Definitely another drug thread.

[randomencounter]

Your seeming failure to be aware of just how drug addicts impact negatively upon everyone around them indicates such a dire lack of knowledge on the subject that you need a crash course in experience with drug addicts just to catch up enough to be on the same page with the rest of us who are discussing this.

You really don't seem to understand the scope of this issue you are discussing. To you, this is all theoretical and philosophical, but to myself and others on this website, it is all too real past experiences with addicts and abuse.

You really don't seem to understand the invasiveness into people's personal lives you are proposing.

Not even Soviet Russia or Maoist China were able to stomp out all drug use within their borders, how can a free country try to and still remain free?

[GIThruster]

It's plain to see for anyone who really looks, that cannabis should not be legal, because of all the fantastic harm it does.

See, that's exactly what I was referring to, reducing the argument to "users of this drug bring suffering upon themselves and others, therefore all access to the drug should be forbidden."

No, actually my argument is more specific. It is rather:

Users of this drug bring SUCH suffering upon themselves and others, that all access to the drug should be forbidden.

Then one needs to look at the details, which have been presented multiple times here and in 15 other threads. Those details matter, and should not be neglected, but there is little point in strutting out pages of them every time we come round to the same argument.

It should be obvious to anyone who is fair minded, that certain drugs need to be illegal. Most of us have never known a different life and yet, we still call this the land of the free. It is only the drug obsessed like Simon who claim otherwise, calling it the land of oppression. And again, when you see someone like Simon making these oddball claims and obviously acting out based on an obsession, you need to ask yourself why this is happening.

The evidence that certain illegal drugs are fantastically destructive and need to remain illegal is obvious for anyone who will look at it. If all your life you have avoided those parts of town where drugs run rampant and destroyed lives are on every corner, you are not qualified to make judgements about the kinds of destruction certain drugs do, and whether they should be illegal.

[Teahive]

I never disputed that drugs were available. I pointed out that the quantities which were available were nothing at all like the quantities available in China. Addiction was limited by the supply side of the equation.

The typical market response to a commodity which becomes supply constrained is a drastic price increase and an attempt to increase the supply. Is there evidence of either?

In the case of drug use in Nantucket (which is what this subtopic is discussing) the supply was low and the demand was low. They were relatively in balance, and usage had not increased to the point where it was outpacing supply. i.e. it was the early stages. What you say would be true at a later point in history if the addiction demand was maintained or increased.

So based on that information addiction actually was not limited by supply.

You aren't looking at the correct experiment. You need to look at the experiment that left hundreds of millions of dead bodies behind. The experiment of Legalizing Opium use in China.

Would you take a scientist seriously if he tried to transfer the outcome of a single experiment to a situation with completely different starting conditions (culturally, economically, and socially)? Not to mention misrepresenting the experiment, as opium use started expanding well before it was forcibly legalized.

You mistakenly regard what happened to China as a single experiment. No, it was millions of experiments that happen to occur in the same geographical location; China. The results are consistent. Whether illegal or legal, psuedo-limitless drug availability exponentially increases addiction.

If you treat every person in China as a single experiment you can neither claim that the results are consistent (because some people became addicted and some did not) nor can you conclude an exponential increase of addiction, because that observation is only possible if you consider a larger group not individuals. "Macroscopic patterns only emerge by looking at Macroscopic conditions."

That aside, would you take a scientist seriously if he tried to transfer the outcome of an experiment to a situation with completely different starting conditions (culturally, economically, and socially)?

It's plain to see for anyone who really looks, that cannabis should not be legal, because of all the fantastic harm it does.

See, that's exactly what I was referring to, reducing the argument to "users of this drug bring suffering upon themselves and others, therefore all access to the drug should be forbidden."

And what is wrong with this argument? Barring any positive attributes, why should the negative attributes not be sufficient to require interdiction?

If someone is only willing to look at one half of one side of the coin, I am not willing to trust their judgment.

[Teahive]

It should be obvious to anyone who is fair minded, that certain drugs need to be illegal.

