Posted on 12/02/2018 11:29:00 AM PST by Simon Green
I don't think its that far away...
“A government that can control what you eat can control who you have sex with.”
_____________________________
...they can literally force you to have sex with someone of their choice..... given enough time, media control, and court control.....
But they probably also had beer as a teenager..but we don't consider beer a gateway drug. Indeed, many alcoholics who were downing a fifth of vodka daily probably started with a Budweiser.
Furthermore, as noted earlier, it took a Constitutional Amendment to ban booze. To argue for banning pot without an Amendment, to me, is giving sanction to every abuse of power against which we Rule of Law Deplorables rail.
I recognize the carnage drugs unleash on people. I know of families who've lost loved ones because someone chose a substance over family. But if we fall prey to emotion then we aren't better than liberals...and THAT is the trap I fear that lurks underneath the War on Drugs.
The direct and 100% PROVEN “cost to society” from all these legal things dwarfs the theoretical cost of some loose links found in imaging studies of handpicked individuals who claim they used cannabis. Nobody is having heart attacks, losing their liver and having strokes at age 40 from just pot. The magnitude and directness of the damage of these deadly legal things is miles above anything that is even remotely correlated to cannabis. Even if ALL the risks in the studies are calculated absolutely correctly, cannabis is STILL proven to be far less dangerous than all these things we can legally abuse.
Alcohol, tobacco and Rx drugs cost society 300% that of ALL illegal drugs combined. Ok, so lets ban all drugs and alcohol! Prohibition will work this time!
Oh wait. People abusing refined sugar costs us more than ALL drugs and alcohol combined. Ban sugar too!
Hey now. How much does people watching TV or reading FR “cost us”? Being sedentary is FAR more correlated to stroke and dimentia than pot ever will be. Time to put ankle monitors on everyone and make sure they’re not sitting around too much! Its the lazy bums’ fault they got sick and I’m not paying their medical bills!
Any other “costs” that we can cut?
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics
I put a link to the government data in post 84
Once again, you are making dubious comparisons and trying to claim that obesity incurs equivalent costs to *other people* as drug abuse.
Consuming sugar does not make people violent. People do not steal, rob, or assault other people to get the money to buy their next sugar fix. Obese people do not physically or verbally abuse other people as a result of eating a candy bar. FUrthermore, sugar happens to be one of the groups of macronutrients that is necessary for life, and sugar provides the fuel that keeps your body functioning. Sugar is only bad if you consume it disproportionately from the other necessary macronutrients. Let me reiterate: obesity affects only the obese person. Until their weight gets up into hundreds of pounds, they still work. They still support themselves. They have health insurance. They are not burdens on society the way drug addicts are.
Also, your comparison of FDA approved and prescribed drugs to illicit drugs is bizarre. Can you actually name an approved, properly prescribed, and correctly used drug whose effects are more damaging than the brain damage and behavior deficits which result from illicit drug abuse?
BTW, I happen to be a subject matter expert in this area. I work in medical research, where I currently oversee neurology research. I point this out because you seem to be new around here and are unfamiliar with my posting style. So quit trying to snow me with red herring claims.
“Silly me, I thought the purpose of government was to protect our God given rights.”
In modern history, I can’t think another administration besides Reagan’s and Trump’s that have tried to do that. The rest seem to have been more interested in cheap labor or registering voters.
“you are making dubious comparisons and trying to claim that obesity incurs equivalent costs to *other people* as drug abuse.”
Who pays for these food abusing people for lost productivity, disbilities from losing hands/feet and permanent damage from stroke/heart attack? WE DO. The “other” people. Its not even close to equivalent. The cost to society from food abuse is several times that of ALL illegal drugs combined! Even when ALL costs from illegal drug crimes are included!
However, I’m not talking about the dangerous illegal drugs. Government lumps them all together and food abuse STILL costs society more. We are talking only about cannabis here so the actual comparison here is something like 5x-10x greater.
The reason these addicts are not stealing from you for their food is that their fix is extremely cheap. I can buy a box of two dozen chemically-pickled donuts that can sit for months on sale for $1.99. $1.99 worth of any illegal drug is not enough for even a taste.
Make refined sugars illegal or only available in synthetic form that costs 100x as much and you’ll 100% soon see theft/violence/smuggling over sugars.
I’ve been on FR since 2004 and have been fighting for legal cannabis for decades. I’ve seen countless sick people helped by it and begin an amazing new life after nearly killing themselves with years of Rx drugs. The side effects of many of these Rx drugs are worse than the disease! Just talk to someone who has been on the “pharma train” taking endless drugs for the side effects. Or just watch the end of the damn TV commercials that push these toxic things 24/7...
