Yes, I suppose this would also require the ban of alcohol. We shouldn't really be treating alcohol and drugs differently.
No? Drop dead.
Um, hello? I just said "yes".
The fact that someone might be hurt by your actions does not mean those actions can reasonably be taken away.
It's not legal to drive above the speed limit. Why? After all, doing so doesn't guarantee that anyone will die. It increases the likelyhood that someone will die, but then again, so will being intoxicated. The point is: we limit what people may legally do to prevent unnecessary injury/death. Unfortunately, people are convinced that doing drugs is a human right and can therefore not be revoked.
AND EXPLAIN ALCOHOL. You use an anti-drug argument about a drug causing car accidents yet completely (and convenientyl) gloss over the fact that alcohol causes more accidents than anything else!
I don't recall saying that alcohol should be treated differently from drugs.
You are just so messed up that I can't even begin to gather my thoughts for an appropriate response; you are too far gone. I pray for the sake of our species that your ideals and D.N.A. propagate as little as possible, because your thoughts alone cause harm the rest of us.
I feel good knowing that my ideals are a serious threat to your way of thinking, and I'm even more confident now that the world I imagine may one day be reality. (By the way, don't bother praying. No supreme being exists. Religion and all its archaic practices are going the way of the dodo.)
I especially find the fact that you would stop consuming alcohol if it were made illegal EXTREMLY funny, and indicative of what a spineless member of the human species you are.
You simpleton. I didn't say that I'd stop drinking alcohol because I'd believe that suddenly it was bad for me. I'd do it because I acknowledge the law. I know that I myself am responsible enough to drink alcohol without accidently killing another person, but I understand the fact that a law cannot handle such things on a case-by-case basis. The lowest-common-denominator must be met when writing law. Why do you think that the speed limit seems rather low in most places? It's because the least-capable driver on the road must still be reasonably safe at the speed limit. The many must suffer because of the shortcomings of the few. That's just the way it works.
All laws should be obeyed.
Yes, that's the point of laws. If you have a problem with a particular law, then you may use the mechanisms that our society has in place to help change the law. Until that happens, obey the law as it is currently written.
And Sharia (Islamic) law should be obeyed by those people too, because obeying the law of the land is the only thing that matters, right?
If they wanted it different, they would change it.
You'd be about as great a president as a Bush, whom I somehow suspect you would vote for simply as a function of a flawed personality.
Often, people assume that I'm a Bush supporter. I'm not.
I'm done. Good-bye, and go to hell, where you belong.
Um yeah. I'm a materialist/atheist. I don't acknowledge the concept of hell.
People should be punished for actual harm caused, not harm that may never come to pass.
And what of the people who died? I'm pretty sure they'd rather still be alive than just have the offender punished. But, oh, gee -- it's too late for that.
I see, so when you say ban drugs, you include alcohol. Nevermind the problems it would cause, and nevermind it wouldn't solve the original problem to begin with.
The problems you're speaking of are an implementation issue, not a conceptual issue. I agree that dealing with these problems would be quite a challenge to society, but I'm confident it could be done.
Please, that's what you're aiming for. There's no logic to your statement, since you're trying to use fear to get others to agree with you; the fear the "OMG someone might get hurt!" Let me make this clear: there's no reason to use a hypothetical situtation at all when trying to make your case. The reason is that you cannot know the future, you cannot say for certain that action A will cause B.
Fair enough. But I can say that "B is more likely to occur after A has happened". Why do you think we have speed limits on the road? Death is more likely to occur when people are speeding. Similarly, death is more likely to occur when people are intoxicated. People do both things for their own personal pleasure, and both things put other people at a higher risk of injury.
With bans, you have people still driving under the influence of drugs, and you have many more innocent people shot because the market the provides drugs is illegal (but never stops existing).
Sounds to me like you're theorizing a situation where this ban was very poorly implemented and not adequately enforced -- much like the situation we have in the world today.
It was my plea to remove yourself from this world, so that we don't have to deal with the consequences of your 'logic.'
I take comfort in the fact that you see my type of thinking as a serious threat to the sort of world that you envision. If you didn't, you wouldn't be suggesting that I commit suicide before these thoughts spread.
You see a problem (which is likely not even a very large one), want to deal with it by stripping people of their rights even when its evident your 'solution' doesn't do anything to solve the original problem and causes other problems which are magnitudes worse.
