That logic doesn’t flow, though. You need to compare number of current illegal users vs number of users before it was illegal.
Have you heard of the US prohibition on alcohol? It’s a pretty famous counterexample to your argument showing that it absolutely does not reduce usage.
Banning drugs or alcohol has never worked. The demand will still be there. People will turn to the black market instead if it gets banned.
There is a whole arc in the Battlestar Galactica reboot series that masterfully illustrates this topic.
Yeah, which is why illegal drugs have more users than legal drugs (alcohol and tobacco). Except they don’t.
Their argument was that banning cigarettes wouldn’t eliminate their use, only drive people to continue doing it through other methods.
What does your comment have to do with that…? Nobody said there would somehow be more users than before, just that people would continue doing it…
My argument is that since illegal drugs have significantly fewer users, prohibition does reduce usage.
That logic doesn’t flow, though. You need to compare number of current illegal users vs number of users before it was illegal.
Have you heard of the US prohibition on alcohol? It’s a pretty famous counterexample to your argument showing that it absolutely does not reduce usage.
The same number of people, as a percentage, smoke marijuana as smoke cigarettes. Marijuana use is federally illegal and illegal in most states.
So no, it really doesn’t reduce usage. Price and perceived risk are the two factors that reduce usage the most.
I don’t know about the USA, but I see tobacco smokers every day and very rarely see marijuana smokers.
Most people smoking weed aren’t just doing it out in the open like tobacco users
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Well, then the prohibition has pretty much fulfilled its purpose.
When the government makes something illegal, they don’t do it in hopes of millions of people doing it anyways in private.