People who break the law are by definition not "innocent". You might disagree with the laws/penalties, but anyone who knowingly violates the law is categorically not innocent.
Of course, that's the entire point. Without prohibition they are innocent. With prohibition they are criminals. That is why prohibition is dramatically worse. People who are not a threat to society are imputed as criminals, losing their life to jailtime and a permanent criminal record.
The same argument could be made for anything. Not paying your taxes is only illegal because there is a law that says you have to. You can't just define words to have whatever meaning you want. If you agree that they did something illegal then you can't call them innocent without lying.
It isn't that hard, don't do illegal drugs if you don't want to be called a criminal. You can work to make them legal, but that doesn't change the fact that they are illegal right now.
The point is that a person who otherwise works and provides value, but does cannabis is better for the society as a working person rather than someone in prison where people will pay with taxes for his living. If you skip on taxes you are living off of society so this should be illegal ofcourse.
I'm not "defining words to have whatever meaning". I explicitly agreed with you on the technicality of innocent vs criminal ("Of course"), and brought the conversation back the actual point:
Prihibition is dramatically worse because it imputes criminal charges onto people who are otherwise innocent. This is bad because these people are not a threat to society, yet with prohibition they lose their life to jailtime and a permanent criminal record.
I talking about the original comment I was responding to. You specifically said that it "imputes innocent people as criminals". This implies that they are innocent which they are not.
I never said that it shouldn't be legalized/decriminalized, I'm just objecting to the usage of "innocent" to describe these people.
Fine - you are correct. These people are not "innocent" in the legal sense, in that they are in blatant violation of the law.
However I would then ask if the legal criteria of judging innocence are useful to society. My claim is that they are not, in that we label people as "guilty" and socially disadvantage them, when they may otherwise be perfectly productive members of society. Their use of cannabis in and of itself causes causes comparatively less harm to others, at least relative to harder drugs like alcohol.
Ok, I hear you. But I think my usage is ok. The purpose of prohibition is to apply a criminal status to an otherwise non-criminal. And without that law they are innocent, no? Or how else should we describe the status of said citizens without the existance of prohibition?
