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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)
What's something that you were wrong about?
I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.
Scott, as always, says it best:
In any case, what were you wrong about?
What's your opinion on alcohol? I don't have a strong opinion on the legality of either marijuana or alcohol (though personally, I avoid both and find their users unpleasant), but I have a hard time seeing why they should be treated differently. The most compelling argument I've heard for regulating marijuana more harshly is that apparently it impairs driving ability for a much longer time after use, but otherwise they seem broadly similar in the damage they cause to individuals and society. I suppose, theoretically, Chesterton's Fence should apply here; alcohol has always been an important part of Western society, while marijuana is fairly new. But the failed attempt to prohibit alcohol seems like a clear object lesson in the failure modes of that kind of substance ban.
Different things are different, and different prohibitions are different. There are all sorts of substances that various societies ban, with a variety of success rates. Some factors include the source materials, manufacturing requirements, size/volume at critical stages, detectability, availability of substitutes, accountability of gatekeepers, etc. The silly example here is that the US banned Chinese drywall. Basically nobody is out there hunting for black market Chinese drywall. There are available alternatives, and the supply chain is relatively legible. No one makes completely context-free analogies between marijuana and Chinese drywall... they only make completely context-free analogies between marijuana and alcohol.
Marijuana and alcohol have some similarities, some differences. They're both pretty concealable, but at least in its final form, marijuana is probably a bit more so. Use of marijuana is a bit more detectable by smell. Cultivation of quantities of marijuana is likely more detectable. Possibly the biggest real difference is the source materials. Alcohol can be sourced by literally just leaving the food you bought at the grocery store in the cabinet too long (or, if you really want, from the toilet paper you stocked up too much for COVID). Marijuana requires a particular, identifiable species of plant. One could go on, but the primary point is that depending on the factors involved, one might be able to determine a lot or only a very little by analogy to other prohibitions. I don't think anyone would say that the world's experiments with nuclear (anti)-proliferation says much about possible handgun bans or vice versa.
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