Garfunkel arrested!

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-22 02:34pm

Okay, I generalized too much. Exclude medications.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-01-22 02:35pm

I'll handle this one.

Okay, I implied it, but I'll say it. Drugs = bad. Drugs = illegal. Getting away with breaking the law = bad. Getting arrested for running/possessing drugs = good (for society in general AS WELL AS the arrested person, though they usually don't realize it). Art Garfunkel getting arrested if he actually broke the law = good. Clear enough?

Drugs = illegal, but drugs =! bad. Drugs are no worse for society than alcohol and tobacco. The only reason drugs are a burden on society is precisely because they are illegal. The money and time they soak up, the crime they produce, the deaths and trauma caused by them, all occur because they are illegal.

Do you remember those little videos they show in health class about the horrors of drug use? Violent crime, death due to laced marijuana, jail time, meth labs exploding, E being made in bathtubs, etc? Those are all by-products of the War On Drugs, which, incidentally, is a massive runaway train hauling billions of dollars and millions of lives right down into the nearest canyon.

Were drugs legal, violent drug-related crime would evaporate. The black market would evaporate. The courts would be unclogged, police officers could devote their time to more worthy things, and graft and corruption would be greatly reduced.

There is no reasonable justification for banning drug use beyond such highly sophisticated arguments like "The government needs to protect people from drugs, but it doesn't need to protect them from tobacco or alcohol," or the ever-popular "Drugs are bad."

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-01-22 02:36pm

Would you be willing to legalise Class A drugs then?

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-22 02:37pm

Perhaps I'm not clear. I believe that alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal. My best friend died when I was 13 from a joint that the dealer laced with crack (without his knowledge) in an effort to get him hooked. He ODed and died. Drugs = bad, mmkay?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-01-22 02:42pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Perhaps I'm not clear. I believe that alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal. My best friend died when I was 13 from a joint that the dealer laced with crack (without his knowledge) in an effort to get him hooked. He ODed and died. Drugs = bad, mmkay?

And that's perfectly okay as it's your view on the topic. I myself don't want to do cannabis or drink or even touch smoking, but I do respect others do. It can be abused, you get pot heads, alcoholics and human chimney stacks, but I'll just avoid those people.

If I have kids they'll make their own mind up knowing my opinion.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-22 02:53pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Perhaps I'm not clear. I believe that alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal. My best friend died when I was 13 from a joint that the dealer laced with crack (without his knowledge) in an effort to get him hooked. He ODed and died. Drugs = bad, mmkay?

You've just made an argument to end prohibition, even if you don't realize it. That kind of thing would not happen were marijuana legal, because distribution would be in the hands of legal suppliers subject to government regulation, who wouldn't lace weed with crack (at least not without marking it on the label) and wouldn't sell to minors unless they felt like losing their liscense. The irony of prohibition is that it actually makes it more difficult for the government to track and regulate use and quality. I'm sorry about your friend, and that dealer is a piece of shit, but your friend would be alive and the dealer would be running three-card monte scams were it not for drug prohibition.

As for alcohol and tobacco prohibition, we've already seen how well alcohol prohibition works and there's no indication tobacco prohibition would work any better than banning drugs or alcohol has. And anyway, what's your justification for doing so? This is a free society, and in free societies, individuals are allowed to make choices about their own lives, even if they're bad ones.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-01-22 03:05pm

RedImperator wrote:
As for alcohol and tobacco prohibition, we've already seen how well alcohol prohibition works and there's no indication tobacco prohibition would work any better than banning drugs or alcohol has. And anyway, what's your justification for doing so? This is a free society, and in free societies, individuals are allowed to make choices about their own lives, even if they're bad ones.

As much as I echo that statement, there are still limits. The recent WHO report on obesity in the US is alarming and shows that the sum of all these people making bad choices can easily affect the masses at large.

It's a real grey area and I'm not opening that can of worms now.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-22 03:05pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Would you be willing to legalise Class A drugs then?

Depends on the drug. Meth and PCP are the two I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't legalize, because of the danger their users represent to others while they're high.

