Posted on 07/05/2005 9:30:27 AM PDT by Sensei Ern
For many years, I have been a strong opponent of legalizing drugs. As you read this, remember that I am still against drug legalization, but I have more sympathy for the opposing argument.
The reason I have been opposed to drug legalization is to protect children. I grew up in a home that was one step up from a crack house..at least we had heat and food. I know first hand what can happen when a child lives in those conditions.
As a counter, I have always felt that use of tobacco and alcohol should be legal for those of a responsible age.
The reason I am considering a change is because of the pain I went through this last month. Four weeks ago, I had a root canal done on a tooth...it was Friday. Once the Novocain wore off, I was in serious pain because the doctor was inexperienced and left a partial root. I experienced pain worse than listening to Rosanne Barr sing the National Anthem. He forgot to write a prescription.
I called the emergency number only to be told I could see the doctor on Monday. TWO WHOLE DAYS IN EXTREME PAIN! I had some 800mg Ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet. That only took away enough pain to convince myself to not commit suicide to stop the pain.
On Monday, I was given a prescription of Tylenol 3 with Codeine and an antibiotic. That took away the pain. Until it ran out. Again, extreme pain. Another dentist did another root canal...and again did not get the whole root. I made sure he gave me a prescription for the pain, before I left the office.
Finally, when that ran out, and another dentist completed the root canal, the pain has subsided.
To be in the kind of debilitating pain I was in, cannot be described. Bill Cosby once talked about taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head...that comes close.
I have always been an advocate of personal responsibility. That conflicted with knowing that some of the drugs offered today are so dangerous that they needed to be regulated. Then, I thought back about how things were a hundred years ago. The doctor prescribed a treatment, and you either made it yourself, or went to the pharmacist, who mixed up the more potential drugs.
Back then, the only regulation was, could you afford the cost? Drugs were available, and the pharmacist would determine whether you were abusing. If you OD'd on a drug from abuse, you died and life went on for others. But, you could get drugs if they were needed, and you did not have to wait until Monday. You didn't need to wait for approval from anyone to use a drug.
That is enough about that for the moment.
If drugs were to be legalized, they should be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes...have a legal purchasing age. Also, if you do harm to another while under the influence of anything, you should be held personally responsible...to the fullest extent, especially capital punishment for causing a death. If you are taking drugs to get high, strap yourself into a chair and sleep it off.
If drugs were immediately legalized, we could expect some immediate effects. For one, the drug addicts would run out and by everything, and we would have a rash of overdosing for about a month. The rest of us could then go on with our lives, only mourning the loss of a relative, instead of daily living with the horror of a drug addict in our lives.
Currently, I believe law enforcement should be stronger. But, I could be moved to undecided if I heard good arguments for the opposite.
--Pray for our troops --Pray they have wisdom to do the right thing --Pray they remain courageous --Pray they know we love and support them --Pray they get the equipment they need to do the job --Pray for their safe return home to a hero’s welcome
Actually, yeah, you clearly implied it. I said there's a group of drug users who are able to afford their habit, and you doubted the existence of such a group. Now, using this little thing that we call "logic", it follows directly from this that you claim that the number of drug users who are able to afford their habit without resorting to crime is zero, and it follows from that that every single drug user resorts to crime to finance his habit.
But I certainly don't know of any who are productive citizens
How do you know?
and you don't know of any either. I wonder if anyone on the thread knows of a meth addict who is a productive citizen.
Given that using meth is illegal, and that the government has successfully implanted the meme that meth users are the scum of the earth, it's extremely unlikely that any productive citizens who use meth would advertise the fact. If you or I or anyone knows a productive meth user, it's probable that we don't know we know one.
"For years, the most successful entertainers in the world were the Grateful Dead, and they were advertising their drug use. I hated their music, but they weren't 'losers' in any capitalist sense." --Penn Jillette
The question wasn't about the size of the group growing or shrinking.
Uh, yeah, it was. You asked me to prove that legalizing drugs (and hence reducing their price) would lower the amount of property crimes committed to finance drug habits. If the group of drug users who steal to finance their habits shrinks, the rate of crime shrinks proportionally. Quod erat demonstrandum. But you apparently wouldn't recognize a proof if it came up and bit you on your drug-free ass.
Yes, I'm still waiting for you to prove your statement. Apparently, you cannot or you would have done so by now.
Third alternative: I've proven it several times over, but you either refuse to recognize it or refuse to admit it. I will give you credit for a novel tactic: demand proof, and then no matter what your opponent says or how many times he meets your demand, repeat over and over again, "I'm still waiting for proof!" I must say that I haven't encountered that particular fallacious behavior before. Good for you.
