the weed that ate human brains
no timmy dont get too close to that strange plant
aieee
crunch munch smack swallow buurpp
(Here are some atypical arguments that should be considered.)
There are several problems with trying to use religious arguments against drugs.
The first of these is that, if you look at the membership of anti-drug organizations like DARE, you’ll note that the vast majority of its members do not, and never have used drugs. They just don’t do that sort of thing in their family, and their only potential for addiction is if they are injured and become addicted to legal pharmaceutical painkillers.
For them, this is a MAJOR threat, and one which will get worse in the future, as at the most current drugs have of their active ingredient is something like 20%, but approval has been given for it to be increased to 100%. While superb for extreme pain relief, its potential for addiction is very dangerous. (By comparison, the 20% drugs are about equivalent to heroin in strength.)
On the other end of the scale is marijuana, which may actually be “helpful” to many. For example, for years the government was certain that there would be a gigantic increase in the number of lung cancer cases from marijuana use, but it never happened. The reason is that while marijuana does have some cancer causing agents, it also has many agents that help to prevent cancer.
In Israel, marijuana is now used as an effective therapy against PTSD, something of very great concern in the US because of the enormous numbers of military personnel suffering from PTSD.
The very best argument that can be made against marijuana, especially to children, is that it makes a person “dull”, dampens their motivation and ambition, and makes them dimwitted long after the obvious effects have worn off.
While this doesn’t sound like much of an argument, it is impressively persuasive, since the vast majority of children want to live a “normal” life, in which they are rewarded for their work. As well, it is reinforced by even marijuana users, who generally agree.
Much of the objection to drugs by the religious is due to the tragedy involved with the few “good kids who go bad” because of drugs. In a stark parallel, it is like the tragedy of children that become homosexual, something that is also very hard to accept.
And this leads to the most painful supposition at all.
It is the easiest thing in the world to imagine that drugs and alcohol make people weak. What is far harder to accept, is that those people who are naturally weak are far more prone to seek out drugs and alcohol.
It has long been known that the human brain does not physically mature until the early 20’s. Before then, it is far more physically flexible and adaptable. So the earlier a person is exposed to *any* addictive substance, the more likely they are to both become generally more susceptible to *all* addictive chemicals; and the harder it will be for them to break out of addiction.
The closer they are to physical brain maturity, they less likely it will be that they will either become addicted to anything, and it will be far easier for them to break out of their addiction.
But there are also many people who are naturally weak, and this handicaps every part of their lives. Others cannot really force them to be strong, as well. Such efforts will not build them up, but tear them down even more, and faster. They will be at their best only if they spend their lives conserving their strength. Under stress they find relief only with drugs and alcohol, so it is best if they are not stressed, even with the demands of a normal life.
The bottom line is that the best argument in support of Dr. Paul is that people are individuals, and as such to attempt to use a broad brush with public policy with such tremendous diversity is to guarantee harm and abuse to many.
While society yearns for simple, blanket solutions to individual problems, these blanket solutions are far too often worse than accepting that individuals are individuals, and must be treated as such.
We cannot legislate away mortality or immorality, stupidity or poverty, criminality or corruption. Just clean up after.
Interesting how all the liberty people only seem to show up when it’s about illegal drugs. Taking illegal drugs to escape reality is cowardly. “Courage is the foundation of all the other virtues.” Cowardice leads to ruin. “No man is an island.” Nobody, and I’ve seen the people living in huts and caves, is truly on their own. Most of the people pushing to legalize drugs are doing it because they think they will get cheaper illegal drugs to use. Others want to legalize to grab taxes off it. Still others don’t mind ruined lives as they think that their children can then have a better chance of grabbing more money. If you truly don’t care what other human beings do, then go live in a zoo. I would rather live in a nation filled with people who have the courage and gumption to change their lives for the better than a nation full of cowardly, stupid and lazy illegal drug users and their greedy dealers and enablers. Saying that discouraging drug use is going to cause the government to take away all liberty is a disingenuous and foolish argument. If you truly don’t care about other people using drugs, then why are you posting as an advocate of ignoring cowardice on a conservative website? If you think that discouraging cowardly behavior is intrusive, than why post your intrusive thoughts on a conservative website? Sit in your cave and twiddle your thumbs. If you’re a libertarian for drugs, then be an honest libertarian and hide in your room. If you can’t, then how much money are you making off of illegal drugs, or how much are you using?
[So do we have the right to put into our bodies whatever we want?]
Barney Fwank thinks so.
Within the confines of the Constitution they can, but I don't see anything in the there that says that the Feds can regulate drugs or social behaviors. Even the temperance union that gave us the Prohibition disaster had the decency to pas a Constitutional Amendment. Now they just ban things by fiat.
The Drug War is a failure and we need to try something else. Ron Paul is right.
As of 10 a.m. PST there are over 85 comments here - too many to wade through, so this might be a repeat.
My take on this “it’s my body” B/S is that, yeah, you can put whatever you want into your body, but when something goes wrong, you’re the first one to dial 911.
If there was an understanding that, yes Virginia, you CAN put anything you want into your body, but when “something” goes wrong, you are left to die on your own or lie in your waste in a coma-like state until you do die.
Since “that ain’t gonna happen”, you can bet there will be some constraints.
There is a fine balance between the complete autonomy of the individual and the effects of individual autonomy on others. As many have observed, the choices made by individuals about what they put in their bodies or their private behavior often impose costs on others, sometimes very high costs. Examples abound: health care for poor eating behaviors, smoking, drug use, reckless driving, unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, etc. We try to fashion rules to maintain this balance but the goal is elusive. For one thing, the calculus is immeasurably complex. Not every exercise of risky behavior results in a societal cost. A single cigarette, cheeseburger or romantic assignation does not necessarily produce cancer, heart disease or aids. Likewise, one can often engage promiscuously in risky behavior without consequence or at least without objectively apparent consequence.
