lead to withdrawal from normal society; this is the basis of its prohibition by international convention. There is also evidence that it can cause serious brain damage.

100% of Heroin junkies started on Cannabis.

If cannabis was introduced when tobacco was introduced and the government got as much tax off it then I'm sure it would be legal.

Morally I agree with you entirely alcohol and tobacco should indeed be banned but we all saw how that turned out with prohibition in the USA.

Once something highly addictive is allowed to become legal and it becomes popular it is difficult if not impossible to go back and make it illegal, especially when those very same drugs hold the law makers themselves in their grip.

Politics is not the same as idealism. Politics is about compromise and practicality. You are talking about idealism and in this area even the most idealistic among us has to doff our hat to the practical problems of making people do what's good for them.

On an idealistic note, there are two forms of government that we can adopt.

Anarchism and fascism. History and current affairs teaches us neither of these government systems is in any way desirable.

All other government systems will necessarily involve some kind of compromise and therefore hypocrisy which is why they are political and not idealistic.

Edit:

Morally smoking a spliff would be no more harmful than drinking alcohol if alcohol were prohibited OR if weed were legal. Although I wouldn't compare it to alcohol You are conveniently ignoring the consequences of second hand smoke so a better moral comparison would be to smoking tobacco if that were illegal.

If weed is illegal where you come from you should think a lot harder about the morality of disobeying the laws of your society. Should you only obey laws you agree with? What if your neighbour feels anyone who takes drugs deserves to die and feels as selective with murder laws as you do about drug laws?

There is a morality to obeying the law even when it is inconvenient or against our personal interests and if you want to get into the philosophy of that there isn't space here so read Plato's Phaedo.

Weed is an hallucinogen, and only used to get stoned. Tobacco and alcohol are not primarily used to get high or drunk. Most people do not abuse alcohol, nor do they reach the point of intoxication. You cite the worst case scenarios with alcohol, but 85% of people are not alcoholics, and maintain perfect health with their moderate consumption.

Alcoholics STILL account for less than 10% of those who consume alcohol, and fewer than 20% get drunk routinely.. 90% of pot smokers get stoned while using. Plain and simple. Most drinkers consume less than 2 drinks per day, if that. You forget that almost all adult use alcohol...you seem to focus exclusively on those who abuse.

And nearly all studies indicate that smoking weed is just as harmful to the lungs as tobacco.

Just regurgitating High Times biased stats is a form of ignorance yourself. Did you know that 2nd most common DUI citation is from pot smoking? Almost 15% of DUI's were given to stoned drivers, and they account for 20% of intoxicated fatalities on the road, according to the NTSB.

Not sure why pot smokers recoil and reject any statistics that indicates pot smoking is not as harmless or fatal as they believes, with multiple serious health and societal drawbacks. The reason the more serious consequences are hidden is the low number of people using on a consistent basis (compared to alcohol or tobacco), and that the primary abusers are the youth. Pot smoking is a cumulative destroyer.

Because the people making the unfair laws are getting paid large sums of money to keep it illegal while making a fortune letting people drink themselves to death. It was made illegal because of racism and kept that way by corporations who would lose money if it were legalized. Now Americans know the truth it won't be illegal much longer anywhere.

There really is no reason, at least no sensible one. Some people just totally disregard studies frightened to be told they're wrong or something. Now you could say 'oh but outlawing tobacco and alcohol is just impossible now' but that would just be a ridiculous reason. Weed is still sold, just like cocaine, just like just about anything illegal, only trouble is it's hard to find and you can be arrested for illegally owning it. Again, either people are totally blind for the truth or just stick to their believes. One of the few reasons why I'm glad to live in the Netherlands is that stuff like this gets treated the same way as other soft drugs.

Also, weed has been shown to be less damaging than at least tobacco (comparing it to alcohol is a bit hard as it's consumed in an entirely different way). Tobacco is addictive thus you should compare a higher dose of tobacco to a normal dose of weed. Tobacco causes all kinds of diseases to your lungs such as cancer, weed has a lot less diseases or lower chance of getting a disease. Well guess this was a bit of my rant as well.

All the studies?!?

You clearly haven't read all the studies.

Spare us the whining until you have.

Life's may seem unfair.....you just have to deal with

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cause doing weed makes you 'cool' these days. we don't need our youth to become even more dumb.