So, what DO you think? I have asked a few times now, but I am guessing you want both to be banned? As I said, if that is the case I don't accuse you of any inconsistency. It is the people who want only one of them banned that are inconsistent.

Consistent in labeling them both as vices, yes, but not consistent in advocating that both of these vices be legally banned.

By all means, go ahead and try. I would love to see a moral argument that pot is "somehow worse" than alcohol at a moral level.

It is worth noting that no one in this thread is actually defending the position that the one ought to be legal and the other ought not to be. So you would be the first.

I'm with deregs. His "out" that the reason for wanting the law doesn't apply to him and hence he is not being hypocritical is just as valid regardless of whether it is "remains illegal" or "becomes illegal".

The bolded is my actual position. Fwiw. Or all drugs be illegal, of course. Or even some kind of consistency would be a good start.

Hypocrisy is about a dissonance between belief and activity. One can believe that it's okay to do something that's legal while advocating that thing should be made illegal. It should be illegal, but it's not, so it's still okay to do this, hence an absence of dissonance.

Now if you change the legal status (and, as I noted in the other post, assume that the person believes in something like "the rule of law" which is a reasonable assumption given that the person is advocating for legal status), and that person can no longer claim consistency between beliefs and actions.

+1. Not sure how you could do that NR. I'm curious what you could say.

Although I have said something along the lines of 'the wrong drug being illegal', or legal, can't remember now.

I don't think you are.

Under "becomes illegal" as long as it's before the law is in place, there is no law to apply to him. Under "remains illegal" there is a law that is in place.

I want both legal. If alcohol was illegal I don't know that I'd advocate for its legalisation like I do advocate for the legalisation of cannabis because my personal experience is that alcohol is the more damaging of the two.

My point, is that while people who want only one banned may be considered inconsistent it doesn't necessarily mean that they are. There's a range of factors and they must be considered discretely. It's a mistake to conflate the abolition of an established legal industry and establishing a new one. Their current legal status is a legitimate factor that can result in seemingly inconsistent results that are consistent with what's actually best.

That said I generally think that any cost benefit would find really heavily in favour of legalisation.

I think my definition of consistent differs here. I would consider it inconsistent to advocate for the legalisation of alcohol where it is currently banned and I don't know the Pope has ever done this. He'd be advocating putting people, currently engaged in legal activity, out of work. I don't know he has to advocate for making a currently legal activity illegal to remain consistent with wanting a currently illegal activity to remain so.

Okay, so as long as you are playing the devil's advocate, can you actually give an example of such an argument? The only thing established thus far - that you don't think actually applies to the pope - is a tactical argument where you only talk about pot for tactical reasons and ignore alcohol. Most arguments I have ever heard are fairly easily dismissed as nonsense, but sure I accept in theory that maybe there is some argument that is both sensitive to the legal status and not blatantly inconsistent. I'd just like to see an example of one.

As an example of the above post, how does the current legal status change here? Legalizing pot would give new people work. Making alcohol illegal would put current people out of look. Why does this difference matter?

Correct. For instance, doing something that one believes is bad is an example of hypocrisy.

Oh lol I see what you are doing. The hypocrisy you are talking about is not that he is doing something (drinking) that he believes is bad. The hypocrisy is that he is doing something that is illegal while believing that one should follow the rule of law and thus only do legal things. Well sure. But that is obviously a rather different hypocrisy then the one being discussed.

The reason deregs "out" works is that since he doesn't think drinking is bad FOR HIM drinking while wanting to ban drinking doesn't become hypocritical. But that applies equally well regardless of the current status of the law, as he rightly points out: "I'm not even sure it's necessarily hypocritical to participate in something that's illegal and wanting it to remain illegal." This is true for him because he thinks the reason he wants it to be illegal doesn't apply to him.

For simplicity's sake I'll respond to this.

It's a very good question and I don't think I can answer it for that challenge. I don't know I want to defend future jobs as being less valuable than current ones.

An area where it may be possible to distinguish based on current legal status.

I live rurally, pubs are the backbone of local communities along with local sports clubs. Prohibiting alcohol has a cost to these communities that denying pot smokers the right to smoke has no obvious equivalent of.

I don't find the argument compelling but it's an argument that I think is often central to the debate around alcohol. People who drink socially see the benefit not only in drinking but in the benefits that derive from being in a social situations where alcohol is present. Cannabis isn't associated with the same benefits and given that smoking cigarettes is often banned in public places I don't know that cannabis consumption in public would be allowed even if legal.

Morality is a different aspect altogether, what's been discussed this far has mostly been legal and social reasons, and the logic of contradictory stances.

There could be a contradictory and hypocritical stance if you reject one and accept the other, but only if you view them as the same, and your objections to one equally applies to the other as well. For instance, I'm inclined to agree with the logic that one should reject both alcohol and pot, if the reason one does not accept pot is ONLY because the effects are damaging, whatever that may entail, because it is obvious that alcohol can be damaging.

The question therefore, is alcohol immoral and is pot immoral? This answer is going to be subjective, but this has no bearing on whether or not the conclusion is logically valid, and not hypocritical. I personally believe that the immorality of these things arises from their abuse, dependency, and intoxication, and combination of the three. It is possible to casually drink alcohol and not break either of these "immoral rules", but not so with pot. You can't smoke pot and not become intoxicated, it is the sole purpose for using it. While alcohol can be more damaging, create a stronger dependence, and have a more prominent intoxication, drinking in moderation can actually be healthy, and imo, not necessarily immoral.

