Hey, druggies! Screw you.

The BBQ Pit
101

Ah, another arbitrarily-chosen end to the personal responsibility train. These are popular, no doubt, but you don’t see this particular model around these parts too often.

So, the responsibility for horrible crimes committed by producers and distributors of illegal drugs falls to the end users due to their choice to indirectly finance these endeavors. This transfer of responsibility stops, however, at the user level; decisions of others, such as jebert, to indirectly finance these indirect financiers do not continue to transfer responsibility. (Whether any responsibility for their own actions remains with the people further up the chain from the end user is an exercise left to the reader.)

By any chance, do you care to present a logical rule system to determine where responsibility for an action can and cannot be transferred via money, that’s cross-applicable to other situations and produces this result? Or is it simply that responsibility for any action continues to transfer until the next step in the chain would be inconvenient for you personally?

102

Apparently you have a hard time reading what you write for all I did in that post was respond to a direct query of yours with a cite. To wit:

Hope that helps.

103

Not really, but I don’t have time to argue about it. The last word is your if you choose to have it.

104

Naw. You.

Off to pluck my eyebrows…

105

There’s that personality integrity we’ve all come to expect and that certainly hasn’t made your username a synonym for stupid, kneejerk partisan vomit. Instead, as is your intellect level, why don’t you simply wail and gnash your teeth about all the [del]facts[/del] evil verbiage that show that even ending the absurd war on a harmless plant would have a huge impact on things, and talk about how you’d rather not read it.

Of course, since this is a Starving Artist ‘not having time’ claim, should we expect you to post continuously to this thread for the next 18 hours? Or is that reserved for threads when the gathered throng of Dopers are using you like a pinata?

106

[Uncle] One more thing! [/Uncle]

Why don’t we treat addictions to substances… any substances… as a medical, rather than a criminal matter? Do we not have already existing laws to cover offenses that could be committed by those under influence?

Drugs don’t kill people. People kill people.

107

  1. Because then self-righteous authority junkies wouldn’t be able to punish people for daring to enjoy different things than they do. And, really, where would a drug addict get better medical care, at a nasty UHC driven doctor or being shived in a good, honest, free-market-outsourced-to-the-private-sector prison? The only drug that’s okay to abuse is unjust power over ‘victimless criminals’. Oh, and alcohol. Nicotine too. Caffeine. And, well, you get the idea. But not any drugs that those getting high off of power don’t want you doing.

  2. Yes, yes we do. But then again, sensible drug policy would prevent petty idiots like SA from not only trying to control the lives of other people with righteous indignation and (civilly expressed) brutality, it would allow people the choice of what to do in their own homes as long as they harmed nobody else but behaved in a manner eerily similar to hippies, who we all know ruined the awesome society we had going during the 1950’s.
    And we can’t have that.

108

I get it! We send more people to Superjail! and our nation prospers.

(Apologies to anyone that has seen that cartoon. Ugh!)

I understand the argument that lost productivity and the potential for greater short-term criminality among a larger subset of people is a probable consequence of liberalizing the drug laws. There’s a reasoned debate to have about that. I guess I even understand how the hierarchical nature of we up-jumped apes would tend toward giving the established views of the powers-that-be greater weight in our lizard brains.

But isn’t it time to move past that given the observed consequences of present policy? I think so. I feel there’s a major paradigm shift afoot, and the morality trolls of the world aren’t going to like it very much.

lights a joint and chuckles, amused

109

You’re a writer of some sort, aren’t you?

Look at that paragraph. Look at the grammar and wrongful use of words. Look at the anger and, pardon, crackpotism that it veritably reeks of…just like most of your posts these days.

(Though for you, it is relatively concise.)

As it happens, I agree that drugs should be a major component of your life; the difference being that it would require the assistance of a psychiatrist or a VERY understanding doctor in order to obtain them.

You need help. Honestly.

110

Eh… I don’t feel that either is a very good argument.

The government no more has a just ability to prohibit folks from doing drugs in order to increase productivity than it does to force them to exercise, or what have you. Sure, not shooting yourself in the foot is a good idea, but it’s not the government’s place to watch over you and make sure you’re making good choices. That’s something that supporters of a Nanny State simply don’t understand, and they really do open Pandora’s box. If we ever do see a ban on fast food, or tobacco being outlawed, or what have you, the arguments will already have been laid by the Nanny Staters.

As for a potential for increased criminality, as you already noted we currently have laws against public intoxication. Or driving unsafely, or what have you.

111

17 hours 59 minutes left to go of your constant posting while you talk about ‘not having time’ to answer factual rebuttals, starting… now.

Go go go!

112

Well… the laws against dealing substances that absolutely pose a clear and present danger to society… I’d be willing to at least argue the point.

