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88-Year-Old Inventor Hassled By the DEA
New submitter Calibax writes "30 years ago, Bob Wallace and his partner came up with a product to help hikers, flood victims and others purify water. Wallace, now 88 years old, packs his product by hand in his garage, stores it in his backyard shed and sells it for $6.50. Recently, the DEA has been hassling him because his product uses crystalline iodine. He has been refused a license to purchase the iodine because it can be used in the production of crystal meth, and as a result he is now out of business. A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."
It can also be used to create an explosive compound that shall remain nameless.
...it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it!
Methamphetamine actually is useful to hikers and flood victims!
An unconstitutional federal agency puts an honest businessman out of work. If you've had enough of this shit, as well as the rest of the collateral damage from the War On Drugs like the routine violation of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, by a militarized police force, vote for Ron Paul.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I thought it is the land of the Dream and DEA destroyed 88-years-old's dream? LoL.
so much for blaming people for killing people, this is blaming the gun maker for the people killed by it.
Notice how this hasn't gone to court? The DEA would be shut down so fast from harassing Mr. Wallace in court that they wouldn't even dare it. Instead, they shut him down by threats alone, aka PIPA/SOPA.
No, the problem is the prohibition mindset.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I want to say something about this, something clever, something snarky...but I'm at a loss. I mean, this is a facepalm of such epicness it is nearly unfathomable.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Also, make sure there's no Los Pollos Hermanos close by.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Can we just end prohibition already? Drug enforcement is ruining more lives than drugs.
He should just contact the criminals who cook meth, I mean they get their supply of it from some where. In a land where crystalline iodine is illegal only criminals will have crystalline iodine. Or something like that.
... then nothing gets done.
The DEA could easily tell whomever gives the licenses to approve this guy, but they choose not to. Instead, they want to blame it on criminals, instead of where the blame really lies, which is the bullshit anti-drug laws that we have too many of.
We could legalize meth, have the government or some pharmacy make it safely, and then every loser that wants to do it won't be supporting the people who make it.
The problem here is not meth addicts, it's the bullshit they go thru to make the meth, which hurts consumers more. You won't have druggies stealing the crap the makes meth, you won't have places become toxic because people are making meth in their bathtub/kitchen.
America, the land of the hypocrites and home of the illusion of freedom.
Be seeing you...
I think it's time people realize that humans like to alter their experience of reality in various ways, and that it is not possible to eliminate this human urge: some people like roller coasters; some people like meditation; some people like alcohol; some people like caffeine and some people like crack or heroin. A lot of people like to make arbitrary distinctions between these: some are "good" (like amusement parks and meditation), some are "acceptable" (like caffeine and alcohol) and some are "evil" (like marijuana or heroin). But these distinctions are exactly that: arbitrary. And more importantly: if someone wants to spend their day in their living room doing crack, why should that be anyone else's concern whatsoever? There are orders of magnitude more harm done by making substances illegal and then calling them "evil" and declaring a demonstrably failed, $1 trillion "war" on them.
So here in the middle of the recession, one old guy with an established business gets trounced on by the DEA because they have their heads up their butts! Where has common sense gone to? If I was in power in the DEA, I would fire or demote those who made such an idiotic decision. Rules and laws are made to protect the public, not to punish them. When are they going to get it through their heads!
just what is needed when the show is on the rebound don't take away them saying fire again.
Lol what? More like cue the incredibly flimsy excuse to take a swipe at stimulus and Keynesians.
There will be no such comments, clearly you've been itching for an opportunity and just got impatient.
I hate to read TFA and I hate to defend the DEA (did we learn nothing from Prohibition?) but once again this is a sloppy and wholly misleading article summary (thanks Slashdot!) To wit:
As much as I like this guy and his sense of humor, it seems much less sinister than the Slashdot linkbait summary indicates. It appears to be a pretty simple case of "government restricts chemical that can be used in meth labs, old guy making product in his garage with said product doesn't want to deal with the government bureaucracy and is surprised when the government shuts off his access to that chemical."
"95% of all Slashdot
"In May, his Oklahoma distributor -- warned by the DEA -- said he could no longer send Wallace iodine.
For Wallace to comply, the state Department of Justice fingerprinted the couple and told Wallace he needed to show them such things as a solid security system for his product. Wallace sent a photograph of Buddy sitting on the front porch."
More people need to do exactly this in the face of bureaucratic oppression and bullshit. Everyone needs more pictures of dogs.
You can thank prohibition for crack and crystal meth.
Prohibition is the reason why more addictive and cheaper substances were invented in the first place!
I used this on a three month long backpacking trip where we hauled in our (insufficient) food, but used whatever (sometimes nasty) water sources we could find.
Polar pure at low concentrations overnight (to kill viruses) in the dirty water container, then pumped through a ceramic filter (get rid of giardia cists), into the clean water container (and a few CCs to replenish the fluid in the Polar Pure bottle). The one bottle handled all the water needs for multiple people for 3 months, and we couldn't really tell if the crystals had diminished at the end of the trip.
This is getting ridiculous. We need to get that insurrection started so the cops have something better to do.
Iodine isn't available without a license from the DEA.
Not here, or here, or even here.
In fact, I can only find 32 results in the first web site I thought to look in.
Looks like the system works!
Once you realize this you will be much happier.
Seriously though, it is stuff like this that makes people not want government having a hand in our everyday lives. There is no sense in this action, just some bureaucrat going by the book.
Sorry hikers and flood victims, we know you'd like clean water but while you're drinking that tepid water and consequently when you're lying ill you can reflect on the fact that your sacrifice means that drug dealers have had to find another source for iodine to create methamphetamine. We know it's a large sacrifice for an almost immeasurably small payoff, but this was low-hanging fruit and we're pretty lazy. DEA.
The purified water doesn't taste very good, but when it's the difference between hydrating and not hydrating, aka life and death, it's worth it.
Not to mention nobody wants to spend the incredible amount of money it would take to fix broken people, instead they'd rather let their friends make money on both ends thanks to privatization of everything from the military to the prisons.
I once saw a show with this monk, damned if I can think of the name of it, that spent all his time with junkies. he said if you talked to them, I mean REALLY sat down and talked to them, nearly all of them had ONE THING, one single thing that they just couldn't face. After all nobody wakes up and says "I want lots of sores and my teeth falling out" now do they? He gave as an example one junkie where after talking to her it turned out her parents had thrown her to the street after her sister was killed in her car, so he paid to fly her halfway around the world and went with her to her parents graves so she could get it off her chest. less than a year later she was clean and working.
Recreational "party" drugs like pot should frankly be legal but when you have people that will literally go commit a crime just to get thrown in prison because they can't get their drug of choice on the outside? There is something in that person's life they simply cannot face. Sadly one of the guys i hung out with in HS is now living under a bridge somewhere, it turned out his mom was getting him fried at the age of 8 and fucking johns in front of him. can anybody blame the guy for staying stoned?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Keynes is widely misunderstood. He once said that it would be better to build totally useless pyramids than to have high unemployment, but he wasn't actually suggesting that we should do that. It's obvious when you think about it, because there are a million and one productive things that could be done with the same labor. The actual idea is that it's better to pay someone to work in a soup kitchen than it is to watch crime skyrocket if you leave them to starve and they resort to theft.
If (as would seem obvious from this case) the DEA is not engaged in anything productive, you don't have to make them unemployed. You just have to eliminate their current positions and instead set them to work patrolling the streets in gang neighborhoods at night to suppress actual crime.
What does his age have to do with this? 88?
Hmm... He must be born around 1923, which would have made him a beatnik, definitely, and quite possibly a serious druggie around the time of Woodstock.
Wait! DEA, I hope them beat that darn old hippie up, whimps.
Who would risk having an old daddy around selling meth and crack to the kids?
Damn druggie.
When I was in New Zealand on LOTR back in 1999 I couldn't buy quantities of plain ole alcohol over a few ounces because they were using it to make meth. You had to be able to prove you were a business to buy quantities so I had to go through the office and not just use petty cash to buy simple alcohol. In this country they hassle you if you try to buy multiple packets of decongestants. The joke is I can buy lab grade ammonia that can be used in explosives without any hassle. I'm betting you can buy everything needed for plastic explosives from a single source without a hassle but try to buy any single component that can be used in drugs and you get hassled.
Because addicts of certain substances don't just sit in their living room, they run out of money, and in order to avoid complete withdrawl, break into your grandma and granpappies house and bust thier skulls for the monthly check. You can deny it happens, but it does happen. I personally know a meth head who did this. Point being, some substances, when abused, have far reaching consequences that affect people other than the users.
Your logic is twisted.
These more addictive (and cheaper) substances were invented because there're people wanting them. They would be invented the same way if the drugs were legalized and (substantially) taxed for the inevitable health caring funding.
The core problem here is simple: people wants to get high, and they don't care about the consequences. All the rest is secondary to that.
There's no laws forbidding you from jump seat on a cactus, there is?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
If you wanted to buy some drugs, and had a choice of going to the murdering city thug, or to the nice guy down the street, who do you choose? Because of prohibition, the nice dealer down the street is less likely to exist (because he's not tough enough to successfully evade police attacks) so you're left with the murdering thug. Also, because of prohibition, the thug charges a lot more, because fewer alternatives exist, so you need to find a way to cough up a lot more money for your habit. How do you do that?
Prohibition breeds violence.
The division of what is "good", "acceptable" and "evil" is not arbitrary.
There're people studying their use, abuse and consequences in order to decide what's need to be controlled, and what's need to be prohibited
Mistakes can be made about that decisions (and a lot of BUT MISTAKES are being made by people that profits with that bad decisions), but please don't reduce all that to "arbitrary".
Heroin is a devastating drug, marijuana is not that bad - but I know people that have their lives ruined by it. Just like alcohol do to some, by the way. And this is not arbitrary - is just observation.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Here's the DEA's list. Those marked as "List 1" are the most restricted. It's not that long a list. Iodine is the only chemical on List 1 that isn't particularly hazardous.
on my last post, where is written "BUT MISTAKES", please read "BAD MISTAKES" - or, optionally, "BUTT MISTAKES" is you are on the mood. =]
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
and you miss the point, if the other drugs that have been used for centuries were legal, 1, it would be cheep enough you wouldnt need to make cheeper options. and 2 people wouldnt be robbing people to go get these drugs because they could grow their own for pot smokers, or be able to obtain their drug of choice for a more reasonable price
Prohibition created the mafia, the DEA created the cartel violence all around the world
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
He makes like $100,000/year. But he is complaining about having to pay a $1,200 application fee and having to fill out a form and print out his customer list and send it to them. Now, he has hired a lawyer. Rather than waste money on a lawyer, he should have just payed the fee and invested in some cheap security theater. If that part was too much work, he should have rented a storage unit at some facility that has security. But, instead he chooses to be a jerk about it. If they deny his application now, he has no one to blame but himself.
And that is why Portugal's approach to drugs, treating it as a medical and mental health issue, is working and ours isn't.
After all the money spent on the War on Drugs, the US still has the addiction rates that we had at the turn of the 19th century. If we only had as many freedoms.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
But then you'd have jails full of ACTUAL criminals...and those blokes are downright VIOLENT. Dealing with all that violence would cut into the company profits.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
No, my logic is not twisted. If you call my logic twisted then you also call Milton Friedman's logic twisted? He also didn't support prohibition.
In the end of the 19th century heroin was sold in drugstores without prescription, but with a warning label that it causes addiction.
And you know what? There wasn't any heroin-craze. There weren't hordes of junkies on the street waiting for their next fix.
Yes, people want to get high, I don't deny that. But you are forgetting that there are also people who want to make money off of other people - the criminals. And for criminals the cheaper and more addictive the "product" the better.
People want to get high, but they can't get high from legal products, so they turn to criminals. You can't make people not want to get high, but you can take away the money-making incentive from criminals by making drugs legally available.
I apologize in advance for actually reading TFA, but I don't see anywhere in the article any claims from the DEA that the chemical has ever been used to actually make meth.
Choice quotes:
about four years ago, the DEA began to look closely at the product, even citing it in a position paper, and suggested that it was being used by cranksters as well as campers.
Suggestions do not equal proof.
Special Agent Richard Camps, a San Jose-based state narcotics task force commander, said he received reports of suspicious buyers. "Weird-looking people, 'Beavis and Butt-Head'-types, were coming into camping stores and buying everything they had on the shelves," Camps said.
Really? A "state narcotics commander" (which I assume is someone important, probably in charge of other officers) just called a class of people "beavis and butt-head types," and he gets to keep his job? Whoever is doing PR for the state is probably cringing right now.
"Then they would take off into the mountains and try to cook meth with it." The DEA reported agents found Polar Pure at a meth lab they dismantled in Tennessee two years ago.
Okay, so they tried to do it, but then what happened? Did they succeed?
If it's just as hard to cookup meth with this stuff as it is to cook up meth with other stuff that's legal, or if you just can't figure out how to cook up meth with this stuff at all, then let this old guy have his iodine.
coding is life
Read Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent in Gonzales v. Raich, in which the Chief Justice concurred. Or even read Thomas' dissent in that case. (He's never very nuanced, but he's always clear on his points.)
Yes, they were dissents, but they were just barely so, and there is a strong body of history and law to support them. And the majority opinions don't directly clash with her reasoning, so it is more that mere dicta.
Remember that a constitutional amendment was required to ban the substance -- this was before the outrageous overreaching by the federal government government using the commerce clause, as we know it today. A constitutional amendment was therefore also required to repeal the power to ban it. O'Connor very powerfully argues that Section 1 of the 21st amendment completely strips the power to regulate alcohol ("intoxicating liquors") from the federal government and, in case there were any doubt, Section 2 returns that power explicitly to the states.
I'm sorry (well, not!) but I think that YOU missed the point.
Making drugs so cheap that you don't need cheaper drugs won't raise funds to the increased medical care that the mass (ab)use of that same drugs will create.
I hope you don't think that all that anti-tabaco campaign is just a right-winged FUD.
There's no way all that drugs would be legalized and keeped cheap. Cigarettes and Alcohol are facing increased tax to fund the medical care need by their abuse, don't think that mahijuana and others would be dealt differently.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Sorry, but... BULLSHIT.
Cigarettes and alcohol are not prohibited, and yet people seeks thugs to buy them cheaper.
This would not happens if you were right.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Let's outlaw Sudafed next. Oh, and don't forget that cologne contains alcohol. Let's ban sale of cologne to minors. Land of the free... pfff
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Because addicts of certain substances don't just sit in their living room, they run out of money, and in order to avoid complete withdrawl, break into your grandma and granpappies house and bust thier skulls for the monthly check. You can deny it happens, but it does happen. I personally know a meth head who did this. Point being, some substances, when abused, have far reaching consequences that affect people other than the users.
