Legalize Drugs, Why?

[geauxtohell]

I couldn't care less which philosophy you or anyone else buys or not.

As elections determine policy in this country. You should care. It's not going to be sufficient to sit back and call everyone who disagrees with you as someone who doesn't understand the founder's intent or whatever.

And you ARE peddling a moral superiorist train of rationale here, whether you choose to accept it or not.

Okay. According to you, I am being a moral superiorist. I hope I can sleep tonight.

And lives are already being ruined and snuffed out, your moral relativism notwithstanding.

As they would be if it were legal. Making narcotics legal doesn't change what they do to the body.

 

[westwall]

Funny nobody seems to factor in the costs of lost freedom, when making excuses for the nanny state.

Are turning lower income neighborhoods into shooting galleries and places like Juarez defacto death camps worthy prices to pay, for your moral superiority?

I have. As I said, I don't buy into the Libertarian mentality. Apparently, as evidenced by the polls, neither do most Americans.

This has nothing to do with my "moral superiority". Nowhere on this thread have I castigated addicts. I've stated that I see addiction as a medical problem and think it should be treated as such.

My problem is removing barriers to highly addictive substances is going to create a lot of addicts who would have otherwise not been an addict.

In other words, lives are going to be ruined. That is my problem with the matter.

Far fewer lives will be ruined by people WILLINGLY entering into their bad behaviour. I find it interesting that you care more for people who will screw up their own lives, of THEIR OWN VOLITION, than those lives lost through no fault of their own. Do you really not see the difference?

 

[geauxtohell]

Our prime point exactly.

So we can move past the whole criminality aspect of the debate and on to what concerns me; the addictive property of these substances and the potential to create a large number of addicts after a few uses?

Sure, why not. What possibly can be so bad from that as opposed to the thousands killed in drug violence every years?

Thousands dying of overdose every year.

Many more throwing their lives away because they have become hopelessly addicted to substances.

 

[Oddball]

I couldn't care less which philosophy you or anyone else buys or not.

As elections determine policy in this country. You should care. It's not going to be sufficient to sit back and call everyone who disagrees with you as someone who doesn't understand the founder's intent or whatever.

And you ARE peddling a moral superiorist train of rationale here, whether you choose to accept it or not.

Okay. According to you, I am being a moral superiorist. I hope I can sleep tonight.

And lives are already being ruined and snuffed out, your moral relativism notwithstanding.

As they would be if it were legal. Making narcotics legal doesn't change what they do to the body.

No, crooked politicians determine policy.

And as it sits right now, there are more profits in it for them via the police state and prison/industrial complex, than there is any downshot of continuing their crooked and corrupt behavior.

 

[geauxtohell]

Now you're just being silly. Drunk driving is illegal in every state of the union and yet over 25,000 per year are killed so those laws are real effective aren't they? Don't resort to silliness to try and prove a bad point.

I admit I was being facetious. I deny I was the first person on the thread to do so to try and make my point.

My larger point is that the law does act as a deterrent. How many people would be killed while DUI/DWI if there were no laws against it?

Then, back to my original point, how many more people would be impaired and on the road if we expanded the amount of legal mind-altering substances the public had available to it?

As it stands, a person metabolizes a beer an hour. If you go out and get intoxicated with alcohol, you will generally be okay to drive seven hours after you stop drinking (unless you had a real bender).

Seven hours is close to the half life of methamphetamine. Peak concentration is around 10 to 24 hours for a single use. That's scary.

Informa Healthcare - Clinical Toxicology - 48(7):675 - Summary

The numbers will be the same. I am all in favour of extremely harsh penalties for the criminal misuse of drugs just as I am all for it for some nimrod driving drunk. We have idiots with 8! DUI arrests still driving illegaly and getting caught yet again.

I would bring back chain gangs and place those assholes on them and make them pay particular attention to every place where a drunk driver killed someone. Make people pay for doing bad things. Not for enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes.

So the law can act as a deterrence in some aspects?

I'll try to check in on this thread at a later date. I've basically said what I wanted to say, and it's a surprisingly beautiful day and I am going to go and enjoy some sunshine.

 

[westwall]

So we can move past the whole criminality aspect of the debate and on to what concerns me; the addictive property of these substances and the potential to create a large number of addicts after a few uses?

Nicotine is as addictive a substance as there is....Why not make it illegal in that basis as well?

And to further the point, could you imagine how many people would be getting killed, from both criminal activity and from bad product, if crooks were cooking down tobacco the way the do for cocaine and heroin?

A person can overdose on nicotine, but to do so would require an amount far beyond what anyone could smoke in a cigarette.

It is certainly addictive. As I said earlier, the genie is out of the bottle with regards to alcohol and nicotine. There is no going back.

Considering the problems that these substances impart on our society (to include health care dollars), I see little point in letting three more genies out of the bottle.

Again, I concede that legalization would reduce criminality. I don't think the degree to which that would happen would outweigh the added burden of having more people who are addicted to drugs.

How many innocent lives are too many for you? You seem to think you can control addictive personalities (there is no empirical data to support that particular idea, my daughters godmother is the head of the Psych Dept for Arapahoe county and deals with the issues all the time and she doesn't think it's possible) and yet the criminal killing of thousands of innocent people (which we could gain some control over) you will ignore
for what reason exactly?

 

[Oddball]

So we can move past the whole criminality aspect of the debate and on to what concerns me; the addictive property of these substances and the potential to create a large number of addicts after a few uses?

Sure, why not. What possibly can be so bad from that as opposed to the thousands killed in drug violence every years?

