Comments on: Fight Cigarettes But Legalize Drugs?

By: David

David — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:22:48 +0000

I see lots of straw man arguments in a lot of these posts (making an analogy between incest and heroin – sheesh).

There are two decent comparisons. One is cigarettes, and the other is booze.

There are plenty of people who smoke. Is there chance of dying of cancer higher? Yes. Do we allow them to anyway? Yes. While there are some states starting to try to charge for the extra burden on health care, no state does more than just restrict consumption by place, age, etc.

Booze is another thing many people “do” on a daily basis – whether it be a beer at the bar or a glass of wine with dinner or a scotch to relax after work. Sure, there are people who are alcoholics, but not since prohibition was repealed have we said you can’t drink. Any why do people drink? Well, to get high for an hour or two (per drink).

So, what’s the big deal if you smoke pot? People do it to get high for a few hours. Many people (myself included) do it on a daily basis after work. I have a successful career in IT, my house is paid for, and the only debt I owe is what I put on my credit card in the last 30 days to get airline miles. Do other people become potaholics? Sure, but that shouldn’t mean nobody else gets to enjoy it. Do I have a higher likelihood of getting cancer. Sure, but don’t discriminate more against me for a bowl a day than the guy who smokes a pack a day.

I think many of the arguments for legalization are weak (We can tax it!, yeah, that’s the ticket!). In a 3 trillion dollar debt load, whatever taxes you can generate will be tiny. We lost the war on drugs. Well, that’s sort of a medium sized argument. It’s true we spend a lot of money on it, and put people who aren’t actually hurting other people in a place where you put people who enjoy hurting other people.

If you put me in jail for smoking pot, you would lose a productive member of society (who would be costing taxes rather than paying them), my wife would, effectively, become a single mom, and two “A” students would lose a dad (and probably some points off their GPA).

By the way, you can ditch the “putting them at risk” argument away. Don’t make me laugh. If I lived int a state where I was doing 5 years in the joint for a joint, I wouldn’t, but I live in California. It isn’t Amsterdam, but … Well let me put it this way. One reason why prop 36 is ineffective may have something to do with a “medical marijuana” prop that guts it.

By the way, if the Republicans want to pick up a lot of votes, just change the party platform to decriminalizing. You have no idea how many people smoke pot because it is forced underground, but there are a lot of them who stick with the dems for this reason.

By: jiffy

jiffy — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:51:27 +0000

you got it wrong. marijuana does not equal drugs. marijuana is not heroine. the whole fuss is about marijuana’s legalization not meth. we got soft drug, we got hard drug.

we live on basis of liberty. humans are ought to be able to choose good or bad otherwise we are coded machines! as long as one’s decisions does not hurt others (smoking a joint in your own room when u can afford it without compromising your family’s finances) why should there be a need for govt to be the big daddy of all the children? we are adults, we are responsible, we dont need some1 to look after us… and if there are idiots out there who are junkies, they are and will be and have always been that way despite what the system does, no basis to compare them to 100 million people who have used marijuana at some point in their lives

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:22:54 +0000

Enslavement of some to the will of other men is evil as well. So how do you justify using the power of the government to enforce your notion of what is good and proper on those that don’t agree with you?

The libertarian view of if leave each other alone will be fine. Again what about drugs that right now you can only get with a doctor’s prescription. These drugs are legal but there is a thriving black market trade in them. Wouldn’t people demand access to them too once the other drugs are legal. If you don’t think they will then you don’t know addicts. One area for sure were it will make things worse is on our medical system which will see a spike in addicts. The irony of libertarians defending drug use and addicts is that they are the totally opposite of the libertarian ideal of letting everyone do want they want as long as it doesn’t brother anyone. Addicts want they want and they don’t care who they have to walk over to get it. In my view crack, meth, herion and drugs like that should never be legalized because of the effect they have on us all no just the people who use them.

