Legalize all of them. Just keep people from driving after they've used them (for days, if required, just like the requirements for drinking and flying are far more stringent than drinking and driving). Isn't the government's job to keep people from frying their brains, and in some cases they won't.
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Anything that doesnt involve an abundance of drain cleaners and ammonia in the process.
Marijauna should definitely be at the top off this list. The orgins of its prohibition are ridiculous. Then throw in legalization of LSD and Shrooms for good measure, so I won't feel so bad about it....
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:PS: Crystal Meth is also nice. Don't know yet about its addiction levels, though, since I tried it only a few times.
That shit's fucking poison.
I don't want to fucking know what the labs are like they came from.
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Maybe I should clarify my position- legalization and decriminalization are not the same things. Should harmful narcotics be legal? No. Should you face criminal sanction for using them? No.
I had a father who's son had died on the steps of some building in the Sydney CBD from drug use talk to our class last year, and let me tell you he really changed my mind about whether criminal sanctions are a good idea rather than medical help for these people.
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:Nah, you'll never find us on the streets, since we're mostly on the dance floor.
I don't care where you lie.
Lie? Nope. Unlike heroine or pot, ecstacy users *never* lie down (at least not before the effect wears off). Instead, we dance like crazy while house music plays in the background.
Legalize them all, coke, heroine, PCP, weed, LSD, everything, but as soon as a user drives around high or goes around beating people up or otherwise endangers others, he's toast. He'll be going for an extended stay behind bars. My feelings are this, you can do whatever you want to yourself, you can go fry your brain with speedballs for all I care, as long as I don't have to cover your medical costs or watch you run over kids in a schoolyard it's none of my business what you put in your body. But as soon as you harm another person while under the influence, I want your ass fried.
aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.
I'm for the legalization and a few of the other drugs that have low addiction rates and do little harm. Hard drugs should stay illegal though effective and sane enforcement is a must.
Of course companies should be under no obligation to allow pot or other drug users to work for them. They'd also be barred from any public assitance while using the drugs.
His Divine Shadow wrote:And I think drug manufacturing = death penalty - these scumbags are really one step worse than the junkies that use drugs.
Have to agree with you here.
Smugglers and manufactures = Kill on sight.
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I will say right now that I have no idea if drugs should be legal or not, I have not decided.
If they are legalized (yeah right), should we be able to discriminate against users and non-users? I mean would you want a police officer that took something the previous night? What about a surgeon who just shot up before work?
I mean yes there are some who do it now, but if caught, they loose thier jobs, and legal action can be taken. This is why I am undecided. Yes it is our body, but when it starts effecting other people in a society, which includes endangering them, I just don't know.
Sam Or I wrote:I will say right now that I have no idea if drugs should be legal or not, I have not decided.
If they are legalized (yeah right), should we be able to discriminate against users and non-users? I mean would you want a police officer that took something the previous night? What about a surgeon who just shot up before work?
I mean yes there are some who do it now, but if caught, they loose thier jobs, and legal action can be taken. This is why I am undecided. Yes it is our body, but when it starts effecting other people in a society, which includes endangering them, I just don't know.
Do explain to me why, if drugs were legalized, that surgeons would be able to shoot up before an operation and get treated any differently from a surgeon who was drunk on the job? For that matter, how many surgeons are going to go through eight years of med school and more years interning only to lose their liscenses, be humiliated in the eyes of their peers, expose themselves to liabilities the size of God, hurt a patient and probably go to jail by shooting up before work? I love these objections to legalization: "Oh, police officers will be high at work!" "People will be driving stoned!" By those standards of logic, there's absolutely no reason at all for alcohol to be legal.
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I think that we should legalize most drugs, or at least reform drug laws. I have good reasons for each. Here:
Marijuana was originally illegalized because of hemp. Hemp makes better, cheaper paper than wood pulp. Newspapers didn't like that. It makes better cloth than nylon. Dupont didn't like that. So Dupont and some newspaper company (owned by some guy who was also a lumber tycoon) lobbied (READ: paid lots of money) to make hemp illegal. Their campaign talked about "crazed negros on hemp" killing people in their hemp highs. Marijuana got lumped in with the illegalization, saying that people who grew marijuana (an admittedly harmless plant according to the gov't) could grow hemp in the same fields and no one would ever know. Fact: You cannot grow marijuana and hemp in the same vacinity. They strangle each other. Fact: You'd have to smoke a doobie as thick as my arm from Boston to San Diego to get high off hemp. Fact: Number of people who die per year as a direct result of marijuana: none. Timeframe: ever.