You see, I actually agree with that. With the provision that research should be allowed. Certain substances (and organisms) are so dangerous that they should only be handled in regulated environments.

However, there are some drugs currently illegal where I consider the effects of that prohibition to be worse on balance than the effects of regulated access in one form or another.

[GIThruster]

However, there are some drugs currently illegal where I consider the effects of that prohibition to be worse on balance than the effects of regulated access in one form or another.

I'm sure each person's evaluation of this will differ based upon their access to facts and especially based upon their immediate contacts with people having their lives destroyed by drugs. If you've never met someone who's life has been destroyed either directly or indirectly by cannabis, you'd be tempted to think prohibiting cannabis more trouble than its worth.

That's why you have to go visit the opposite side of the tracks. Until you know first had what drugs do on a daily basis, how do you have any hope of forming a useful judgement about them?

[Diogenes]

Oh please don't act like a moron. Simon has threatened me multiple times. He's not the person you pretend, nor he pretends.

He's a druggie.

And so are you. I have it on competent authority you are addicted to air. You can't go ten minutes without it. That is a very serious Jones.

But don't feel bad. I share your addiction.

GIT is perfect, therefore anybody who disagrees with him must have grievous flaws.

As long as you keep that straight you won't have any trouble with him.

Fallacy Ad hominem.

[Betruger]

Except that is GIT's character

[randomencounter]

And so are you. I have it on competent authority you are addicted to air. You can't go ten minutes without it. That is a very serious Jones.

But don't feel bad. I share your addiction.

GIT is perfect, therefore anybody who disagrees with him must have grievous flaws.

As long as you keep that straight you won't have any trouble with him.

Fallacy Ad hominem.

Yes it is. I did restrict myself to observed behavior though.

I don't trust him because he hasn't been arguing facts, he's been arguing people.

[Diogenes]

The facts are that <9% of Americans use illegal drugs:

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/0 ... l-drugs-3/

and more than 67% drink alcohol.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/141656/drink ... -high.aspx

So 67% of the US population are users of alcohol, an addictive and dangerous drug. Yet apparently lawmakers and society as a whole think that prohibition of alcohol is not the right way to deal with it, that regulating the sale and treating addiction as a medical condition is better.

You guys sure hang a lot of your arguments weight on America's experience with "prohibition." You are constantly citing it as proof that the concept is completely unworkable without considering the possibility that it might have worked had it been approached differently.

It is obvious that the sudden imposition of draconian laws against a product that had been with humanity for thousands of years was too much and too fast. This is not evidence that a slow encroachment method (such as is currently being implemented against tobacco) might not have eventually attained the sought after result.


A further aspect I wish to point out is that Alcohol is responsible for 75,000 preventable deaths per year. Apparently society has decided that this quantity of deaths is an acceptable trade for the pleasure of imbibing.

Not saying that the majority must be right, but it at least shows that the decision is a trade-off, and it's not even dominated by the suffering that abusers of the drug directly bring upon themselves or others. It's also worth pointing out that a clear distinction is being made between those who drink alcohol and alcoholics.

For other drugs, depending on their specific properties different aspects of the discussion will become more or less important, but it never boils solely down to "users of this drug bring suffering upon themselves and others, therefore all access to the drug should be forbidden."
Personally, I think a credible argument can be made that in many cases prohibition actually brings more suffering to drug users and others.

And yet, look at China. By 1905, 50% of the adult males in the province of Manchuria were addicted to opium. What is the cost in deaths and lost productivity to a society when 50% of your adult males are chasing a drug, and all their efforts are focused on that?







Could it be that China's weakness against the subsequent invasion by Japan was the result of all that loss of manpower and productivity? It is a question I had always wondered about before I started arguing with MSimon about drugs. I'm a bit of a history buff, and I never understood how it was the much smaller Japan could wreak so much death and destruction upon the much larger and more populous China.





After I started arguing with MSimon about drugs, and after I started doing the research to rebut him, it became clear that China was a very sick nation when Japan saw it's opportunity to invade. The term "Sick man of Asia"was an apt description of China at the time, but why was China so sick? My research on the subject yielded an answer that makes sense to me.

