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!:-)
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.
I'm not as stupid as you think, yet you treat me as such continually.
Weird enough, I have the same feeling about you,
Presume I'm right then prove me wrong.
Do it for me, and I'll do it for you.
It's arbitrary. [.....]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, we've changed as people, so prohibition would work now? Then why not add alcohol to the banned list?
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.
How is it that you can agree Prohibition was "bad", but prohibition is good?
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).
How is it that you can agree Prohibition was "bad", but prohibition is good?
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).
(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.
Marijuana does not cause lung cancer. Dr. Donald Tashkin made this finding 6 years ago now
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
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.
Smoking marijuana, even infrequently, can cause burning and stinging of the mouth and throat, and cause heavy coughing. Scientists have found that regular marijuana smokers can experience the same respiratory problems as tobacco smokers do, including:
Daily cough and phlegm production More frequent acute chest illnesses Increased risk of lung infections Obstructed airways
And
Because marijuana smoke contains three times the amount of tar found in tobacco smoke and 50 percent more carcinogens, it would seem logical to deduce that there is an increased risk of lung cancer for marijuana smokers. However, researchers have not been able to definitively prove such a link because their studies have not been able to adjust for tobacco smoking and other factors that might also increase the risk.
And more
Research indicates that THC impairs the body's immune system from fighting disease, which can cause a wide variety of health problems. One study found that marijuana actually inhibited the disease-preventing actions of key immune cells. Another study found that THC increased the risk of developing bacterial infections and tumors.
Finally:
When high doses of marijuana are used, usually when eaten in food rather than smoked, users can experience the following symptoms:
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.
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.
But that's ok, I understand your pathological need to be right, even if you lie to us and yourself
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..
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.
[....] 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.
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.
It wasn't about "drug use" it was about trade and English imperialism.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
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! :-)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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)
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).
Because you are a jerk. :-)
(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.
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.
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
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.
Weird enough, I'm still getting your attention.
Funny, uh?
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.
Point taken. Thank you.
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.
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.
We are all humans, aren't we?
I agree that using a example from China can be utterly ironic, but no less valid - IMHO.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-States-Targeting-Black-Market-Cigarette-Sales-100426174.html
Do better. Try google.
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..
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.
I don't. The grand parent of my posts thinks it.
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.
We are all humans, aren't we?