By: David Gillies

David Gillies — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:05:37 +0000

If we’re claiming moral philosophers in aid of our arguments then I see your Burke and raise you John Stuart Mill: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” One can argue the penumbras of such a prescription, but its central truth can hardly be gainsaid. To the extent that drug use imposes a cost on society at large rather than simply the individual drug user, the law has a rightful part to play in the matter. But that cost had better be real, salient and mitigable before it becomes a valid focus of legislation. The second hand smoke issue has been a farrago of statistical jiggery-pokery and bad faith special pleading. That smoking tobacco is profoundly harmful to the smoker is uncontroversial. That it causes harm to bystanders is also uncontroversial, but it should not be. The wholesale abandonment of the scientific and epidemiological method in the demonisation of ‘second hand smoke’ is just a harbinger of the Red/Green totalitarians’ desire to control our existence. For some reason ‘slippery slope’ arguments are always derided as a fault in reason. That one thing does not NECESSARILY follow from another is used as a cosh against those who point out its practical inevitability. Not content with banning smoking in pubs in the UK, the Puritan zealots have now set their sights on restricting alcohol consumption. There’s no reason a priori why one should lead to the other, but one would have to be more than routinely naive to fail to predict it.

If quoting J. S. Mill isn’t enough, then maybe a couple of bons mots from that eternal scourge of Puritanism and Tartuffery, H. L. Mencken, will do:
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

and

“When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.”

P.S. just to head off the inevitable: I have never smoked a cigarette in my life; I think it is a filthy and disgusting habit and if by some act of God every smoker in the world decided tomorrow to give up his or her addiction I would be more than happy – as long as the decision was not coloured by the threat of Puritan bigotry and coercion.

By: kabud

kabud — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:23:42 +0000

Anneke:

may i tell you something and it comes from experience and reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana#Health_issues
that totally corresponds to experience

u r wrong

if u smoke pot – you need one drag, may be two for a day. Well, may be a joint if you are so much into it.

Also tobacco smell stays on the fabric, carpet, walls, in the car.

When someone smokes even lots of pot, not 1 drag-
smell usually disappears in an hour completely

When you read studies you may notice that there are several positive effects cannabis has

Tobaco has none

But to tell u the truth i dont consider pot a drug at all.

It is something very close to cofein in respect to the intensity of its effect on human body
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/addictiv.htm

By: Anneke

Anneke — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:08:29 +0000

I just can’t get past the irony. In the apartment complex where my mother lives, there is an activist couple trying to ban all cigarette smoking on the premises because of it’s negative health effects. They, however, smoke “medicinal” marijuana. Inhaling any kind of smoke–tobacco, marijuana, forest fire, etc–is bad for the lungs. But somehow because marijuana is a drug people should be more free to use it?

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:52:13 +0000

Drug War Victims 'nuff said

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:50:32 +0000

http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html

’nuff said

By: kabud

kabud — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:27:45 +0000

i look at legalization totally NOT from the point of personal freedom

i dont think it is a good time now to theoretize on the subject because we are at war and we are losing it fast

from what i learned and can see-

legalization of all substances MUST BE MANDATED IMMEDIATELY

not because it is a freedom to use but because there is no other choice at this point

Was it all legal before 1913?
very well, lets go to that point.

Moral subversion by drugs is only possible because they are illegal.

If drugs will get under control in pharmacies without any advertisement and promotion and with appropriate social stigmatization that we as citizens will attach to them:

it will work so much better then the failed policy of war on drugs

After this initial step we will be watching carefully what is happening and design a better policies of partial or full prohibition or not

By: Keith_Indy

Keith_Indy — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:16:04 +0000

I suppose some people need the government to tell them it’s not OK to murder people, and that wearing your seatbelt is a good idea. Next they’ll be asking how many squares of toilet paper is appropriate, at what time they should get up to go to work, and how often to pray.

the purpose of the drug trade – beyond enrichment of assholes – is to demoralize, distract, stupidify, and apparently stir up “libertarians” to annoy the rest of us with their petty preoccupations.

And here I thought the purpose of any trade was providing a product for which there is demand. You really need a history lesson of this country, re drug laws, in order to realize how silly you sound.

Whether you agree with a law or not, laws beyond protecting ones rights, are all about control and the restriction of liberty.