Weed legalized in Cali and age to buy Tobacco is raised to 21. Seems weird to celebrate both.

[DanTex]

37. No, but people have advocated it.

You're right, alcohol prohibition doesn't keep people from drinking. On the other hand, a combination of messaging and legislation has greatly reduced the amount of smoking and saved huge numbers of lives.

And speaking of red herrings, where did you see me being opposed to "relaxing this stupid fucking authoritarian posture even in the slightest"? Is that seriously what you got from my post?

Having said that, I disagree with your philosophical baseline. Because your baseline implies not only that heroin and meth should be available at 7-11, but also that all prescription drugs should be OTC, and hospital grade pharmaceuticals as well. Michael Jackson, for example, died because a crooked doctor was giving him anesthetics to use as sleeping pills. That doctor went to jail, as he should have. But according to your philosophical baseline, MJ and his doctor were just consenting adults who weren't hurting anyone but themselves, so there should be no issue with it.

And it's even worse than that. Your baseline implies that there should be no regulations on credit cards or payday loans, after all if a consenting adult wants to borrow at 10,000%, why should the government stop them? In fact, all product safety laws: as long as the vendor doesn't misrepresent the product, who cares if it might blow up in my face. And if I want to save some money buy buying potentially contaminated meat, that's my body, my business, right?

No. That's crazy. There are actually two philosophical baselines in play. The first is personal freedom. The second is public health/safety. Taking either to the extreme is bad. Each individual law needs to be evaluated non-dogmatically with both of these concerns in mind. Which is why, getting back to the OP, decriminalizing pot while tightening smoking laws is not a contradiction. It's only a contradiction to dogmatists.