The Topic is to legalize Hard Drugs. NOT THC.

[Diogenes]

We are discussing the legalization of ALL Drugs.


Seeing that some are suffering under an illusion as to what is actually being discussed, I decided to try to spell it out more clearly. The Libertarian argument is that people have a RIGHT to do whatever they want with their own body, including taking Hard drugs such as Heroine, LSD, Crack, Meth, or whatever.





Marijuana is the least demon of the entire hellish pantheon, and if it is
brought up at all it is for the purpose of being a stalking horse.


Make no mistake. This topic, as has been discussed for years on this website, is NOT about legalizing pot. It is about legalizing EVERYTHING. Now if any of you want to sign on for that, then by all means, continue discussing this issue, but for all of you that think this is a discussion about weed being made lawful and regulated, you haven't been paying attention, and you either need to get up to speed or start a thread where THAT is the specific topic.






One more time. We are discussing the legalization of ALL Drugs.

[Giorgio]

We are discussing the legalization of ALL Drugs.

We who?

I am pro legalization of light drugs and I am against legalization of hard drugs.

Making a war to light drugs is an economic nonsense, and if we really decide to ban light drugs from our life than we should start with cigarettes and alcohol.

[MSimon]

Given the results.

1.3% hard drug users before Prohibition and the same number after 90+ years of Prohibition. Could some one please tell me what useful Prohibition has done? Other than provide law enforcement jobs, jobs for small time entrepreneurs, and jobs for outlaw cartels?

And I might add prohibition provides pretty pictures to make D's point. Which is? Oh. Yeah. People in pain will do rather a lot to keep their supply of pain relievers coming. Torturing people for fun and profit. Well bear baiting is no longer allowed for amusement. So that leaves people. On whom it is always open season. If you pick the right sort to go after.

Read a nice excerpt from "Our Man In Havana" about torturable classes here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... f-all.html

[IntLibber]

a) quantify the number of people on hard drugs, and the costs, not just to health and life, but economically, and collaterally to family members
b) quantify how much of (a) is due to prohibition and how much is due to the impact of the drugs themselves (and this varies from drug to drug, LSD is far different from heroin or meth).
c) Do the drugs serve any valid purpose (Heroin, as an opiate, has pain attentuation capabilities, LSD has usefulness in psychology and in curing addictions, etc) that is inhibited by their prohibition? i.e. is there a medicinal use?
d) Should a substance have to have a medicinal use to be legal? What about the right of the individual to control their bodies and what goes into them? Being inhibited, being a loss of control, constitutes a surrendering of rights and responsibility for oneself, so does this justify the state stepping in?

[palladin9479]

a) quantify the number of people on hard drugs, and the costs, not just to health and life, but economically, and collaterally to family members
b) quantify how much of (a) is due to prohibition and how much is due to the impact of the drugs themselves (and this varies from drug to drug, LSD is far different from heroin or meth).
c) Do the drugs serve any valid purpose (Heroin, as an opiate, has pain attentuation capabilities, LSD has usefulness in psychology and in curing addictions, etc) that is inhibited by their prohibition? i.e. is there a medicinal use?
d) Should a substance have to have a medicinal use to be legal? What about the right of the individual to control their bodies and what goes into them? Being inhibited, being a loss of control, constitutes a surrendering of rights and responsibility for oneself, so does this justify the state stepping in?

Basically this. Currently there isn't any real definition of light vs hard drugs, just the FDA's scheduling system which is more political then anything else. Create a definition then we can discuss the distinction between them.

Nearly anything can be turned into an illegal drug, aka Oxycontin and other prescription pain relievers are now being black marketed. They've become the poor mans version of cocain.

As for whether all substances should be available to the general public, that's a hell no. Rohypnol and Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) are not things you want being spread around. There needs to be a standard created for what defines something as dangerous enough not to be available to the general public.

[IntLibber]

a) quantify the number of people on hard drugs, and the costs, not just to health and life, but economically, and collaterally to family members
b) quantify how much of (a) is due to prohibition and how much is due to the impact of the drugs themselves (and this varies from drug to drug, LSD is far different from heroin or meth).
c) Do the drugs serve any valid purpose (Heroin, as an opiate, has pain attentuation capabilities, LSD has usefulness in psychology and in curing addictions, etc) that is inhibited by their prohibition? i.e. is there a medicinal use?
d) Should a substance have to have a medicinal use to be legal? What about the right of the individual to control their bodies and what goes into them? Being inhibited, being a loss of control, constitutes a surrendering of rights and responsibility for oneself, so does this justify the state stepping in?

