Is this (the economic imposition on you as a tax payer) your primary reason for supporting drug prohibition?
I too would like to live in a society that works exactly according to my Nth level desire. There’s that snag about living around other people that keeps coming back, though. They keep acting like they have a say in how I act around them.
I just love it when people’s solution to their dislike of my vote is to take it away. It’s been suggested on this board numerous times.
Can I fit in with the OP?
I am all for individual rights. People should have the right to do as they please, until they infringe on anthers right thru force or fraud.
With increased individual responsibility, there should be increased consequences.
Government has it’s place, National security, maintaining infrastructure, enforcement of the rule of law.
Osip
I’d first note that this commentary extends to many positions: motorcycle helmet laws, for instance. Looking at the issue in a vacuum, there is no reason for the state to mandate that motorcycle riders wear helmets. They are only harming themselves, which they should be free to do. But since this society refuses to walk past a motorcyclist who has cracked his head open… instead, we rush him to the hospital and care for him, at taxpayer expense if he cannot afford it … then the taxpayer arguably should have some voice in whether or not the rider is permitted to take such risks in the first place.
So, too, with the drug addict. We are not willing to walk by alooof when the heroin user is dying of an overdose. We expend public resources to heal him. That gives the public a voice in prohibiting his conduct.
That’s certain a major reason I support drug prohibition.
Well, the thing i’d like to point out is that drug prohibition is devoid of such logic. It’s supposed to be about protecting people, yet we gas the farms of farmers in Colombia. Caffeine is FAR worse for the human body than Cocaine. I have actually seen people get over depression by taking LSD, haven’t really seen it happen with Prozac or Zoloft. Of course none of this can truly be proven because we’re not allowed to study the effects of these drugs, and then when we do the methodology is all fucked up. When mood altering drugs are studied they are oftentimes studied in a sterile lab, when the most comprehensive study of such things done by Timothy Leary at Harvard said that set and setting is crucial to what effects the drugs will have. There was a study in Time Magazine not too long ago about how there reaches a critical mass in a community when 1.5% of the male population is in prison it depresses the economy in such a way as to make it extremely difficult to get out of. This study was done in poor black neighborhoods in Texas.
To claim any humanist ideals behind the prohibition of drugs is ignorant at best. It is an attempt to regulate behavior, in a way that the best dystopian authors built their careers upon. It is based upon the flawed idea of aristocracy or rule by the elite. Do you really think that the elite don’t do drugs? Do you really think that they have any concern whatsoever that they will ever face any negative legal consequences from doing so? I’ve been in many circles of drug use, and the wealthier the community, the more flagrant the drug use is. I’ve been in parties with upper middle class bourgeois people where the drug dealers announce what they have for sale, where the drugs are so prevalent that the dealers who get there late have no market to sell to. It’s purely about controlling the lower classes, it’s not at all about any humanist ideal. The humanist ideal is the propaganda sold by the lies of DARE classes, where the state teaches children absolute falsehoods about the effects of drug use. The side-effects of legally prescribed drugs are oftentimes just as bad with everything from heart attacks to seizures as a possibility. Yet, we are supposed to trust the “Doctors” who have some sort of elite knowledge, except that many doctors don’t even pay attention to their patients. My friend’s mother recently got her medical records, and not one but multiple doctors had statistics that included the wrong hair color, height and build.
Any humanist ideal put behind the drug war is based upon complete and total ignorance. I’ve never met anyone who was truly hurt by marijuana, and very few who were hurt by LSD. Yet, for some reason trafficking in LSD carries a life sentence. For some reason police are arresting hippies who grow a little pot to supplement their income. How exactly is this humanist? How is it better for hippies who don’t hurt anyone to be in prison? How is it better for us as a society that we pay the cost for imprisoning them rather than letting them support themselves by selling a commodity that people want? People die of lung cancer, yet the tobacco companies that put extra nicotine in their cigarettes go along just fine. Rolling tobacco without additives and no filter are far less nasty for you than say a Camel or a Marlboro, this can be felt simply by smoking them. I’ll smoke an American Spirit or some Drum once in a while, but never a Marlboro or a Camel.
The Humanist agenda behind the drug war is a sham, people’s lives are ripped apart by the drug war, the negative effects of the drug war are far worse than a sensibly regulated commodity would be. When people are overdosing they don’t get the proper hospital treatment sometimes as the people around them fear the social repercussions of calling an ambulance because of Draconian laws that could hold them responsible merely for owning the establishment in which that person overdosed.
Alcohol is far more dangerous than most drugs, kills many more people, brings out anger in people. I’ve seen people get in fights on Alcohol more than I have seen it on LSD or Marijuana, or even Cocaine.
As for people being idiots and doing stupid shit, well we have laws for that, we don’t need double jeopardy laws to make them more effective. We have DWI laws to prevent people from driving. It’s illegal to steal or assault someone, it doesn’t need to be increased because they are on drugs at the time. It was already proven during prohibition of alcohol that violent crime went up as the value of the commodity increased in direct relation to it’s being prohibited.
Prohibition is simply a bad idea, nothing good has come of it, and I have yet to hear any argument for it that is not ignorant of the negative effects that the drug war has macrocosmically.
Erek
Ok, but you appear to be advocating legalization, which carries its own risks. Or so I’ve argued. Warning: Long, tedious thread. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=332309
Heh, thanks, I’m not up for a long tedious thread just yet, but I would just say that while it is fraught with risks no doubt, it has to be done, only in a free world may we truly have peace.
