2025-11-20
Cannabis is a topic about which I know next to nothing, so I won't babble on about it.
I would however remark that legislation is usually the antithesis of freedom, proposed by all those who dislike the behaviours of others whilst imagining that their own behaviours are obviously fine.
"Health and safety" has been much overused by government to bring in unnecessary restrictions that might have been better addressed by the (currently their own!) education system. Still, Parliament's job is to legislate, so that's it's default solution. It has reached well beyond the point where nobody can be realistically expected to understand the full extent of the law, whilst "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Legal beagles thus make their fortunes, and the citizen who regards the law in general as unnecessarily restrictive isn't always going to respect it
However, if we understand why some behaviours may be undesirable, then we are in a better position to decide such issues for ourselves and for the right reasons, and thus to police ourselves.
I well remember standing on a platform on a Shanghai metro station and looking at a big poster across the track which told us not to get down onto the track because that would be "illegal" (everything on the metro was in both English and Chinese). I felt that my motivation to comply might have been rather greater had it warned me of the danger of being run down by a train, but in fairness I had no appreciation of the likely result of being apprehended by the Chinese authorities for breaching the rule, so had the poster actually chosen the best motivator?