Basically this. Currently there isn't any real definition of light vs hard drugs, just the FDA's scheduling system which is more political then anything else. Create a definition then we can discuss the distinction between them.

Nearly anything can be turned into an illegal drug, aka Oxycontin and other prescription pain relievers are now being black marketed. They've become the poor mans version of cocain.

As for whether all substances should be available to the general public, that's a hell no. Rohypnol and Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) are not things you want being spread around. There needs to be a standard created for what defines something as dangerous enough not to be available to the general public.

Sorry, we live in a society, at least here in the US, where 80%+ of the states say the individual has the right to carry a concealed weapon, thats the power of life and death. That is a standard that also says that ALL drugs should be legalized for adults because there is no drug more dangerous than a bullet to the head. So, by your own argument, you are wrong.

[TDPerk]

"The Libertarian argument is that people have a RIGHT to do whatever they want with their own body, including taking Hard drugs such as Heroine, LSD, Crack, Meth, or whatever. "

So? You haven't shown any evidence that prohibition has made these harder to get, or that rates of addiction have decreased because of it. We aren't getting anything out of Prohibition except the bill and a shredded constitution.

MSimon is a monomaniacal idiot for insisting it's all about PTSD from abuse--even if it's true it's beside the point.

Either we own us or the government owns us. Diogenes wants to live in a world where the government owns us, at his philosophical foundation he's no different from Obama--he's at best an odious fool.

The only thing which can be the government's job, is to prevent us from doing things that hurt other person's property and persons. It does so justly only by convicting us of crimes when we commit them, after the fact and by a jury trial--by due process. Since using recreational drugs does not in and of itself do any harm to another person or their property, it should be legal. All the actual evidence is that here, in this country, it won't be a problem for more than 98% of us in any way anyway, and prohibition isn't improving anything.

So what's the excuse for it, Diogenes?

[Diogenes]

We are discussing the legalization of ALL Drugs.

We who?

I am pro legalization of light drugs and I am against legalization of hard drugs.

Making a war to light drugs is an economic nonsense, and if we really decide to ban light drugs from our life than we should start with cigarettes and alcohol.

"We" is the same group of people that has been discussing this issue for the last several years.

Why are you against the legalization of hard drugs?

[Diogenes]

Given the results.

1.3% hard drug users before Prohibition and the same number after 90+ years of Prohibition. Could some one please tell me what useful Prohibition has done? Other than provide law enforcement jobs, jobs for small time entrepreneurs, and jobs for outlaw cartels?

Rocket ship thrusts for a whole hour against gravity and only hovers, what good has been done?


Why do you keep postulating a linear analysis for an exponential function? The NORMAL data track looks like this:

And I might add prohibition provides pretty pictures to make D's point. Which is? Oh. Yeah. People in pain will do rather a lot to keep their supply of pain relievers coming. Torturing people for fun and profit. Well bear baiting is no longer allowed for amusement. So that leaves people. On whom it is always open season. If you pick the right sort to go after.

Read a nice excerpt from "Our Man In Havana" about torturable classes here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... f-all.html

You allege that depriving an addict from the drug that is wrecking their life is torture. It may be painful to them, but it is necessarily medicinal, not sadistic.


Just so you know, I just found out about another victim of drug/alcohol abuse. A 33 year old woman hanged herself last Thursday because she was drunk/high, and got into an argument with her daughter. It was her daughter's birthday. She left behind a 17 year old, a 13 year old, and a 7 year old. I knew these people. The 17 year old was a friend of my son. I've met the mother a few times. It is a tragedy. Note, she wasn't deprived of either drugs or alcohol, they were all too easy for her to obtain.

If you are going to count the people injured in the drug war as casualties for your argument, you need to count the people injured from using drugs as the casualties against your argument. I know of many from my own personal experience.

[Diogenes]

a) quantify the number of people on hard drugs, and the costs, not just to health and life, but economically, and collaterally to family members
b) quantify how much of (a) is due to prohibition and how much is due to the impact of the drugs themselves (and this varies from drug to drug, LSD is far different from heroin or meth).
c) Do the drugs serve any valid purpose (Heroin, as an opiate, has pain attentuation capabilities, LSD has usefulness in psychology and in curing addictions, etc) that is inhibited by their prohibition? i.e. is there a medicinal use?