I'm not actually advocating for anything, I'm just pointing out that there could be a perspective that holds pot as immoral, and alcohol not immoral, in every circumstance. Also, fwiw, I've greatly abused both alcohol and pot in my life.

That depends on how you view it. Let us assume the two drugs are equals, as an accusations of of double standards should imply. If one then thinks alcohol being legal was a mistake, then obviously one should be opposed to legalizing marihuana. Two wrongs don't make a right, and as people in favor of legalizing marihuana tend to love to point out: Alchohol causes a ton of problems.

Nor does this imply that one should necessarily fight to make alchohol illegal or that not doing so is hypocritical. For this to hold true the cost/reward scenario of these two actions should be equal, and they are not.

As with so many people who are 50+ my guess is Pope Francis does not make much of a distinction between various types of drugs. Drugs are drugs and drugs are bad...

Pope Francis is really an outsider looking into a world he doesn't know much about (my hunch).

If culture had progressed differently it is possible that the CC use marijuana in communion and forbid alcohol.

Pope Francis is advocating a moral argument. From his perspective, whether its medically accurate or not, drugs lead to addiction which is evil. If he had the chance to speak out about preventing alcohol from being legal maybe he would, who knows.

I don't think Pope Francis is being hypocritical he just doesn't know what he is talking about. He is obviously not presenting a nuanced argument about the addictive nature of cannabis.

I'm not quite sure what this is meant to refute. If someone thinks both should be legal or both should be illegal, then I might disagree but they wouldn't be blatantly inconsistent. The question is with regards to people who believe one should be legal and the other is illegal, which I am guessing is the position of the pope.

Right as mentioned in replies to others ITT, if there is some tactical argument where one actually thinks both should be illegal but for tactical reasons zeros in on just the pot or something like this well then again I might disagree on the tactics, but it wouldn't be a blatantly inconsistent position. Nobody has suggested that this is what the pope is doing, however.

If he is just too ignorant to know basic facts about the topic, then the religious leader of a billion people shouldn't be opining on about it.

So the possible moral argument about pot is that even though alcohol "can be [I'll add much] more damaging", if you take really small amounts of alcohol vs small amounts of pot then you are going to call the one intoxicated and the other not, and this...uh....makes...uh...sorry i'm still lost

I assume not many people are going to agree with my interpretation of morality here, so it's mildly useless for me to explain why I feel it is immoral. Some people view pot as being immoral, because you only ever smoke pot to get high, which can be seen as sinful, but you can drink alcohol for many reasons that don't involve getting drunk. I had a beer with a friend of mine at lunch today, and I don't consider that immoral, but had I had a joint with lunch, I would consider that wrong.

People consume either drug to experience the effects on the body (or social pressures, etc, but mainly this). Those experiences - particularly in small quantities - are a little different, but I don't see any difference that means you get to conclude that one is moral and the other isn't. As it happens, people do consume pot in small quantities, whether to relax, to sleep, for pain, to help them concentrate, etc, so I don't even think your statement is correct.

One shot will mess me up more then one hit.

Imo we should turn all alcohol bars into to pot ones. Be a better world.

I think it's generally a mistake to conflate separate questions regarding alcohol and cannabis. It may be valid to counterpose the way we consider alcohol and cannabis but any comparison has to account for the different legal status.

I also think those that would advocate for the legalisation of cannabis often ignore the real dangers associated with cannabis use. It's easy enough to consider it relatively harmless but there are real kids getting smashed on strong weed, and strong alcohol, for whom cannabis use often isn't benign. We can sit off as relatively comfortable and consider our own use of cannabis but we can't infer from that, that that's how other people use it.

To answer an earlier question from MB a variety of drugs taken voluntarily that result in some physiological or psychological effect can be used recreationally. Cannabis, alcohol. heroin, cocaine, painkillers, valium ketamine are all used recreationally, some are available legally, some on prescription while one is a horse tranquilliser. We may not associate drug use that results in a dependency recreational but that's generally how it starts.

If you want to advocate for cannabis use you have to account for the dangers/damage and you do that by tackling the questions relating to cannabis not by pointing at the legal status of alcohol and shouting unfair. Personally I find the strongest argument in favour of legalisation is that prohibition doesn't work. we already bear the costs of cannabis use without deriving the benefits of having that economy pay tax and provide tax paying jobs.

Sometimes I wish I explained myself this clearly.

We are likely not going to agree, and that's fine, I said from the beginning most people wouldn't agree. Even if I'm wrong, there is enough of a reason here to not accept pot, but to see alcohol as okay in some instances.

You can define the consumption and the effects as you like, but it's as clear as being high or drunk is not morally acceptable. Of all the times I've smoked pot, whether my intentions were to get high or not, I always got high, but I can have a drink and remain sober, and I can have a drink for other reasons than being drunk, I cannot say the same of pot.

You don't need to accept that my interpretation of morality is correct, I don't expect you to, but I think you are able to agree with my view on sobriety, even if you don't see it as true.