legalize all drugs - free money and freedom

Because I don't want more people becoming harder drug users, which is why I strongly believe in keeping cannabis illegal-because it may make people more curious in experimenting with some other sorts of drugs.

 

This is actually citing a historical fact. Meth did become the "poor man's cocaine" in the 1970's because it was far cheaper.

QUOTE=BleedingHeadKen;1062758347]It also makes those drugs extremely inexpensive and unprofitable. Methamphetamines produced by pharmaceutical companies are cleaner and do not lead to the same side effects as street meth, and cocaine and heroin are so cheap to produce that no one who self-medicates with it would have to commit crimes to pay for it.[/QUOTE]

This is also true. While I don't know the exact cost of cocaine on the black market I do know that it's somewhere between 120-240 times more expensive than legally produced pharmaceutical cocaine.

BTW I wonder how many know that methamphetamine is regularly given to combat troops in the US Army.

 

Ok. That's all I really needed from you. You believe that government violence should be used against peaceful people in order to prevent them from doing things you don't want and that everyone else should be forced to pay for the things that you want. It doesn't matter what other people want, only what you want. Is there any objective principle behind government that does what ASE wants?

 

I don't believe I'd be quite so harsh because the intentions are good. Unfortunately there is a saying about good intentions.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The negative consequences of the drug prohibitions laws are far worse than the consequences of legalization and I will point out some facts that support this.

Yes, the law enforcement does lead to government violence, including the killing of both those breaking the laws as well as the occasional innocent person by law enforcement. Law enforcement must use acts of aggression against the person in enforcing the drug prohibition laws but this really relates to the tip of the iceberg when it comes to act of aggression against persons because of the drug prohibition laws.

Unrelated to the use of drug the prohibition laws create large drug cartels and smaller street gangs that engage in "black market capitalism" because of the extremely high profits in the illegal drug trade. The drug cartels and smaller street gangs engage in extreme forms of violence directly and indirectly in "protecting" their market. Every drive-by gang shooting we read of is fundamentally a result of the drug prohibition laws as this inter-gang violence is fueled by the need to protect the "gang's turf" where they engage in the black market of drug sales.

And this violence isn't just in the United States as we're all aware of the extreme violence in Mexico and other countries related to the drug trade. Not only is the drug violence internationally extreme the money from the drug trade corrupts government in many places.

We can actually estimate that for every prossible death related to drug use that 100 people or more die because the drugs are illegal. If we're trying to "protect" people then it doesn't make sense that far more people die because of our laws than would die if the laws didn't exist. It's like trying to cure brain cancer by amputation of the person's head.

When we address the drug prohibition laws themselves they don't address a crime agianst either "persons" or "property" which is why the drug prohibition laws are commonly referred to as "victimless" crime laws. The Rights of Person or Property are not being violated by the sale or use of drugs.

Because of the drug prohibition laws the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world today. We like to think of ourselves as the "Land of the Free" while we have more people in prison per capita for "victimless" crimes alone than other nations have in prison for all crimes. How can we be the "Land of the Free" when we send people to prison that have harmed no one? The drug prohibition laws violate the very ideals upon which America was founded where the People should be free to do what they want so long as they don't violate the Rights of other People but our prison population reflects just the opposite where roughly 1 million people are in prison for violations of the drug laws where no other crime is involved.

The negative consequences of the drug prohibition laws far outweigh any benefit to society and that is something many fail to understand.

 

Marijuana can be a gateway drug for some people because of their curiosity and the very basics of human nature. If you watch one of the foundation for a drug free free world's videos, which is that one specific video about the crystal meth addicts, one of those guys states that smoking marijuana got him more curious about experimenting with some other drugs. He stated that since he had already started smoking marijuana, then he got more interested in experimenting with some other substances, which also included crystal meth.

Here's some analogies that may help me explain this better. Some people that are fans of the Beatles don't just stick to listening to their Beatles CDs, they may start to experiment more and listen to some other different classic rock musical groups. There's actually some cause and effect relationships between listening to the Beatles and listening to some other rock musical groups. Isn't these very same analogies also true with the usage of some drugs?