War is people resisting the control of others who want to control them.
So… we can’t prove it. But you KNOW.
Argument from ignorance. Fallacy.
Fallacy of… eh, you know what. Let’s leave this as an exercise. What is the logical fallacy demonstrated above?
Strawman. I never claimed my position was “humanist”. I laid out specific objections, which you have completely ignored in this response.
You’d probably do even better if you depreciated your wife rather than marrying your car.
What I am saying is that there is no way to argue this from any position other than ignorance, because the study has been impeded by legislation. That is hardly an argument from ignorance.
As for the rest of your post. I could go and get statistics regarding why I feel the way I do about this subject, and it’s something I intend to do, but the corruption caused by the drug war is so widespread and endemic that it’s a pretty major task. I will at some point, but right now I must remind you that this is the BBQ Pit not Great Debates, and I was expressing frustration at legislation that I think is stupid, not trying to prove to anyone that it is stupid.
Thank you,
Erek
I am with you 100% here in the reasons for why the Gov cares about this stuff.
I still think it should be leagal but come with a basic waiver, i.e. no helmet, no life saving medical care, heroin/coke/meth/whatever in your system? looks like you die young. the gov would make more in taxes, stop losing billions in prison costs/court costs and finally the stupid people might actually start dying when they behave stupidly.
So would you be in favor of a law making it illegal to ride without a helmet unless the rider had opted-out of publicly-funded health care treatment?
Assume such a system would be possible to implement.
er, that should have been “opted-out of publicly funded health care treatment for head injuries stemming from motorcycle accidents that occured while not wearing a helmet.”
As long as they consent, what the hell do I care?
Sell to adults, fine. Sell to chidren, no way.
Agree, but I hope you will not feel the same for people who may believe in God.
Please do.
What you may choose to holler in the presence of my children is very much my business.
Do I care? Yes. Am I going to write to the FCC demanding that the network lose its license? Not likely.
As long as you don’t take anyone with you.
So, does this mean I get to vote in primaries and not the general? That I can vote for state and not federal officials?
Arguing over the drug war is pointless. Humans are not good at evaluating situations in which they are not a part of. The vast majority of the people supporting the war on drugs do not use drugs themselves*. Therefore they don’t care if it’s illegal and have no incentive to reduce their ignorance. You can beat them over the head with statistics and studies, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that they just don’t give a fuck. Just like gay marriage. I’m not gay, so what the fuck do I care? Plain and simple.
Oh and one other thing. I think **mswas ** mentioned it earlier. Saying that you don’t want to pay for a junkie’s overdose and therefore drugs should be illegal is stupid. You’re **already ** paying for them and you will continue to pay for them.
*Of course all people use drugs of some sort, but most of these dumbfucks don’t realize that. Enjoy your heart attack and blindness with that *non-recreational * drug Viagra.
Just remember that anarchy is the purest form of democracy. Too bad we live in a Republic 
That’s the spirit!
It was always easier for me to get illegal drugs than legal alcohol when I was a kid.
I do believe in God personally, I just don’t think we should waste money having the government debate theology, when just about everyone is willing to do it for free.
Hey, I’ve been in places where people don’t wear clothes in public, it ain’t that bad.
Certainly it’s your business, but it wouldn’t affect them one way or another if you didn’t teach them that some words were bad and some were good. All words are neutral with a stable meaning. Saying “ahh crap” is no different from saying “ahh shit”. Wasting time caring about it is your prerogative, but I still think you’re wasting your time.
So they can watch commercials where people claw each other’s eyes out so that they can get to the beer first, but seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple is beyond the pail?
That’s what I’m saying! If it were up to me there’d be suicide booths in every city.
As long as you think none of those social decency issues you quibbled about are subjects of legislation, then you can vote in every election. Go forth good citizen, you are approved!
Erek
I was just thinking that about five minutes ago when I nominated George HW Bush for the Republican Ticket in '08 in the thread about that subject.
Floyd13: It truly is unfortunate that people don’t give a fuck about the fact that people are going to jail unecessarily for it. If only there were some way to get it through their thick skulls the fact that white people get carjacked by black people because the drug war keeps many black communities depressed, and offers black ex-felons little upward mobility, the whole time everyone is asking, “Why can’t those black people just get it together?”, if only every bleeding heart liberal that sends money to amnesty international realized that we were dropping chemical weapons on poor farmers in Colombia on the daily. If only they realized that drug lords can pinpoint people’s locations based on phone records, and can assassinate DEA moles with their super computers, even if the moles are using anonymous lines, based upon patterns that can be picked out by the computer. If only they realized that they have engineered a super strain of Coca that produces about ten times as much cocaine as the older version to increase redundancy and minimize the effectiveness of the American government’s gas attacks. If only they realized that the head drug lords never get touched, it’s mainly just the desperate poor that are just trying to survive day to day that are getting ushered through the system.
If only reason were a virtue in this nation. If only all those senators that were willing to make an appearance on the movie Traffic and bash the drug war, had the balls to actually do something about it.
Erek
[Hijack]
That sounds like a really cool thing to have in a book or movie! Do you have a cite where I could get some details?
[/Hijack]
That’s such a huge assumption that I’d rather explore it in another thread.