I’m confused by your attitude towards drugs. Your comment indicates that you’re treating yourself as some sort of guinea pig, seeing how far you can push it. A few people have that mindset, not others. They just want to come home and take in some bud. They aren’t upping the intake to see how far they can deal with it. And at recreational doses, there isn’t anything seriously wrong with a lot (not all) of recreational substances.
I still can’t figure out what the f*** you guys are talking about.
Me either, Ghanima, and I posted to this thread!
Apparently, we’re supposed to read some other thread that has over one hundred posts and then discuss a general theme that was tangential to that thread (hint: it’s somewhere near the end.) Which theme will be obvious if we would only do our prerequisite reading.
And what is the reason that this thread doesn’t deserve a concise OP of its own?
Possibly the fact that Gyan was telling him to shut up rather than actually asking doug here to conduct a roundtable on drug use. doug’s posts have made it clear both in the past and present that he doesn’t know much about drugs, but still expects us to take some lecture his parents gave him as gospel.
Let’s get something straight here, Excalibre. I consider my parents’ counsel better than yours, or that of any other stranger I might encounter on an Internet Message Board. Unless you can present professional credentials–a medical degree and license to practice medicine, for example, or advanced credentials in teaching and/or a cogent field of science–you are in no position to countermand my parents’ teaching 45 years after the fact!
You are correct about me not knowing all that much about drugs. So what? I made it plain that alcohol and tobacco had done irrepairable damage to people in my family and I am not of a mind to see whether such things would affect me–so I am a non-smoker and a teetotaler. And you have not presented a basis for me to engage in what I consider to be blatant Doublethink: I consider illegal drugs to be just as much a risk as cigarettes and liquor–if not more.
This is simply wrong. Herein lies the problem.
Care to elaborate?
Many illegal drugs are far less harmful than tobacco and alcohol, you’re parents’ experiences don’t really have any bearing on the situation, some people use illegal substances recreationally without harm, this is their decision, what were we talking about again?
Maximum respect to **dougie_monty ** for having kept a discussion, the point of which nobody seems to quite understand, going for this long.
As mouthbreather mentioned earlier, if there are no obvious signs of damage, it is impossible to gauge how different you would have been had you not taken what has been taken.
I too have had a relatively lengthy association with illegal substances and do not consider myself particularly damaged by it.
Alcohol takes a heavier toll - at least in the short term - but, there again, alcohol is taken in far higher quantities, and by many more people.
I subscribe to the everything in moderation view on this one.
I hope that has added to this debate – whatever it may be.
Well, bully for you. :dubious:
I think this can be distilled to three simple issues:
- The potential any illegal drug has to lure any user into addiction (or, as they used to say in the Sixties, “psychological dependence”).
- Without legal manufacture, the absence of standards of purity: so that LSD, for example can contain God knows what else!
- Similar to the first point, what constitutes an overdose.
And in the worst-case scenario, suppose you are behind the wheel, under the influence of your favorite drug, going 60 miles an hour, and you hit me while I’m a pedestrian. I am just as dead as I would be if you had guzzled a whole bottle of Scotch.
Or if I had ingested nothing at all. What’s your point?
I agree with your issue No 2: a good argument for the legalisation, and therefore regulation, of certain drugs.
However, issues 1 & 3: how do they differ from a great many other, legal, foods/beverages/activities/whatever? Especially if we substitute the word “overdose” for “obesity” or “heart attack” or even “repetitive strain injury”.
Out of mild curiosity, what in the world is wrong with you, doug? I didn’t say you should use drugs. I didn’t promote drug use in the slightest. I simply pointed out that your obnoxious, ill-informed lectures on drugs are not founded on anything resembling knowledge, as you freely admit above, but on a lecture your parents, who also didn’t know anything about drug use, gave you as a child.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether you or anyone else uses any substance; I don’t understand why you act as though I’m some kind of drug pusher here - I have not advised you to use drugs. No one here has done so. Weighing my advice against that of your parents is a logical impossibility, since no one here has given any sort of advice to you that would contradict what your parents said.
To reiterate, all I said was that your mindless, ill-informed parroting of what your parents told you is not the same as actual, honest debate. No one here is out to get you; my goal is just to persuade you to keep your self-righteousness to yourself.
Where did driving under the influence come from? Thats a compeltely seperate topic that no one here is advocating.
I think I can put the first and third issues in a perspective you can appreciate, whether I myself accept it or not:
Among the things a physician apparently considers when prescribing a meducation for the patient is that person’s sex, age, general health, height, weight, and personal physical idiosyncracies. For the sake of argument, a dose of xylocane, morphine, or other potent painkiller that would be right for you might kill me.
And, of course, there’s the issue of drug tolerance, which so far as I know has applied only to heroin but might also apply to LSD, marijuana, barbiturates, or more modern things like ice, crack cocaine, or methamphetamine, for example. Again for the sake of argument, you might take a dose of heroin or one of the others for your hundredth dose that would have killed you on a first dose.
I’d also like to add that you’d be just as dead if the driver were completely sober. So what’s yer point?
I think the OP can actually be distilled into three things:
- doug thinks drugs are baaaaaaad
- doug wants you to confirm this
- if you don’t, you’re on drugs, man
Don’t put words into my mouth, buddy.
You may care to research the issue of traffic fatalities to find out what percent of the 50- to 60-thousand fatalities on American highways every year, resulted because one driver was under the influence (of alcohol or whatever substance that was abused). My guess is it is considerable–perhaps half. That’s 25,000 to 30,000 people who would still be alive if some driver had not been ingesting drugs or alcohol or both. 
It might help if you or I were to get some data on this from a medical professional.
I believe that this is now post # 37 of the thread, and I’m still trying to find out what it’s about.
Is your assertion that all intoxicating agents should be banned?
I think my posting of 1:14 AM today may answer your question. 
Actually, I’m afraid it doesn’t. It contains three points, but does not offer a point of issue or a resolution. Let me see if I can show you how it doesn’t say anything. I’ll paraphrase, and use fattening food as an analogy:
The issues are:
- The potential that some foods will cause obesity
- Without manufacturing guidelines, who knows what they’re made of
- Like 1, what is obesity.
There is no coherent point. You’ve made no definitive assertion. You’ve not offered a point of resolution. One could not say what my point is in the above analogy. Are fattening foods to be banned? Should they have manufacturing guidelines? Should they state their contents?
See, I don’t know what your point is.
I’d like to know the point. Maybe I’m just being slow, but can you simply re-state it, as either a single sentence statement or question, so I can see where you’re going and respond appropriately? Thanks.
[sigh]
In a nutshell, it is that illegal drugs are illegal for a good reason–and it isn’t because the government has been in collusion with tobacco growers, distilleries, wineries and breweries in a conspiracy to root out the competition.
You see, I can play the game too. I know, for example, that most people die in bed but I am not of a mind to ban beds.
Tobacco and alcohol abuse has caused countless illnesses, infirmities and deaths–why add drugs to that?
If you know a physician, a DEA agent, or a legislator, ask for their position, and rationale, on the issue.