I’ve seen extremely succesful people use cannabis every day and actually HELP with their careers by giving them the rest and creative view they need. The *greatest* danger from cannabis that any of these people experienced was being arrested in one of the backward states. Several are considered some of the highest reputed fellows in their fields with the highest awards (medicine, engineering, mathematics) and relax nearly every day with a joint.
Yes, some people will abuse pleasurable things 24/7 until they cannot work, communicate or leave their basement. They’ll sit around until the bloodflow to their brain goes so low that it atrophies. The slightly increased rate of brain atrophy in long term users is likely due to lower physical activity by average cannabis users. (low exercize/flow causes dimentia and also can be seen when imagining)
But this also happens with TV, video games, porn, comics, magic the gathering, food, etc, etc. I’ve had many times more friends “ruin their lives” with video games than pot! Become dependent on their parents and then the state because they cant stop playing and become obese.
So, what are we banning next?
First of all, we are talking about cannabis here. But for the sake of argument let's just say that cannabis DOES turn people into violent, aggressive criminals....
We already have have laws in place which address these things. There are already laws against assault, theft, robbery, aggressive pan handling, etc...
Interestingly, these laws have their foundation in millennia old Judeo/Christian beliefs and values. These laws are based on the idea that each individual has the right to themselves and their property and that this right is given to them by God and is inalienable. No other human (or government) has the right to take your property or assault you.
The "extra" laws that you are advocating for are the complete opposite. These laws are NOT based on Judeo/Christian values but instead are based on early 20th century progressive/socialist values. They are rooted in a way of thinking that says we are not individuals with responsibility to ourselves, our families and God but rather, we are part of a collective. The collective is responsible for us and we are rightly told what we can and can't do for the well being of the collective. The collective also has the right to our property to support others in the collective who aren't making productive choices.
Regardless of whether I support the practice or not, it is a fact that there are many costs that the taxpayers end up paying because of drug abusers. Welfare, prison, rehab, and medical expenses are all costs incurred by taxpayers for drug abusers. That is the reality that we live with right now.
I would argue that it is not "regardless" whether you support the practice. It is very important whether you support the practice of the government forcing you to pay for someone else's bad decisions. This policy is a BAD policy. It has BAD consequences. It is morally wrong to force you to pay for someone else's bad choices. You are suggesting that we need to enact other laws which may or may not be bad themselves, may create unintended bad consequences or may be morally wrong in order to mitigate some of the negative consequences (cost) of the first bad law.
The drug of choice is almost irrelevant. The disease is addiction. One component of the disease is that parts of the brain that are involved with impulse control are destroyed, meaning that the addict is lacking the one quality that he/she most needs to kick the addiction.
We already have have laws in place which address these things. There are already laws against assault, theft, robbery, aggressive pan handling, etc...
Um, okay, then. So whenever I visit a city, it is just my imagination that I frequently have to avoid stepping on drug addicts who are panhandling to support their addictions. I'll try to remember that the next time I go to San Francisco, New Orleans, Anaheim, Baltimore, etc. I'm just lucky that I have not been mugged; maybe that's because I always insist that I have no money, and they hear that.
I would argue that it is not "regardless" whether you support the practice. It is very important whether you support the practice of the government forcing you to pay for someone else's bad decisions. This policy is a BAD policy. It has BAD consequences. It is morally wrong to force you to pay for someone else's bad choices. You are suggesting that we need to enact other laws which may or may not be bad themselves, may create unintended bad consequences or may be morally wrong in order to mitigate some of the negative consequences (cost) of the first bad law.
I find it interesting just how far people will go to try to excuse drug abuse (or, honestly, to rationalize their own drug addictions).
The fact is that I have no control over the laws which ensure that drug addicts still receive welfare payments and health care (including multiple rounds of rehab) at taxpayer expense. And for every person like me who would cut off every taxpayer dollar from being spent on addicts, there are radical leftists who hysterically claim that people like me are heartless, and that we should dump tons of money onto addicts. In case you have not noticed, there is a war going on between those who would preserve civilization and those who would destroy it to build a socialist dystopia; the drug war is just one front of the war.
Another fact is that making an activity legal NEVER decreases the incidence of that activity, despite the claims that proponents of legalized drugs often make. Did abortion disappear when the Supreme court deemed it legal? No; in fact the incidence of abortion jumped from a few hundred per year to over 1.5 million per year at its peak (the rate has since dropped, but is still many times higher than pre-legalization). Now, on what basis would I believe that drug abuse will drop with widespread legalization of marijuana? All I see is that marijuana is being legalized, and at the same time, there is an opioid epidemic... and now some jurisdictions are toying with legalizing other drugs. This is a huge problem.
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