This may surprise you, but "human rights" is not an absolute constant in the universe. It's a totally arbitrary concept, invented by some humans. And not everyone agrees that people should have the multitudes of rights that they have in many parts of the world. Because the definition is arbitrary, you can't prove that your definition of human rights is any more correct than anyone else's.
I've never tried pot or any other illegal drug, nor do I really have a desire to try them. Yet I stand 100% behind those that want to legalize all drug use. I do this because I believe strongly in individual rights. I believe that no one ever has any right to tell you what you may do to your own body. I also don't like what some radical groups say, but I believe they have the right to say it (practicing it is another matter). That's what logical people that belive in individual rights do.
I completely agree that a person should be allowed to do whatever they want to themselves. But the moment that a person increases the likelyhood that they may kill another person (drunk driving, etc.), then it's no longer an individual right, is it?
Yet alcohol doesn't bother you a bit does it? No one said it should be legal to drive while under some kind of chemical influence. They just said it should not be illegal to put in your body what you want.
Acutally, yes, alcohol does bother me in this sense. I consider alcohol and drugs to be exactly equivalent in this issue.
Its funny that you claim to support your views with logic, yet this argument is purely an emotional one (what about the poor poor innocent 6 year old orphan with the curly hair and dimples that no matter how many people spit on her she had the brightest smile in the world).
In what way did I describe the victim's appearance, demeanor, or background in this hypothetical situation? I did not describe any such thing. What you imagined was merely an emotional reaction to my question that you simply didn't have the wherewithal to ignore, or even recognize. The only modifier I used to describe the victim was "innocent", and that was only done to indicate that this person had no involvement with the consumption of the intoxicating substance.
Please, do the world a favor, and exersice your right to die.
That's certainly a convincing argument for the legalization of drugs. I bet you just got a lot more people behind you.
Are you implying that you do not ever drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or cigars, drink caffeine? Because if you do, then you are certainly a hypocrite. I'll type a longer response this weekend.
First of all, there is no correlation between caffeine/tobacco use and accidents. Generally, no innocent bystanders die as a result of someone going on a coffee binge or smoking a pack of cigarettes.
Second, I certainly do use alcohol, but that doesn't make me a hypocrite. My argument is not that all people are irresponsible. My argument is that some people are irresponsible enough to "ruin it for the rest of us", so to speak. If any law were passed banning the consumption of alcohol, I would readily comply.
How dare you be so arrogant and self important to think you have the right to tell someone else what they can do with their body.
That's an easy one. The reason is: actions performed by people that seem to affect only themselves actually do affect others. For example: drug use --> intoxication --> accident --> death of innocent bystander.
The mistake you are making is to think that the prohibition of intoxicating substances somehow reduces the incidence of drug related deaths (innocent third party or otherwise). It does not.
This is an implementation issue, not a conceptual issue. The concept is sound. What you're suggesting is that we throw up our hands and say "well, we don't seem to be very good at stopping drug use, so we might as well let it happen."
You seem to be fixated by the misconception that the legal status of an intoxicating drug has some bearing on the responsibility of the individual involved in a car crash. Hopefully you will be able to understand the difference between responsible and irresponsible use in the context of recreational activity.
That's not a misconception. If the individual couldn't get access to the drug, s/he would be sober and the car crash probably wouldn't have happened.
You have friends that do drugs, and you have co-workers that do drugs.
Wrong again. I have a pretty close group of friends, and when we discovered that one of us had started using drugs, that person was quickly ostracized because the rest of us don't put up with that sort of crap. As far as my coworkers go: the sort of work that I do is such that a person caught using drugs would probably not be allowed to even work in the same industry again, let alone the same company. It isn't worth the risk, so they don't do it.
Drug users need drugs like gay people need gay sex:)
That's a junk analogy. Drug users chose to become drug users.
I daresay your attitude is actually evil, and certainly counter to personal freedom. I shudder to think that people like you vote to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.
People have been given plenty of chances with personal freedoms and they've showed time and time again that they're careless, inconsiderate, and irresponsible.
Anyway, I could argue that people don't need to drive, because it's a priviledge, not a right.
That's correct, it is a privilege and not a right. But that doesn't change the fact that people need to do it. The economy would break down if people couldn't drive to work or drive to the store. Just because something isn't a basic human right doesn't mean that it isn't necessary.
But I'd much rather argue the fact that people do need to do drugs. That's precisely why there is a neverending demand for them. People need to be free, and domain over your own body is an important part of that.