Because making these drugs illegal 1) increases the price a hundredfold and 2) forces any users to deal with very nasty criminals.
Deal with "drug" abuse the same way you deal with alcohol abuse, and you'd still have addicts, but a lot less associated crime and violence.
If people want to fuck themselves up, there is very little the police can do to stop them.
And how is a dog not good security if all that can happen is theft? Grossly overcharging for permits is awfully close to extortion, done by a government. Not giving exact specifications on what "security" should be, makes "lack of security" an invalid reason to deny a permit. If you want to set rules, you should make them well known and publicly available.
I'm all for regulating this, but you'll have to do it the proper way. In my opinion, the "free country, free will" thing in the USA constitution has been misused a lot, but in this case, it totally fits the bill. Make up some proper rules, publish them properly, and don't extort extreme large amounts of money out of people trying to obey them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
water... when it's the difference between hydrating and not hydrating
Well then I have some good news for you! Haven't you heard, thanks to the vigilant heroes working in the nanny-state, you no longer need to waste your time purifying water to stay hydrated. It doesn't actually hydrate after all! Just think of the savings to the world economy. We truly are living in glorious times thanks to the genius of our technocratic leaders. It's a good thing I'm just a Beta and I don't have to do all the thinking required to be one of those hard workers, that would be doubleplusungood!
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
You shouldn't make direct comparisons between present society and earlier ones.
We have a such more complex, more populated and (faithfully) more educated nowadays. We do not use Laudanum for headaches anymore.
And I strongly suggest you study History better before making such statements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Why stop here?
About 250.000 people gets hurts (something about 40.000 of them die in situ, another 80.000 die some months later) by alcoholized drivers in Brazil.
And alcohol is not even prohibited.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Keynes is widely misunderstood. He once said that it would be better to build totally useless pyramids than to have high unemployment, but he wasn't actually suggesting that we should do that.
Yeah, he said we should bury money in bottles so that the "private sector" should dig them out.
I'd rather have Pyramids than that.
he's earned every right to mouth off to anyone he wants.
Because making these drugs illegal 1) increases the price a hundredfold and 2) forces any users to deal with very nasty criminals.
Yes, this is probably the most harmful aspect of current drug control policy.
Deal with "drug" abuse the same way you deal with alcohol abuse, and you'd still have addicts, but a lot less associated crime and violence.
I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning, as, making murder legal would also reduce the crime rate, and over time, the quantity of violence, as there would be a much smaller population as a result.
If people want to fuck themselves up, there is very little the police can do to stop them.
I don't think anyone could argue with this. The police ( and the legal system ) punish those who commit crimes, they don't prevent individual instances of crimes. It is the threat of punishment that affects many, but not all, peoples behaviors.
Because addicts of certain substances don't just sit in their living room, they run out of money, and in order to avoid complete withdrawl, break into your grandma and granpappies house and bust thier skulls for the monthly check. You can deny it happens, but it does happen. I personally know a meth head who did this.
How often does this happen with legal drugs? Even highly addictive ones such as nicotine?
.. as, say, gasoline refineries, I bet they would not be "blowing up at alarming rate" -- and no, I do not use their end product, and do not even intend to use it!
Paul B.
We could legalize meth, have the government or some pharmacy make it safely, and then every loser that wants to do it won't be supporting the people who make it.
Just because the DEA overreaches and just because there are solid libertarian arguments for legalizing some drugs doesn't mean there are no substances for which prohibition makes good social, economic, and ethical sense....
Your idea sounds nice, but unless your plan includes banning the users of your legal dispensary from medical and dental care the fiscal costs alone are way too high. Amphetamine abuse causes serious neurological problems, well in excess of those potentially caused by alcohol, cocaine, or heroin; the burden of caring for addicts could be staggering. Severe depression, anxiety, concentration problems, motor impairment, etc. Not to mention the social and moral costs of, you know, just watching people cook themselves into death or permanent oblivion with product that you asked your government to manufacture and give to them.
If you firmly believe that people should have a right to get high, fine. But don't go spouting off about which particular substances should be available - without the pharmacology, economics, and ethics to back it up - simply to satisfy your libertarian impulse. That's not advocacy, it's sociopathy.
- $1200 is a lot to pay for a license and a license generally needs to be renewed once a year.
- He would need to produce an additional 200-300 units a year to justify the cost of the license and this is a lot of units to produce.
- He's 88 years old. He most probably produces the product for his love of the technology than for profit by this time.
Let's be pretty blunt about this... I'd imagine that it all started with the $1200. While the DEA is obviously trying to do their job, their job policing the drug trade in the U.S. should not be impact legitimate uses of these chemicals by stopping the small and up and coming businesses from being able to function. It would be like saying that since a bomb maker would likely need a resistor or relay to make a detonator, then anyone who wishes to build anything with a resistor or relay should have to pay DHS a $1200 fee before they could purchase them. This would eliminate a tremendous number of small businesses from starting up and would seriously hurt America as a result. We as computer geeks often forget that things like crystalline iodine is a component to a guy like this in the same way that a resistor is to a electronics nerd.
The DEA is a publicly funded entity. They already receive their budgets from the government and we as a people pay their operating expenses as a whole because we recognize that they "fight an evil" which most of us believe needs to be fought. I am disappointed to see that they are penalizing this guy. Yes, you have many great and valid points about how he dealt poorly with this situation...but... he's justifiably pissed off that the DEA is penalizing him for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I makes absolutely no difference which organization it is that is trying to take his money... honest inventors and businessmen shouldn't have to pay stipends such as this because there's a few bad apples screwing it up for him.
No he obviously is not a diplomat. He almost certainly isn't someone you'd want negotiating contracts for your company. But he is a guy who produces and probably regularly improves upon a technical innovation and provides it to a group of people who wish to buy it and see a utility with it. The DEA is obviously aware of him now. They had the budget to track him down and communicate with him. Asking $1200 for a license to a chemical he obviously knows how to handle was just plain stupid. As to the bulk purchasers thing... this is obviously what was most important or should have been to the DEA. Instead of putting the guy out of business, they instead should have been more diplomatic and asked him "If someone orders more of these things than they could actually use, could you give them a call and say 'Hi... wow you're my best customer this month... it's a big order and I don't want to make you wait unjustifiably long, what are you using all these filters for? Can I send you the first 1/4 of the order today as I have that many on my shelf and I'll send the remaining 3/4 when I finish producing them?' and call us if they sound like they aren't buying them for the filtering itself.". I bet you anything, the old fella would have been much more amenable, and then the DEA would have accomplished something meaningful instead of shutting down a small, legitimate business.
Ever heard of amendments, you know, the legit way to make changes? that's how you keep up with the times, not by wiping your ass with the constitution.
if the commerce clause and general welfare are enough to authorize anything, why bother with constitution in the first place?
Making everything cheap is the solution for all the problems?
If we get rid of the tabaco and alcohol taxes, who is gonna pay for the costs of their abuse's consequences? (car acidents, lunger cancer, these little things you carefully avoid in your argument - or do you think that all that drugs are just vitamins with stereoids?).
Prohibition increases violence? Good! Let's get rid of that pesky murder law. It's the reason for all that murderers are criminals nowadays! X-D
Prohibitions are tools. They can be used for the good, or for the evil. Grow up and learn to face the consequences of the decisions YOU DO, instead of pleading "not my fault, it's the prohibitions! It's their fault" childish.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
How often does this happen with legal drugs? Even highly addictive ones such as nicotine?
That wasn't the point. The point was, that individuals actions have consequences for society as a whole.
If allowing the use of a particular substance, call it Drug54, is determined to cause more damage to society than if it were made illegal and punished, then it should probably not be allowed.
Driving your car at 220mph down the interstate isn't allowed, even tho you have insurance to pay for damages you may incur. It isn't allowed, as, no matter how much insurance *you* have, or how good a driver *you* are, others don't have insurance, suck at driving, and as their allowed speed increases, so does the probability that they will kill entire families of people from the carnage that results in an accident at that speed.
Yes, I know about the Autobahn in Germany, and my response to it being used to refute the above hypothetical situation, is that their culture can apparently handle it, because, they aren't tweeting and sending texts at eating McDonalds at 220mph while be-bopping to Lady Gaga. If everyone who used drugs did so responsibly without consequences to society, then, it would be hard to argue for their regulation.
The point of my posts isn't that drug policy shouldn't be changed. I think it is just as f'd up as everyone else. My posts on this topic are merely to further the debate without pushing a personal agenda or emotional outburst.
If we are talking about alcohol, you are right.
There're a significant parcel of the population that can't hold themselves and commits crimes motivated by alcohol. Since it's significant, but yet too small compared to the majority of people that enjoys alcohol, it's willing to fight to the right to enjoy alcohol and, yet, does not cause any trouble to the society, the alcohol is not banned (but severely controlled - get caught driving drunk if you don't believe me).
On the other hand, nicotine besides being highly addictive, is not scientifically proven to cause misbehavior. I don't know of a single crime motiveted by the consumption of nicotine.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
You forget that water does not hydrate
It is just too addictive. It has more or less a 100% addiction rate. So you can't do "just a little" meth or be an occasional user. You get hooked, hardcore. Combine that with the massive amount of damage it does and it is just not safe for use at all really.
I think people forget that there are different levels of dangers in terms of drugs. Some, like marajuna, are pretty harmless. It doesn't have any physical addiction symptoms, is effectively impossible to OD on, and doesn't cause much long term damage (there are studies to indicate it causes some damage to higher reasoning skills, and of course when smoked it causes damage that any smoke inhalation does). It is quite safe over all.
Others though, like meth, are exceedingly dangerous. They have strong physical addictions (some like heroin can have fatal withdrawal symptoms), and do extreme amounts of damage to the body. You want to see real nasty, look up Krokodil but don't look at photos unless you have a strong stomach: People literally rot away alive. Life expectancy for addicts is a couple years at best.
While I sure as hell don't support the current "All drugs are evil and should be illegal," mentality, you have to learn about them and appreciate that some are just too addictive and destructive to be things that are sold over the counter. We need to legalize the reasonably safe drugs, not just everything and say "Fuck it, this can kill you quick but who cares?"
Iodine has all kinds of legitimate uses in all kinds of non-drug fields. Why not focus on stopping the drug labs getting hold of those things that are specific to the production of drugs. If the drug labs cant get the Pseudoephadrine or other drug ingredients, it wont matter how much iodine they can get.
I have a bottle of his product sitting not 20 feet from me. Serves as a backup on all of my camping trips should my primary water purification method fail, or if the water is just too dirty to use a filter. The first time I used the stuff was a decade ago when I visited Philmont with my scout troop, where a pair of bottles is given to every contingent for safety.
This guy makes $100,000 a year on this stuff. They told him he needed to pay a $1100 regulatory fee and needed to secure his stash. He completely ignores the fee and sends the DEA a picture of his old dog claiming it's his security. I'm really at a loss. Did he secretly not actually want to keep his business?
I do not think the over regulation of these kinds of materials is necessary in society, but it is what it is right now. If he wanted to keep his business, he should have at least tried to look like he wanted to comply instead of brushing everything off and hoping for the best.
And it's incredibly handy. You fill the small glass vial with water, soak the pellets in it for a while, then pour a capful of iodine-laden water into about a gallon jug of suspect drinking water. It's one of the lightest and simplest water purification systems I've ever encountered; it is even easier than boiling water. You could even use this device to make a stagnant puddle potable, if you didn't have a larger water vessel.
This thing must certainly have saved lives before. It allowed me to extend a southern Utah desert hike to two weeks instead of the (maybe) two days' worth of water I'd have been able to pack in.
Polar Pure isn't just some recreational upper like gas station ephedrine tablets used to be. It allows a person to drink the water one needs to survive in adverse environments. It lasts for thousands of gallons, and its weight and size are negligible.
I've very sorry to see Polar Pure go.
Hey now, don't ruin the guy's buzz with facts. That'll only confuse him. :)
But yes, he should research drug use and abuse through history, and the economics of drug cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. It's very complicated, and actually has very little to do with prohibition.
Opium is a great pain killer, and slightly addictive.
Process it, and you have morphine, an even better pain killer, and even more addictive, and more expensive.
Process it more, and you have heroin. Well, way overkill on the painkiller scale. It's hugely addictive, and even more expensive.
And lets not forget some of the dirty dealing that has happened, where particular governmental organizations world wide have put their fingers in the dealing to turn a profit themselves. Governments don't like competition.
If I had an opium farm (which I don't), and if I was a drug manufacturer or dealer (which I'm not), I'd want to sell my opium as heroin, bring in more money, *AND* have a really solid recurring customer base. Well, until they OD'd. I hate that we've taken a natural resource (opium) and tainted it so horribly.
I had thought, it would be nice to have a few opium plants growing. If I had a bad pain, I would have a natural, not horribly addictive, pain killer on hand. Instead, my options are combinations of chemicals produced in labs, that ensure the continued profits of pharmaceutical companies. And these drugs are *known* to have severely toxic side effects. Due to chronic pain, I'll probably die of liver failure by the time I'm 50. Why? Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and if it gets really really bad, some prescription only drugs. I'm confident my pains could be managed well with opium and marijuana. But hey, there's no good profit in a drug that I can grow at home.
Since I have a severe dislike of the idea of being in prison, I go with the legal options. The government has too many employees with guns and bad attitudes to argue the finer points of the current drug wars with.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Why did it take an Amendment to make alcohol illegal and not one to make marijuana illegal?
Learn to love Alaska
What is the increased medical cost of heavy marijuana use?
Learn to love Alaska
You shouldn't make direct comparisons between present society and earlier ones.
And I strongly suggest you study History better before making such statements.
You are joking, right? You tell him he can't compare today with earlier times, then tell him he should study History. And you know the Opium Wars were about English Imperialism more than drug use, right? Oh wait, we should only pay attention to history that agrees with you, everthing else is "not comperable." What a crock of shit.
Learn to love Alaska
Cigarettes and alcohol are not prohibited, and yet people seeks thugs to buy them cheaper.
Huh? I've never seen anyone selling alcohol on the street corner for a reduced price. I think you are making up shit.
Learn to love Alaska
It was 3/5ths, and it was 1787, and given your inadequate knowledge of the basic facts concerning the census count of slaves, you're probably not aware of the way that number was arrived at. There were people who didn't want them to count at all. I'll give you a hint: It *wasn't* the slave holders in the South. Perhaps if you think about the problem for a minute it might dawn on you why that was the case.
The founders knew perfectly well that things would need to change with the times. That is precisely why they created the amendment process in the first place.
Grow up and learn to face the consequences of the decisions YOU DO, instead of pleading "not my fault, it's the prohibitions! It's their fault" childish.
