People Who Buy Pot Fund Murderers, Discuss

Great Debates
101

Well to me that’s the real issue at stake here. It’s all about one side imposing the will upon the other. You want to impose your will, though only have enough will to impose it from your armchair, toward that side. I am pulling in the opposite direction.

Like I said, it is very easy to repress by pretending that it isn’t a religious issue. Most people I know that have been very heavily into drugs have a very spiritual relationship with their drugs. You do not have this experiential relationship, therefore it is easy for you to deny that it is a spiritual relationship, because it supports your assertion.

If a policeman is going into one’s home to support an unjust law, then they are a stormtrooper. Is calling them a stormtrooper sensationalist? Sure. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t still knocking in people’s doors to support unjust laws.

Religion’s vy for control over the collective psyche. Their marketshare is determined by how many people believe in their system. Personally, I am very against the AMA. Ironically, because of the way they try to treat every problem with a chemical or a knife. I think that drug addiction in our society is a MAJOR problem, but it’s not addiction to Heroin or Crack, it is addiction to Zoloft and Prozac. People trust their doctor’s in the same way people used to treat priests. They fulfill the same role. If you want to examine it for five minutes you’d be able to draw the same corrolation. Think about a Priest’s job description, what they traditionally are responsible for. The spiritual(psychological) well being of their flock, as well as the healing arts. These jobs have been taken over by psychologists and doctors. It’s not a difficult idea to comprehend, and it certainly isn’t a radical claim to make.

See, I disagree with you, I think that when a law is unjust the populace must resist it. I am not going to stop supporting an honest trade because one mafia is better at exerting their will than another.

You are trying to impose your beliefs upon the rest of us. Don’t get all uppity at me for using the term “I believe” to offer an opposition.

I believe in personal freedom, that personal freedom includes the ability to buy/sell opium. I am not going to kowtow to an unjust system just because it causes some death. I do however agree that we should stop supporting the murderers, and that’s why I think we should stop supporting governments that support the drug war.

At the end of the day, the drug lords rarely go to prison or get killed. It is their lieutenants and the people lowest on the totem pole. The War on Drugs has made it illegal to be poor across the entire world, and supporting western morality at the detriment of people who don’t have a whole lot of other options is incredibly unfair in my opinion.

If your morality isn’t to the benefit of the people, then it’s not very moral, in my opinion. I’d rather treat the cause, than the effect.

Erek

102

Perhaps a more emotionally appealing case, but not a stronger OP. The crime involved in those black markets is still because they are black. Ask yourself the question: would people still be killing each other to protect territory in a regular market? Are there shootouts between WalMart and Target over pricing and customers?

I am not suggesting that drug users are free from culpability. That would be a tough sell. But it is also a tough sell to suggest that it is merely morally questionable people driving the drug trade for if there were legal avenues to funnel demand they would surely be preferred.

Because of the profits involved. You don’t become a drug lord on nickels and dimes. And you don’t stay a drug lord by honest practices when there is no way to honestly be a part of the trade. And you don’t get honest men in the trade when there are honest profits, or at least less morally questionable profits, to be made elsewhere.

To turn the question around: what is it about cocaine and heroin that attracts such a bad element? I would be much further along your line of thought if I understood that. When I do a pragmatic analysis I still come out on the side of legalization, and so I find the prohibition to be the largest shareholder of blame. But if it were more clear why you feel there is something about the drug trade, or even specific drugs, which by their nature attract the criminal element, perhaps I could see where you are going with this.

103

Are you treating the cause or doing what feels good and wrapping that in a self-serving dogma? If you want to oppose unjust laws, do it. I doubt if supporting the local drug trade is an effective way of opposing an unjust law.

Sounds pretty self-serving to me.

104

Then sir, we are in perfect agreement.

105

I would have thought breaking an unjust law is a pretty good way of opposing it, especially so in this instance as the more commonplace the social use and trade of pot becomes, the more the man on the street will see the absurdity of its criminalisation and understand that the government doesn’t always tell the truth on the issue - eventually, with any luck, leading to the popular repeal of the unjust law.

