Why conservatives don't like marijuana

[emzie]

Disagree on a few points but I really like "your happiness is ours" statement.

Taxes below item cost are a minimal imposition, it's always market + premium and doesn't drive growth of prices. Other than that, the more Democratic states have waaaay more liberal and free cannabis regulations than purple/red states. The West Coast isn't limiting growing operations to friends of the legislature.

Nicotine gets hate because it's so awful en masse to everyone else. Weed smoke doesn't hang like tobacco smoke, and doesn't get smoked all day. Nicotine as an antidepressant can't be the enemy, per that same logic of addiction isn't the enemy per caffeine— caffeine is antidepressant number 1.

Smokers who die of smoking-related illnesses cost the medical system less than people who live into their 90s. If we have a moral obligation to make it more expensive for people to slowly kill themselves, that's one thing; if we're applying sin taxes to combat the social harm of smoking, that's bad economics.

 

[Hygro]

Smokers who die of smoking-related illnesses cost the medical system less than people who live into their 90s. If we have a moral obligation to make it more expensive for people to slowly kill themselves, that's one thing; if we're applying sin taxes to combat the social harm of smoking, that's bad economics.

This is isn’t so cut and dry, but even still the costs to society aren’t just medical bills

 

[Arwon]

Also the entire point of universal healthcare is you don't do that "who owes what" accounting, because health needs are so random and unpredictable for any given person and the stakes are so high. Persnickety bill splitting is for restaurants when someone ordered the expensive fish.

 

[Narz]

are conservatives actually broadly against it these days, as opposed to being divided on it?

i reject the premise that what you get from it comes "for free" too. there are costs, both financial and otherwise.

For free meaning you don't need much special equipment, you still have to buy it like you'd have to buy a beer, alltho you could also grow it.

What are the 'otherwise' costs? I'm aware of severe & numerous health costs associated w alcohol & cigarettes but haven't seen any diseases proven to be caused by marijuana.

 

[Arwon]

I mean, there's cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome which occurs in a small number of long term high frequency users.

But that is reasonably easily dealt with just by cessation, once people actually know that's what's going on. And it's fairly rare even in heavy long term users.

It's pretty nasty to go through though. As well as the symptoms themselves, you can end up with scalding burns trying to get relief via hot water.

 

[Narz]

No doubt there's risk. Same as w caffeine or even water. And psychology risks & potential dependency but orders of magnitude less than w alcohol.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah, pretty much. My personal encounter with hyperemesis had a dependency dimension because the person who had it switched to that horrible synthetic cannabinoid stuff people call K2 or "spice" hoping it wouldn't cause the same symptoms.

Unfortunately, it did, and they also ended up actually hooked on that garbage. It left them oscillating between hyperemesis and dangerous withdrawals for a few months, which nearly killed them and badly injured their kidneys from dehydration.

But that stuff isn't cannabis and legalisation of cannabis should reduce usage of that other stuff anyway.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I’ve always felt that the left/right wing views on drugs were ‘the wrong way round’. Right wing views on individual freedom, ‘no one tells me what I can / can’t put in my body’ etc. ought to suggest that they would be pro laxer drug restrictions. At least that seems to me?

What make you think right wing is for individual freedom, you can probably find so many examples of that not being true.

Like people don't seems particular free in USA which is maybe one of the most right wing/conservative developed countries, in fact to me it look like in so many ways people there are significantly less free than in other more left wing developed countries, especially the economic conditions in USA for a large part of the people seems absolutely terrible, those people are clearly not free.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

disgust is not you just not liking something. the distinction is technical within certain academic fields. you can be averse to something without having that specific reaction of disgust to something, and you can actively work to have something go away without being disgusted by it. i'm talking about a specific kind of disgust that right wingers just feel more of. it's also demonstrated in brain chemistry, as some parts of your brain light up when disgusted, and some parts of your brain light up when angry. if you want to fundamentally engage with what i talk about here, you have to detach disgust from the vernacular you use daily and disgust as it's present in moral theory and psychology. even something as dumb as Inside Out can make a shorthand demonstration of the distinction.

like, outrage that isn't based on disgust. i don't even know where to start. i could name a number of examples, but you'd go "well i find that disgusting" and then you'd be missing the specific way we react to that. again, detach from the vernacular. you can feel unpleasant about something, but disgust is a very specific kind of unpleasantness.

so. idk. iran rebellion, for example. even if we say the current rebellion is about the unjust murder of one person (it isn't, it's about long term repression, brutality, question of rights and economic hardship), people aren't going on the streets because of the bodily situation of mahsa amini, they are going on the streets because she was unjustly killed. the government, on the other hand, is enforcing what it is because of disgust of certain things women can do, western influences (them gays) and so on.

like, the bodily situation. there's a difference between being angry over at her being killed and being angry over having to see her mangled body. that's kind of a connection a lot of left wingers don't get about extreme conservatism and it's practices. when they see gays kiss, they feel the same we do when we see body horror. they are grossed out on a primal level because it does not fit what they think bodies are supposed to do.

in marijuana, they feel it's gross. morally gross, racially gross, politically gross, but gross. because it's drugs and drugs change behavior. all while generally not feeling gross over wine, because it's part of the space as is.

