13248908:Miomo said:
To start off, I never took solid ground when I said they were necessary. That having been said, you can't say that there's absolutely no reason for drug laws.
The difference between helmets/seatbelts and drugs is the level of action taken. Someone who doesn't wear a helmet/seatbelt is doing so in "dis-action", but people who do drugs make a conscious decision to. Children are more influenced by action then dis-action. I don't have any sources, but I believe that's a fair assumption to make. If this child grows up seeing people shooting up heroin or smoking crack, then they'd probably be more likely to, themselves -- especially if it's one of their peers. Of course, age limit it, but if it's easier (and legal) for adults to get, then it's also easier for teenagers. I'm not saying this is going to be happening all over America, but in the less-than-fortunate communities? Definitely. Moreso than today.
And the thing is that I can't even take the whole Darwinism thing to this, because this is entirely dependent on nurture rather than nature. Children can't control what they hold on to in their early lives. Early experiences, and probably even those in the teen years, become ingrained in, and part of the person. It's not something that goes away. It's almost as much a part of a person as their genetics. The person is damaged before they even get a chance to do anything. It's no longer as much of a choice.
I was just trying to pull as many other arguments into an otherwise straight forward thread.
The drug war doesn't even work regardless of your moral feelings about drugs. I personally don't believe somebody should be able to tell you that you can't use drugs but even if I didn't it's a pretty big failure.
You can get anything anywhere. Drugs are all over and they're as illegal as they've ever been(other than weed). We spend over 40 billion a year and what has it gotten us. Even if we start seizing even more at the boarders, quadruple our budget we're not going to put a dent in it.
The more money we throw at it, the higher the price of the drugs rises, to meet the unchanging demand. If the price of said drugs goes up, there is a $ incentive to counter the added risk.
If you want to clean things up legalize it. A lot of the sketchiness surrounding drugs is from them being illegal.
As far as seeing people use drugs everywhere, make it illegal to use them in public. Most places it's not even legal to drink in public yet alcohol is very much legal and widely used.
All the people dying in this new wave of fake drugs. IF drugs were legal people wouldn't be buying, selling, or ingesting research chemicals thinking they were other things. Instead now an otherwise responsible person can go out with friends, end up ingesting some fucked up drugs and have a really really bad time, maybe even die. Not that their aren't risks involved with drugs anyway, but making them pure and labeled with the dosage would save lives.
If you kept drugs at the prices they are now or even half of that and mass produced them you could kill it in taxes. Would be epic to use that money for something good like treatment programs vs just funneling it back into the gov to waste like usual. Also the 40+ billion you're saving at the start.
If drugs were legalized tomorrow I think there would probably be a rise in usage at the beginning just because it's finally legal. After that I think it would slide back down to a normal level. The same as you would go out and drink if prohibition ended, smoke when weed is legalized.
If heroin was made legal tomorrow, would you go out and use it? Most people wouldn't. So is it really the law keeping you from doing it or your own judgement?
Throwing people in prison for years simply for wanting to do something on their own time with their own body is just insane. IT only seems rational because we're so used to it.
Also the drug money that fuels gangs around the world. They're making bank and willing to fuck anyone up who messes with that. From the cartels to the street gangs in the states. Drug money buys weapons and is an incentive to fight, to kill to protect their business. If you legalize drugs you take away that incentive. There will still be violence, there will still be guns, there will still be gangs but it will put a legitimate dent in things.
Are there problems with drug usage? Yes. Will there be problems even if they're legalized? Of course. Will it destroy the moral fabric of our society and destroy the earth? Probably not.
Doesn't matter because it won't ever happen. We're still at least a long way out from legalizing even weed. The fact that that's even a battle gives me 0 faith in our system. There really aren't any good arguments for the drug war in general and if you go with just marijuana prohibition and nothing else? There's nothing to even get that argument started. Just an example of moral policing and "well that's the way it's always been" logic.
If something as simple as that is such a long process, it's pretty hopeless for progress in general. We should be able to look at something, if it doesn't fit axe that shit. But that's just not how things are done and one of the reasons we can never really seem to move forward.
Sparknotes: Same as it ever was'd