106

If I capitulate then the powers that be chock it up as a victory, and they see no reason to change their behavior, because their behavior was a clear success. I don’t want to give them any reason to believe that their behavior is in any way successful, or acceptable.

But let’s clear a couple seeming misconceptions.

  1. I barely care if you feel my drug use is justified. Your view is more likely to color my opinion of you, than of my own drug use.

  2. Most of the drugs I do are not affected by the same socio-political issues you are discussing. We’ve extensively discussed the blackmarket of Pot. Half a dozen chemists supply almost all of North America with it’s LSD. The demand FAR exceeds the supply, and when the supply goes up the price of LSD goes down, and they just sell far more of it, as a drug measured in micrograms is incredibly easy to transport and conceal. The culture of LSD tends toward peaceful resolution of conflicts, and it’s distribution is largely maintained by hippies. LSD is rarely cut with other chemicals because other chemicals are more expensive than the LSD-25. In short, the number of people being murdered over LSD is pretty low, even though the legislation against it is some of the harshest. Mushrooms grow wild in every state, I’ve had mushrooms where I got them straight from the grower. There are other chemicals for which you’ve probably never even heard of like DMT, 2Ci, etc… I only once in a while do drugs like XTC, Cocaine, or Crystal Meth, for which you might have a tenuous point about. Ironically, the reason I don’t do those hotbutton drugs is because the hangover makes the high not particularly worth it.

  3. You have completely eliminated any spiritual motivation from drug usage. I could write for the next year about positive benefits from multiple drugs. However, I will give you a short synopsis of my experience with DMT. When I first took DMT, I felt as though all of my organs were being crushed, all of reality left, and I barely had any hold on the reality around me, and was transported to a universe of superstrings, and my awareness of everyone else was in the terms of their superstring connection to me. Eventually, all those strings were cut and I stood on the edge of oblivion about to wink out of existence. It was an incredibly horrific ordeal. However, when I awoke I was free of a lot of issues that had previously been plaguing me. I had a greater understanding of the world around me, a heightened awareness that I have maintained to this day. I have even done DMT again, and it has been fairly terrifying every time I have done it, but I have felt healthier after each session of DMT, and have maintained that. DMT is such a powerful chemical that I get flashbacks merely from smelling it’s acrid odor. You can smell it from across the room.
    So maybe my personal experience can help you to understand a little bit better why I hold the position I do. While I am one of those rare people that does actually take the drugs as a sacrament, and not merely a pasttime, I’d like you to remember that people like me are not as rare as you might think. I’d also like to say that just because other people do use it as a recreational pasttime, and don’t give the Dragon the proper respect when they go chasing it, that’s no reason to keep it from them. Many people have started out as recreational users, and experience has changed them, many learned very little, many got scared off, and many have died, but there are two sides to the drug coin.

Drugs have been a major part of our culture, and an agent for evolution. The term “drug” is a fairly arbitrary distinction. Any chemical that triggers a change in body chemistry is a “drug”. Everything we consume is a chemical, and every chemical we consume changes our body chemistry. So all chemicals are drugs. Some outright kill people, we call those “poisons”. Some cause mutations, we call those “Carcinogens”. Some cause hallucinations, we call those “hallucinogens”. Humanity adapts and evolves to accept new introductions to the environment. We are a species that manages our own evolution to a certain extent. We seek out that which will change us in the way we desire to be changed. Drugs are an integral part of that. The Adam and Eve story is a wonderful allegory about drug usage. Who knows what kind of effect an apple would have on human chemistry the first time that any human ever consumed one.

Without drugs Pink Floyd and the Beatles would have been very different. Modern American culture would not exist without William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. Many people believe that St. John was on a steady diet of mushrooms when he wrote “Revelation”.