Extrapolation suggests that if we follow the same course, we will become the "Sick man of America."

[Diogenes]

It's plain to see for anyone who really looks, that cannabis should not be legal, because of all the fantastic harm it does.

See, that's exactly what I was referring to, reducing the argument to "users of this drug bring suffering upon themselves and others, therefore all access to the drug should be forbidden."

And what is wrong with forbidding dangerous materials with no redeeming characteristics? This safeguard seems like a no-brainer to me.

Can you think of any reason why people should be allowed to play with nuerotoxins or anthrax? If you think such things should be forbidden to the general public, then you are on the same page as us. We merely have a disagreement as to what things belong on the "forbidden" list.

[Diogenes]

Your seeming failure to be aware of just how drug addicts impact negatively upon everyone around them indicates such a dire lack of knowledge on the subject that you need a crash course in experience with drug addicts just to catch up enough to be on the same page with the rest of us who are discussing this.

You really don't seem to understand the scope of this issue you are discussing. To you, this is all theoretical and philosophical, but to myself and others on this website, it is all too real past experiences with addicts and abuse.

You really don't seem to understand the invasiveness into people's personal lives you are proposing.

I am proposing nothing other than the status quo. Drugs are illegal, and drugs should remain illegal. What is it that you seem to think I am proposing?

Not even Soviet Russia or Maoist China were able to stomp out all drug use within their borders, how can a free country try to and still remain free?

Two flaws in this sentence.

1. The notion that something needs to be 100% eradicated before efforts to control it can be considered to be a success.

2. That somehow preventing childish people from indulging a destructive whim (to themselves and others) is somehow an affront to our freedom.


On the first point, how many physical processes are you aware of with a 100% efficiency? Electric motors range in efficiency from something like 80% to 95% efficiency. At a 1.8% addiction rate for the population, the efficiency of efforts to suppress drug usage appear to be highly successful compared to electric motors. In any system, there is always some degree of loss. The best that can be hoped for is optimization. Lowest loses, highest gains.


On the Second point, Freedom is the ability to do whatever you want within the constraints of the social compact. You can run, jump, yell, build this or that, criticize the government, or admire the flowers to the extent that you wish. You may not injure, or steal from another person, nor put them in danger while you do something reckless.

Using drugs is reckless, and it endangers other people as a result. By far the greatest danger to other people is the transference of the addiction through social pressures. Just as other diseases spread by social contact, so does the disease of addiction.

Those of you who insist that people ought be allowed to use drugs are very much like those people who insist that not vaccinating their children poses no threat to anyone. The real world facts differ drastically.

An investigation by journalist Brian Deer uncovered the fact that two years before the 1998 Wakefield group report was published, Wakefield had begun receiving money from lawyers, led by Richard Barr, wanting to file lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

The final blow to whatever credibility Wakefield had left was delivered in 2009 when it was discovered that he had fixed his data.

[randomencounter]

I'm suggesting that adults be treated as adults and allowed to make their own mistakes.

The status quo of outlawed drugs has the USA with the highest percentage of our adult population incarcerated of any "civilized" country. If that isn't an imposition on the personal freedoms of *every* American then we are already slaves in fact if not in name.

If someone is stealing to support their drug habit they are already committing a crime they can be convicted of and imprisoned for. If they commit assault because they are drunk or high the same thing applies.

Freedom includes the freedom to be a stupid shit and ruin your life.

[Diogenes]

In the case of drug use in Nantucket (which is what this subtopic is discussing) the supply was low and the demand was low. They were relatively in balance, and usage had not increased to the point where it was outpacing supply. i.e. it was the early stages. What you say would be true at a later point in history if the addiction demand was maintained or increased.

So based on that information addiction actually was not limited by supply.

Are you familiar with the term "non sequitur"?