What are you talking about? I do not do drugs. I would not if they were legal. Prohibition wastes massive amounts of my tax dollars on idiotic tail-chasing and imprisoning non-violent "criminals" for life. Nothing good has ever come from Prohibition. Prohibition is an excuse for the government to violate our rights, spend our money, and Prohibition causes crime (and no, not in the way that making murder illegal makes murders criminals, but that Prohibition causes murder, rape, and robbery, in addition to putting millions of non-violent people into the category of "criminal"). I can't tell if you are really too stupid to understand, or lying to pretend you don't get it for your rhetorical games to protect yourself from actually listening to dissenting opinions.
Learn to love Alaska
Yes. Gasoline and other fossil fuels were more affordable when I were young. I wonder if this is somewhat connected to all that "global warming" thing?
Things are expensive nowadays because there're a lot more people disputing resources. You can't make things cheaper just because you want. You must increase the production (on a world where food production is already near critical) or decrease consumption.
Humm... Lung treatments are so cheap nowadays, aren't? :-)
Look, pal... Medical care is expensive. A LOT expensive. Two orders of magnitude more expensive than the price of the drugs needed to make you sick. And sick people can't work to pay for the treatment.
So, basically, what you are meaning is that drug induced sickness will be the next cause of violence, since besides drugs would be so cheap that everyone would buy it for chips, the ones the became sick because of the drugs will have to resort to any other means (legal or not) in order to pay for the medical bill.
You're exchanging a money problem for another, bigger, one.
You almost got a good point here.
Unfortunately, while the absolute number of murders is raising, the fact is that the proportional number of murders is decreasing - and it's because of the murder prohibition. In America, killing people is the last option for solving a dispute because of a entire century of Law Enforcement. You are right, the risk/reward is too bad to solving problems by killing people. In America.
In Colombia, it's not.
Since you are going to reasoning, explain to me exactly what makes you thing that it's better to prevent a statistically small number of death by murder (comparing to the total number of dying people in the world) by allowing a huge, crescent, number of deaths by OD's, drugs induced sickness, social disrupting by drugs abuse, accidents et all?
We can't correctly deal with the alcohol abuse problem, what makes you think that we would do it with more drugs being legalized?
(By God's sake, we got almost 4 deaths a day in São Paulo city on transit accidents. In the same period, we got circa of 1.2 homicides a day on the entire State - you tell me where the bigger pr
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning, as, making murder legal would also reduce the crime rate, and over time, the quantity of violence, as there would be a much smaller population as a result.
Prohibition causes murder, rape, and robbery. Making drugs legal stops many different types of crimes. Making murder legal will end murder as a crime, but would likely increase the overall crime rate. If you could kill all the people you rob to ensure they never identify you or testify against you, then perhaps you'd be more likely to commit other crimes. Not to mention that you imply that if murder were legal, you would go out and kill people. Would you? IF not, why not, it would be legal then?
Learn to love Alaska
It is arbitrary. Alcohol and nicotine have ruined lives and are legal. Marijuana is about as harmful as ice cream and is illegal. That's arbitrary.
Learn to love Alaska
"Combine that with the massive amount of damage it does and it is just not safe for use at all really."
A new study out this week from Columbia University reports that the "massive amount of damage" caused by meth is actually totally overblown, basically a "myth", and in fact counter-productive for the purpose of treating meth addicts. Very much in the same scare-mongering tradition of claims that (a) marijuana causes instant insanity, (b) crack babies are crippled for life, etc.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/21/why-the-myth-of-the-meth-damaged-brain-may-hinder-recovery/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This guy now has had five different +5 posts in a single topic! Cut him off the mod points people, the man has to get home!
Because addicts of certain substances don't just sit in their living room, they run out of money, and in order to avoid complete withdrawl, break into your grandma and granpappies house and bust thier skulls for the monthly check. You can deny it happens, but it does happen. I personally know a meth head who did this.
How often does this happen with legal drugs? Even highly addictive ones such as nicotine?
All the time. See: Oxycodone
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
FINALLY a good question! :-)
As far as I know, a bit harder than alcohol on the hallucinatory effects and somewhat as bad as tabaco on the health.
However, there're documented nasty psychological effects on prolonged and consistent use (this information is being disputed, however).
Marijuana, in my opinion, can be legalized but with heavy control on his use (so heavy as alcohol), and so taxed as tabaco to fund medical care.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
No, I'm not joking.
We can't direct compare today society with past ones. We have too much more information today, too much more technological resources and environment knowledge to compare, ipsi literis, our decisions with the ones made in the past.
And he should have studied more history before doing the statements he made.
The opium use was devastating on China - and he's stated that there were no abuse problem in the XIX Century - exactly the Century of the Opium Wars (1840, more or less, IIRC).
You should paid more attention on the History that does not agrees with you before trying to make me do the same! :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
You got a excellent point here. Marijuana is also well known to be a good pain killer on cancer patients.
However, this is a bit off the argument (or what I think it's the argument): legalize unrestricted, recreational use of all drugs.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Speaking frankly, I misplaced that paragraph. I was having an argument with another guy and, well.... the wires had crossed a bit. Sorry.
Other than that, this post of yours are plain wrong. Just that.
As I said, prohibitions are tools. They can be used by educated people to educated other people, or can be used by uneducated (or evil) people to do evilness to another people.
Drunk driving is a Prohibition. You think this is bad? COMMON!
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
There's no way all that drugs would be legalized and keeped cheap. Cigarettes and Alcohol are facing increased tax to fund the medical care need by their abuse, don't think that mahijuana and others would be dealt differently.
I think that legalizing and taxing drugs (but taxing only to a point where hidden backyard manufacturing remains unprofitable) would be the best solution. This way, we could put the cartels out of business but still have a bit of a financial incentive to keep consumption low.
The taxes could be used for therapy in those cases where people cannot handle the newfound freedom to get high. As others wrote, it is not guaranteed that they would be used for that purpose. But that is a different topic that belongs in a thread about general fiscal irresponsibility of governments ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Read more. I know we are capable of.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/27/crime-smuggling-alcohol-tobacco
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/648986/posts
http://www.atf.gov/alcohol-tobacco/
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
YOU are being arbitrary.
Marijuana is not unharmuful. It's as harmful as any other smoking drug.
More facts, less wishful thinking, please.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Deal with "drug" abuse the same way you deal with alcohol abuse, and you'd still have addicts, but a lot less associated crime and violence.
I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning, as, making murder legal would also reduce the crime rate, and over time, the quantity of violence, as there would be a much smaller population as a result.
That IS NOT AT ALL my "line of reasoning". I said ASSOCIATED crime and violence. E.g. prostitution, robbery to get money to buy the (expensive) drugs. Violence between drug dealers over turf, etc. Most of these would be much reduced, if not eliminated, if drugs were available legally, with some restrictions, like alcohol and tobacco, at prices that represented the actual costs of production and taxes.
There is no authority at the federal level to ban marijuana. A state or locality can do so.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We get it, you're a moron who doesn't understand the actual history of prohibition, bootlegging, and smuggling. Go back to your kindergarten class.
Thank you very much by keeping this argument so civilized and constructive. I'm pretty sure you were a fabulous orator in your graduating.
Now, with your consent, I will move my stupidity to threads of a lower civilized level - I don't want to taint your oratory skills with my "rhetorical, lying games".
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I've hiked and backpacked many a mile, and I've never used any iodine product to purify water. Can't stand the taste. Yuck.
I use regular Clorox. Carry a small bottle that has a medicine dropper screw-on cap and just add a couple of drops per quart of water. Let it sit for half hour or more, and you're good to go. Tastes more like the water from your faucets.
People make moonshine, even tho alcohol is legally available. People traffic in and smuggle cigarettes to avoid paying cigarette taxes. Criminals will still commit crimes.
As to the exact effects, for a specific drug, one would have to try it, and collect data on it. Legalizing marijuana would be a good first step. Societal expense data could be collected in places like California as to whether it has resulted in a net positive or negative benefit.
Legalizing PCP, on the assumption that crime will be reduced, however, is not likely to produce the same data as the legalization of marijuana does.
Not only that, Keynesian policies of today are also missing another point of Keynes - you run BALANCED budgets during times good and you get into debt and all this nonsense to have gov't spending during times bad.
Of-course nobody was running balanced budgets during times good. It's a misconception for example, that Clinton had a balanced budget. He took on more loans to have that 'balanced budget', he had increased the debt and he transfered the debt from long term debt to short term, variable rate debt to do it with Rubin.
Of-course Keynesian ideas are wrong regardless, but they at least were somewhat sane, unlike the implementation of them by the government.
You can't handle the truth.
This one of the more basic, and stable, high quality water purification products that can kill giardia in small amounts, long term, cheaply.
I first heard of this guy 25 yrs ago, having trouble with EPA registration (for the bactericidal part, usually like $1-2 million for a new one about then). Amazing that he's still at it. All too soon America will be short of these old guys that knew what to do, knew their rights, weren't empty greed heads and provided niche products with fantastic value. Then when America fails, too many will just say "back luck" and wonder why.
No, they're facing increased taxes because we've managed to convince more and more people not to use the stuff, and the governments had been counting on tobacco and alcohol tax revenues to pay the bills.
So, less use means less taxes, unless you raise the taxes. Which they've done, repeatedly.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Unfortunately, you can.
And if the "another form of bad behavior" is proven to cause a lot less of damage that the "one form of bad behavior", we call it a success. Even (or despite) the fact that could be better forms of dealing with the given problem.
We call it civilization.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
The DEA reasoning on this is completely absurd. A product with *significant* life-saving (and ass saving) primary uses is held back by an overzealous response to drug-thousandaires buying overpriced iodine in micro-doses to manufacture a drug for which far more critical components are already regulated, and the DEA has the gall to point the finger elsewhere?
That's right, people, we had to take away your freedoms to better protect you from people participating in a black market resultant from our criminalization of a chemical compound. So much has been laid on the altar of the war on drugs. Civil property forfeiture, warrantless-compilation of private actions, televised fried eggs...
Will we ever claw back form this?
The drug was has caused actual war on the streets, and war in Mexico and hugest population of non-violent drug related prisoners in the world. It is part of the economic problem as well, with all the resources that go into it and all the regulations like the one in this story, which in fact destroys jobs.
Drug War must stop.
Ron Paul 2012.
You can't handle the truth.
"I had to hit her. She made me do it".
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
"A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals." Calling your co-workers who decided to harass this guy without supporting rules selfish criminals is pretty harsh. Granted it's true, but you'd expect government agency spokesmen to be a little more politic.
'A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."'
That is obviously, factually untrue.
The harm was caused directly by the DEA regulations. They, in turn, may have been necessary because of the actions of criminals; but the spokesman's reported words are self-evidently untrue.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Yes, there are problems that come from individual use of drugs (of whatever type). Then, there is prohibition (or whatever legal term you feel is appropriate). So, when you get right down to it, with prohibition, you get both. You get the problems of drug use, and you get the problems of prohibition (violence, theft, etc.).
Nicely put. As some wise person observed, any organization ostensibly created to stamp out some form of behaviour actually has a powerful vested interest in the continuation of that behaviour. (Who wants to become unemployed as a result of being too successful?)
It follows that, if a government agency can manage to get people to break the law in two ways instead of one, it's all good (from the agency's point of view).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
However.... look at the swiss heroin study.
What did they do? Took a bunch of addicts and gave them a way to buy heroin, with a safe place to use it (to prevent diversion obviously), at what they projected would be a fair market value (which is much cheaper than street prices).
What did they find? A reported 90% reduction in their income from criminal activities (obviously stopping dealing, stealing etc). Not only that, but an increase in their ability to hold down jobs.
In my state its around 20% in jail for just drug crimes...and another 20% for petty drug related crimes. This category of crime is almost entirely caused by the excessive prices of the most addictive drugs. Heroin costs no more to make than aspirin. The current street price is an absolute travesty. People who use it all the time are genuinely sick. They need treatment, support, therapy, or just to be treated like normal people.
And it infuriates me when people say jail is just for the dealers. Well... where do they think they get their drugs? I mean seriously.... most "dealers" started to support their habit, and few see any real profits, and just end up using for "free", or rather, for the risk of excessive jail sentences.
Its just a travesty in every way.
Then on top of it all, just in the past few days I have read stories, police raid the wrong house. Police raid a house, kill a mother and dog, injur her toddler. Why? Because a raid is an intense and chaotic situation, and a very very dangerous place to be. Yet, we are willing to subject people to it? Why? For what?
The criminal gangs were created by prohibition. The dealers, the prices, the crime? Prohibition? Potential "collateral damage"? All of us. How is this the least bit sane?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yeah, it was non-slave owning notherners who didn't want slaves to be counted as a person. Politically it would be a disaster if you could just import more people to boost your population numbers and stuff the legislature with more seats.
The GP is right. The constitution was a document for a simpler time. It's also not even close to being perfect.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This is 100% on the head of the DEA, It would be the same as blocking cold medication from a store because it can be used for making Meth. I'm glad the DEA tries to spin excuses that are completely BS, nice work.
Please stop trivialising the harms associated with ice-cream use. Sugar and fat are among the biggest killers in the Western world.
It's also worth noting that, while extremely addictive, heroin itself is quite non-toxic at recreational doses. Street heroin (the type that only exists because of prohibition) is poison.
This from someone who has never taken heroin, and probably never will.
People make moonshine, even tho alcohol is legally available. People traffic in and smuggle cigarettes to avoid paying cigarette taxes. Criminals will still commit crimes.
People steal cars and sell them. But you don't HAVE to deal with a criminal to buy a car. But you HAVE to deal with a criminal if you want to buy heroin, coke, hash, etc. If drugs aren't illegal, you can be an addict and deal with that without also necessarily being a criminal.
I have 2 or 3 bottles of this stuff in my camping equipment. That it's all been packed by this one guy in his garage blows my mind.
Hum, no, you are also a bit removed from it. You should run a SURPLUS during good times, to pay for the bad times' debt. Not a balanced budget.
But I understand that US media is focused on balanced budgets like it was the more one can possible hope to do. Surplus is unthinkable.
Rethinking email
Isn't marijuana a Schedule 1 drug according to the Feds? Which would essentially ban it? But states can then override it (see California), correct? I'm not very conversant with drug laws since I don't deal with any besides what my doc prescribes me (somehow I don't think my blood pressure medicine is going to be a problem).
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Is that you have the DEA openly admitting that it's collateral damage and then trying to deflect the blame on the criminals making meth as opposed to the idiot legislators who crafted the law in the first place.
People make moonshine, even tho alcohol is legally available. People traffic in and smuggle cigarettes to avoid paying cigarette taxes.