 

The last person we should believe is the hard drug user when it comes to why they started using hard drugs. This is asking an untrained person to self-analyze their own pschological behavior. Not even a trained psychologists should attempt this because of inherent self-prejudice.

Hey, I like rock-n-roll including the Beatles but it never inspired me to listen to classical music. There is no cause and effect relationship between listening to rock-n-roll (i.e. marijuana) and classical music (i.e. hard drugs).

And this still ignores a couple of fundamental facts. First and foremost we'll never have a "drug free society" and secondly that the costs to society from the drug prohibitions laws are many, many times worse than the effects of the use of drugs. Far more people die, for example, because of the drug prohibition laws than die from the use of drugs.

 

I have heard this statement several times before by people that are supports of the legalisation of drugs, and here's my response to these very interesting, but yet also very flawed at the same time, arguments.

Some, in fact, most of those people that die as a result of the prohibition of drugs, is people that belong to some organized crime groups. We should not put some innocent American civilians in danger of being hurt from some drug users, just to save the lives of some of those drug cartel's soldiers. Your statement is the equivalent of stating that the Allies should have surrendered to Adolf Hitler and also that they should have allowed him to take over some more countries, just to save the lives of some of Hitler's soldiers.

 

Sure, but I could make the same argument for prescription drugs as well.

 

Well, since some marijuana smokers often will hang out with some people that will often have some other drugs with them, doesn't this show some causations between smoking marijuana and the usage of harder drugs, even if marijuana was legalised?

 

Well, if everything was legalized, it would be a moot point.

It's not the government's job to babysit everyone.

 

"being high" is actually just some term that describes a sort of very euphoric feeling that somebody gets from using some mind altering drugs.

When people are drunk on alcohol, they get violent and depressed and aggressive, they don't get that "happy high" feeling that somebody gets from smoking cannabis. Both smoking cannabis and the usage of harder drugs results in somebody getting a very euphoric "high" feeling, which alcohol actually doesn't give people, which is why it's not accurate to compare the gateway effects of legalised cannabis to alcohol.

The psychoactive effects that somebody gets from smoking cannabis is very similar to the psychoactive effects that somebody gets from the usage of harder drugs.

Is my above statements true or false?

 

I can tell you from personal experience that pot just made me happy and sleepy.

I suppose you could describe that as "psychoactive", but when you read about adverse effects of pot on people, that usually involves the product being laced with something or the person has schizophrenia.

As with any drug, some people shouldn't use pot because of their body's reaction to it. The same hazards are present with prescription drugs and alcohol.

 

How does cannabis making people "happy and sleepy" refute my statements? Alcohol gets people very violent and depressed and stupid. People don't get happy and high when they are drunk, they get angry, stupid, and violent. Alcohol doesn't get people "high", which is why it isn't a gateway drug. The legality of cannabis and alcohol is totally irrelevant as to which specific substances should be considered so called "gateway drugs". Cannabis is a gateway drug, for the sole reason that it gets people "high" (which is what some of those harder drugs do to somebody), while alcohol just gets people drunk.

 

I'm not so sure that his intentions are good. His intentions suit his moral worldview. Some people *want* to use drugs when and how they please. Why are they bad and Sam's Ego good?

The problem with this argument is that it essentially asserts that the end can justify the means if the means do not create unwanted consequences. I disagree. Legitimate government does not have the role of determining superior moral behavior if those behaviors deemed immoral do not constitute force or fraud against the person or property of others.

 

Organized crime recruits children from the streets to do low level pushing, sometimes to other children. The children on both sides of the equation often wind up in jail, their productive lives ruined and they come out hardened criminals.

Why should drug users be put in danger of having their lives destroyed by government? If we are going to use the Hitler analogy, then it's fair to say that you want people who violate the government statutory prohibitions on certain drugs to be treated like the Nazi's treated political and religious dissidents who did nothing more than violate German statutes.

 

Those are actually some very flawed statements. I do not want to legalise the harder drugs because since we already have some enormous social problems of drug addictions (mainly with drugs such as alcohol or prescription drugs), I don't want to make the problem worse by normalizing the harder drugs and creating more addicts. I see absolutely no connnections between those ideals of reducing the rates of the drug addictions, and the Nazis that wanted to control religious and political dissidents. I wish that people with some drug addictions get helped, which is an absolutely different story than the Nazis, which were people that wanted to control, but not to help, others.

