I hate Gateway Theory or the idea that one thing should be illegal because it might lead one to doing things that are definitely illegal. I think we should have few laws but serious penalties.
Drugs, I think Crystal Meth should be illegal but Pot and even LSD should be legal. The idea that Pot will lead to Crystal Meth is ludicrous there’s no evidence, and even so if it’s a gateway drug that’s only because it’s illegal. Cigarettes and Alcohol don’t lead to Pot.
Laws where the punishment is exacerbated by inebriation. Vehicular manslaughter is vehicular manslaughter, it should be entirely irrelevant whether or not the person was drunk. Sure it can play a part as to whether or not we determine culpability but should be irrelevant in sentencing, except that DWI is illegal too and we can nail them for that too.
Child pornography. Manga depicting children in sexual acts should be covered under the first amendment. Sometimes it’s not about titillating people with the act but about portraying a story. Yes this is a grey area but long story short if it doesn’t directly victimize someone it shouldn’t be illegal. Child pornography should be illegal if it is actual pictures of children.
What are people’s thoughts about this? Should certain things be illegal because they ‘might’ lead to worse acts?
Well, drunk driving is illegal because it’s a “gateway” to crashing your car. Now you might argue that it should be legal and those that end up getting in accidents are the ones that should be punished. However the benefit to society is likely to be greater if you just go ahead and make drunk driving illegal to begin with.
I agree that the ‘gateway theory’ of drugs is pretty ridiculous.
Drunk driving should be a crime of course; if nothing else the crime of reckless endangerment. Drunk drivers who are driving normally won’t be caught anyway… I’m not sure what the law is on vehicular crimes being worse with drunkenness as a factor: is it not a matter of separate charges?
I think that child pornography that does not actually victimise any children is gross but probably shouldn’t be illegal. I can see it being used in evidence against someone accused of child molestation though, and wouldn’t have a problem with that.
Alcohol tends to lead to alcohol. It need not be any more destructive than that.
Besides, its not about how many “gateway” experiences you have, its about what chemical is effective at self-medication, what drug fits into the pattern of your brain. The only drug you have to be afraid of is the one you really, really like.
I’m with the OP on soft drugs and on imaginary sexually explicit depictions involving minors (in this I’m with past SCotUS decisions: I’d rather we don’t call it CP unless it IS real CP.) Sometimes the Law’s too close to saying “well, We The Majority, or at least We Who Can Influence Things, think that’s sick: so it should be a crime”. As DaphneBlack said, if we have someone for whom there is evidence of the more dangerous criminal conduct, sure we can use his other vices to establish a pattern.
Well, ISTM this is a case in which the example is not really one of “gateway crime”. IMO it sounds more like saying that the law takes what could otherwise be an aggravating circumstance or separate offense (being DUI) and making it an element of a “new” crime… Different debate?
Doesn’t this just lead to endless debate over what will lead to what? I mean, we had people in the gay marriage thread contending that gay marriage today will lead to extinction tomorrow, or some such thing, and good luck getting them to abandon this belief.
Not so much extinction, but miscegenation of the species. We guys, we know we’re pigs, so if you want to fuck another guy, you’re just a later closing time away from bestiality, and not for the first time, either, for some of us. Why do you think GeeDubya took such a bold stance against animal-human hybridization research? And where the hell did he disappear to, anyway? Is he clearing brush?
A quick peek through Google scholar is a bit of a mixed bag. It looks like it can be said for certain that people who do drugs of any sort will have drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes first, done marijuana second, and then moved into harder drugs. But it’s not clear that this has much to do with life-changing addiction. Doing cocaine irregularly through college is a different thing from wasting your life until you turn 40, find Jesus, and become an ex-junky Jehovah’s Witness.
But, on the other hand, I suspect that if you look at countries which don’t have an essentially limitless supply of addictive consumables, that the rate of true addiction is lower. Given a limitless supply, we’ll max out at whatever our natural inclination to addiction is, of course. But with proper draconian measures to limit supply, I suspect that addiction levels would decrease, and especially if you did start earlier in the chain. I wouldn’t be surprised if, during Prohibition, people were so busy getting their alcohol that they never went past alcohol as a drug.
Of course the US is such a large mass of low-population density land that sufficient draconian measures may well be impossible, the ethicality thereof aside.