And where are the state-and-national-prison-system-filling numbers of cigarette and moonshine criminals to match the numbers imprisoned because of the war on drugs? Where are the cigarette and alcohol cartels capable of waging a shooting war against entire nations and even threatening to overthrow their governments? Oh, that's right. Cigarettes and alcohol aren't illegal in and of themselves, are legally obtainable, and are taxed & regulated.
But other than those minor details, I guess they're almost exactly the same, right?
Equivalency fail.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
He's an old guy wanting to be left alone, DEA bugs him about some stuff, he more or less tells them to "sod off." Some prissy official gets his panties in a twist, and has a personal grudge against the guy.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The third point I'd add is that it eliminates any hope of quality control and dosage control. I used to live in Vancouver, which has a pretty damn hard core junkie area at Main and Hastings (and if I recall, the highest concentration of AIDS patients in North America, primarily due to needle sharing - that stretch was also just bloody nuts on welfare day, which was known as "Mardi Gras", and it's the same stretch where Pickton trolled for prostitutes, over the years taking 49 or so back to his pig farm for parties that ended with him killing them, which the police generally ignored because they were "just" hookers and junkies). Every now and then some ultra pure heroin would flood the market and a whole bunch of people would die.
Virtually every single problem associated with drugs like heroin is a function of its illegal status.
YOU are being arbitrary.
Marijuana is not unharmuful. It's as harmful as any other smoking drug.
More facts, less wishful thinking, please.
Ironic that you plead for more facts and less wishful thinking - since your assertion that marijuana is "as harmful as any other smoking drug" has been disproven by actual research. Marijuana does not cause lung cancer. Dr. Donald Tashkin made this finding 6 years ago now, and it has been reaffirmed by subsequent follow on investigation, which has also turned up evidence of lower risks for other types of cancer in cannabis users. Cannabinoids are in fact potent anti-cancer agents (shown in lab tests as well).
Check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.htm l. And this: http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/2/8/759.abstract .
Follow your own advice and actually learn the facts.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Congratulations, you're part of the problem. Attitudes like yours are why things continue down the path they are on. If things are wrong, you do not accept them. Period. You don't shrug your shoulders and go "it is what it is."
The reason your meth head friend commits crime to support his habit is because the drugs are expensive. The reason they are expensive is because they are prohibited. The reason people kill to stake out territory in the drug trade is because the margins are fucking enormous, and every time ridiculous ideas like minimum sentencing get enacted, the margins just go higher, and the bar is raised so that you get more and more harder core people involved.
Compare this to alcohol: some subset of the population becomes addicted to it (incidentally, a rather substantial subset, compared to the illicit drug subset), but it is legal, there is quality control, the price is reasonable and there are very few people who commit crimes to obtain it (altho an enormous percentage of prison inmates were under the influence of it when their crimes were committed, again, a far, far larger subset than those who were under the influence of other, prohibited drugs when they committed their crimes).
Alcohol prohibition in the US should have taught law makers the results of prohibiting substances - hell, there remain, many generations later, crime families who got their start because of prohibition (no, I'm not talking about the Kennedys). But as others have pointed out, there are an awful lot of people who profit legally from its prohibition, like the DEA and the ATF and the FBI and the rest of the state apparatus, which never, ever gets smaller or goes away.
An ordinary person would look at a few decades of the "war on drugs", examine the costs (both financial and to liberties) and then examine the results: did the problem go away? Was it reduced? Or did it get worse, and more violent? Does having the largest prison population on the planet, about 2 million of whom are imprisoned for rather trivial drug offenses, make the country safer, or do they learn to become criminals while in prison? What's harder for a school-aged kid to get: heroin or alcohol? Anyone who sees those results and thinks it's money and effort and freedom well spent should get their head examined - prohibition is hurting an awful lot of people for no discernible upside.
>DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals
In another related story about how useless the DEA can be, pharmacies across the country have now had their Tylenol and Aspirin stocks pulled from the shelves
again siting that the selfish actions of a few criminals and drug abusers made it now so that the rest of the world can not get rid of their headaches.
Also, in other news, Obama has pulled relief help funding from the all organizations including the DEA, siting that the selfish criminal actions of a few banks
has made it now that no one should ever get any help from the US government ever again....
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/water-treatment.htm
"Crystalline Iodine (found at some chemical companies and sporting goods stores) First make a saturated solution and then measure your own dose to add to water. The crystalline form stores well indefinitely and new batches of the saturated solution can be made from a small amount of crystals each time you take a trip".
Way off topic, but this is precisely why countries like Pakistan will never seriously make efforts to kill the people the US wants them to kill: as long as they get billions of dollars to "fight terrorism", there is very little incentive to stop "terrorism" and every incentive to make it appear they are occasionally helpful but never actually particularly effective. It's like anything whereby payment is made based on intentions or actions, rather than results.
No, the states can not override federal law. Medical marijuana may be left alone by state authorities in California, but the feds can swoop in any time they like and shut down any MM operation they want and prosecute them in federal court. For a while, it seemed that they were backing off of this sort of "unwelcome enforcement" in Cali, but recently word is that they're about to return to business as usual.
State laws are always trumped by federal laws.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Car can and have been used to kill people... they should be ban and anything else that can harm us..... like oil spills, Chemotherapy, FDA, nuclear power plants, chemtrails, etc...
And I don't have to read all the comments to know others have mentioned this logic..
I guess if you completely ignore the title of a post, you can get confused.
Wow, you're really going to post the above? I know 8 year olds that make more sense than this.
The possession of hand-sized rocks today have been made illegal. "I had a few rocks out in my garden and I was fined and the rocks were removed by the police" says Mrs Smith. A law enforcement spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals. "Any common criminal could pick up one of those rocks and break your window, or bludgeon your kids right in front of your house. Think of the children for Christ' sake!" said Sgt Aswipe (thats prounced ahs - weep - ay).
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Oh I agree that ultimately ALL drugs should be legal, but that still doesn't change the fact that at its very core heavy drug addiction is about broken people.
Let me give an example from my own family, my ex brother in law. I ended up raising my sister's kids when after the birth of the second she found she had a fatal disease similar to ALS because halfway through the pregnancy he got a taste of drugs at work and that was all she wrote, last I heard he had hep C and was back in jail for trying to rip off an ATM, but why was he so easily .succumbed?
It was because meeting his family it was quite clear he was an unwanted child, all they really wanted was his older brother and he was the "mistake". Add to this the fact that his family ignored him and never bothered to give a shit along with the teachers doing the same so he was also illiterate and you can easily see why without therapy he was doomed. How many could go through life knowing your own parents wouldn't care if you died?
Finally while I agree that legalizing will reduce a HELL of a lot of crime I have seen in my own family that the whole "nature/nuture" thing is bullshit and the correct answer is nature. i know this because of my cousin Rock. He was adopted when he was 6 weeks old, his parents NEVER treated him any different than his biological brother that came a year later, in fact many in the family didn't know that he wasn't their biological. yet almost from the time he turned 12 he was frankly a monster, torturing animals, stealing, finally trying to find out if it was a medical cause they sued the court and had the records unsealed...
HIS PARENTS WERE MURDERERS! I swear to fricking God we all shit when we found out. His dad was an honest to goodness AX MURDERER that got pissed at a guy in a bar, calmly walked out to his car, got an axe out of the trunk, and proceeded to chop the fuck out of the guy right there in the bar! And his mom? Fricking slit the throat of a John whom she thought had more money on him and rifled through his pockets while he bled out. She had the baby in prison!
So while I agree that legalization is our only choice, because nearly a century of prohibition hasn't worked, I have to say DNA DOES play a part, a pretty damned big one. His adopted parents were the sweetest folks you'd want to meet, their biological ended up a writer for a small town sports mag, meanwhile Rock is doing double life for shooting a drug dealer for a couple of hundred in cash and his stash. The kid has been in prison longer than he has been out! ironically he is now in the same pen where his dad died while doing life 20 years earlier.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning, as, making murder legal would also reduce the crime rate, and over time, the quantity of violence, as there would be a much smaller population as a result.
Murder is a violation of someone else's rights. using drugs, making drugs, or selling drugs is not. There can be no crime unless there is a victim who's rights (liberty or property) have been violated against their will and has a grievance. Someone shooting up with meth is no more a crime than someone having a shot of whiskey.
Learn how to spell tobacco before you keep posting, ignoramus.
This is pretty absurd logic. Travel is a pretty basic need in today's world (unless you want to go live on a farm somewhere and be fully self sufficient), crystal meth is not. By your logic we might also say thousands of people choke to death on their food everyday so let's ban food. Not to mention the government does collect taxes on legalised recreational drugs (tobacco and alcohol), so if getting rich was their aim why would they spend money playing whack a mole with meth labs instead of legalising it and collecting the taxes?
The issue with the phosphate was the effect on plants and other green organisms. Algae and bacteria blooms, that kind of thing. What is so much worse about zeolite A, sodium carbonate, citrates, and sodium silicate?
Blar.
I was already annoyed about the pseudoephedrine restrictions. Did you know phenylephrine (the 'safe and effective' replacement) works no better than placebo when ingested orally? That's not the line the government sold the public about it. They said it was 'just as effective for most people'.
And now they're going after the guy who makes Polar Pure? The one positive of this is that I learned about the small business behind a product that probably saved me from the shits when I was a teenager backpacking in New Mexico. Poor guy.
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sshhhhhh don't give them more ideas!
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NOOO!! Polar Pure is a great product. Other water purifying products cost orders of magnitude more on a per volume of drinkable water basis. I love this product. A bottle of the stuff can treat way over a thousand liters, and has an indefinite shelf life. I have a bottle, in my emergency kit. I'm gonna rush out and buy one or two more right now. F#C%ing DEA!
Incidentally the Polar Pure website says they are involved in a government permitting process, so he is down, but not necessarily out.
-- QED
That's because alcohol is so damn easy to make. Ever heard of somebody running an illegal distillery, or, even more common (and legal), brewing their own beer? It's easier to make it yourself (legally, even) than it is to find someone who makes and sells it illegally.
Once you recognize someone is a victim due to your actions in the course of your regular duties, it becomes YOUR responsibility to make it right. Labeling something collateral damage doesn't absolve one of responsibility, but, instead, claims responsibility with mitigating circumstances. And if you're responsible for the harm, you're responsible for the fix.
The laws that were created to get rid of marijuana did not make it illegal. They made it so you needed a stamp. The fact that they did not sell stamps was a seperate issue.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Thanks to the war on drugs, it is now easier to get meth amphetamine than it is to get cold pills.
Meth dealers don't check I.D. or log who purchased, like they now do with cold pills.
If you're someone like me, who has a certified birth certificate, social security card, and an out of state expired I.D., and that's still not enough to get current I.D. with the new regulations.
-Myke
I can just see it now, how it would go at the check-out register.
"Sir, I need you to show ID, sign this log, and you can't buy all four of those, you can only buy one at a time."
"WTF? My 60s party is going to be a total flop without ALL 4 of these."
"Sorry sir. I guess your party will be collateral damage from the War on Meth."
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This is one of those cases where the bright sunshine of media attention PLUS a sympathetic Congressperson can do what no amount of bureaucratic paperwork or civil lawsuits can ever accomplish - or at least never accomplish in a short period of time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
YOU are being arbitrary.
You arbitrarily limited its use to "smoking", and decided that it's harmful.
More facts, indeed. There are ways to use marijuana without smoking it.
First, the guy is hilarious. FTFA:
---
"For Wallace to comply, the state Department of Justice fingerprinted the couple and told Wallace he needed to show them such things as a solid security system for his product. Wallace sent a photograph of Buddy sitting on the front porch.
"These guys don't go for my humor," Wallace said. "Cops are the most humorless knotheads on the planet."
---
Also, wasn't this guy relatively safe via security through obscurity. Meth heads don't go around randomly seeking out any component but ephedrine. But now, this guy is a target.
Isn't dihydrogen monoxide used in methamphetamine manufacture...?
Shouldn't we ban that...?
-Myke
The constitution was a document for a simpler time. It's also not even close to being perfect.
Nobody said it was, and the founders knew it wasn't. That's why there's an official process to change it: amendments. How many times can this point be raised and subsequently ignored in the same thread?
It ain't that simple.
Drunk drivers kill more people than terrorism. And more even than some wars - annually.
I do agree with most of the rest.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
especially fertilizers... they can be used to make rocket fuel! imagine all those farmers engaging in criminal activities all over the world...
...and the moon and beyond!
Meth is highly addictive and I am not in favor of legalizing it (although I am troubled by the laws making it illegal). That being said, you are overstating the addictivity of meth. In my younger years I abused various drugs including to some degree meth. I never came close to developing an addiction to meth. Of course, that was largely because I was aware of its high potential for addiction and I limited my use of it to forestall that possibility.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This is why I tend to support decriminalization rather than legalization. Make drugs cheap (the cheaper, the better) and easily available from government approved sources (pharmacies, liquor stores, I don't really care). All you need is a doctor issued card and you can buy a personal supply.
But enforce the hell out of smuggling and illicit dealing. Kind of like they do now. Dealers will be forced to continue high prices.
Addicts will continue to be addicts, but maybe have a chance to become productive and/or not waste as much money on feeding their addiction. The vast majority of dealers will quickly go out of business. As a bonus, dealers will have very little incentive to encourage new users. The population of addicts might shrink significantly over time.
Many of the benefits of legalization without as many of the down sides.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I'm calling shenanigans on your post. Just on a cursory reading, I found two things that are completely false:
1) Meth has a "100% addiction rate". It doesn't, or you're using that term, "addiction" incorrectly. Doesn't have 100% dependance nor addiction.
2) Heroin isn't dangerous to withdraw from. Not. It sucks, it can make you *wish* you were dead, but it isn't dangerous to withdraw from opioids. Alcohol withdrawal can kill you, other drugs too, but not opioids.
And, yes, IAAD (I AM a doctor).
A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."
Those black eyes are collateral damage, not resulting from my fist but from your own selfish actions.
Now shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen, bitch, before your selfish actions cause you more collateral damage.
Drunk driving is one of the most over-hyped causes, just behind "terrorism" (which you rightly point out doesn't kill many people either). In the US, the percentage of the population which died from drunk driving in 2009 is around 0.0036%. Of those, 67% were the drunk drivers themselves. So your odds of being killed by a drunk driver are somewhere around 1 in 100,000. You have 4 times greater chance of being murdered and about 11 times greater chance of committing suicide.
Of course, it serves as a serviceable excuse for arbitrary police check points and routine 4th amendment violations, so at least there's something coming out of it...
Its because you make a shitty unfair society that people do drugs.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Wow, I never knew that. It's amazing what Wikipedia gets wrong all the time. Dang that unarbitrated hogwash.