That's funny, because I don't need to do drugs. No one in my family uses drugs, and neither do any of my friends. None of my coworkers use drugs. We all seem to be happy and productive people, and there's nothing special about us that makes us able to function in this way. It's a lot more likely that people who claim that they need drugs are just trying to get away with something.
Well, you clearly think that you know why I'm opposed to the legalization of drugs. Interestingly, you're completely wrong. It is quite possible that I am less effected by propaganda than anyone else. To the occasional annoyance of friends and family members, all important moral and philosophical decisions I make are the result of logic and not emotion. I have never known anyone personally that has died (or even been injured) as a result of them, or anyone else, having consumed an intoxicating substance. No alcohol poisoning, no OD's, no drunk driving wrecks, nothing. I thus only care about this issue from a practical point of view.
Individual citizens who happen to like using drugs have a direct personal interest in lobbying for drug legalization. Thus, the arguments made by such citizens must be taken with a grain of salt -- once a person has experienced a physical/mental euphoria as a result of a particular action, their rationalization of that action can no longer be trusted as being objective.
I understand that responsible people can live their life doing drugs without causing others harm. Unfortunately, 'responsible people' is not the same as 'all people'. Innocent people die as a direct result of others being intoxicated. Unacceptable.
Consider the following: a person consumes some controlled substance which impairs their ability to drive a car. They drive anyway and kill an innocent pedestrian. Because of the nature of the intoxicating substance in this case, it was extremely unlikely that the driver, if sober, would have killed the pedestrian.
How do you reconcile this situation? Punishing the offender will not bring back the innocent that was killed. Would you argue that the freedom of the offender to do what he did is worth an indeterminate number of innocent lives? If you answer 'yes', would you believe that not everyone is as willing to increase their own risk of death as you are? How do you reconcile that?
The only people I can imagine actually supporting the drug war are either people who have no notion of history, or those who are profiting immensely from it in some way.
I fall into neither category. I submit that the failure of Prohibition was more due to implementation than concept.
Everyone who rode a motorcycle rode a bicycle. Does that mean that riding a bicycle is a "gateway vehicle" to motorcyling?
This is a very poor analogy.
First of all, riding a motorcycle (versus driving a car) does not at all increase the probability of injuring another person versus driving a car. A person who has been drinking or smoking, for example, would be less capable of driving a car or handling a firearm while under the influence -- thus increasing the probability of injuring a bystander. A motorcyclist, however, is actually less dangerous to other drivers because the mass of his vehicle is less than than the mass of a car by an order of magnitude.
Secondly, you're quoting absolute figures for those morality statistics. What would actually be relevant (if this analogy were valid in the first place) would be the percentages of motorcycle-riding experiences versus drug-using experiences that result in a death.
Thirdly, using some sort of motorized vehicle is necessary for many people to whom public transportation is not available. As I've already established, riding a motorcyle is actually less dangerous than driving a car for everyone other than the rider.
If you use drugs and don't affect anyone else then I don't care and neither should the government.
I would agree with that position -- if you could guarantee that no one else would be affected. But you can't guarantee that. No one can. Legalization of intoxicating substances (alcohol included) suggests that the lives of an indeterminate number of innocent people are worth less than the collective right of people to ingest said intoxicating substances. This isn't the case.
Oh, don't be dense. It's obvious to everyone expect you that what the grandparent meant was: "The police accidently misidentified one guy as a terrorist and shot him..."
It's not like the fucking gun misfired. They meant to kill this guy, and they got it done. I applaud their efficiency.
It's also worth nothing that all three of those substances are addictive and it's possible to fatally overdose with all three.
That's a good point, and one that people often miss. We should illegalize those drugs as well. After all, people haven't exactly shown that they can be trusted with alcohol.
Nice little logical fallacies you have there. Using pot doesn't mean you will turn to harder drugs, not even that a large majority will. I know people that smoked quite a bit, but they never expressed interest in anything harder (indeed, since they knew the dangers of the harder stuff, they decided it wasn't worth bothering with).
What the hell? That wasn't a logical fallacy at all. It was just a hypothetical situation, and one that is actually realistic.
You missed the point. People were laughing at the "crazy" ones many many times in the past. Later (often centuries later) we found out that these "crazy" people were actually undervalued geniuses. Don't laugh at "crazy" people (someone could be laughin at *you* a few centuries later).