Thousands dying of overdose every year.

Many more throwing their lives away because they have become hopelessly addicted to substances.

Right...And hundreds-cum-thousands of innocent bystanders who'd never even think of taking drugs are being killed and victimized every day.

Better the dope who chooses to stick drugs in his body than someone who doesn't.

 

[westwall]

I admit I was being facetious. I deny I was the first person on the thread to do so to try and make my point.

My larger point is that the law does act as a deterrent. How many people would be killed while DUI/DWI if there were no laws against it?

Then, back to my original point, how many more people would be impaired and on the road if we expanded the amount of legal mind-altering substances the public had available to it?

As it stands, a person metabolizes a beer an hour. If you go out and get intoxicated with alcohol, you will generally be okay to drive seven hours after you stop drinking (unless you had a real bender).

Seven hours is close to the half life of methamphetamine. Peak concentration is around 10 to 24 hours for a single use. That's scary.

Informa Healthcare - Clinical Toxicology - 48(7):675 - Summary

The numbers will be the same. I am all in favour of extremely harsh penalties for the criminal misuse of drugs just as I am all for it for some nimrod driving drunk. We have idiots with 8! DUI arrests still driving illegaly and getting caught yet again.

I would bring back chain gangs and place those assholes on them and make them pay particular attention to every place where a drunk driver killed someone. Make people pay for doing bad things. Not for enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes.

So the law can act as a deterrence in some aspects?

I'll try to check in on this thread at a later date. I've basically said what I wanted to say, and it's a surprisingly beautiful day and I am going to go and enjoy some sunshine.

The only deterrence it will have is to keep irresponsible people off the streets. You can't enforce morality no matter how hard you try. Just like laws that keep pedophiles locked up for life don't prevent other pedo's from committing crime it does prevent the one you caught from ever doing it again.

 

[westwall]

Sure, why not. What possibly can be so bad from that as opposed to the thousands killed in drug violence every years?

Thousands dying of overdose every year.

Many more throwing their lives away because they have become hopelessly addicted to substances.

Right...And hundreds-cum-thousands of innocent bystanders who'd never even think of taking drugs are being killed and victimized every day.

Better the dope who chooses to stick drugs in his body than someone who doesn't.

Absolutely! Who the hell cares what someone does to themselves! We should only care about those who will be harmed by the dickheads profitting off of it! Take the profit away and the violence follows.

 

[del]

I admit I was being facetious. I deny I was the first person on the thread to do so to try and make my point.

My larger point is that the law does act as a deterrent. How many people would be killed while DUI/DWI if there were no laws against it?

Then, back to my original point, how many more people would be impaired and on the road if we expanded the amount of legal mind-altering substances the public had available to it?

As it stands, a person metabolizes a beer an hour. If you go out and get intoxicated with alcohol, you will generally be okay to drive seven hours after you stop drinking (unless you had a real bender).

Seven hours is close to the half life of methamphetamine. Peak concentration is around 10 to 24 hours for a single use. That's scary.

Informa Healthcare - Clinical Toxicology - 48(7):675 - Summary

The numbers will be the same. I am all in favour of extremely harsh penalties for the criminal misuse of drugs just as I am all for it for some nimrod driving drunk. We have idiots with 8! DUI arrests still driving illegaly and getting caught yet again.

I would bring back chain gangs and place those assholes on them and make them pay particular attention to every place where a drunk driver killed someone. Make people pay for doing bad things. Not for enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes.

So the law can act as a deterrence in some aspects?

I'll try to check in on this thread at a later date. I've basically said what I wanted to say, and it's a surprisingly beautiful day and I am going to go and enjoy some sunshine.

enjoy

 

[Sheldon]

definitely

look at teenage binge drinking


by 23, the novelty generally wears off

much of the marijuana culture seems likewise to me

Pretty much. At 19 you drink to get blitzed at basement keggers as much as possible before the cops come... to being in the mid-twenties and doing it just to casually kick it around friends.

But I'm not always comfortable with the alcohol-to-hard-drugs comparison that's made in these threads sometimes. They're fundamentally different. A person can enjoy a little bit of alcohol and not be at serious risk of addiction; there's no such thing as 'a little bit of heroin'.

Ultimately people have to make decision for themselves about this. There's enough stigma and information about the hard drugs like meth and heroin, that you know what you're getting yourself into. It's a waste of resources for cops to babysit adults like what's seen in the War on Some Drugs, imo.

Your middle paragraph is my basic point.

I disagree with your last paragraph in regards to amphetamines, cocaine, and narcotics. I agree MJ should be legal.

I get where you're coming from. It's no problem for weed. The thing is I've seen and heard some horror stories second hand about the harder drugs that make me less cavalier about legalizing them outright. But I also don't like the idea of supporting laws that tell other adults what they can and can't do with their own bodies.

For me it comes down to, the same process of logic and reason for legalizing weed can be used for legalizing the other drugs.

I guess I could tolerate some kind of middle ground, where the hard drugs are decriminalized so that the "punishment" is not incarceration, but treatment of the end user. I'd rather have my tax dollar going to that instead of over-feeding the fed pens.

 

[Father Time]

makes sense, then, that everyone here has voiced support for combining decriminalization with treatment

did we not mention Portugal?

I'm not sure whats going on with Portugal, did they actually legalize everything there?

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
​

I thought one of the benefits of legalization was that we didn't have to spend so much money on everyone we found with pot?

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped,

I don't really trust any think tank, but anyway I never understood why legalizing drugs would get people to share needles less.​

 

[Sheldon]

Holy fuck