Hallucinogenic mushrooms are relatively harmless. They are neither addictive nor destructive to brain cells. The sad fact is, however, that people die from mushroom overdoses all the time. It is possible to do so, and in fact it is a real danger to first-timers. Because it is a naturally-occuring substance, people have naturally-occurring allergies to it. It's no less prevalent than allergies to nuts or strawberries or dairy products. Add that to the fact the proposition of people lacing the drugs with all sorts of things (from Raid to crystal methane), and you've pretty much accounted for the entire death-count of shroom-users. It's not the drug itself that is bad, but certain bodily reactions to it and stupid people who take too much, or who get it from the wrong person. If shrooms were made legal and doses were regulated by package, we'd eliminate most of those deaths.
Opiates are considered class A substances by federal law. In order for a substance to be declared class A, it must meet all of the following criteria:
1) it must be harmful
2) it must be addictive
3) it must have no medicinal value
Morphine, the most common opiate, is considered a class A substance. Posession of morphine earns 14-25 years in prison, thanks to drug law reformation during the War on Drugs in the 1980s. And yet it clearly has medicinal value as hospitals frequently use it as a pain killer. In fact, it is the most potent injectable pain killer available. Prior to the 1930's, there were drug laws banning opiates that were much less severe. They followed narcotics laws, which required drug therapy instead of prison time. I'll talk a bit about that later.
Cocaine laws are a testament to classism in the USA. In the 1920s, the people who abused powder cocaine weren't inner-city minorities, but white suburban housewives. Cocaine and morphine were the drugs of choice. In fact, there were places called morphine dens where you could get your daily fix for a moderate price. But when it was discovered that both substances were addictive, and when signs of this addiction started coming through, something needed to be done. What happened was that these white suburban housewives were told to see doctors who weened them off of their cocaine and morphine. But that only happened when people were addicted. Morphine dens were still popular; people drank absinthe like water. It wasn't until minorities started using crack cocaine that laws started to be passed. Crack was made illegal. Later on, so was powder cocaine. But let's look at the sentencing for drug posession on the two substances (keep in mind that neither is more or less deadly than the other):
Crack - Used by poor, inner-city dwellers - 10 year minimum for posession of 1 gram. Powder - Called an "executive drug," as it is used primarily by the upper classes - 5 year maximum for posession of 1 gram.
Heroin is addictive, but only deadly in lethal doses. The problem with heroin is that it is FREQUENTLY laced with other deadly substances. It is less harmful than almost any other "unnatural" drug: MDMA, Cocaine, and LSD are all more physically harmful than heroin. Again, classism comes into play here. Heroin was introduced as a cheap way to get high. It was abused first by doctors in the 1910s and '20s, but became illegal when it became associated with the largely poor black American jazz movement in the 1930s.
LSD should be banned outright. There is no good that comes of it, and it is terribly harmful despite its lack of addictive qualities.
I haven't really decided on MDMA (Ecstasy). Personally, I like E. That is, I like GOOD E. It's not addictive, and unless you drop three dozen at once, it's relatively safe. (I say relatively because it's probably not a good idea to drive cars or operate heavy machinery on E. This is evidenced by the fact that we've dubbed the rumble strips on the side of the highways "raver savers.") Again, the problem with E is that far too often it's laced with really bad stuff that gives you bad trips. I had a friend who took a red pill (NEVER TAKE THE RED ONES) with a star, and it was laced with rat poison. Luckily she was ok, but her trip was scary as fuck. If MDMA were regulated by the government, and if we could get pure MDMA in stores and such, then maybe I'd like it better.
The common argument is that even if we regulated these drugs, people could still take too many and die of overdose. Well yeah, but the same is true for Tylenol. People generally buy drugs to have a good time, not to kill themselves. Those that DO overdose are either extremely stupid, or had an allergic reaction that proved fatal, or else were TRYING to OD.
Summary: Marijuana, shrooms and MDMA should be made legal, but federally regulated (that does NOT mean "watered-down") so that people aren't killing themselves on bad trips. Cocaine, heroin and opiates should still be illegal, but reformation on drug laws is absolutely necessary. Fuck prison time, get these people in clinics and halfway houses to cure their addictions and give them the skills they need to get out of that environment. Prison does nothing. LSD should be made illegal, and in that case, prison time might be ok. Still, though, job skills are a necessary part of breaking the cycle of drug use, so prison must be followed by some life-skills assistance program.
[/two cents]
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