It may not be the only thing, but it’s certainly a primary thing.
The law can be pretty effective, you know. It’s why we (or at least most of us) stop at red lights and stop signs, and drive only ten miles an hour or so above the speed limit. It’s also the primary reason we (or at least most of us) don’t beat the shit out of and/or kill one another.
Are you saying the law is effective because we break it?
Actually everybody I know isn’t a murderer because it’s immoral, not because the government says not too.
Somehow I suspect that if the government had said all along that murder was legal, like certain proponents here are saying ought to be the case with regard to drugs, a great many people who currently believe that murder is immoral would be of a different opinion.
We all know that cocaine was made illegal during the 1980’s, with disastrous results.
Of course, education and personal choice have absolutely no power. None.
In fact, what we need is arch-Liberal Starving Artist to support the Nanny State and save us, making illegal all the substances which he doesn’t like. After he gets done with drugs, he can get to work on fried food.
Nope, both sloppy and stupid.
If the government declared that every time someone had premarital sex they’d torture a kitten to death, we wouldn’t be blaming people for fucking, we’d put 100% of the blame on the government for an idiotic policy. But when the government creates and empowers an entire criminal class because adults are using their free will to ingest whatever substances they like, why, then those people have to shoulder some of the blame. No, sorry, it doesn’t fly. You can’t blame the effect s that are 100% due to the policy on those the policy targets.
And come the fuck on. Rather obviously I was talking about the situation under Prohibition II whereby people who use/possess/sell drugs have no real legal avenue of redress for drug-related violence committed against them, because the best case scenario is that they get jailed for their trouble anyways. Pointing to the fact that amendments can be repealed says nothing about the state of society under the current laws. Nor, it should be noted, does changing the law after its already been enforced actually amount to redress of grievances.
Imagine this, instead. Instead of this indirect government idiocy, the government simply skipped the middle man and sent CIA agents down to Mexico to murder the family of a police officer for every 100 kilos of cocaine that was smuggled into the country. Would we, then, still be blaming the innocent American drug users? Or the people whose policy, 100% and undeniably, set up the situation which caused the murder in the first place?
With regards to cannabis, I actually agree in part with the OP: crappy Mexican brick schwag does indeed fund some nasty people. High-quality pot, on the other hand, is far more likely to have been grown and sold by nonviolent people unconnected to extensive organized crime. This is why you should never buy low quality weed, boys and girls: nothing compressed, brownish, or seedy. The better stuff generally funds electronic musicians, event organizers and old hippies rather than murderers.
What a wonderfully unfalsifiable little insinuation.
I strongly suspect that if the governmment didn’t say that it was immoral to fuck babies, all Republicans would fuck babies.
That’s very unfair, Dio, a lot of them can’t get it up.
No wonder you’re so authoritarian. You really think people are this base. I think most of us follow traffic laws because we understand that if everyone follows the rules, then we can all anticipate what the others will do and we can all get where we’re going safely. You’ll notice accidents are usually linked to someone breaking those rules, like not stopping at a traffic signal or not yielding the right of way. At least that’s why I follow the traffic laws.
In a similar vein, I don’t steal or resort to violence because I recognize my life and everyone else’s lives are less stressful and more pleasant if we all treat each other with respect and forbearing.
What a dark, violent, depressing world you must live in.
Then you’re a fucking nut with a completely distorted view of human nature, and people’s ability to arrive at morality based on reasoning. Which would explain your posting history. And also your equating using illegal drugs with murder.
Several years ago I had occasion to become friendly with a group of people from Morocco. One of them said he can’t drive when he goes home anymore because he became so used to the civilized way everybody drives here…staying in the proper lane, etc. I asked how people drove where he came from and he said that everyone just goes wherever they think they can, whenever they think they can.
I wonder why people in Morocco and other parts of the world where traffic is similarly chaotic don’t have the same wonderful morals and reasonable viewpoint you have?
Oh, wait…maybe it’s because they never had laws based on the idea that it’s safer for everyone if they all followed the rules to begin with, so no such reasonability ever got a foothold, huh?
I figure it’s either that or Moroccans are just a different species of human. What do you think?
My answer, you know, the one you said was “sloppy and stupid”, was explicitly about Prohibition and the associated alcohol-related violence. So it shouldn’t really shock you when I use that example in defense of my answer.
Obviously not. But I don’t find the indirect/direct distinction to be so insignificant.
The laws establish the rules so that everyone knows what the rules are. Just because some nations don’t have effective traffic control and regulations doesn’t refute the notion that most people follow the rules because they know the rules work.
It’s absurd to think that fear of the coppers is the only reason people follow laws. If that were so, then why don’t people continually run traffic signals when there is no police officer at the intersection? Why does anyone ever return to the store when they realize they have an item they didn’t pay for? How does any retail business overcome all of the shoplifting and theft that surely happens when nobody is watching?
People are willing to break laws they don’t think are reasonable. But they follow the laws that jibe with what their moral or rational beliefs may be. That’s why people are willing to smoke pot. They figure it affects noone but themselves and it’s none of your or the police’s damned business if they want to get stoned. However, they don’t assault people because they know life would suck if everyone went around slugging anyone who pissed them off.
The point is that, even with the 21st, there was no redress of grievances, merely a repeal of the policy. And the fact remains that while Prohibition (I or II) was/is under effect, there was virtually no legal route for redress of grievances wrt most conduct having to do with the prohibited substances.
The results of the US drug policy are the direct results of it. And again, even if we play a bit of linguistic gaming, the situation remains the same.
If I know that you carry lots of cash on you and I just happen to mention it to the local standover man, it’s hardly not purely my fault when he kicks your ass.
In the first place, I never said fear of “coppers” were the only reason people obey laws; and in the second place people here are talking about “legalization of drugs,” which I assume to be all drugs, or else what’s the point of all this talk about legalization. If meth, heroin, cocaine, etc. are all still illegal, how much will things have really changed?
I actually agree with the OP to a point, but I think Americans who needlessly drive gas guzzling vehicles are also responsible for a lot of misery and death in the world.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I think you’re getting stupider.
What about those who drive them needfully? I drive a big gas guzzling vehicle. I like it, and I have a political/cultural/socio-economic stance that I am expressing, and an agenda I am carrying out, when I drive it.
Is that ok with you, then?
You mean all I need to do in order to support resistance to the State, its enforcers, and its dreams of empire is buy drugs? Sounds like a good deal to me.
Yes - I always love the conservative in general and SA’s in particular, position that the only thing holding us back from being savages is laws.
I find it an interesting insight into the conservative psyche in general and SA’s in particular.
Wow, just wow. Jebert, I’m sorry for whatever brought you to this point. The war on drugs has been very violent for a long time and has ruined many a life. You can blame the drugs, the users or the people who insist on trying to hold back the tide (our government) but millions of people aren’t going to just stop doing what they want to do, what they believe they should be allowed to do, just because. And I wouldn’t call myself a druggie although I have been known to try pot in the past.
When I drive over the speed limit am I murdering state highway policemen? If it has to be 100% obedience or I’m a murderer then I have to suggest that those who are setting themselves up to protect me from myself might want to reconsider some of their choices. I’m not sure I can handle the responsibility of so many lives depending on my following trivial and often pointless laws to the exact letter.