i_smell_toast

Can you recommend the top 3 videos you think would be good to start with?

I don't think that those things are comparable. The govermment doesnt tell you you cannot drink or smoke cigarettes, though lately it tries to encourage you not to do so. Tax on alcohol isn't a punishment, when you pay tax on food or land you arent being punished, and I don't think advertising standards can be considered a punishment either. Surely when OP mentioned punishment s/he meant via the legal system, being fined, improsoned, receiving a criminal record and so on.

I'm not sure if this is what u/sikanrong meant when they said

it doesn't fucking matter.

But it doesn't fucking matter, people are going to smoke pot and use herion. Legal or not. We can reduce the harm that that entails by legalising or decriminalising drug use and treating addiction as the illness that it is. There's a good book on this by Johann Hari, called Chasing The Scream.

I'm pretty sure this theory that the health effects would be a burden have been proven wrong in other countries such as Portugal and Canada, when you take into account the income from tax and the benefits to the justice sector when you take the crime out of it. Especially since the cost of cannibis is artificially high (because crime) so they can tax it heaps which can offset cost to health service.

Portugal had gone really well with decrimanlising:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

More like, because it makes the store look bad. Like people aren't safe there .

I predict this post is going to blow up... how many upvotes would make you feel a strong sense of pride and achievement?