Where to draw the line? Zero tolerance? Infinite tolerance? Left to the government, new agencies would pop up, teeming with bureaucrats spewing impenetrable clouds of regulatory gas, making a bigger mess of things and devouring the wealth of yet more unborn generations.
The answer is, there is no answer and there are many answers. There is no answer because the question as a whole is as irreducibly complex as all human interaction. Only G-d can sort this out. But man is left to try to perfect what he can and the political charter between the state and the governed is the laboratory. So there are many answers taking individual cases on one at a time. Reasonably good examples already exist and we need only the courage to apply the same logic to larger categories. In many states, a drunk driver injured in a car accident is denied certain recoveries. While they may be able to receive basic medical care, they will be prohibited from bringing suit for pain and suffering. The choice of what the driver put in his body comes with a consequence which shields the rest of us from bearing part of the cost of the behavior.
Very well. Let’s apply this to the current notorious case of Sandra Fluke and her demand that we all pay for her sexual appetite. It is no fluke that Fluke wants to camouflage the conversation in “health” rhetoric. After all, don’t we all have more sympathy for protecting health than for promoting promiscuity? (I can also use polemical language, but that’s the point). Moreover, aren’t we all invested in “preventative care” in the form of birth control to avoid the steeper costs of pregnancy complications, unwanted children, including pre- and post-natal care and public education? Well, yes and no. It is certainly desirable to avoid these costs. But why should the entire society shoulder these burdens resulting from entirely volitional activity. The injured drunk driver, chooses to drink alcohol, which carries certain risks, such as heart disease, sclerosis of the liver and impaired function. Then, he chooses to get behind the wheel. We penalize him for his choices by erecting barriers to certain forms of compensation for his injuries.
Ms. Fluke chooses to engage in intercourse, which carries the risk of pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and heartbreak. Her choice not to take measures to protect herself from these consequences, save heartbreak, is the same as the choice of driving drunk. She says the taxpayers must support her choice and protect her from its consequences. If she is right, then all drunks should have the right to taxpayer provided prophylactic measures against his drunk driving: a guardian paid to be with him at all times to take away the keys, or, more seriously, a breathalyzer interlock should be installed on all vehicles, because we can’t take the chance that he will only attempt to drive his own vehicle. Why is the tippler’s recreation worthy of less consideration than the libertine? (I did not say slut) He needs preventative “health” care just as much as she does, if not more, although much sexual recreation results in human wreckage and much more seriously, the killing of millions of babies in utero.
Alas, I don’t think the intellectual satisfaction of the argument really pays off. After all, whether we choose, as citizens to pay for contraception and disease prevention or not, the behavior will continue. Irrefutably, we all will suffer. One only need look at the wages of the last 40 to 50 years of “sexual liberation” to know this: single motherhood and the resulting tsunami of social pathologies, sexually transmitted diseases and the enormous tragedy and costs of AIDS and the untold spiritual devastation of 50 million aborted children.
In the end, the only true remedies lie in a restoration of a moral culture. I don’t mean religious zealotry or imposition. What I do mean is an effort to reassert the idea that America, and even other nations, once had standards and, for all their shortcomings in the eyes of today’s hipsters, the standards were a public good.
The task is daunting. Academia, Hollywood, mass media and activists have been chipping away at societal standards for at least 50 years. Their labor has produced two or three generations of Americans who are completely sold on the idea of moral relativism. So sold, in fact that it goes beyond moral relativism to moral inversion: it is now bad to be good. If you are a Rick Santorum and there is a whiff of morality in your political message, you must be demonized. Rush Limbaugh tagged Sandra Fluke with an apt moral label and he is vilified. No degenerate behavior of the left ever receives comparable treatment: Elliot Spitzer caught with a hooker-he gets a show on MSNBC; Bill Clinton staining dresses in the oval office dresses is hailed the wise man of the Democrat party. A complete inversion of values. Good is bad and bad is good.
Until and unless America can restore a moral culture to some degree, where personal behavior matters and people again sense shame when they behave badly, no amount of tinkering will reverse the current direction. When society itself feels a collective sense of responsibility to maintain standards of personal behavior, the behavior of individuals easily rises to those standards. I pray that such an awakening takes place because the future of the country hangs in the balance. G-d Bless and Save America.
the weed that ate human brains
no timmy dont get too close to that strange plant
aieee
crunch munch smack swallow buurpp
Its a simple idea.
It is more powerful for someone to choose to do right instead of forcing them to do right by a rule.
If someone has the liberty to do whatever they want with their bodies, and instead chooses to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, than that choice has power. It is an expression of free will.
If, however, a powerful force such as the government forces someone to live a certain way, whether they force people to do right or do wrong, there is no free will. There is tyranny. Even if a government forced everyone to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, the choice has no power. There is no free will.
It comes down to this point. Is free will a God given right? And if it is, then isn’t it immoral for government or anyone else to take away that right from people?
>>...What do you think?...<<
I think the bulk of the *YOUTH* supporting Ron Paul are only behind him hoping for legal weed.
And one might also think that if you want to use man’s laws to enforce a particular theology and/or religious doctrine upon a society, then that point of view might be fairly compared to mooselimbs and sharia. I’m not saying that’s your intent, but a rastafarian sure might think so.
Because you and your fellow idiot Congresscritters have created a “right” to medical care. Eliminate that “right,” and I don’t see why we can’t deal.