It is just too addictive. It has more or less a 100% addiction rate. So you can't do "just a little" meth or be an occasional user. You get hooked, hardcore. Combine that with the massive amount of damage it does and it is just not safe for use at all really.
I'm not sure if that's true or not, I don't know much of anything about drugs. What I don't see is why it's relevant. If some guy wants to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, that's not safe, and it will result in his death. It's still his life, and it's his right to end it. I feel the same way about drugs. I don't care if they're safe or not.
By all means, spend the money we're using now in the drug war to educate people about the dangers. Then let them make their own damn choices.
If "Lisias" had any intention of listening to facts, I highly doubt he/she would be ranting about how harmful marijuana is. Let's face it, the media and anti-drug people have turned this issue into something that resembles religion way more than it does science. In what other "discipline" do people blatantly ignore rock hard solid facts, especially when they prove their beliefs wrong? It's a shame that our society has to suffer like this because most people are too stupid and voluntarily ignorant to think critically and make sound, logical decisions.
Um.... why bother?
There is no way smugglers or illicit dealers can compete with legal drugs. Legalization will result in exactly the situation that you describe.
Or do you really think that there are people out there who, given the choice between legal, cheap and pure vs illicit, expensive, and unknown, will choose the to the latter?
What are you smoking?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Drunk driving is a Prohibition. You think this is bad?
It isn't a Prohibition. Prohibition is the complete illegality of a desired substance, action, or transaction. Drunk driving is a regulation.
Also, it is bad. Why? Because the problem isn't drunks, it's unsafe drivers (of which drunks are a disproportionate representation). It's stupid to target only one set of unsafe drivers and allow/encourage the others. So yes, in a perfect world, we wouldn't have laws against driving drunk, as drunk people wouldn't be proper attentive drivers and would already be banned because of that.
Learn to love Alaska
Thank you very much by keeping this argument so civilized and constructive. I'm pretty sure you were a fabulous orator in your graduating.
You call laws against drunk driving "Prohibition". That's simply not true. The only question is whether you don't know anything about the subject you have such stong opinions on, or whether you know it false when you said it. A quick search on the definition of prohibition comes up with "prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption". Nowhere did I see any definition that comes anywhere close to what you claim. Prohibiting something isn't prohibition. "prohibition" gained a more specific definition due to "Prohibition" and the old definition of "any ban of any thing or action" was abandoned in favor of the only definition used today of "a complete ban of any thing or action" and any one piece of a ban, if not complete, is not a prohibition. But that's ok, I understand your pathological need to be right, even if you lie to us and yourself. I was just curious whether you were doing so consciously or from ignorance. From your further replies, I have my answer.
Learn to love Alaska
>Not to mention nobody wants to spend the incredible amount of money it would take to fix broken people,
While still being willing or even eager to spend the incredible amount of money it takes to leave them broken.
It's as harmful as any other smoking drug.
There have been studies that contradict your statement, and you arbitrarily exclude the number of other methods which THC is administered (ever heard of brownies?).
Learn to love Alaska
Ah yes, Russia vodka taxes causing a black market (much like the taxes on cigarettes are getting to where there are smugglers as well). But I've never bought any vodka on the Russian black market, so my statement stands. There is not a black market for alcohol and cigarettes in the US, and where there is, it's not because of prohibition, but tax evasion, just like people buy stolen goods from fences - it's not ABC's fault people buy TVs from fences, but you blame tobacco and alcohol for the presence of a black market? That just seems silly.
Learn to love Alaska
Human nature doesn't change over time. That's why Greek plays are still classics 2000 years later. China didn't have a "drug problem" for the opium wars, other than England was dumping illegal drugs into the economy in an attempt to balance the trade deficit, and then started a war over it. It wasn't about "drug use" it was about trade and English imperialism.
Learn to love Alaska
good question (and I thought I addressed it).
It sounds like you understood my reasoning perfectly, but got things a bit backwards. My whole intent is to for people to choose "legal, cheap and pure vs illicit, expensive, and unknown" and choose the former.
Legalized means that anyone can buy and sell as much as they want. No such thing as illicit/expensive/unknown. That would all be driven out of the market by cheap and plentiful. So you end up with informal "dealers." Sort of what happens with alcohol and cigarettes. People hanging out and sharing. It becomes trivial for anyone to try and become hooked. And since there is no such thing as smuggling or illicit dealing, you get brands of drugs. Marlborough or Captain Morgan ring any bells? There is still a profit motivation to encourage people to try and use.
But if you punish distribution (while keeping usage relatively cheap but in check) you minimize how often people will become informal dealers. Heck, even if you just fine $50 for distribution, it'll at least slow things down. And it'll make informal sources "illicit, expensive, and unknown."
My thinking isn't to eliminate drug usage, but to make it less destructive while still creating at least a modest barrier for becoming a user. Then let Darwin have his way.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
As a wilderness backpacker, I use iodine tablets and whatever other kinds there are (forgot the names) on trips. They are mainly a backup to our water purifiers but we'll use them overnight sometimes since it's easier than purifying but there is a time delay before use. They are a no brainer to bring because they basically have no weight or space penalty.
A couple weeks ago I was picking up a prescription at Walgreens and a kid got in the next line and asked for some Sudafed. As I left I saw him get in the passenger side of a car and take off. It dawned on me then what probably happened. Wish I saw their license plate.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
We are all humans, aren't we?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Oh, you're right! All that poor chinese were victims of a imperial scam! The drugs were just placebo, all that social disruption was simply a illusion.... =P.
Serious. You are right. The Opium War was all about trade and imperialism maintainability. What you are conveniently trying to bury is that English funded this war by opium addiction - what denies the original argument that there weren't drug problems in the XIX Century.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I don't. The grand parent of my posts thinks it.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Prohibition is the complete illegality of a desired substance, action, or transaction.
I understand that drunk driving is a action, but what you says make sense too. Language barrier, perhaps.
I think I can agree with this.
If your rationale extends to our previous argument, I think that I finally understand what you mean.
I still not convinced about the correctness of your arguments on the original arguing, but now things make sense - I need some time to rethink this issue over this new light.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
It is just too addictive. It has more or less a 100% addiction rate. So you can't do "just a little" meth or be an occasional user. You get hooked, hardcore.
There were loads of casual meth users in the rave scene in the late 90's. These people used some at a party once a week and that was it. The overwhelming majority of them were functional members of society with jobs, in college, etc. That's not to say that some small percentage didn't get hooked. One guy got hooked on meth and lost his university scholarship because of it. That was a life changing mistake. However, like most all drugs, society only see the people who have hit rock bottom. The other 95% of users who are not similarly effected remain invisible. Result: Society believes that drug X,Y,Z has absolute power to run everyone into the ground.
If you're a mess then drugs will make you more of a mess. If you have your shit together then no drug can destroy you.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Cultural differences can be a bitch.
If by prohibition we are talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition - then I stand corrected. The Prohibition of alcohol was a huge, herculean mistake. Too many people wanted to enjoy alcohol, people simply didn't support it.
I should have paid some attention on that capitalized "P".
But other that this, I do not take back any of my (other) arguments.
I'm very sorry (well, I'm not, but I'm trying to be polite), but the pathological need to be right appears to be on you - after all, you are the one making ad hominem attacks here. The fact that you were right on this point does not change the way you made your arguments (neither what I think of you by doing that).
But that's ok. All we need to do is to ignore each other, what I will happily do from now..
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-States-Targeting-Black-Market-Cigarette-Sales-100426174.html
Do better. Try google.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
We are all humans, aren't we?
I agree that using a example from China can be utterly ironic, but no less valid - IMHO.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
The original argument stated that there were no drug abuse in XIX Century.
The Opium Wars, being funded by England by selling opium on China proves it's wrong. All other considerations are off topic to the original argument.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
It's times like these that sorely tempt me to actually vote Libertarian.
We are the 198 proof..
Serious. You are right. The Opium War was all about trade and imperialism maintainability. What you are conveniently trying to bury is that English funded this war by opium addiction - what denies the original argument that there weren't drug problems in the XIX Century
I think we are getting into many many semantic issues. What's a "drug problem"? Someone used drugs, that's a problem? Someone is addicted to caffeine, that's a drug problem? Women in the Old West habitually used heroin tonic to ward off "headaches" that were nothing but symptoms of the withdrawal they'd get when they didn't have the tonic? People who smoke weed every Saturday, but hold a M-F 9-5 job with no problems for 30 years?
I think the definition changes in your mind to be different things depending on the point you are trying to make. If the drug problems were so bad, the English wouldn't have had to start the war. They wanted to balance trade with China from selling illegal drugs, but the uptake (while likely leading to some "problems") wasn't sufficient to balance the trade, so they attacked. That isn't proof of a drug problem, but proof that it wasn't as bad as the English expected or hoped it would be. The Opium Wars were caused because the "drug problem" wasn't as bad in China as England hoped. So I'm still not seeing how that supports your position. Every time you mention it, it seems to refute more than support what you are trying to say.
Learn to love Alaska
Well... It end up that I was that moron.
I'm not anymore.
And managed to do that without going back to the kindergarten class. When I was there I was taught how to learn, but more important, how to respect other people.
Maybe I'm not the one needing to go back to the kindergarten.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Prohibition is bad in that a sober driver at .09 BAC will be thrown in jail while the person on the road next to them drinking a coffee and eating a donut and not watching the road will not receive any sanctions.
.09 BAC. Go hang around with some alcoholics for a while. I knew one in college who could drink anyone not just under the table, but into the grave (hardened alcoholics can have a BAC sufficient to kill you and me and still be quite functional, so 2 beers don't even give them a buzz, even if above the legal minimum for drunk).
And yes, you can be "sober" at
We would be better if crashes were treated like they are in Mexico, as criminal matter. If someone was sufficiently careless, it is assault. Treat them all, even the little ones, as critical issues, and the fatal ones will decrease greatly. But no, it's pull over everyone and sniff, if they are drunk, ticket them, if not, but they were weaving and sriving unsafely, off they go with a warning (if that much). The focus on alcohol is causing road deaths from neglecting other worse offenders. Last I heard, talking on a hands-free handset is more "dangerous" than being at the legal minimum "drunk" level BAC.
Learn to love Alaska
Yet the government is perfectly OK with a large portion of the population (including kids) being fed amphetamines for ADHD. Methamphetamine is just more efficiently absorbed. Same effects basically. They even have an extended-release variety.
The government doesn't want you to stray from their APPROVED tax-paying drug dealers and medical cartel.
It's gotten to the point where if it isn't alcohol or tobacco and it gives you a buzz, it's immediately demonized and banned often with one-sided fictional research that they themselves fund.
Both alcohol and tobacco have SEVERE side-effects with normal use and will usually eventually kill you, even when not "abused". The War on Drugs is stupid and always has been since its roots in the 20's.
Point taken. Thank you.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
But other that this, I do not take back any of my (other) arguments.
I've never had anyone explain this to me. Maybe you could try. How is it that you can agree Prohibition was "bad", but prohibition is good? The problems may have been more delayed because of lower general use, but the problems are the same. Increased violence (Al Capone gang/mob style) and ancillary crimes to hide or fund black market activities were common under Prohibition, and are common now under prohibition. Prohibition is much worse than the problems caused by the drugs themselves.
So how can someone recognize that Prohibition was a bad thing, and not recognize that prohibition is a bad thing? Balance the budget. Legalize and tax drugs, close 25% of the prisons which are filled with non-violent criminals who committed drug-only crimes, Close the DEA, moving any legitimate functions into the FDA, and the FBI can go on a hiring freeze for 5 years and still be over staffed. Save and raise trillions of dollars, so much better than spending it on things designed to remove our rights. All for prohibition. We'd have a balanced budget, except for the trillions wasted on prohibition. I'd rather have the money than spend it in taxes to remove my own rights. They realized this for the first Prohibition. What is different now? Oh, we've changed as people, so prohibition would work now? Then why not add alcohol to the banned list?
Learn to love Alaska
The Washington Post article give me a 404.
The aacr journals talks about the positive effects of the THC on cancer treatment (something I already stated in some other post).
Now, my turn: http://alcoholism.about.com/od/pot/a/effects.-Lya.htm (please be advised of the immense quantity of links to another sources on this page).
In special:
And
And more
Finally:
Of course all the information can be disputed.
But, please, pretty prease, stop all that ad hominen attacks. This is just childish.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Weird enough, I'm still getting your attention.
Funny, uh?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
The Opium Wars, being funded by England by selling opium on China proves it's wrong.
define "abuse"
There was obviously drug *use*. But what constitutes "abuse" and how can you prove 150 year old abuse now? Aside from funding terrorists like the English, what was the problem with drug use? Did it cause massive internal issues in China? Or did China make it illegal and prevent most (or all) of those issues, which is why England attacked?
All other considerations are off topic to the original argument.
You want to know why sometimes I use harsh language? Because you are a prick. "I'll define the argument to something I think I can win, I'll listen to nothing else." Screw you. The discussion is about whatever people want to discuss. The "original" argument is about some 88 year old guy who pissed off the government and got slapped down. All other considerations are off topic, and you've been off topic for all of your posts. But people have found them compelling enough to respond to. But steering the discussion to where you want it to go to make it "easier" on you is a little juvenile.
Learn to love Alaska
And there are studies that support my statements. See above.
There's no such thing as a unharmful drug. God damnit, even sugar are harmful when abused.
By the way, the nastier effects of marijuana happens when eaten. Again, see above.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Please stop running from the subject. We are talking about the harmfulness (or unharmfulness) of marijuana.
If even sugar can be harmful (as you states), what can be said for marijuana? =]
If you can't stay on the subject, please abstain yourself from messing up the discussion.
Street heroin, on the other hand, is very dangerous - I agree. However, I think it's a lot of naiveness credit its existance to prohibition only (can we call it "legal ban" or something? I got some bad press using the word "prohibition" a few posts ago).
Addicts are always searching for the "next stuff", as they got used to the drug of the day. Everybody gets resistance when repeatedly using the same drug - and then feels the need to going to something stronger.
Do you know Skank? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank&defid=2602206
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
There's no such thing as a unharmful drug. God damnit, even sugar are harmful when abused.
That's why my comparison was to ice cream. I'm not as stupid as you think, yet you treat me as such continually. Presume I'm right then prove me wrong. It's good enough for the courts, yet you can only support your position when you presume yourself correct and all others wrong, then argue from the position that you are right and don't have to "prove" your rightness beyond a few supporting statements you like. If I'm wrong, it shouldn't be so hard to prove it. I know people have found bad effects with all sorts of things. Legal sweeteners cause cancer (aspartame going into coffee that's re-heated breaks down into carcinogens, and saccharine was shown to cause cancer in mice), yet are legal and essentially unregulated.
