On this thread here is a discussion of the sad news that four RCMP men were gunned down in some sort of pot raid. I would prefer not to disturb that thread with this discussion. It does not seem respectful.
People who buy pot are putting money into a business that kills people. Maybe the guy you buy from is a nice guy, but the business is nasty. I know it is nasty because it is illegal. Legalization makes sense and I support it.
Until then, can we all agree that each little baggie carries in it a little bit of the responsibility for this and numberless other outrages? How can any thinking person support this trade?
Unless of course I am guilty of some sort of logical error.
Well, if we agree that every time I gas up my car I’m funnelling money to terrorists and every time I buy a Micky D’s burger I’m killing the rainforest and every sneaker I buy supports child sweatshop labor then yeah, I’ll agree that that bag carries some responsibility.
Let’s just move into the hypothetical realm here since we’re talking about things that are illegal. Suppose that someone doesn’t like their drugs or anything else comming from random sources. Suppose that person found a supply chain that they liked, good consistant product locally grown hydroponically. Now suppose that the grower is an uninsured single parent with an expensive disabled child to care for. Nobody has any guns, nobody is shooting or getting shot. Can we claim some moral superiority for supporting this system?
Bad analogy. You had nothing but your cynicism to suspect that MCI was committing crimes. Theirs was a legal service. Irrespective of what you think about the matter, pot growing and trading are currently illegal. It is a more reasonable assumption that many pot dealers might be involved in more insidious crimes.
Another aspect to consider is that the connection between pot and violence is indirect at best. Obviously, if you follow enough links, a pot user is related to violence of some sort. But this isn’t the same as the moral equivalence of eating meat to killing animals. Using pot doesn’t require violence, it’s just associated with it because of many other factors.
I think you draw a bad conclusion, Paul. Isn’t it the politicians who keep pot illegal that are responsible for these deaths, not the people who smoke it?
Blaming the smokers sort of seems like blaming letter-writers for the postal workers who go postal.
Actually, it’s the killers themselves who are responsible, although I think I know what you mean-- that pot smokers are less a reason for the violence than are the politicians who make the activity illegal.
Otherwise, I agree. I think the OP is placing blame on the wrong party.
I agree–I was mostly being facetious, suggesting that it was almost as silly to blame the politicians. I disagree with the idea of making pot illegal, but I don’t think people who do so are murderers. However, they’re marginally more culpable, in my mind, than pot smokers–who are in turn marginally more culpable than people who stay out of the ugly mess altogether.
But the guilt of politicians or potheads pales in comparison to the guilt of, oh, I dunno, the people firing bullets at mounties.
Very good points…except the OP didn’t even intimate anything different. Of course the overwhelming majority of the guilt is on the killers who pulled the triggers.
Well, if terrorists were the ones who brought you the gasoline, or Mickey D’s could only make their money by destroying the rainforest, or the sneakers you buy were, in fact, made by child labor, then yes, you should bear some responsibility for those actions.
No, it’s not. “Going postal” is not a necessary part of the postal worker’s job description. Evading the law, and the resulting killing of innocents, is a necessary, and apparently acceptable to you, part of the marijuana trade. And blaming the politicians more than the consumers is equally as silly.
Paul, a few years ago, I started a thread on the issue of responsible consumerism and the drug trade. You can, if you are feeling especially masochistic, read it here.
Incidentally, John, I dreamed about you the other night. We were discussing some point about the ethics of war, and you wrote, “Oh yeah? Cite how that applied in the Battle of Cyrig Horn? Cite how that applied in the Lithuanian War of 1819? Cite how that applied in the Charge of the Fifth Regiment?” and so on for about a dozen lines, telling me that if I couldn’t explain how it applied in all these cases, it was a worthless point. It made me really mad.
Huh? What? Just saying something doesn’t make it so, you know. So, I’m going to be like dream-John here, and say, cite?
Cite that “the resulting killing of innocents” is part of evading the law?
Cite that it’s a necessary part of the marijuana trade?
The guy that shot these mounties turned the gun on himself. Suicide is a pretty bad business tactic, if I’m not mistaken: the returns are hella low. I hardly think that one asshole’s actions that hurt his business justify the claim that “killing of innocents” is a necessary part of the marijuana trade.
Murder does not require the funding that the drug trade brings with it. So it is hardly a matter of “supporting murderers.” Plenty of murderers have held normal jobs, too. It is not a high-cost kind of field, and pretty much anyone can apply. There’s not really any benefits package, though.
You may be guilty of a logic error. Can you cite any credible statistics that show pot growers and dealers kill police officers with a greater frequency than, say, auto workers? I am not aware of the pot selling business being particularly associated with killings. Now if you were talking about cocaine trafficking I’d suspect that you were right.
Well, then you better buy any batteries made by Union Carbide.
And products from IBM, Ford, and the United Fruit company are definitely suspect. In fact, if you want to link any the purchasers of products from any company to any death that may have been caused, well, I suspect you’re going to be living in the woods eating alge pancakes and grub-patties.
There’s a difference between the product and the producer.
The OP is just a big Guilt By Association fallacy. If I buy weed from a dude that kills people, yeah, I’m funding a murderer. But I buy weed from Stoner P. McPotseller whose greatest crime is driving a little above the speed limit and having poor hygiene, who never harmed naught but a fly in his life, HOW am I funding a murderer again?
I am willing to admit I might be wrong with the OP. (I have a case of the crud and am less capable of clear thought than usual.) Someone will have to show me my mistake more clearly than has been done so far.
If it is a good idea to boycott lettuce in order to encourage Mexican field workers to make the world safe for baby seals, surely it is a good idea to boycott ilegal drugs for much better reasons.
Union Carbide might do nasty things, and I suppose denying them my business might make sense, but there is a lot more blood on each drug transaction.