Yahe or Ayahuasca, which is a combination of an MAOI with DMT as the active ingredient has been in sacramental usage in the Amazon for thousands of years, and is still used that way. There are shamans in the Amazon that still practice the ancient herbalism, there are even Ayahuasca vacations one can go on in the Amazon. Ayahuasca is currently in a major supreme court case. A church in New Mexico uses it for sacramental purposes, and it keeps going back and forth in court whether or not this is ok. The Native Americans smoked pot at peace ceremonies, and used Peyote(Mescaline) extensively. Arabs/Hindus have used Hashish in their rituals throughout history.

Our current government is so restrictive about our intake of chemicals that new research chemicals are scheduled before most of the populace even hears of them. I have only done one research chemical 2Ci prior to it’s being scheduled. It was scheduled only a couple months afterward. However, there is a law against using research chemicals for that purpose. It’s kind of an all-purpose law.

I can’t expect the system to change on it’s own. I must help it do such a thing. Honestly the rebellion and the drug cannot be seperated. I found myself dissatisfied with the status quo for whatever reason, and I find myself still dissatisfied with the status quo. To be honest the drug war doesn’t affect me directly much at all. Though, I have been subject to unreasonable search with the drug war used as a lame excuse. I am now in a strata of society where I am able to largely avoid that whole morass, but I still feel that it is not fair, and I do not appreciate that it continues to be perpetuated. I do the drugs for myriad reasons, and pleasure is certainly one of them, but it’s not as simplistic as you seem to want to make it in order to support a pretty lame argument toward your particular bias.

Erek

107

Such as non causa pro causa? The difference in your case being that you’ve identified event A as the cause, and then turn around and blame event B as being the cause.

So, no, I can’t agree w/ you.

Apoligies: I’m bad at reading long threads, I may have missed this above.

108

I say that it might be the dominant drug in 500 years only because the farther out we get, the harder it is to predict anything. I’ll equally concede that opium might be the dominant drug in 500 years, or that LSD might be the dominant drug, or that some newly-discovered slime mold may be the dominant drug.

As for pot, though, care for a wager? If, 20 years after pot’s legalization, it’s not the dominant drug, you owe me a bottle of fine cognac; if it is, I owe you an eighth of sticky greenbud.

Daniel

109

(first time poster)

I was suprised to learn in some of my college classes a link between drug laws and racism. In Psychology and Music History, and from my subsequent studies, it was outlined that Opiates were intially made illegal because white leaders thought the drug would lead to more fraternizing of white women with Orientals, and the same for weed with the jazz musicians. Then crack in the 80’s in the inner city areas (being ‘released’ into the 'hood by law enforcement is also debatable) leading to major black arrests and imprisionment…Thoughts?

Also, what about the fact (yes, fact) that I can rape or shoot someone and go to prison for less time than if I was caught with lets say a pound of pot. Or what about the theory that for every person convicted on pot violations, possibly a rapist or aggressive criminal has to be paroled in order to make room for a non-violent offender (In a round-about way)?

Just curious on peoples opinions. I don’t see pot being legalized in my lifetime (I’m 26) although it being criminal is baffling.

‘No, I don’t do drugs anymore, either. But I’ll tell you something about drugs. I used to do drugs, but I’ll tell you something honestly about drugs, honestly, and I know it’s not a very popular idea, you don’t hear it very often anymore, but it is the truth: I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry…Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife or kids…laughed my ass off…and went about my day.’ -Bill Hicks

110

Welcome Modular! The SDMB is the best place on the net by far.

Of course drug laws began and a perpetuated for bad (and perhaps some good) reasons. Few of us would argue against some sort of legalization.

Still, here, in an exceptionally nasty thread we are discussing if people who spend money on drugs have some sort of moral responsibility for the horrors the drug trade causes.

What are your thoughts?

111

Make that an ounce and 25 years, and we have a deal.

112

25 years and $100 of whatever the winner wants ($100 in 2005 dollars)–and sold!

(An ounce of good bud would’ve gone for about $300 when I was in college, so that’s not a good bet)

Daniel

113

Oh come on, if you’re gonna make a bet that takes 25 years to resolve, you should at least make the prize worth remembering that you made the bet.

Erek