Would this qualify as indignation or could you classify it as outrage?

I think I would liken the psychology literature on this matter to germaphobia in relation to orderliness, OCD, and authoritarianism. These being extensions of conscientious personality via psychiatric perversions inherent to the extent of ones right leaning political views mirring the psychology of artistic delusions, group think, and resistance to authority within the left.

Such manifestations are also present within religious context much along the same lines present in the political and psychological makeup of individuals.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

What make you think right wing is for individual freedom, you can probably find so many examples of that not being true.

Like people don't seems particular free in USA which is maybe one of the most right wing/conservative developed countries, in fact to me it look like in so many ways people there are significantly less free than in other more left wing developed countries, especially the economic conditions in USA for a large part of the people seems absolutely terrible, those people are clearly not free.

Could you clarify this by explaining why you feel the economic freedoms of the US are diminished vs other countries? I'm not aware of the reasoning or evidence for this position.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Could you clarify this by explaining why you feel the economic freedoms of the US are diminished vs other countries? I'm not aware of the reasoning or evidence for this position.

Are you really free if you feel like you need to work a lot, sometimes several jobs, take little to no vacation, avoid healthcare and so on?

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Are you really free if you feel like you need to work a lot, sometimes several jobs, take little to no vacation, avoid healthcare and so on?

I suppose it would depend on how you define free. The imposition of such things by nature or by man resulting from consequence of nature would not seem an infringement on my freedom.

Moreover I suppose I don't feel the need to do such things so much as the desire to do such things which is of course my own choice as a consequence of prior decisions leading up to this point in my life.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

If you are rich you can do pretty much whatever you want, if you are poor you have far more limited freedom and the worse the economic inequality get the larger the difference or less freedom the poor have and extreme income inequality seems much more associated with the right wing than the left wing, so are they really for freedom, seems to me only freedom for the rich while taking it away from the rest.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

If you are rich you can do pretty much whatever you want, if you are poor you have far more limited freedom and the worse the economic inequality get the larger the difference or less freedom the poor have and extreme income inequality seems much more associated with the right wing than the left wing, so are they really for freedom, seems to me only freedom for the rich while taking it away from the rest.

Again how are you defining "freedom" in this measure? Are the rich free live without the care of the poor? Is the celebrity free of the paparazzi? Is the politician free of the press? Is the CEO free of the shareholders?

Are not all free to decide their choices in life? Is poverty a false delimma between consequence of nature or choice? Is the parapalegic less "free" than the able by fault of the able without remedy of justice? Is it just to hold the able at fault for nature? Does freedom mean equality of outcomes and by what measure could such be achieved?

 

[Gorbles]

Again how are you defining "freedom" in this measure? Are the rich free live without the care of the poor? Is the celebrity free of the paparazzi? Is the politician free of the press? Is the CEO free of the shareholders?

Are not all free to decide their choices in life? Is poverty a false delimma between consequence of nature or choice? Is the parapalegic less "free" than the able by fault of the able without remedy of justice? Is it just to hold the able at fault for nature? Does freedom mean equality of outcomes and by what measure could such be achieved?

"is the CEO free of the shareholders" is a very nuanced and impressive take when discussing the working poor. My goodness. Top libertarianism, here.

 

[Angst]

Would this qualify as indignation or could you classify it as outrage?

I think I would liken the psychology literature on this matter to germaphobia in relation to orderliness, OCD, and authoritarianism. These being extensions of conscientious personality via psychiatric perversions inherent to the extent of ones right leaning political views mirring the psychology of artistic delusions, group think, and resistance to authority within the left.

Such manifestations are also present within religious context much along the same lines present in the political and psychological makeup of individuals.

whether to classify as indignation or outrage, i'm not sure.

artistic delusions confuse me what you mean. what's an artistic delusion exactly?

rest i can somewhat agree with, some of the word choices are just kind of strange. maybe you can expand on what you mean. it's not "psychiatric perversions" as much as it's aspects of human behavior that should be considered healthy in itself. particularly "perversions" is a really strange way of phrasing it. even if something's mirrored in mental disorders, it's not actually sick. it's understandable that people (generally) have a sense of disgust, for example. many of our senses of disgust are there for reasons of health. it's very rare that you don't feel disgust. and some are just more prone to taking action on it, or wanting ability to take action on it; and these align more with the right.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

whether to classify as indignation or outrage, i'm not sure.

artistic delusions confuse me what you mean. what's an artistic delusion exactly?

rest i can somewhat agree with, some of the word choices are just kind of strange. maybe you can expand on what you mean. it's not "psychiatric perversions" as much as it's aspects of human behavior that should be considered healthy in itself. particularly "perversions" is a really strange way of phrasing it. even if something's mirrored in mental disorders, it's not actually sick. it's understandable that people (generally) have a sense of disgust, for example. many of our senses of disgust are there for reasons of health. it's very rare that you don't feel disgust. and some are just more prone to taking action on it, or wanting ability to take action on it; and these align more with the right.