It's arbitrary. The Purityrranical religious right have shoved "no intoxication" down our throats, even going so far as to screw up the country for a nice long while with Prohibition, and it's been arbitrary in the sense that anything with enough entrenched money behind it (tobacco, soda, and alcohol) is legal, and the rest banned, for no reason other than arbitrary ones.
Learn to love Alaska
Thank you for mentioning Dr Tashkin. You made me rememeber a interview he did some time ago:
HT: Has your research changed your view on marijuana prohibition over the years?
DT: Well, I still maintain that, in terms of safety and health effects, I believe that smoking any substance is not good for your health, but there could be in certain desperate situations where no other remedy is available, there might be an indication, on a case by case basis, for smoking a substance that may have more benefit than harm.
HT: Aside from smoking, how do you see marijuana as a “risky” medicine?
DT: Outside of the smoking factor? I’m not an expert in that area. I think you need to talk to a behavioral psychologist or someone interested in the effects on cognition. This is an area I really have no expertise in and I prefer not to comment on it
Emphasis are mine. Source: http://hightimes.com/news/mikeg_ht/3658 :-)
Please, keep me feeding with so astonishing remembrances.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
(sigh). I think we deserve each other, as you are so a jerk as I am a prick. =]
The original argument that started this subthread stated that were that weren't no drugs problem on the XIX Century. Opium Wars proves it existed at the time. FINITO.
If you are too lazy (or just plain stupid) to figure it out for yourself, here it goes: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2540052&cid=38145656
If you wanna discuss other facets of the problem, you're welcome to start a new thread. But on this thread, I'm focused on the threads argument.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Because you are a jerk. :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
You have a excellent point here.
This post is giving me a LOT of reasons to reevaluate some of my concepts, thank you. (sarcasm mode is off: the thanks is genuine).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
"In the end of the 19th century heroin was sold in drugstores without prescription, but with a warning label that it causes addiction. And you know what? There wasn't any heroin-craze. There weren't hordes of junkies on the street waiting for their next fix."
Obviously, this was stated in relation to US areas where heroin tonics were common. And just having a war with a convenient title doesn't prove him wrong. Nothing you've said addresses his comments. You've not addressed the drug problem in the US at that time, no indicated anything about any drug problem in China at that time, short of pointing out that "opium" appeared in the name of a war. You've just ranted and raved with irrelevant distractions hoping everyone forgot the original statement that was obviously US-centric (As is this site and the people on here). If you are in China, I'll concede the point that China's problems at that point are relevant. However, more likely you are not, and as such it's are relevant as stating "Martians had trouble with Jabluka" in the 1800s". Whether or not that's true, it isn't a relevant rebuttal to the original statement.
Learn to love Alaska
The Prohibition of Alcohol was a utter mistake not because prohibition (in the "ban", "forbiddance" meaning) is bad (I'm not saying, yet, that it's good - I'm just saying that the badness of the prohibition was not the cause), but because they tried to ban the alcohol.
Our society is too much bounded to alcohol consumption. It's cultural, but also evolutionary: Europe in the dark ages was a nasty, filthy place. There was little, if any, sources of drinkable water on the cities and the ones that insisted on drinking the available water dyed of diseases.
What had saved our civilization were the Beer and the Wine (distilled beverages were introduced in Europe in the XV century, on the Turkish invasion - too late for doing any good in this matter). The alcohol grade were enough to kill most of the harmful germs that plagued their water.
To short the history, the ones that did not handle alcohol in their metabolism just died of some disease because they had no choice but to drink contaminated water. The survivors were the ones the could sustain drinking lots of beer and wine instead of the dirty water.
(For the sake of curiosity, in Japan there's a large incidence of alcohol intolerance because the Japanese already had good hygienic habits since God knows when - clean, drinkable water was not a scarce resource on their cities, people didn't had to drink alcoholic beverages instead of water to be healthy).
The botton line is that alcohol is, so, fiercely bounded to our society to be so easily eradicated - people will fight back, in the easiest way they can: by paying thugs to confront the government in their place.
That's the reason I say Prohibition (of alcohol) didn't caused the Mafia. Mafia was already there, they just jumped in when people started to pay someone else to break the law in order to get what they want. And since there's a really lot of people paying them, they made a huge ammount of money and use it to protected their new interests. The rest is history.
Tobbaco, on the other hand, were introduced in Europe in the XVI Century, brought by Cristobam Columbus from America. This drug were initially used by the rich as a demonstration of power, but spreaded as fire on the populace because it's very addictive : the rich just discovered a new source of revenue, together with sugar.
After 500 years of mass consuption, it's also a bit hard to ban tobbaco from our society (but, i think, a lot less hard than alcohol - the no-smoking campaigns are working well in Brazil, the no-drinking ones are not).
(to be continued)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I think I demonstrated why I think that the "Prohibition" (of alcohol) was bad, and the "badness" of it is related to the "alcohol" thing, not the "prohibition".
Remains the need to discuss about the badness (or goodnes) of the prohibition (as in ban, forbiddance) concept. My rationale is: is not good, neither bad. It's just a tool.
You appears to believe that all people are intelligent, decent and civilization bounded. I wished this would be true (I like the Anarchism principles, as stated here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism ). However, I also think of it as a utopia.
Not all people are intelligent and civilization bounded. A good parcel of the population simply don't care about anything else besides themselves, and so some kind of coercion is needed to prevent them to destroy the present society (we can argue that the present society deserves destruction, but this would be another discussion).
Prohibition (ban forbiddance), in my opinion, is just one of these coercive methods. Or social tool, as I like to think of it.
As any tool, can be used to the good, but also to the evil. So, can be good (killing is forbidden), and can also be evil (banning alcohol was just plain stupid).
(to be continued again)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
This *CAN* be a better solution than drugs prohibition, but not because prohibition is bad, but because this crazy idea of you can be BETTER.
I don't think that this can be applied to any drugs, but certainly a lot of them could be handled this way, as experiments on Holland appears to demonstrate.
Nops. IMHO, banning alcohol is plain stupid because our civilization is too much bounded to its consumption (see previous posts). On the other hand, this is not extensible to other drugs.
While a LOT of people are going to fighting (openly, or in dissimulation) the government against banning alcohol, this is not true for the rest of the drugs. Tobbaco, for example, are being successfully restricted here in Brazil, while our alcohol restrictions laws are constantly being defied by the population.
Marijuana is getting some momentum at the present moment (pun intended, it's not every day I manage to make jokes with the English language X-P), so I think it's feasible that we could see its legalization on the next years.
The other drugs, on the other hand, are hopeless for while. There're simply not enough people fighting for them.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
so some kind of coercion is needed to prevent them to destroy the present society
And I assert that if you have to coerce everyone to act in the manner you wish, then you have already destroyed present society. Allow and condemn is much more productive than banning.
As any tool, can be used to the good, but also to the evil.
I don't agree that it's a "tool" From that definition, there exists nothing that isn't a tool, yet nobody I know would ever refer to a door as a "tool" yet you'd argue it's a tool to control access. Where are you and where did you learn English? You have some linguistic peculiarities that make it very difficult to discuss the finer points of some things, as you use words in ways I've never heard any native speaker argue, yet you argue that point with such confidence that it seems you are both not a native speaker and a native speaker at the same time.
evil (banning alcohol was just plain stupid).
Yet banning marijuana is smart. Nope, I still don't get your logic. I have never heard a reasonable argument as to why alcohol should be legal and marijuana illegal, which indicates that if Prohibition was stupid, prohibition against marijuana is *more* stupid.
Learn to love Alaska
World is a lot bigger than U.S.
If no US centric discussions are welcome here, I suggest the site starts to prevents access from other countries. Until there, I will bring here my non US centric opinions and you are welcome to ignore me.
But I will not ignore you.
Live with that.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Weird enough, I have the same feeling about you,
Do it for me, and I'll do it for you.
It's not. It's a decision made about potential benefits against potential malefices.
Of course, as in any other facet of our society, abuses of power happens. But advocating that the banning of drugs are just arbitrary, is naiveness in my opinion.
Even the Prohibition of alcohol, besides antidemocratic and a way out too much truculent, wasn't simply "arbitrary". There were reasons to ban alcohol - they just weren't good enough to justify all the mess it caused.
As an example, there's something as a "timed" "Prohibition of alcohol" in São Paulo. After 22:00, selling alcohol is strictly forbidden - while being allowed at, let's say, 21:50 o'clock.
Arbitrary? Not really. Local Police records showed that 2nd degrees murders (not sure if this is the correct concept - I'm talking about murders that happens after verbal disputes than became violent) most happens between 22:00 and 4:00 (or 5, I don't recall it) of the next day. Since alcohol is heavily associated with 2nd degree murders, the rationale was that by banning alcohol after 22:00, we would face a drop on 2nd degre murder occurrences.
We can dispute the correctness of the idea, but I don't think we can call it "arbitrary". Maybe stupid, but not arbitrary.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
It's a decision made about potential benefits against potential malefices.
Using facts to get to an arbitrary line doesn't make it any less arbitrary.
We can dispute the correctness of the idea, but I don't think we can call it "arbitrary". Maybe stupid, but not arbitrary.
Then I assert you do not know the definition of "arbitrary." Or, I'd say you know the word as the dictionary defines it, but, for English, that doesn't work. Arbitrary means "declared" as opposed to deduced. The sun going down at 6 p.m. isn't arbitrary, there's a system that forces that. Closing a store at 6 p.m. is arbitrary. It could be 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. and there'd be no "real" difference (even if the 6 p.m. was selected based on extensive market analysis, it's still effectively random in that if it were changed, there'd be little to no effect on anyone or anything else and no other justification is necessary than the owner saying "because I said so."
That and you are factually wrong. There wasn't a decision made about potential benefits vs harm. It was never done that way. It was arbitrary, even by your standards. It was bribes by cotton and paper companies and such more than any reason or discussion.
Learn to love Alaska
It seems like the law is just stupid. The DEA agents are just doing their job -- requiring anything which can be used in the production of dangerous drugs to be secured -- but this guy has been doing this for 30 years and no one has stolen his iodine yet.
Will they be requiring all car owners to have a 24-hour security service watching their cars? After all, they could be stolen and used in a crime. We need to get reasonable here.
so some kind of coercion is needed to prevent them to destroy the present society
And I assert that if you have to coerce everyone to act in the manner you wish, then you have already destroyed present society. Allow and condemn is much more productive than banning.
As I said, we have fundamental disagreements about key concepts.
If I, as you, believed that every human is equally capable of being intelligent and decent, then your argument would be acceptable for me. (I almost used the work "correct", but fortunately I withdrew it in time - your arguments *are* correct - but it happens that I believe they're not valid, i.e., applicable in the real world).
As any tool, can be used to the good, but also to the evil.
Where are you and where did you learn English? You have some linguistic peculiarities that make it very difficult to discuss the finer points of some things, as you use words in ways I've never heard any native speaker argue, yet you argue that point with such confidence that it seems you are both not a native speaker and a native speaker at the same time.
Sorry about that. I'm having professional contact with many people from many parts of the world, 90% of them non native English speakers (my "worst" - note the quotes - experience was when I had to learn German in order to being able to communicate with Germans using English. It was a lot of fun, at the end - my English pronounce got contaminated with germanishes for months).
It end up that I manage to murder the English language not only the way Portuguese speakers do (my native language), but also as Japanese, German, Chinese, Indian and, funny enough, British speakers do: I still write "colour" and "behaviour" nowadays, together with "yep"'s and another american terms. (I'm still "Australian free" until the moment).
Feel free to correct me anytime you fell the need.
(to be continued)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
evil (banning alcohol was just plain stupid).
Yet banning marijuana is smart. Nope, I still don't get your logic. I have never heard a reasonable argument as to why alcohol should be legal and marijuana illegal, which indicates that if Prohibition was stupid, prohibition against marijuana is *more* stupid.
Banning marijuana is not exactly "smart". It just worked for some time in order to achieve a goal: minimize the damage done to society by drugs abuse.
Some bans works in a limited, but effective fashion: for example, we do not see, spread across the city, all that opium pubs that plagued Chinese society. (Even the crack consumption, the current plague in São Paulo, is confined in a small area we called "Cracolândia" - Crackland).
Some others did not worked at all, as the big "American Alcohol Ban" (as I used to call it).
And yet some of them worked for some time, but are facing dispute at the present moment, as marijuana.
But all this rationale of mine just works for people that, as me, did not believe in the "good nature" of human beings (I believe that most humans can be educated, and sometimes prohibitions can be a good tool to be used in such a task).
I think we reached that point in that we must agree in our disagreement. :-)
I acknowledge you have a solid argument, but as I cannot accept the fundamental concept needed to accept your argument as a possible True (i.e., I see its correctness, but I cannot be convinced about its validness), not to mention that to convince you of the validness of my argument I would need to convince you to change that very same fundamental concept of yours (what I will not achieve, as it's a strong believe of yours - and this is not a criticism, just a fact), I do not see how we can, constructively, extend our discussion.
What does not mean that it was useless. You made many good points (one of them so good that is reshaping some concetps of mine: the drunk driving), ending up in a very interesting (besides - or perhaps, due to - the eventual harshness) conversation.
Thank you - again, sarcarm mode off. :-)
As a side note, if you are on the mood I'd like to suggest the reading of this page: ttp://opioids.com/opium/history/index.html . I do not intent to change your believes with it, but to demonstrate that, being stupid or not, prohibition is being used as a social tool in many diffent cultures and epochs.
It's possible that you will extract good reasons to enforce your argument from there, just like I did for mine! :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Just for the sake of completeness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opium-Eater
Ok, still not american. But I'm getting closer. :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Then I assert you do not know the definition of "arbitrary." Or, I'd say you know the word as the dictionary defines it, but, for English, that doesn't work
Ok, another language barrier bites me in the butt.
I will assume "Arbitrary" as a decision made based on synthetic reasoning ("the day starts at sunrise" versus "the day starts at sundown", by example).
However, by accepting your definition of "Arbitrary", I simply can't see any evilness inherent to it.
So, yes. I can now accept that marijuana ban is arbitrary. I can accept that alcohol ban was arbitrary. But I do not accept the "It's arbitrary" argument a valid one on this discussion.
Things can be good or bad, being arbitrary or not. This simply does not matter.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
At last, I found something about drugs (ab)use in the 19th Century on the U.S.
http://www.netowne.com/historical/tennessee/drugs.htm
It appears that (presuming the reliability of the text), at least on Tennessee, there were drugs problems (in a similar fashion we have nowadays) on that times. What appears to corroborate my statement: US already had a drug problem in the 1800's - it's not weird that a third world guy appears to know (and research) more about US history than some Americans? =P
On the other hand, your ideals of drug legalizing are equally old, as this very same document states:
Had you made some research instead of all that ranting and raving, you could made a very impressive argument - probably one that would shut me up as I don't know american's history well enough to do a good refutal.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Without big corp money behind him he is screwed. They can get pizza defined as a vegetable, he can't get the materials he needs to run a small business. By the way, the government defines a small business in various ways depending on the type of business, but can have up to 1,500 employees and take in $21,000,000 a year. You can see why they do not give a damn about this guy, no money - no political power.
