All I ask is that laws have 1) a clearly defined goal of solving a problem that society wants to solve, and 2) empirical evidence (gathered after the fact, if needed) that they are doing what they were intended to do with acceptable side-effects.
How can you gather the evidence after the fact without experimentation? You have to try out alternative copyright schemes, for instance, to test whether it’s actually working well. Otherwise I don’t know what you’d consider empirical evidence for success.
Marijuana criminalization seems to badly fail at least the latter, and the former depending on what problem you think it’s solving.
How can you tell? What would the actual effects of decriminalizing it be? What would widespread marijuana use do to traffic accidents, the intelligence of the general public, etc.? You can argue that it’s surely better than alcohol and tobacco, but the obvious counterargument is that those are too entrenched to do away with (especially alcohol) and therefore have to be grandfathered in for pragmatic reasons.
Who’s right? Maybe you’re right, but the only way to tell is to experiment. I’d be all in favor of more experiments in things like criminal law, to be sure, but I don’t think the evidence in favor of a marijuana ban at present is much worse than that in favor of copyright.
How can you gather the evidence after the fact without experimentation? You have to try out alternative copyright schemes, for instance, to test whether it’s actually working well. Otherwise I don’t know what you’d consider empirical evidence for success.
How can you tell? What would the actual effects of decriminalizing it be? What would widespread marijuana use do to traffic accidents, the intelligence of the general public, etc.? You can argue that it’s surely better than alcohol and tobacco, but the obvious counterargument is that those are too entrenched to do away with (especially alcohol) and therefore have to be grandfathered in for pragmatic reasons.
Who’s right? Maybe you’re right, but the only way to tell is to experiment. I’d be all in favor of more experiments in things like criminal law, to be sure, but I don’t think the evidence in favor of a marijuana ban at present is much worse than that in favor of copyright.
As mentioned previously, decriminalization in Portugal serves as a pretty good experiment, and the outcome was much less harm.