The artist sees beyond the status quo and pushes the boundaries of how reality is perceived. This plays an important role in the challenging conventional understanding and progress of society which rarely understand or fully appreciate great artists within their time. The error of the artist is to fall into delusions of grandeur or to perceive criticism even when valid as persecution or an inability to appreciate as a form of defense regarding their ego within the individual or an ideology within the collective.

A perversion by definition is abnormal and or a corruption of the intended function seen from both within and from without. The excessive self-medication of alcohol to ease anxiety culminated in the abuse of the alcoholic by down-regulating GABA thus inducing anxiety leading to dependency for example. Whether self-deception or schizoaffective disorder the broken framework of perception misaligned with reality is never healthy. I completely agree that many of the reasons for a sense of disgust are rooted in reasons for health like the germaphobia I raised previously and arise from an evolutionary survival mechanism run amock that is likely parallel to the same basis as rooted causes for the issue of disgust raised in the OP. Don't mistake that last sentence as alleging the same process of cause and effect but rather a comparison of observable behavior along a continuum to the psychological responses being discussed.

Speculating from what I've read on the topic the disgust reaction on the right is likely a response to orderliness. Taken as a figurative to that which is "unclean" in the form of germaphobia from the individual vs "foreign" to the collective both manifesting in a hyperactive desire for control in a form of authoritarianism over the body in the former or society in the latter.

If you want to take a deep dive into this I'd recommend the work of Dr. Jonathan Heidt on the relationship of disgust in relation to political leanings and Dr Thornhill on the parasitic stress response in evolutionary biology.

 

[Lexicus]

Are not all free to decide their choices in life?

No, not even close. This is obvious to anyone who considers the matter for even a moment.

Are not all free to decide their choices in life? Is poverty a false delimma between consequence of nature or choice? Is the parapalegic less "free" than the able by fault of the able without remedy of justice? Is it just to hold the able at fault for nature? Does freedom mean equality of outcomes and by what measure could such be achieved?

Every conservative for the last 6,000 years has claimed that their destructive system of prejudice and social inequality is in fact ordained by nature and not created by humans. This is really a good demonstration of that.

 

[EgonSpengler]

fwiw, Freedom House, an American liberal thinktank, The Cato Institute, an American libertarian thinktank, and The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative thinktank, all rate the U.S. as "not great, not terrible" in their respective "freedom rankings."

Freedom House gives us an 83 out of 100. Norway, Finland and Sweden scored a 100. New Zealand scored a 99, Canada a 98. I haven't counted, but just eyeballing it, I'd say they rate the U.S. behind ~50 other countries.
The Cato Institute gives us a score of 8.73 out of 10. Again, just quickly skimming their map, they give New Zealand a 9.1, Ireland 8.9, Canada & Finland 8.85, Australia 8.84, Sweden 8.83. Again, we're well behind many countries we'd like to think are at least our peers, or who even look up to us.
The Heritage Foundation ranks us 24th, with an overall score of 72.1 out of 100. They rate Singapore the "most free" country in the world, with a score of 84.4. Switzerland gets an 84.2, Ireland an 82.0, New Zealand 80.6.

All three give us good marks, overall, but among our English-speaking, free-market peers, we're just okay, hardly the "leader of the free world." If an American really wants to celebrate freedom, they'd be better off moving to almost any of the other English-speaking, capitalist countries.

EDIT: World Population Review notes that the Human Freedom Index is co-published by the Cato Institute with Canada's Fraser Institute and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Germany. Wikipedia describes both as libertarian, although I don't know what that means or implies in the contexts of those two countries (I'm not always clear on what libertarianism means in the U.S., either ). It describes the Fraser Institute as "conservative libertarian" and says the Friedrich Naumann Foundation is affiliated with the Free Democratic Party, about whom I know nothing.

 

[El_Machinae]

For free meaning you don't need much special equipment, you still have to buy it like you'd have to buy a beer, alltho you could also grow it.

What are the 'otherwise' costs? I'm aware of severe & numerous health costs associated w alcohol & cigarettes but haven't seen any diseases proven to be caused by marijuana.

I think the other costs could be the perceived 'laziness' associated with pot smoking. That will dampen someone's earning potential (even if not their potential productivity, since we make more for society than our wage suggests), AND if it becomes self-confirming, it really could damage someone's output. I'm loathe to tax people for what they 'lost us in potential', however. That way lies horror.


The other will be triggering psychosis in a small minority of people. I am intensely cognizant that criminalization hasn't helped this cohort. Luckily, they get locked away 'out of sight, out of mind' (Or, "gettting the help they need " we say to mask the "out of sight, out of mind"), and once again El_Mac ask people to directly support mental health research. I mean, out of the savings of the marijuana generates, at least.