I will note though that porn and drugs are separate things. We’re genetically geared to want and understand other people as sexual targets, and we’re exposed to them on a daily basis. Drugs are really more akin to a fad. If you’d never been informed that there was such a thing as a drug, you’d never seek it.
It’s not something the OP specified but I think it’s the same thing. I would say the definition of a gateway crime is one that isn’t harmful by itself, but could possibly lead to more harmful things. DWI and pot seem to fall under that heading depending on who you ask.
“Gateway theory” as applied to drugs is a classic case of correlation/causality mislabelling. Naturally there’s bound to be a correlation between heroin use and marijuana use. Somebody who’s willing to shoot up heroin is hardly likely to throw up their hands in horror at the thought of smoking dope…“oh no, I couldn’t do that, it’s ILLEGAL!”
But the inverse is true as well, it’s unlikely that someone as pristine as the winter snow is going to go out scoring crack. He’s more likely to try a glass of beer on his first outing.
But if you vapourised all the beer in the world (which you can’t do anyway, as I think Prohibition pretty much proved) it seems exceedingly unlikely to me that Mr Potential Heroin Experimenter is going to remain satisfied with orange juice all his life.
Why do you think that unlikely? Certainly there will be the people who make the jump, but most people would rather take more careful steps.
Like, I would be certain that people who eat really spicy food started at lower levels of spiciness. People who jump out of planes probably rode on roller coasters more than those who didn’t. But, like, I’ll bet you that in places where there is more easier access to spicy foods, the ratio of people who eat super spicy foods is increased. I’d be willing to bet that most people who play hockey come from places where one can more easily become involved in hockey. If you have to build your own course to train yourself, then move all the way to Canada to get tried out, you’re just not likely to go the course.
People were certainly smoking marijuana and opium during Prohibition.
I think the ‘gateway theory’ of drugs assumes a level of idiocy that is not in evidence. Different drugs have different effects, both generally and on an individual level. There are plenty of people who take E, for example, but have no interest in pot or cocaine (and vice versa). Amphetamines are used by people no one would classify as ‘stoners’ or drunks. People who smoke marijuana are perhaps more likely to ‘experiment’ in general. But that does not mean they are more likely to become drug abusers.
There are also plenty of people who use heroin regularly but are not a ‘heroin addict’ as portrayed in TV and movies; for all the people who will spend ther life chasing that first euphoric high there are those who do not like its effects at all, and those who get a milder ‘buzz’ – these will often use heroin without developing the debilitating dependency.
The ‘gateway theory’ is like ‘zero tolerance’ – an idea which makes some sense on an intuitive level but is horribly ineffective or detrimental in practice.
I think that people who want to take careful steps can still do so. To take your spice analogy, if the only spicy thing in the world was “Doctor Deth’s X-treme Tongue-Stipping Sauce Of Terror” then I imagine that people who might otherwise start off their spice experience with a mild curry, would instead start off with a fingernail’s worth dipped in a bottle passed round as a curiosity.
Anyone who wants to try out what a mild buzz feels like, and only has access to heroin, can simply take less of it.
The only thing that I can think of which makes dope a gateway to heroin, is that in order to get dope you need to have access to a dealer operating outside the law … which gives you an obvious starting point in your search to actually find some heroin to try. And of course this is only the case because of the criminalisation of dope in the first place
In the case of DUI, I, the drinker, actually have increased my chances of causing a car wreck. But by owning a gun, I am in no way increasing my chances of committing murder. For that matter, with fairly simple responsible behavior, gun owners don’t increase their chances of causing firearm accidents or getting their guns stolen either. Gun ownership in general arguably influences the number of shootings to rise, but it doesn’t actually cause shootings the way drunk driving causes accidents.
Given that not owning a gun undoubtedly decreases your chance of shooting somebody, I’m pretty sure it inevitably follows that your chances of shooting somebody increase when you own a gun, at least on broad average across populations. (Specific individuals may have a 0% chance of shooting somebody with their gun, but this clearly doesn’t apply across the entire population).
Nobody who has never fired a gun has ever shot someone. You’re wrong.
I get the point you’re trying to make, but take it a step down to, for example, knives. If I hear an intruder in my garage, a baseball bat would be equally likely to convince him to leave. The intruder stands zero chance of getting stabbed by the baseball bat. If I enter the garage with a cleaver, the chances are higher.