Some bans works in a limited, but effective fashion: for example, we do not see, spread across the city, all that opium pubs that plagued Chinese society. (Even the crack consumption, the current plague in São Paulo, is confined in a small area we called "Cracolândia" - Crackland).
I had already guessed Brazil to be your country of origin or residence, though you haven't explicitly said so, but your recent references to locations in Brazil and Portuguese confirm it. The thing I find interesting is that the pro-prohibitionists I speak to generally imply that if something was legal, "everyone" would do it, but when questioned, they say they would not, thus proving their own argument wrong. "Everyone" can't go try it if legal if they are sure they wouldn't. Plus, even if I can't prove the "everyone" wrong, I know it is because I wouldn't do it if legal. I don't drink or smoke (or consume caffeine outside chocolate), and wouldn't try anything just because it's legal. So the arguments of "it would be a massive problem because *everyone* would do it" are neecssarily wrong. A few more people may try it, but if it's legal, then they can hold jobs and such (yes, in the US, people are fired for getting high outside business hours).
Learn to love Alaska
I'm not going to scour the comments to see if anyone already said this yet, but I didn't see it, so here goes.
Iodine is used for the methylation step in the reaction process, and there are other ways to do it. They are not as efficient, and slower, and messier, and basically produce a lot more toxic waste and a dirtier product. So even if the DEA actually managed to block all sources of iodine, they would arguably be doing more damage than good.
If you ask me, trying to control chemicals is pointless. It's the addicts that need attention, not the chemists. But it's way sexier trying to bust criminals than help poor people.
If I, as you, believed that every human is equally capable of being intelligent and decent, then your argument would be acceptable for me.
I do not agree with that statement. There is a saying "trust but verify" You'd argue that if you verify that you didn't trust. I'd argue that you can trust and still verify. That's why you disagree with my statement working in the real world. Not "every" human need be "equally" decent. Just enough to make it right more than wrong. You are (from my perspective) arguing that *most* people are not intelligent and not decent. I disagree with your assessment of the human condition.
Feel free to correct me anytime you fell the need.
I'm only correcting when you use a term central to the argument in a manner inconsistent with the "native" definition of it, such that the argument becomes about the definition of that word, rather than the ideas in general.
Learn to love Alaska
World is a lot bigger than U.S.
Wasn't it you that argued against using parallels between cultures that weren't the same (though you used time as the differentiator, the argument is the same either way)? In that case, arguing about "the world" is pointless. There is no world government, and the right thing for South America might not be the same as what's right for China or the US. As such, by your own arguments, we must confine our arguments to specific times and places, and the US was what the comment was about, so your shift to "that doesn't work outside the US" violates one of your own previous arguments.
Learn to love Alaska
However, by accepting your definition of "Arbitrary", I simply can't see any evilness inherent to it
It is dictatorial. It's as "fair" or "unfair" as banning your children from dating until they are 16, with no discussion on comment or input from their side. That may be a "good" decision, that may be a "bad" decision. But it is arbitrary, and by definition of arbitrary, unfair to the child (even if correct and mostly fair in that 16 is better than 18, the "worst case" option).
"It's arbitrary" is an indication that it's inherently inadequately justified, until proven otherwise. The reasons marijuana is illegal now all apply *more* to alcohol than marijuana, yet alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. That's stupid and illogical ("arbitrary" is a pejorative which implies "illogical" and "unjustified" in common use).
Learn to love Alaska
"Consequently the recreational abuse of opium, in Memphis at least, was not circumscribed to society’s riffraff, but cut across class, racial, and gender boundaries. Included were any number of respectable citizens such as clerks, housewives, attorneys, cotton brokers, police officers, engineers, newspaper editors, judges. merchants, writers, bankers and the idle rich."
I assert that you are proving drug use, but not "abuse" in that these engineers went on to keep their jobs, design bridges and roads that still stand today, and otherwise have no ill effects from the use (or abuse) of drugs.
You seem to be asserting that any "use" is defacto "abuse" and that isn't a correct definition of the word. You haven't indicated "abuse", and nobody said "use" wasn't present. So we aren't arguing the same thing.
Learn to love Alaska
This is about huge American corporations seizing control from ALL small businesses, and driving them under, intentionally, methodically, without prejudice. You can't get a decent chemistry set nowadays, chemicals I used to experiment with as a 12 year old child are now a felony to posses. And NOT because of the potential of illicit drug production, Americans used to know basic chemistry; well enough to not rely on mega monopolistic corporate personas to make everything for them, with no real alternatives, save "competing" products from other mega-corporations. This is the natural regression of the American political system which favors corporate influence over the people. The USA is really just a front for criminal corporate "enterprise". I'd end this comment with a statement such as "END THE USA", except for the fact that it's already been ended.
Well...
I see a blocking problem on our "arbitrary" discussion, as I'm getting more and more confused on its use on your argument. Sometimes, we need to be picky in order to pursue a misunderstanding^w understanding about what the f*ck we are arguing about! =D
So, please, let's forget a while our argument about marijuana, and shift it to an argument about the argument itself (God, we are going to meta-argumenting - how slashdotting can this be?)
From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/arbitrary :
I don't think definition number 1 can be, correctly, applied to your argument as most drugs ban are condoned by the majority of the population - not to mention that the guys that ruled the ban were elected as the people representatives. You can argue that people are being misguided to elect representatives that do not represent our real interests (and you'll probably be right), but this is another problem.
Definition number 2 was applicable in the past, but not anymore. Explicit legislation exists today to ban some drugs (again, you can argue about the correctness of the legislation, but again, it's anther problem).
Definition number 3 does not applies neither, as if it applies we simply could not be having this conversation. As a side note, Brazilian drugs law in the 1970`s were arbitrary by this definition, as any public pro-drugs statement would be classified as "drugs apology", a federal felony!
Maybe the definition number 4 would apply - but again, the majority of people either support or does not care about the issue, so I don't think the "unsupported" applies. Since there're ongoing efforts on studying the matter, the "unreasonable" does not applies neither. So it would be a weak argumentation.
Exampling, the Prohibition of alcohol can be tagged as arbitrary, because the people didn't support it at all - definitions 1, 2 and 3 full applies here (and 4 partially, as it was unsupported by most part of the people).
5 and 6 are completely off our topic, I hope we do not have to argue about it. :-)
(to be continued).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
"It's arbitrary" is an indication that it's inherently inadequately justified, until proven otherwise. The reasons marijuana is illegal now all apply *more* to alcohol than marijuana, yet alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. That's stupid and illogical ("arbitrary" is a pejorative which implies "illogical" and "unjustified" in common use).
I think that I finally understand what you means for "arbitrary", but I beg your pardon as I disagree of the inherent evilness of it.
You appears to have profound dislike about what can be called "synthetic reasoning", and I'm guessing that you blindly (I know the use of this word is commonly pejorative in English, but I do not want to be pejorative - I just could not found a better word) thrust on rational reasoning.
The problem is that rational reasoning is not inherently better than the synthetic ones. Given an wrong or bad axiom, all the cards castle falls apart when applied to reality. Sometimes you just can't reach a valid axiom in order to make your rational reasoning works (being pedantic, your rationale can be always correct, but not always valid).
So, I cannot accept your statement of "it's illogical or unjustified, so it's bad". Logical and justified things can be bad also.
I can accept, however, that you find all the thing plain stupid (I can even agree sometimes) - but by doing that, you would be being arbitrary too - and I cannot accept that you can, on good faith, do a thing yourself that you not condone on others (exception made on some sexual practices I love being done by my women, but wouldn't do it myself - since I presuming you're male, this does not applies either!). :-D
This is the main reason I though badly about you for while (things changed on the drunk driving discussion, when I realized I was wrong about it - so the "problem" should be something else).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I had already guessed Brazil to be your country of origin or residence, though you haven't explicitly said so, but your recent references to locations in Brazil and Portuguese confirm it.
As a side note, I lived 25 years on Manaus, Amazon. Drugs were cheaper there, as Manaus is one of the entry point from drugs made by drugs cartels on Colombia et all.
Man, I saw a lot of bad things happening to people that uses drugs. Not all directly caused by drugs, granted, but... It's hard do not associate one thing with the other.
The thing I find interesting is that the pro-prohibitionists I speak to generally imply that if something was legal, "everyone" would do it, but when questioned, they say they would not, thus proving their own argument wrong.
I totally agree. However, the same applies with the other side. A lot of drugs users from my social circles does not understand how I can accept their choices without condoning it. The faces of the guys that offered me marijuana last time was simply remarkable. I had to take a walk around the show, as their uncomfortable was undisguisable.
So the arguments of "it would be a massive problem because *everyone* would do it" are neecssarily wrong. A few more people may try it, but if it's legal, then they can hold jobs and such (yes, in the US, people are fired for getting high outside business hours).
I agree.
What I disagree with you is that "just a few people wound try it". I think that a lot of irresponsible people would be going to abuse drugs, with all the splash damage inherent to it. I also think that this same irresponsible people are also lazy enough to seek drugs if it would be too hard or too costly, preferring being irresponsible with some other less damaging (and legal) drugs.
Using your "drunk driving" rationale, if being irresponsible were a felony, drugs prohibition would be useless as the core problem would be already dealt with.
But while irresponsibility is legal, I can't see how to legalize all drugs as you defends.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I deeply disagrees.
The nowadays word is a big, messy culture with a lot of things in common. Putting aside some minor, secondary countries and regions - like Africa, North Korea, Afganstan, etc, we all share a lot of the modern thinking and desires.
There're cultural nuances, but nothing that could put Brazil aside Japan (I'm carefully avoiding using USA on this matter, as I already found some north-americans that really thinks USA is a civilization apart from the rest of the world).
The USA on the XIX Century were a rural country, still fighting for territorial occupation. You were still killing your natives for land at that time. USA started their way to be a World biggest Military and Industrial Power only during 2nd World War.
XXI Century Brazil is closer to the XXI Century USA than the XXI Century USA is close to the XIX Century USA.
And, by the way, we are all humans. Suffering on poor China is the same suffering on the poor Africa, and the pollution on the rich China is the same pollution on the Mexico. Cultural nuances shapes diffident solutions for the same problems.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
And I asserting what the link says, and you quoted: "Consequently the recreational abuse of opium,"
We can argue in order to reach a consensus about what is "use", and what is "abuse".
Let's begin with mine:
Use : making (recreational, in our case) use of something in a way that does not perverts its original (recreational, in our case) intent.
Example of alcohol use: occasionally getting drunk with friends getting a good chat or some other fun time.
Abuse: perverting the original intent of the drug.
Example: getting drunk everyday, and suffering from this, as you cannot stop yourself from doing that.
Marijuana, Cocaine, Opium, Alcoho, whatever - the intended purpose of all them is to get some pleasure.
As soon as the subject gets addicted, and starts to use the drugs just because he can not stop, getting so or more hurts as he gets pleasure (if any pleasure is got at all - some drugs stops working, while still being necessary to the metabolism), I define it as an abuse.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Damn. I should get some sleep, I wrote some really bad sentences above. :-(
Where I wrote "The nowadays word", please read "The nowadays World".
Where I wrote "but nothing that could put Brazil aside Japan", please read "but nothing that could get Brazil out the side of Japan".
Where I wrote "You were still killing your natives", please read "You were still legally killing your natives".
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Where I wrote "secondary countries and regions", please read "laggards, archaic countries and regions" - I'm really lost here, I could not think on a good English translation for "países arcaicos e anacrônicos".
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
There is a saying "trust but verify"
This does not had worked well on my life. I'm getting better results with "Verify, and then trust".
Our arguments reflects our beliefs, and I think we're reaching some core personal concepts too much bounded to personal experiences to be disputed.
But at least, they can be acknowledged and understood.
You are (from my perspective) arguing that *most* people are not intelligent and not decent. I disagree with your assessment of the human condition.
An american philosopher (I forgot who) once said something like: "What's percentage of sick people a society can sustain without getting sick itself?"
We don't need that most people be dumb and indecent. It's enough than a sufficient number of them exists to pervert the society. I believe that this "sufficient number" is smaller than you think.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
This does not had worked well on my life. I'm getting better results with "Verify, and then trust".
Our arguments reflects our beliefs, and I think we're reaching some core personal concepts too much bounded to personal experiences to be disputed.
It may not be polite, but perhaps the issue is that I was brought up in the US, and you were brought up in a 3rd world country. I've seen people act mainly from the position of them being "good" without a massively large contingent of "bad" in the general actions.
I believe that this "sufficient number" is smaller than you think.
It depends on the sickness. "dumb" doesn't harm society that much. We have lots of dumb, even had a few doses of it as ruler, and it didn't break anything any more than the non-dumb did in the same situations. But indecent is a different story. But not one we can discuss. Some people would assert gays are indecent. Yet even with 10% gays, society has not become "perverted" enough to give them equal rights. What level of gayness is necessary until gay partners are allowed to visit their loved ones in the hospital? Or porn watchers. That's "indecent" yet is about 80% of people by some estimates, and society is still largely prudish. Every president in the last 30 years has admitted illegal drug use, yet drugs are still illegal. I don't see the perversion you assert, even for larger numbers.
Learn to love Alaska
Marijuana is not "addictive" in the chemical sense. As such, most of the "problems" you associate with addiction are impossible. It's nearly impossible to "abuse" by your definition.
Learn to love Alaska
Man, I saw a lot of bad things happening to people that uses drugs. Not all directly caused by drugs, granted, but... It's hard do not associate one thing with the other.
And when you look back, what do you think it would be like if the drugs were free and dispensed at the store alongside aspirin? Would the "Bad things" have happened if people weren't having to deal with criminals and steal and such to get the money for the high prices for illegal substances? From the US experience with Prohibition, the answer is "no", but I'm sure you'll discard that answer if you find it inconvenient.
What I disagree with you is that "just a few people wound try it". I think that a lot of irresponsible people would be going to abuse drugs, with all the splash damage inherent to it.
The "splash damage" is greatly reduced when the drugs are legal, to a greater benefit to users and society than the minor reduction in users from prohibition.
Using your "drunk driving" rationale, if being irresponsible were a felony, drugs prohibition would be useless as the core problem would be already dealt with.
If irresponsible were a felony, we'd all be in jail. I don't know of anyone that didn't do something stupid at some point or another. Irresponsible is not a felony, nor should it be. It should be a crime only when it harms, or would likely harm someone else.
