[Hemingway's Ghost]

You were the one who suggested the comparison:

Do you tell your kids it's okay to cherry-pick the rules by which we play? To ignore those laws with which they don't agree?

And yet now you insist there are rules and then there are rules. Lies and little white lies, in other words? Thank you for saving me from having to demonstrate the absurdity of this argument any further.

No, being a former leftist did not leave behind some collectivist residue. And no, I don't believe the state owns my--or anyone else's--body.

You can think whatever you want, but you've demonstrated on this thread, quite definitively, that you do. I'm still waiting for your common-sense explanation as to why it's proper to criminalize substance X while demonstrably more harmful substances Y and Z remain perfectly legal.

I do believe, though, that legalization of mind-altering drugs is a profoundly bad idea--even your drug of choice. People--children especially--are, by and large, binary thinkers.

Meaning what: all law should be formulated as though the government were a parent?

If we--as a society, as a culture, as a representative government--don't spread a message that says 'Say no to drugs', then we are sending the message that says drug use is perfectly okay, and that simply isn't true.

What bravo sierra. Substances do not need to be criminalized in order to "send a message" that using them is bad. What's the buzz around fast food: Bad, don't eat it, you'll become obese. Cigarettes? You'll destroy your lungs . . . you'll get cancer. Drinking too much? You'll destroy your liver, you'll kill someone in a drunken driving accident. Yet possession of a Big Mac, a Marlboro, or a Budweiser is not a crime---the latter for adults over the age of 21.

Amazing. How did we ever get this far without a War on Fast Food or a War on Tobacco?

[Zon]

Amazing. How did we ever get this far without a War on Fast Food or a War on Tobacco?

Politicians and bureaucrats give us 3,000 new federal laws each year to rescue us from the brink of disaster. Each year the save us. I'm simply terrified that myself, you, everyone and society will plummet over the cliff-edge without the 3,000 new laws that will come next year and the 3,000 new laws to come the following year to rescue us right now. We need those laws right now. 3,000 new laws and regulations annually is not enough. It should be double or triple that. Perhaps then people and society can finally prosper.

[Rembrandt_fan]

You wrote, "And yet now you insist there are rules and then there are rules. Lies and little white lies, in other words? Thank you for saving me from having to demonstrate the absurdity of this argument any further."

No, I adhere to the law, as do most people. I granted you the point on, say, creeping a few miles over the speed limit, as a breaking of the law. But there are graduations in the law, which is why there are such things as misdemeanors and felonies. Further, you didn't address the consequences of buying dope: who profits, who dies, or the effect on whole communities where drug use is rampant. The absurdity lies with you: an inveterate dope smoker hiding behind a smokescreen of do-what-thou-wilt libertarianism.

Lastly, you've used a tone bordering somewhere between patronizing and accusatory when referring to my former political beliefs, as if those once-held views somehow taint my arguments now. I tell you what, when I did become a conservative, I never imagined I would hear another conservative proudly boast of buying and using drugs.