Cocaine and heroin are trickier. I'd certainly decriminalize possession of those drugs, because throwing addicts in prison is not only ineffective, it's immoral. At the turn of the century, we saw very high rates of cocaine and morphine addiction in the United States thanks to patent medicines (much higher than they are today, and much higher than they were after patent medicines were banned but before recreational consumption of cocaine and heroin were), without the accompanying breakdown in social order that we see associated with drug use today, so there's evidence that legalizing recreational consumption would not be the social catastrophe most people would expect. Still, it's hard for me to accept emotionally legalizing drugs that can kill an inexperienced user in one dose.

LSD, mushrooms, and peyote I'd legalize. Extacy I'd legalize (the biggest problem with extacy today is unscrupulous dealers selling a witch's brew of cocaine and heroin as E, rather than the real thing). I'd also allow pharmaceutical companies to sell antidepressants and mood stabilizers for recreational use.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-22 03:10pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
RedImperator wrote:
As for alcohol and tobacco prohibition, we've already seen how well alcohol prohibition works and there's no indication tobacco prohibition would work any better than banning drugs or alcohol has. And anyway, what's your justification for doing so? This is a free society, and in free societies, individuals are allowed to make choices about their own lives, even if they're bad ones.
As much as I echo that statement, there are still limits. The recent WHO report on obesity in the US is alarming and shows that the sum of all these people making bad choices can easily affect the masses at large.

It's a real grey area and I'm not opening that can of worms now.

Obesity is a problem that has deeper roots than people making bad choices. Since the second world war, the United States has been unintentionally building the perfect society in which people can get fat--gigantic food surpluses, the elimination of most jobs involving physical labor, television as the primary means of mass entertainment, and the automobile as both the primary means of transportation and the first consideration in urban planning. But, all this is an issue for another thread.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2004-01-22 05:05pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Perhaps I'm not clear. I believe that alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal.

Well, we tried the former already, and it didn't work out so well.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2004-01-22 05:54pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Perhaps I'm not clear. I believe that alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal. My best friend died when I was 13 from a joint that the dealer laced with crack (without his knowledge) in an effort to get him hooked. He ODed and died. Drugs = bad, mmkay?

Interesting, I've never once heard this happen where I've come from, and my town is chock full of drugs. I guess it was one rotten apple dealer.

Besides, Prohibition's been tried with the Volstead act. Speakeasies, bathtub distilleries, and organized crime along the lines of Al Capone resulted. When it was legalized, organized crime left, speakeasies became bars, and bathtub distilleries (Which were highly dangerous due to purity issues) went out of business. Purity issues only result from the uncontrolled nature of the drug trade, as stringent alcohol and tobacco regulations show.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-22 06:57pm

Or we could round up the drug dealers and shoot the murdering bastards. Unfortunately for any attempts to get me to support legalization, I'm feeling militant and very pissed off. Prohibition failed because while the laws were in place no one did anything to enforce them unless you waved a violation under the cops' noses.

I'm sorry, but this has all been dragged up in my mind again and I'm in no mood to be reasoned with. Flame on, but I'm not budging.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2004-01-22 07:08pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Or we could round up the drug dealers and shoot the murdering bastards.

Really. Do you really know how many dealers and pushers there are around you? I'm sure you don't, because you'd notice some very ordinary, maybe even upstanding citizens on that firing squad.

Unfortunately for any attempts to get me to support legalization, I'm feeling militant and very pissed off.

Fine, you can be pissed and militant. Doesn't mean you can't listen to logic.

Prohibition failed because while the laws were in place no one did anything to enforce them unless you waved a violation under the cops' noses.

Wrong. Prohibition failed because people wanted alcohol.

I'm sorry, but this has all been dragged up in my mind again and I'm in no mood to be reasoned with. Flame on, but I'm not budging.

No problem man, I'm sorry about what happened to your friend, it's shit dealers like that that give the FDA something to pounce on.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-01-23 12:59am

Rogue 9 wrote:Prohibition failed because while the laws were in place no one did anything to enforce them unless you waved a violation under the cops' noses.

Tell that to Al Capone.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-23 01:00am

Rogue 9 wrote:Or we could round up the drug dealers and shoot the murdering bastards. Unfortunately for any attempts to get me to support legalization, I'm feeling militant and very pissed off. Prohibition failed because while the laws were in place no one did anything to enforce them unless you waved a violation under the cops' noses.

