I don't see how voting to legalize pot is anything but insanity personally.

Thank you. I'm disappointed but not despondent.

I think there are a lot of things going on but the white-lash is definitely part of it.

I also think the Democrats got way too cocky. They confused the exceptionalism of Obama with exceptionalism of the party (hint - it's not exceptional). There were a lot of Republicans and/or Independents who voted for Obama that were never going to vote for Clinton.

How so? It clearly has medicinal uses and also is a lot less of a "problem" drug than alcohol or tobacco cigarettes. Additionally it allows the state to tax it, reduces it being an "underground" activity and prevents criminalization of its use and distribution. Clogging up our legal system with non-violent offenders makes little or no sense.

I'm not looking to turn the country blue, I'm looking for both parties to reinvent themselves as viable, moderate centre-left and centre-right opposition with broadly reasonable policies that benefit the majority of Americans, with bipartizan cooperation. If they can put forward, and get behind reasonable candidates with sensible views and positions in each election then I think it will do a lot of good for everyone.

Neither party, IMO, did this in this election, though the potential was there in the primaries. I might have voted for Clinton, but I was thinking about Sanders when I did it.

I'm not into it myself, but anything that puts less money in the pockets of drug dealers has to be a good thing.

I've no issue with it being used medicinally as it currently is. My big issue is a worrying amount of people here have an extremely lax view to driving when drunk. I doubt these people will feel much differently to driving whilst stoned. The difference is, there is an accurate way to test is someone is driving drunk. There isn't to test if someone is driving stoned.
Blood Tests Can't Tell Who's Really Too Stoned To Drive : Shots - Health News : NPR
As for your last point, let's just go the whole hog and make all drugs legal then.

Also, getting people out of prisons for smoking pot is going to good for the budget.

That too.

Or let's make rational decisions over which drugs it makes sense as a society to control. For example, do you think the same harm comes from smoking marijuana as to does from taking heroin?

Not just prisons but the whole legal system, including policing and the courts.

I disagree with that entirely. Use of cannabis can cause permanent changes to the brain, with people under the age of 25 being particularly susceptible to developing varying degrees of schizophrenia, in some cases the results are severe and debilitating.

Most people are not affected, but Inhave read that as many as one in six younger users of cannabis experience permanent changes to brain chemistry.

Given a choice I prefer a stoned driver to a drunk. So it seems does the NHTSA. Pot makes one mellow and relaxed. Booze on the other hand often makes one wreckless and aggressive.

"People driving while high on marijuana may be a bit safer than drivers who have consumed alcohol and less likely to have or cause a crash, reveals a new federal study.

Overall, statistics, when adjusted for factors such as age, race and gender, suggest there's little difference between driving stoned or sober when it comes to the risk of having a wreck, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) claims."

Unfortunately, your typical serious stoner reads that to mean that driving while high is recommended by the government.

I'm all in favor of legalization, but it isn't entirely optimal.

That is just one side of the equation; now it compare to the health effects of alcohol and tobacco cigarettes.

Nobody said cannabis doesn't have risks. But if you accept the risks of alcohol and tobacco, which have been shown to be larger than cannabis, why not accept the risk of cannabis? For a country so enamored with freedom, seems to make sense to me.

Well for starters neither have permanent/irreversible psychotropic effects. Isn't that enough?