So do cars and fries and whiskey and stupid.
Why should we care if somebody decides to kill themselves?
Oh, and this thread is about POT, not heroin. Or meth or any of that other stuff.
We need cars, and we can't help whiskey or stupid. Stupid comes natural for a lot of people, and Whiskey is going to be around.
Why should we care if somebody decides to kill themselves?
The question is simpler than the answer. There are multiple answers to this question but they depend heavily on other factors.
In World War II, the United States forces were pushing back the Japanese Army. In Japanese culture, being defeated is a great dishoner, and many Japanese officers were killing themselves from the shame. The problem got so bad that the Emperor had to issue an order forbidding Japanese soldiers from killing themselves.
In this instance, they cared about people killing themselves because it affected their ability to defend the homeland. Dead citizens are not helpful at this. They are also not helpful in any nation, because whatever it is they would have contributed is lost.
Now we can afford some level of suicide in this nation, but the amount we can afford is limited. If sufficient quantities of people were killing themselves, then it would have severe repercussions for our economy and defense.
As long as the people killing themselves are the worthless F**ks and the dredges of society, we will probably see some benefit from it, but the problem with drugs is that it will turn decent contributing members of society into worthless F**ks that might as well kill themselves quickly than robbing and stealing from the rest of us to feed their drug habit. The problem is, they won't. They will linger and rob and steal from the rest of us until they eventually die of an overdose or some other drug related malady.
Oh, and this thread is about POT, not heroin. Or meth or any of that other stuff.
Libertarians do not see a boundary between one drug and another. You see, their philosophical argument is that taking drugs constitutes a "RIGHT" and is therefore applicable to any and all drugs.
Whether you like it or not, if you are going to argue a right for the most harmless, you are going to have to accept that same right for the most deadly.
So here we are talking about all drugs in a thread in which the proponents want to limit it to pot, and that doesn't even address the issue of a gateway drug.