Only very rarely is someone widely ridiculed who is actually correct. It's a lot more likely that these people who are generally regarded as crackpots are, in fact, actually crackpots. There is no evidence whatsoever that we didn't go to to moon.
Furthermore, there isn't anything that could be presented as evidence that would convince these hardcore conspiracy theorists that a moon mission was completed in 1969. That means that their theory is not falsifiable, which means that it's not even worth discussing.
people should have dominion over their own bodies.
Ordinarily I would agree, but people have demonstrated that they can't be trusted with even simple decision-making, let alone decision-making while under the influence of drugs.
You might say that we should wait until a person actually commits a crime while under the influence before punishing them, but I doubt you'd get any agreement from the families of innocent people who were killed by a drunk driver or strung-out addict. You see... the victim has already died by that point, which is an unacceptable final result.
The long life of such a program proves that people want drugs more than they fear death.
And thus, the sort of people that we don't need and who are contributing nothing are systematically removed from society. This is probably exactly what the governments of such nations want. I know it's definitely what I want.
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Um, hello? I just said "yes".
It's not legal to drive above the speed limit. Why? After all, doing so doesn't guarantee that anyone will die. It increases the likelyhood that someone will die, but then again, so will being intoxicated. The point is: we limit what people may legally do to prevent unnecessary injury/death. Unfortunately, people are convinced that doing drugs is a human right and can therefore not be revoked.
I feel good knowing that my ideals are a serious threat to your way of thinking, and I'm even more confident now that the world I imagine may one day be reality. (By the way, don't bother praying. No supreme being exists. Religion and all its archaic practices are going the way of the dodo.)
You simpleton. I didn't say that I'd stop drinking alcohol because I'd believe that suddenly it was bad for me. I'd do it because I acknowledge the law. I know that I myself am responsible enough to drink alcohol without accidently killing another person, but I understand the fact that a law cannot handle such things on a case-by-case basis. The lowest-common-denominator must be met when writing law. Why do you think that the speed limit seems rather low in most places? It's because the least-capable driver on the road must still be reasonably safe at the speed limit. The many must suffer because of the shortcomings of the few. That's just the way it works.
Yes, that's the point of laws. If you have a problem with a particular law, then you may use the mechanisms that our society has in place to help change the law. Until that happens, obey the law as it is currently written.
If they wanted it different, they would change it.
Often, people assume that I'm a Bush supporter. I'm not.
Um yeah. I'm a materialist/atheist. I don't acknowledge the concept of hell.
The problems you're speaking of are an implementation issue, not a conceptual issue. I agree that dealing with these problems would be quite a challenge to society, but I'm confident it could be done.
Fair enough. But I can say that "B is more likely to occur after A has happened". Why do you think we have speed limits on the road? Death is more likely to occur when people are speeding. Similarly, death is more likely to occur when people are intoxicated. People do both things for their own personal pleasure, and both things put other people at a higher risk of injury.
Sounds to me like you're theorizing a situation where this ban was very poorly implemented and not adequately enforced -- much like the situation we have in the world today.
I take comfort in the fact that you see my type of thinking as a serious threat to the sort of world that you envision. If you didn't, you wouldn't be suggesting that I commit suicide before these thoughts spread.
This may surprise you, but "human rights" is not an absolute constant in the universe. It's a totally arbitrary concept, invented by some humans. And not everyone agrees that people should have the multitudes of rights that they have in many parts of the world. Because the definition is arbitrary, you can't prove that your definition of human rights is any more correct than anyone else's.
Acutally, yes, alcohol does bother me in this sense. I consider alcohol and drugs to be exactly equivalent in this issue.
In what way did I describe the victim's appearance, demeanor, or background in this hypothetical situation? I did not describe any such thing. What you imagined was merely an emotional reaction to my question that you simply didn't have the wherewithal to ignore, or even recognize. The only modifier I used to describe the victim was "innocent", and that was only done to indicate that this person had no involvement with the consumption of the intoxicating substance.
That's certainly a convincing argument for the legalization of drugs. I bet you just got a lot more people behind you.
Second, I certainly do use alcohol, but that doesn't make me a hypocrite. My argument is not that all people are irresponsible. My argument is that some people are irresponsible enough to "ruin it for the rest of us", so to speak. If any law were passed banning the consumption of alcohol, I would readily comply.
That's not a misconception. If the individual couldn't get access to the drug, s/he would be sober and the car crash probably wouldn't have happened.
