So you reckon it's OK to impose on others any risk that insurers don't bother to ask about?
Insurance is a business. My main point in bringing up the insurance was to illustrate for you that drug abuse and drunkenness is a high risk activity. The proof is in the rating.
Insurance carriers build into their premiums the little risks. That is ok with me, yes.
I didn't ask you whether it was OK with you if insurance carriers build the risks of pleasure driving into their premiums. I asked you whether it was OK with you for you to impose those risks on others - a question you've repeatedly found ways to not answer.
Well, what we do as a nation is decide what constitutes high risk activity. Drunkenness and drug abuse are high risk activities that put not only the users at risk, but all dependents, those nearby, and pretty much the entire society in which we live.
We as a nation have decided that (with the unproven but possible exception of minors in one's care) drunkenness is NOT a high risk activity and does NOT put at risk those nearby nor the entire society in which we live - because (with that possible exception) we have NOT made drunkenness illegal.
As for drug "abuse": if by that you mean the equivalent of drunkenness, by all means let's restrict it as much as we do drunkenness - and no more. But if drug "abuse" is your way of referring to drug use in any amount, then I refer you AGAIN to the following:
As I said in post #258, to which you haven't responded:
A glass or two or three of alcohol depending upon the size and duration does not keep you from rational thinking, or have any but beneficial long term effects.
All other drugs do;
Alcohol was used exclusively in irrationalizing doses when that drug was illegal. It's not the drug, it's the incentive structure.
save for a puff or two of marijuana; which I’ve never heard of or seen someone do;
I've done it myself in the past - so again you FAIL.
It’s your opinion that I “fail,” but the plain fact is that you and I don’t agree on the threat of stoned persons.
We’d both, I think, want someone arrested for waving a knife in our face in a threatening manner, even if no damage was done.
But I’d want the participants in a crack den arrested for getting high, and you would not. You think they are exercising a liberty. I say they are indulging a sin, or evil if you prefer, that threatens OVERMUCH a law abiding society.
You say things like pleasure driving threaten society, too. I say the risk there is far more minimal, insurance rates are evidence of that, and that there are some benefits to pleasure driving yet none with drug abuse.
As for your habit of smoking one or two hits and yet not getting high, good for you, however, it is not my opinion that this is the usual practice. I can’t prove it, though, just speaking from life experience (mostly as a teen, around teen and adult pot smokers.) Except at a couple of weddings, in my adult life it is not my experience that people usually drink until drunk.
I suppose that the majority of Americans must agree with me, because social drinking for adults is legal, while drunkenness and using other psychoactive drugs is not. That’s where we’ve landed as a society. You’d like to change that.
So, you want to make marijuana use equivalent to social drinking. I don’t see it that way. That doesn’t mean I “fail.” It just means we don’t agree.
Once marijuana is legalized, of course, we can start the argument that hashish is just like marijuana. After that we can start in on cocaine, and etc., until like the Libertarian standard bearer Ron Paul, we say heroin should be legalized if the states so deem.
I’ll oppose it all the way, I guess you will support it, and we’ll see who wins.