You mistakenly regard what happened to China as a single experiment. No, it was millions of experiments that happen to occur in the same geographical location; China. The results are consistent. Whether illegal or legal, psuedo-limitless drug availability exponentially increases addiction.

If you treat every person in China as a single experiment you can neither claim that the results are consistent (because some people became addicted and some did not) nor can you conclude an exponential increase of addiction, because that observation is only possible if you consider a larger group not individuals. "Macroscopic patterns only emerge by looking at Macroscopic conditions."

The large group is 50% of the adult male population in the province of Manchuria. That's a pretty large data pool for analyzing the results.

That aside, would you take a scientist seriously if he tried to transfer the outcome of an experiment to a situation with completely different starting conditions (culturally, economically, and socially)?

As the chemical interactions involved have nothing to do with culture, economics, or social interactions, I would think he was an idiot if he invoked the theory that they would make a difference on the outcome.

Does potassium hydroxide react differently with hydrochloric acid if the reaction is occurring in a Muslim country? I don't see how it makes any difference. The base foundation of addiction is chemistry. Certain drugs resemble naturally occurring hormones and neurotransmitters, and as a result bind to receptor sites in the brain, thereby modulating activity at those sites.

To make it simple for you, certain chemicals fit certain locks on brain cells.

It has nothing to do with what country or culture you are currently existing in, it is physiological.

The only social aspect of it is whether or not others, whom might be observing someone who has something they are enjoying, will want to try it themselves. That is a virtual certainty given human nature.

See, that's exactly what I was referring to, reducing the argument to "users of this drug bring suffering upon themselves and others, therefore all access to the drug should be forbidden."

And what is wrong with this argument? Barring any positive attributes, why should the negative attributes not be sufficient to require interdiction?

If someone is only willing to look at one half of one side of the coin, I am not willing to trust their judgment.

I personally think Cannabis is the least harmful of the commonly known drugs, (including Alcohol) but I think allowing it will create a clientele and advocacy for harder drugs. That being said, If they would license it's use, I would be okay with that.

Get a license, smoke pot if you want. Abuse it, and lose your license. Of course, I would also like to see a license for Alcohol, which is abused far more often, and to a much larger degree than is pot.

For drugs like crack, meth, cocaine, heroine, etc. I see no reasonable method of tolerating them, except for strictly medical purposes.

[Diogenes]

I'm suggesting that adults be treated as adults and allowed to make their own mistakes.

You want to base jump off a cliff? Fine, go for it. You want to fire a gun randomly into the air? No dice. Your recklessness is threatening others.

Drugs fit into the category of firing randomly into the air. Where the rounds come down, nobody knows, but when they do people get badly killed or injured.

The status quo of outlawed drugs has the USA with the highest percentage of our adult population incarcerated of any "civilized" country. If that isn't an imposition on the personal freedoms of *every* American then we are already slaves in fact if not in name.

There are more factors than just drugs at work regarding the stat you cite. Simon is always saying that the sole cause of crime is drug prohibition, but I point out that the "War on Poverty" (16 trillion dollars spent thus far) is far more responsible for the damage. (1964)




What do you suppose happens when you let the government pay for the consequences of free sex for everyone? You end up with Women run households (paid for by government) with half a dozen children growing up without a father.



What do you suppose happens to children allowed to grow up without discipline? (Since August 20, 1964)



Hmm... 1964 to 1980? That would be about 15-16 years old when incarceration started really taking off. Sounds about right to me.

If someone is stealing to support their drug habit they are already committing a crime they can be convicted of and imprisoned for. If they commit assault because they are drunk or high the same thing applies.

Would you steal for food? Their craving for this stuff is worse than hunger.

Freedom includes the freedom to be a stupid shit and ruin your life.

Spreading AIDS ruins the lives of others, not just YOUR life. Same principal with drugs. Using involves other people, and puts them at risk for being caught up in it too. It only takes once to transfer the disease.

I know people who started drugs via social pressure, and subsequently ruined their lives because of their addiction. The injury to others is getting them to try it. Once they try it, the Chemical bonding does the rest.




It only takes once to transfer the disease.