Learn to love Alaska
Marijuana *can* cause psychological dependence, but granted - tobacco too.
And you are right - it's nearly impossible to abuse marijuana, unless the poor bastard is masochist, suicidal or have some serious psychological issues (mainly anxiety).
What does not means that constant use of marijuana is safe, but granted, tobacco and alcohol neither.
As I said in some other posting, I think that we can see marijuana being legalized in a few years.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
It may not be polite, but perhaps the issue is that I was brought up in the US, and you were brought up in a 3rd world country
Reality is rarely polite. And you're right. Brazil is experiencing a severe ethical crisis for, let's say, 30 years at least.
It depends on the sickness. "dumb" doesn't harm society that much.[..]
Well, I think that dumbness is one of the worst "social sickness" possible. The perpetual reelection of a very nasty cast of corrupt politicians in some states in Brazil is a prove of that. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic.
We must take some care about some subjects, as this "social sickness" matter can be badly misused. Homosexuality was never a social danger - sociopathy, on the other hand, is.
Dishonesty can be hugely disruptive, selfishness too.
Imagine living on a society where one can commonly hit a pedestrian with his car/motocycle and leave without hassle, as very few people are willing to "waste his time" going to the police to testify the event - the victim end up speaking alone
Or else a society in which you must check and recheck every transaction on every place, as people is used to steal small amounts of your change, charge more than the regular price of the product or even deliver a bit less of the product you're buying.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
And when you look back, what do you think it would be like if the drugs were free and dispensed at the store alongside aspirin? Would the "Bad things" have happened if people weren't having to deal with criminals and steal and such to get the money for the high prices for illegal substances? From the US experience with Prohibition, the answer is "no", but I'm sure you'll discard that answer if you find it inconvenient.
If drugs were yet more cheaper and freely available, things probably would gone worst. I saw people (a boyfriend of my sister) bleeding on his nose on my bathroom after sneezing cocaine (bastard, he did it on my house without asking), and then going to the night crashing the car and hurting people. His brother died in another car accident, some years later
I saw fathers leaving wife and son alone on home, while going out to get high with "friends".
I lost friends in car accidents due to intoxicated drivers. Friends of mine had relatives heavily injured (and impaired for life) on that same accidents.
I know I already mentioned it, but I will mention again: Manaus is (or were, I don't live there anymore) one major cocaine entry point in Brazil. Cocaine is very cheap and easily available there, to the point in that it was possible to see cocaine being served together with scotch and wine on some college parties.
On the aftermath, the drug users that were rich could walk away from the mess as they could afford the medical care needed to survive healthy the experience (but some few of them must live with some health problems for the rest of their lives).
The users that could not afford the medical care, well... They just keep going on the best they can.
Of course the major part of these guys managed to walk way almost intact. But a good, significantly part of them did not - counting friends, acquaintances and their relatives, I will guess that 16 to 18 people died or got heavily impaired somewhat due to, direct or indirect, drugs abuse on an universe of... hummm... 120 or 130 people I can remember somehow (Orkut and Facebook to the rescue!).
Talking with relatives that always lived here in São Paulo, things are not that harsh. People dies and get health problems everywhere and all the time, but the incidence on my social circle are one order of magnitude higher than on theirs.
Cocaine and some other drugs are somewhat more expensive here in São Paulo (the popular drug here appears to be marijuana).
I would be naive to conclude that drugs are the only reason for that, but I would be even more naive by ruling them out from the equation.
If irresponsible were a felony, we'd all be in jail.
On a second thought, you are right. I would got a life sentence for some things I did when younger... :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Man, I just noted it now. Sorry.
You used homosexuality and porn watchers on your argument due my use of the verb "pervert" on mine.
Strictly speaking, "to pervert" something is to derive it from its fundamental/natural meaning or objective.
Since the natural purpose of having sex is making babies, using a condom is a perversion - as its objective is to do not making babies while having sex.
Philosophers, mainly the one from the earlier centuries (or at least the ones I used to read!), tend to use the verb "pervert" on that meaning, and not on the currently popular one used to nominate some sexual practices or choices.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Marijuana *can* cause psychological dependence, but granted - tobacco too.
Again, you never addressed the ice cream comparison, and pretended it wasn't serious. Food can cause a psychological dependence such that people compulsively over eat, causing more health problems than all dugs combined (at least currently in the USA, your country may vary, but inappropriate eating kills more people than all drugs combined).
What does not means that constant use of marijuana is safe, but granted, tobacco and alcohol neither.
Though composed of English words, that sentence is unparsable.
As I said in some other posting, I think that we can see marijuana being legalized in a few years.
Never. Politiicans will never admit failure. The people don't care enough for the fight it would take to get it through. At best, there would be a minor shift to libertarian that gets it through, but it's never going to be a core issue. And it won't be going through any time soon.
Learn to love Alaska
OMG, you're right. Only about 10k people a year are killed by drunks, and the murder rate is real low per 100k. Which is apples and oranges of course, you gotta keep the units straight. It's a lotta people no matter what. I'd bet the "death by McDonalds cholesterol" swamps them all. http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html Meth is more insidious. As an old hippie myself, I learned back in the '60s - Speed Kills. And in this case it really does. A couple of life long friends are dead of it - well, their husks still walk around, so they aren't counted as drug deaths, but my friends are dead. It's really a shame something like it had to come along and remove the simplicity of the "just make drugs legal" slogan. Though I suppose it would improve the breed if we just let the stupids have meth and die...Darwin and all that.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Been a long day and perhaps my brain just ain't so sharp at the moment, but I don't get your point about "...keep the units straight": on average, in any arbitrary set of 100,000 Americans, about 1 will be killed by a drunk driver, 4 will be murdered and 11 will commit suicide (and somewhere around 146 will die as a result of tobacco smoking). In only one of those scenarios do police attempt to pre-emptively prevent the outcome by arbitrarily stopping people at police check points absent any probable cause. I'm also regularly shocked by the lack of relative attention suicide gets.
You're right: meth is very insidious - I too have a friend who is a "husk" - he went completely nuts on it, coke and ecstacy and ended up in the mental ward of the hospital and he never came back to normal. I visited him every day for the first 30 days he was in there and your description of "husk" is spot on: the guy I knew just didn't live there anymore.
However, there are lots and lots of things which are not particularly good for humans. My point is pragmatic, not Darwinian: prohibition has worse consequences and outcomes than non-prohibition. Are there still horrible outcomes? Yup. But fewer. And adults ought to be free to do what they want, including things which are demonstrably sub-optimal.
Homosexuality was never a social danger - sociopathy, on the other hand, is.
You've not defined what is a social danger. Who gets to make that decision, and why? We are told that gays getting marriage rights will harm "marriage" and by that, families (and thus society), so it feels "convenient" that you get to assert that the tough ones to defend are "not a danger" and pick others more easy to defend for your sicknesses. I can't form rational arguments against a moving bar. You apparently get to decide what most people in a place thing is a "sickness" even if it doesn't agree with what the people there assert is.
Learn to love Alaska
You used homosexuality and porn watchers on your argument due my use of the verb "pervert" on mine.
That's one of the reasons you come across as non-native, even if fluent. Your word choice isn't colored by general use, even if technically correct. "twisted" would be a more appropriate word for what you meant, and pervert in that context would point to moral twisting, more than just any general deviation.
Since the natural purpose of having sex is making babies, using a condom is a perversion - as its objective is to do not making babies while having sex.
Spoken like a Catholic. A condom is a "perversion" like a tissue is a "perversion" of a sneeze. You are asserting that the "purpose" of sex is making babies. There is no "purpose" to sex. It is a desire instilled by genetics to procreate, but that doesn't mean the "purpose" is procreation. The "purpose" is to satisfy a desire for orgasm. That "desire" is instilled via genetics for the purpose of procration, but sex is about procreation like sneezing is about curing you of a viral infection. Again, you assert the "truth" in a manner best suited for your convenience, and without concern about other options or other's opinions.
Learn to love Alaska
Or else a society in which you must check and recheck every transaction on every place, as people is used to steal small amounts of your change, charge more than the regular price of the product or even deliver a bit less of the product you're buying.
Not too "disruptive." If you go to the discount malls in China, you do your best to pay in exact change, as they'll change the deal after they have your money. But yet, there are piles of those malls. They gauge the person they are dealing with, and would never do that to a local, so there's not that much disruption, but for a foreigner, they'll feign the inability to make change if they think you'll buy another widget to round up the transaction to the amount you handed over. And they'll be very reluctant to cancel the transaction because you didn't want another widget. But, even with tactics like that, the society still functions well and the street malls are common and spreading. Ad for giving you a bit less than you paid for, you should pay attention to the quality problems from Chinese goods. Their quality assurance is very good, but not always in the interest of the buyer.
Learn to love Alaska
Marijuana *can* cause psychological dependence, but granted - tobacco too.
Again, you never addressed the ice cream comparison, and pretended it wasn't serious. Food can cause a psychological dependence such that people compulsively over eat, causing more health problems than all dugs combined (at least currently in the USA, your country may vary, but inappropriate eating kills more people than all drugs combined).
I didn't understood at that time. Eating abuse around here is commonly associated to fast food and similar fat/sodium rich foods.
We do not have the obesity problem US is facing now. Yet.
It's possible that we would face this problem but with less severity - "healthy" food is cheaper here. By the price of a BigMac, you can eat a balanced meal (vegetables, meat and cereals) on a self-service restaurant.
IIRC, obesity incidence is a bit higher on the poorer population, probably due to their lesser education (our basic education is a tragedy - or a really bad joke, if you works on education).
What does not means that constant use of marijuana is safe, but granted, tobacco and alcohol neither.
Though composed of English words, that sentence is unparsable.
Sorry. Let me try again from scratch: It's nearly impossible to abuse marijuana, unless the poor bastard is masochist, suicidal or have some serious psychological issues (mainly anxiety). But this does not mean that marijuana consumption is safe - but, granted, nor tobacco and alcohol consumption is.
(Portuguese speakers forms sentences differently than English ones, but some English phrases can be, correctly, formed in a way also valid on Portuguese - but not all of them, and sometimes we end up writing white noise instead.)
As I said in some other posting, I think that we can see marijuana being legalized in a few years.
Never. Politiicans will never admit failure. The people don't care enough for the fight it would take to get it through. At best, there would be a minor shift to libertarian that gets it through, but it's never going to be a core issue. And it won't be going through any time soon.
Weird enough, there're people seriously fighting for marijuana legalization here at Brazil. We are not too far from reaching a civil disobedience situation, in a very similar fashion did by Americans on the Prohibition (of alcohol).
People around here doesn't really care about it neither, but we have a cultural resistance to Regulations - due the 1970's Military Dictatorship perhaps. People tends to grudge anything that was imposed by the Government at that time, and our drugs legislation is one of the dictatorship inheritage.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
That's one of the reasons you come across as non-native, even if fluent. Your word choice isn't colored by general use, even if technically correct. "twisted" would be a more appropriate word for what you meant, and pervert in that context would point to moral twisting, more than just any general deviation.
Note taken.
As House MD said once: "Read less, more TV". I never thought that I would use it on myself. =D
Spoken like a Catholic. A condom is a "perversion" like a tissue is a "perversion" of a sneeze. You are asserting that the "purpose" of sex is making babies. There is no "purpose" to sex. It is a desire instilled by genetics to procreate, but that doesn't mean the "purpose" is procreation. The "purpose" is to satisfy a desire for orgasm. That "desire" is instilled via genetics for the purpose of procration, but sex is about procreation like sneezing is about curing you of a viral infection.
Man, we're going metaphysical now. =D
You are right, but I'm right also. Defining "purpose" is essentially arbitrary (on the pedantic meaning of the word), as different people (or even the same ones!), from different perspectives, can state differently the "purpose" of the same thing - and all of them could be equally right (or wrong!) given a adequate (or not) subset of the reality to discuss on.
Again, you assert the "truth" in a manner best suited for your convenience, and without concern about other options or other's opinions.
There's no "Truth" - only personals, limited (and sometimes, shared) versions from it.
You're right. I have no concern about other people opinions because... these opinions are theirs, not mines! All I can do is to try to keep my mind open to these opinions (given that their owners are willing to communicate them to me) and, occasionally, reshape my owns once I feel the need.
Your uneasiness about my "strong, convenient" opinions is a situation that belongs to you, not to me. I don't have any problem with any "strong, convenient" opinion from nobody, as it will not affect me or my beliefs unless I let them.
And I will only let them affect my beliefs if I think they are right (or righter) than my owns, when so I will just don't care if they are strong, convenient or fallen from Mars.
This does not prevents me to criticize such opinions, but since no one is obliged to accept - or even listen to! - my statements, I'm also don't care, as I do not intent to catechize some one, but to trial my opinions by challenging the ones that sounds incompatible.
As a side note, you are not the first one that criticizes me about this - don't feel alone in the world! ;-)
(By the way, don't misunderstand my "I don't care" with "I don't appreciate" - I don't care in the sense that I will not be bothered if you don't reshape your opinions due to mines - to tell the true, I will not bother even if you do - but I really appreciate the fact you're sharing your opinions to me and, equally important, bothering to challenge my own).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
but you blame tobacco and alcohol for the presence of a black market?
Just for the sake of completeness: I don't blame tobacco and alcohol for the presence of a black market. I blame people desiring the cheapest (without any other concerning) tobacco and alcohol for the presence a black market.
It's the same about thugs and drug cartels: I blame the people that sticks money on their (thugs and cartels) asses for their existence.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Well.... At least Chinese appears to do gauge the customer. :-)
Their quality assurance is very good, but not always in the interest of the buyer.
Marvelous, I could not said it better. :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
you can't do 'just a little' meth or be an occasional user. You get hooked, hardcore
Fact: There is very little in the way of withdrawal symptoms from meth, mostly you just sleep for days. Many people use amphetamines casually without getting addicted, in fact our armed services gives it to the troops in certain situations to promote wakefulness, they're called 'go pills'.
some like heroin can have fatal withdrawal symptoms
Fact: Nobody ever dies directly from heroin withdrawal. The perfectly legal drug alcohol, on the other hand, can indeed cause death upon withdrawal. Actually, using just about any measure of "harmfulness" you want, alcohol is far and away THE most dangerous drug, whether you look at addiction potential, severity of withdrawal, harm to the body, cost and/or danger to society, whatever you look at... Good old booze is number one. This inconvenient fact is a big reason why our current drugs laws are so pathetically hypocritical. If there were any rhyme or reason to the law alcohol would be illegal and heroin would be easily available at the local drugstore. The reality is that the laws are completely arbitrary in their approach as to what's dangerous and what isn't.