I'm sorry, but this has all been dragged up in my mind again and I'm in no mood to be reasoned with. Flame on, but I'm not budging.

You could kill every drug dealer on Earth and tomorrow there'd be new ones to take their places. Prohibition will always fail unless you're willing to instiute draconian punishments for the users themselves, and if you do that, you have no moral ground to stand on anymore to claim you're trying to help the victims of drug abuse. If you want to stop drug dealers like the one who killed your friend, or the ones who have turned the inner city into war zones, you have to move the drug trade into the hands of legitimate business through legalization. To put it bluntly, your friend would still be alive were marijuana legal.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-23 01:04am

Damn Wizard's First Rule. Fine. Whatever. May they all OD and die so they won't plague the planet anymore.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-01-23 01:43am

That whistling sound past your ear would be what we tend to call the point.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-23 01:52am

I get your point. What you're not getting is that its the principle of the thing. They're literally getting away with murder. Legalizing it will legitimize all of that. All the effort, all the deaths, all in vain.

Yes, I know this isn't logical, yes I know emotion is clouding my logic, and I know that at this point I'm a bit beyond caring.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-01-23 01:54am

What the hell are you talking about? Legalizing it will stop the deaths, not "legitimize" it. That's the whole fucking point.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-01-23 02:05am

What am I talking about? Admit that they're right in what they do, especially when they're not? I will not consider it.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-23 02:46am

Rogue 9 wrote:What am I talking about? Admit that they're right in what they do, especially when they're not? I will not consider it.

Then what's the solution? Yeah, drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are dangerous and people shouldn't use them. But they're also pleasureable, and there's always going to be a demand for something pleasureable by that certain percentage of the population that doesn't give a shit if it's harmful. You can try to fight human nature or you can accept that people are stupid and try not do anything to make the situation worse.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2004-01-23 09:16am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:You can't argue with the law until you change it, if this guy broke a state law then he must do time. Maybe one day it will change and cannabis will be legal.

And maybe I'll shit solid gold bricks.

And thats the I'll become your gay lover if so.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2004-01-23 09:21am

I'd want something to be done about the horrible attitude towards drugs that seems to become so prevalent, that is, that they are accetpable, they are not acceptable, it's a filthy fucking disgusting habit.

People shouldn't need laws to stay the fuck away from coke, meth, heroin acid, etc, etc, etc, it should be as natural as not drinking nitroglycering and throwing yourself into a wall.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-23 12:13pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:I'd want something to be done about the horrible attitude towards drugs that seems to become so prevalent, that is, that they are accetpable, they are not acceptable, it's a filthy fucking disgusting habit.

Such as what? Top-down attempts to change cultural attitudes are almost always dismal failures, and if you press too hard, you risk causing the opposite effect.

Legalization might at least take some of the outlaw appeal away. I'd also be very curious to see what would happen to demand for some of the really nasty shit that was cooked up as a substitute for older drugs that were banned first (meth comes to mind). But the idea that drugs are acceptable is an idea that's become part of the culture and there's little to be done about it that isn't already being done besides wait for the pendulum to swing the other way. And in the case of some drugs, the idea that that particular drug is harmless and acceptable is accurate.

People shouldn't need laws to stay the fuck away from coke, meth, heroin acid, etc, etc, etc, it should be as natural as not drinking nitroglycering and throwing yourself into a wall.

The difference is that drinking nitroglycerine and then slamming into a wall isn't fun. People take drugs because they're a cheap and easy way to light up the brain's pleasure centers, and basic human nature says that any substance that can do that will have its share of users who don't care about the consequences.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-01-23 12:17pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Cannabis is being downgraded to a Class C drug in the UK now, but a big push campaign to say it is still illegal has been launched as well.

You can't argue with the law until you change it, if this guy broke a state law then he must do time. Maybe one day it will change and cannabis will be legal.

And maybe I'll shit solid gold bricks.

You'd better start squatting now. It may be legal in Alaska by next year if a ballot referendum up there passes. There was another one in Nevada in 2002 that failed, and I suspect there will be more in '06. While I don't want to get my hopes up too far, it appears that there is some momentum building, and the fact that it's doing so in the midst of a hard anti-marijuana push by the Federal government is encouraging.