That's a junk analogy. Drug users chose to become drug users.
People have been given plenty of chances with personal freedoms and they've showed time and time again that they're careless, inconsiderate, and irresponsible.
That's funny, because I don't need to do drugs. No one in my family uses drugs, and neither do any of my friends. None of my coworkers use drugs. We all seem to be happy and productive people, and there's nothing special about us that makes us able to function in this way. It's a lot more likely that people who claim that they need drugs are just trying to get away with something.
Well, you clearly think that you know why I'm opposed to the legalization of drugs. Interestingly, you're completely wrong. It is quite possible that I am less effected by propaganda than anyone else. To the occasional annoyance of friends and family members, all important moral and philosophical decisions I make are the result of logic and not emotion. I have never known anyone personally that has died (or even been injured) as a result of them, or anyone else, having consumed an intoxicating substance. No alcohol poisoning, no OD's, no drunk driving wrecks, nothing. I thus only care about this issue from a practical point of view.
Individual citizens who happen to like using drugs have a direct personal interest in lobbying for drug legalization. Thus, the arguments made by such citizens must be taken with a grain of salt -- once a person has experienced a physical/mental euphoria as a result of a particular action, their rationalization of that action can no longer be trusted as being objective.
I understand that responsible people can live their life doing drugs without causing others harm. Unfortunately, 'responsible people' is not the same as 'all people'. Innocent people die as a direct result of others being intoxicated. Unacceptable.
Consider the following: a person consumes some controlled substance which impairs their ability to drive a car. They drive anyway and kill an innocent pedestrian. Because of the nature of the intoxicating substance in this case, it was extremely unlikely that the driver, if sober, would have killed the pedestrian. How do you reconcile this situation? Punishing the offender will not bring back the innocent that was killed. Would you argue that the freedom of the offender to do what he did is worth an indeterminate number of innocent lives? If you answer 'yes', would you believe that not everyone is as willing to increase their own risk of death as you are? How do you reconcile that?
People need to drive for us to have a functioning economy. It's a necessary risk. However, people don't need to do drugs.
First of all, riding a motorcycle (versus driving a car) does not at all increase the probability of injuring another person versus driving a car. A person who has been drinking or smoking, for example, would be less capable of driving a car or handling a firearm while under the influence -- thus increasing the probability of injuring a bystander. A motorcyclist, however, is actually less dangerous to other drivers because the mass of his vehicle is less than than the mass of a car by an order of magnitude.
Secondly, you're quoting absolute figures for those morality statistics. What would actually be relevant (if this analogy were valid in the first place) would be the percentages of motorcycle-riding experiences versus drug-using experiences that result in a death.
Thirdly, using some sort of motorized vehicle is necessary for many people to whom public transportation is not available. As I've already established, riding a motorcyle is actually less dangerous than driving a car for everyone other than the rider.
I would agree with that position -- if you could guarantee that no one else would be affected. But you can't guarantee that. No one can. Legalization of intoxicating substances (alcohol included) suggests that the lives of an indeterminate number of innocent people are worth less than the collective right of people to ingest said intoxicating substances. This isn't the case.
Are you suggesting that you want people around who want drugs more than they fear death?
It's not like the fucking gun misfired. They meant to kill this guy, and they got it done. I applaud their efficiency.
That's a good point, and one that people often miss. We should illegalize those drugs as well. After all, people haven't exactly shown that they can be trusted with alcohol.
What the hell? That wasn't a logical fallacy at all. It was just a hypothetical situation, and one that is actually realistic.
Only very rarely is someone widely ridiculed who is actually correct. It's a lot more likely that these people who are generally regarded as crackpots are, in fact, actually crackpots. There is no evidence whatsoever that we didn't go to to moon.
Furthermore, there isn't anything that could be presented as evidence that would convince these hardcore conspiracy theorists that a moon mission was completed in 1969. That means that their theory is not falsifiable, which means that it's not even worth discussing.
Ordinarily I would agree, but people have demonstrated that they can't be trusted with even simple decision-making, let alone decision-making while under the influence of drugs.
You might say that we should wait until a person actually commits a crime while under the influence before punishing them, but I doubt you'd get any agreement from the families of innocent people who were killed by a drunk driver or strung-out addict. You see... the victim has already died by that point, which is an unacceptable final result.
"We never went to the moon" is not an original or 'revolutional' (sic) idea. It's tired, stupid, and without merit.