 

The Nazi's believed that political dissidencev and certain religious views contributed to social problems. Both you and they believed that violence was the solution to eliminating those whom were undesirable in society.

 

Well, what the hell are you even talking about?

I have never stated that I believe in using violence against drug addicts.

 

Putting them in cages is not a violent response?

 

[h=1]Drug Prohibitions Hurt Science, Researchers Charge[/h]
by Phillip Smith, June 12, 2013, 03:07am

n a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, a group of leading scientists argue that global drug prohibition has not only compounded the harms of drug use, but also produced the worst censorship of research in centuries. They likened the banning of psychoactive drugs and the subsequent hampering of research on them to the Catholic Church banning the works of Copernicus and Galileo.

The paper, Effects of Schedule I Drug Laws on Neuroscience Research and Treatment Innovation (abstract only), was written by Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London and Leslie King, both former government advisors, and Professor David Nichols of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The possession of marijuana, MDMA (ecstasy) and psychedelics are stringently regulated under national laws and international conventions dating back to the 1960s, but those laws are not based on science, and the global prohibition regime is rigid and resistant to change, they argued.
"The decision to outlaw these drugs was based on their perceived dangers, but in many cases the harms have been overstated and are actually less than many legal drugs such as alcohol," said Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. "The laws have never been updated despite scientific advances and growing evidence that many of these drugs are relatively safe. And there appears to be no way for the international community to make such changes."
In the paper, Nutt and his colleagues argue that the scheduling of psychoactive drugs impedes research into their methods of action and therapeutic potentials and sometimes makes it impossible.
"This hindering of research and therapy is motivated by politics, not science," said Nutt. "It's one of the most scandalous examples of scientific censorship in modern times. The ban on embryonic stem cell research by the Bush administration is the only possible contender, but that only affected the USA, not the whole world."

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/jun/12/drug_prohibitions_hurt_science_r

 

Please, just stop using this Godwin's law tactic against somebodyin which you simply disagree with.

Jailing people that take drugs is not violent at all in the same sense as what the Nazis and Hitler did, since drug addicts are not being killed when they are put into prisons. Please just stop with using these absolutely flawed analogies.

 

Well, we at least agree that whether or not pot is a gateway drug has no relevance to its legality.

 

Well actually, you're just misinterpreting my statements. My main concerns in the legalisation of marijuana is whether or not pot is a gateway drug. Here's what I don't understand. Does drinking alcohol "get people high", like smoking cannabis does? Because, my first theory was that the only reason that marijuana is a gateway drug is because of it's illegality, not because of it's psychoactive effects, which may not be any different than what alcohol is like. How does alcohol alter somebody's mental state just as much as cannabis does? You made some statements about that earlier before, and I want you to elaborate on what exactly do you mean by those statements. This could help me in figuring out something about marijuana's legal status and also how that relates to it's status as a gateway drug.

If cannabis's psychoactive effect's are no different than alcohol is, then it's legal status in Colorado and Washington State would stop cannabis from being a gateway drug. However, does alcohol get people "high", just like smoking cannabis does? Are drunk people "high"?

 

I'm not really sure why you're fixating on the high part.

Most people I knew who smoked pot didn't do much else. A few of them dabbled in acid and ecstasy, but heroin and coke were in a class of their own.

Generally speaking, heroin users and coke users are a different social group.

 

Well, then why do some statistics show that some people that became heroin addicts or cocaine addicts have started out smoked cannabis?

Well, that's a very good question about why I keep discussing this "high" part of this. That's mainly because cannabis may be a gateway drug for some people because once they get high from smoking cannabis, some of those cannabis smokers may become more psychologically inclined or curious about "getting high" with some other substances. Now, let's just suppose that cannabis was totally legalised everywhere, and it's legal status was alongside alcohol's.

Since people that drink alcohol usually don't get curious about doing LSD or ecstasy, is that because of alcohol's legal status, or is that because alcohol's psychoactive effects don't get people "high", which explains why alcohol isn't a gateway drug like cannabis is? I'm trying to figure something out by asking those "high questions", which may help me explain some of my arguments somewhat better.