Seems like a reasonable approach to me.

d) Should a substance have to have a medicinal use to be legal? What about the right of the individual to control their bodies and what goes into them? Being inhibited, being a loss of control, constitutes a surrendering of rights and responsibility for oneself, so does this justify the state stepping in?

The answer to this question hinges on the degree to which usage will spread through the overall population. If it stays confined to the 1.3% of the population as MSimon argues, then it is not likely to be a national security threat. If on the other hand, it spreads like an infectious disease, and yearly encroaches incrementally into the population, it will at some point paralyze and kill the society, or make it so weak that it cannot defend itself from outside powers.

It is my opinion that we have the answer to this question of whether drugs will spread or not, by the example of China and it's subsequent collapse and overrun by the Japanese, with the eventual rise of the predictable replacement government; A Dictatorship; Which is ALWAYS the consequence of Anarchy.

Look at Opium consumption in China. If it stayed at 1.3%, imports wouldn't have done this:



Bear in mind, towards the end, China started growing it's own opium to try to bleed off the profitability of the Imported opium, so the imports don't even show the ACTUAL increases, usage was even worse than the imports indicate.

[Diogenes]

"The Libertarian argument is that people have a RIGHT to do whatever they want with their own body, including taking Hard drugs such as Heroine, LSD, Crack, Meth, or whatever. "

So? You haven't shown any evidence that prohibition has made these harder to get, or that rates of addiction have decreased because of it. We aren't getting anything out of Prohibition except the bill and a shredded constitution.

You haven't bothered to acquaint yourself with my argument. That is passing strange, because I have repeated it so often as to become tired of it myself.

My argument is simple. When you legalize drugs, this is what happens.




By 1905, 50% of the population of China was addicted to opium.

MSimon is a monomaniacal idiot for insisting it's all about PTSD from abuse--even if it's true it's beside the point.

Either we own us or the government owns us.

Following the necessary obligations of a civilized society does not equal "ownership" by the government, it means that someone is a beneficial component of the civil society. When you follow the rules against rape and murder it does not make you "owned" by the government.

Diogenes wants to live in a world where the government owns us, at his philosophical foundation he's no different from Obama--he's at best an odious fool.

Because I don't want people spreading a horrible disease among the uninfected, that means I want the government to "own" people? And you say *I'm* a raving lunatic? Does it not occur to you that when the addiction of a population reaches a tipping point you will be OWNED by the replacement government regardless?

The only thing which can be the government's job, is to prevent us from doing things that hurt other person's property and persons.

And I regard the introducing of people to a disease that will hurt and kill them as an injury to other person's property and persons. It is little different from spreading AIDS, other than the less predictable manner of their death. Of course the way you Libertarians would propagandize it, a prohibition against spreading AIDS would be called a "Religious Fanatical law against people's right to have Sex!" or something.

It does so justly only by convicting us of crimes when we commit them, after the fact and by a jury trial--by due process. Since using recreational drugs does not in and of itself do any harm to another person or their property, it should be legal.

That is a fact not in evidence. Perhaps most of the time it does no harm, but much of the time it does. You are ignoring the victims.

All the actual evidence is that here, in this country, it won't be a problem for more than 98% of us in any way anyway, and prohibition isn't improving anything.

So what's the excuse for it, Diogenes?

Then how was China different from Us? If you can't explain why China went into a state of massive addiction, then you haven't thought this issue through.

As G.K. Chesterton said:

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."

[seedload]

Given the results.

1.3% hard drug users before Prohibition and the same number after 90+ years of Prohibition. Could some one please tell me what useful Prohibition has done? Other than provide law enforcement jobs, jobs for small time entrepreneurs, and jobs for outlaw cartels?

Your economic and statistical arguments are unconvincing.

Making something illegal is not always about reducing the incidence of it. Some things are just wrong. For example, if removing the prohibition on rape didn't cause more rapes, should we stop prosecuting rapists? Obviously not. Rape is wrong. So is selling heroin.

It is not clear to me that you have considered the simple possibility that selling crack is wrong. You are just looking at the stats. You are just arguing the costs. You are making predictions assuming that these pragmatic arguments are the only arguments that people will consider as you go forward with your campaign. However, I suspect that you are missing the fact that there are a lot of people like me who are so simple minded as to think that selling acid is wrong regardless - pragmatism be damned.

