COGNITIVE DISTORTION

It's been kind of nice the amount of attention my recent local letter
to the editor received (including some very nice emails from
acquaintances in the community).

The letter, ( http://mapinc.org/url/ansKOoSy ), has been in the top
10 most commented recent stories for the paper, with over 130 comments.

That doesn't necessarily mean that all the comments have been
particularly intelligent - this is the letters to the editor section
of a central Illinois newspaper. And a lot of the volume has come
from some strange back and forth exchanges in the nature of "You need
to prove why marijuana should be made illegal." "No, you need to
prove why marijuana should be legalized."

What's interesting to me is that my letter had purposely avoided any
discussion of the relative benefits or harms of marijuana and focused
solely on the harms of prohibition versus the benefits of regulation.
And yet, the discussion immediately was all about whether marijuana
was bad or good. Several attempts in the discussion thread to force
anti-legalizers to address prohibition were simply ignored.

It's as if they can't see past their hatred(?) for marijuana (or
marijuana users) to even reasonably discuss the facts surrounding prohibition.

I just found it interesting.

I think the most humorous moment for me in the comment thread was
when one very vocal anti-marijuana legalization advocate decided to
show how absurd legalization was by giving "ridiculous" similar examples.

[quote]

"Then why not legalize prostitution? After all, it's between
consenting adults, and one could make the argument that you pay for
it anyway - dinner, entertainment, gifts, etc. This would put all
pimps out of business, or at least regulate and tax them, require
them provide insurance to their whores.

Why not legalize all drugs, including cocaine? After all, it's my
body and I should be allowed to shoot up, snort, sniff, smoke, etc.,
as much as I want! The government could tax and regulate the drug
dealers who would be required to provide insurance in their pre-teen
lookouts and other junkies.

I'm sure none of this would cause any legal, political, moral,
ethical, or medical issues in the least, and I'm sure that by having
it taxed and regulated, there will be no cause for alarm for anyone
abusing the system to get their fix, or have any sort of increase in
crime as drug use increases."

[/quote]

Although completely unintentional, it was the most logical and
reasonable argument he made in the entire thread. Other than some of
the snark thrown in there, that's a fine argument for legalization.