Of course, the question then becomes where to draw the line–we draw it completely incorrectly in the direction of the Immoral Minority but I still feel, viscerally, that there needs to be one. Growing up in Englewood (one of the rougher Chicago neighborhoods) during the height of the crack wars has influenced my view on that, I’ll admit.

Basically, any substance that causes functional insanity upon initial ingestion I’d be willing to jawbone about… but even then, I’d only pose that we punish dealers of those substances–users would, in my perfect world, still be treated medically first.

113

Fair enough, but even still I’d argue that those are comparatively rare. You mention crack, for instance. A guy I went to school with liked to smoke crack on occasion and still held down a job, got his degree, etc… I’m not saying that it’s a good drug or a drug that someone with an addictive personality* wouldn’t have serious trouble with, but I’m not convinced that the potential for societal harm justifies the initiation of force.

We’ve also seen that while we attempt to stamp out drugs like crack, all it does is create a vibrant criminal class who stand to make massive profits off of selling the drug, and who kill each other in order to gain turf. I’m not sure I have a perfect solution, or that anybody really does… but if Prohibition doesn’t work then we might try something more humane.

I’m much more interested in discussing varieties of things that might work versus things that we know for a fact do not work and actually make the problem worse.

*to me, this has always sounded like this should mean something good. “Man, have you ever hung out with Steve? He’s super awesome, guy’s totally got an addictive personality!” Ah well…

114

You know, I don’t recall ever agreeing with you in the least, SA, but on this one point, I think we can agree.

115

I don’t think there are any perfect solutions. I will say that if you do have a substance which is likely to cause the user to commit any act of violent crime to gain more access to it, there can be an overriding societal interest in restricting access to it.

116

Well, I’d sorta agree, as long as we explore alternate variables. For instance, if t’she supply was more prevalent and less costly, would people be forced to steal in order to support their habit? Is there a way to allow people to support and/or cure their addictions without negatively impacting society unduly? Is the rate of addicts stealing to support their habit significantly higher than, say, the rate of people stealing to get big screen TV’s?

Naw, there are many points you can agree on. You both agree that when faced with pesky facts that sink your claims, the best course of action is to ignore them, then strawmen them, and then snidely declare that those who are pointing out how you’re being stupid are big meanies. You both agree that the substance of an argument is not at all important if you can declare that those who have facts that they’re using are really uncivil/nasty/hippies, whatever.

I’m sure if the two of you got together, you’d find that your outlooks on avoiding honest debate via dishonesty are actually quite similar.

117

That’s what shocks me too. I never, ever agree with SA, but as to his assessment of Finn, he’s right. Finn has been nothing but a raging asshole in this thread, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lower myself to his level.

Since I am not a raging asshole, I will simply point out that you have apparently confused me with the OP. I have not, contrary to your assertion, used the word “druggie” in any of my posts in this thread. On the upside, at least you didn’t immediately resort to inane and baseless insults to make your point, so you’re at least a step up from Finn.

118

It’s interesting that even now, you keep lying. And you’re evidently stupid enough to do it when your lies can be falsified by posts just a few dozen up in this very thread. Of course, I’m sure that pointing out the fact that you are a liar makes me a total asshole. I should be ashamed of noticing your conduct, eh?

Let’s review though, shall we?

My first post to you? What do you know, no insults at all. Of course, when you started arguing dishonestly, including strawmen with virtually every single post and deliberately ignoring the actual issue (Yet again, how many gang related crimes were there with alcohol before, during and after prohibition? Is it buying drugs/alcohol that causes problems, or Prohibition?) I pointed out your behavior.

But you, like SA, can not address let alone rebut the facts. He had to start ignoring factual refutations on his “liberals are fungible” and “although teen pregnancy peaked into the 1950’s and hit a low point post 2000, teen pregnancy has skyrocketed since the hippies!!!” bullshit. Conveniently enough, as soon as he started going ever further off the rails and indulging in his petty, ignorant bigotry all those pesky facts suddenly became TLDR, damn all those facts, I mean verbiage. Grrr, verbiage.

You’re a whiny bitch about lowering yourself to “my level” but you repeatedly dodge the actual facts and respond with absurd strawmen like how I’m simply (and without reason) “blaming the government” or about how I claim that utopia will result if the government’s destructive policies stop. And, of course, you still haven’t address why, if there is no organized international crime when there’s no prohibition, consumers rather than prohibition is to blame for the 100% verifiable and predictable consequences of prohibition. And you won’t. You will just avoid the issue, be a schmuck, and whine about how mean I am to point out your behavior. See, idiot, to be at “my level” you would actually have to start addressing the facts and logic of the situation instead of avoiding them and slinging strawmen.

You and SA really are quite alike.

119

Remember when you called me a liar? Said I was dishonest? Remember how I said, “Cough up an instance, asshole!”?

Remember how crickets chirped?

I do.

120

Uh, not if you buy local.

Disclaimer: That’s all behind me now and I don’t recommend the use of anything illegal by anyone.