It is often true that we fall in love with our arguments without considering whether those arguments are actually important to anyone else but us. Your perception of the strength of your own argument may be leading you astray especially with regard to your predictions of future lifting of prohibitions.

But that's just my take.

regards

[ScottL]

Given the results.

1.3% hard drug users before Prohibition and the same number after 90+ years of Prohibition. Could some one please tell me what useful Prohibition has done? Other than provide law enforcement jobs, jobs for small time entrepreneurs, and jobs for outlaw cartels?

Your economic and statistical arguments are unconvincing.

Making something illegal is not always about reducing the incidence of it. Some things are just wrong. For example, if removing the prohibition on rape didn't cause more rapes, should we stop prosecuting rapists? Obviously not. Rape is wrong. So is selling heroin.

It is not clear to me that you have considered the simple possibility that selling crack is wrong. You are just looking at the stats. You are just arguing the costs. You are making predictions assuming that these pragmatic arguments are the only arguments that people will consider as you go forward with your campaign. However, I suspect that you are missing the fact that there are a lot of people like me who are so simple minded as to think that selling acid is wrong regardless - pragmatism be damned.

It is often true that we fall in love with our arguments without considering whether those arguments are actually important to anyone else but us. Your perception of the strength of your own argument may be leading you astray especially with regard to your predictions of future lifting of prohibitions.

But that's just my take.

regards

"It's wrong" isn't a defensible position to take. Rape is considered wrong because it violates another's rights. Drug use is considered wrong to act as a mechanism for control over those from poor socio-economical positions and non-model minorities. Drug use does not violate the right of any individual and to deny it's been used as a mechanism of control would be to deny you breathe air. I think the overpopulation of several prisons by those who have committed minor offenses such as drug possession, use, and selling would atest to that, but that's another argument regarding the prison industrial complex.

From an individual's rights view, all drug use should be allowed providing it does not violate any other individual's rights. On the reverse-side, the ability to break addiction through rehabilitation should always be available, whether it be hard drugs or not.

[Diogenes]

Given the results.

1.3% hard drug users before Prohibition and the same number after 90+ years of Prohibition. Could some one please tell me what useful Prohibition has done? Other than provide law enforcement jobs, jobs for small time entrepreneurs, and jobs for outlaw cartels?

Your economic and statistical arguments are unconvincing.

Making something illegal is not always about reducing the incidence of it. Some things are just wrong. For example, if removing the prohibition on rape didn't cause more rapes, should we stop prosecuting rapists? Obviously not. Rape is wrong. So is selling heroin.

It is not clear to me that you have considered the simple possibility that selling crack is wrong. You are just looking at the stats. You are just arguing the costs. You are making predictions assuming that these pragmatic arguments are the only arguments that people will consider as you go forward with your campaign. However, I suspect that you are missing the fact that there are a lot of people like me who are so simple minded as to think that selling acid is wrong regardless - pragmatism be damned.

It is often true that we fall in love with our arguments without considering whether those arguments are actually important to anyone else but us. Your perception of the strength of your own argument may be leading you astray especially with regard to your predictions of future lifting of prohibitions.

But that's just my take.

regards

"It's wrong" isn't a defensible position to take. Rape is considered wrong because it violates another's rights. Drug use is considered wrong to act as a mechanism for control over those from poor socio-economical positions and non-model minorities. Drug use does not violate the right of any individual and to deny it's been used as a mechanism of control would be to deny you breathe air. I think the overpopulation of several prisons by those who have committed minor offenses such as drug possession, use, and selling would atest to that, but that's another argument regarding the prison industrial complex.

From an individual's rights view, all drug use should be allowed providing it does not violate any other individual's rights. On the reverse-side, the ability to break addiction through rehabilitation should always be available, whether it be hard drugs or not.

Are you not even looking at the Charts regarding China? At what point can you conclude it isn't harming anyone?

[ScottL]

Are you not even looking at the Charts regarding China? At what point can you conclude it isn't harming anyone?

Yeah because Great Britain had nothing to do with that right? Just like the U.S. had nothing to do with sterilization in Gautemala right? Another argument please. Dominant foreign powers with loads of money and product will often do what they want in weaker socio-economic countries. It happens all the time.