Ah, correlation equals causation. You know, I bet that his record also showed that any time he committed a crime, he was wearing shoes, and there was no record of violence on his part when he wasn't wearing shoes. Clearly the shoes caused the crimes. We need to start arresting the shod right now and giving them tough prison terms, to fight this scourge.
Does that help your understanding?
If that bothers you, so be it. I'm sure it doesn't bother you near as much as having your sister raped and thrown out a window.
You are cetainly entitled to your opinion, and I respect them.
However, I have witnessed property crimes committed by black and hispanic men repeatedly (never once by a white man). I don't call for outlawing black and hispanic people. I had my car totalled and I was injured by someone who wasn't paying attention. I didn't call to outlaw cars.
Any instrument can be used for a good and bad purpose. Because some people use it for bad, I would hold the person accountable, and not the instrument.
If you use every cicrumstance in your life that has caused some harm, you could possibly make the case that everything except pillows, vitamins, and water should me made illegal.
Then again, there are enough a$$holes in the world that could probably figure out a way to hurt people with those items too.
Because 10%-20% of the population are scumbags, doesn't mean you outlaw things for everyone else to keep the scumbags in check, IMHO. Then again, that's just my opinion. I respect yours, and I hope you do the same.
Alright, what about so-called "conservative Democrats", such as Zell Miller? I don't think the meaning of "conservative" can change so readily as you believe, because it is a description of a relative position, not a fixed one. A pro-AA Dem cannot be called conservative, because the anti-AA position would return race consideration to the position described by the 14th A., and is thus a conserving of a previous condition.
"Change" would be a move toward the Liberal position, the consequent "change back" would be a return toward the Conservative position. An even more radical Liberal may advocate "change even more", which would place the first change in a relatively conservative position to the second change, but still more liberal than a return to the status quo before any change.
Care to comment on the X-Y axis theory I proposed?
No one is surprised at this, in fact, we expect this of you. You've no remorse in your disregard for facts. Btw, your sibling story sounds remarkably like another that was told to me. Without the veil of anonymity, and upon questioning, I found that the 'story' was a cover for a much greater, and sadder story, where the devil weed only played a tangential part. In this story the perverted uncle played a much greater role.
It seems any time I post to one of these pro-drug legalization threads, I get 20 pro-legalizers posting to me at once.
"It seems any time I post to one of these pro-drug legalization threads, my obvious illogic gets immediately pointed out by the saner. I'm sick of it."
So to all on this thread, suffice it to say that, after what happened to my sister, you can count on me to NEVER be in favor of legalizing drugs.
"So to all on this thread, suffice it to say that my personal experience has permanently warped my judgment and blinded me to logic. My position is set in stone and I'm far too emotionally invested in it to even consider changing it, no matter what facts or evidence is presented to me."
Rant and rave all you like. Twist what I have said. Ignore the parts you don't wish to acknowledge. Use all the silly hyperbole you like.
"Point out all the facts you like. Demonstrate the clear contradictions and flaws in what I have said. Show that I ignore all responses to requests for proof. None of it matters."
None of that is going to change my position. . .it is not going to change how and for whom I vote.
"My mind is completely closed! No matter how clearly you show that the War on Drugs does many times more harm than drugs themselves, I don't care! Logic means nothing to me!
If that bothers you, so be it. I'm sure it doesn't bother you near as much as having your sister raped and thrown out a window.
"My sister was defenestrated, and that trumps everything!"
Good day to you all.
"Way deep down, or even not so deep down, I realize how thoroughly I've been beaten in this thread. Every point I've made has been shot down, and I've failed utterly to respond to the points raised against me. Despite the many people pointing out the negative consequences of the War on Drugs, all I've been able to come up with in defense is 'my sister was attacked by a druggie, so there'. I completely fail to see that my so-called logic could also be used to ban guns, or cars, or even oxygen for that matter. Please, make the pain stop. I'm going to go away now to lick my wounds and try to figure out what I did wrong, only to repeat the experience the next time a drug thread gets posted."
You kidding, buddy? Do you have any idea how many people have died from being smothered by pillows? Do you know that many vitamins are lethally toxic in overdose? Are you aware how many people drown every year? How dare you suggest that these murderous instruments of destruction be legal?
IOW, you believe that those who don't think like you do should be considered criminals.
Isn't that pretty much why prohibition didn't work?
Since the beginning of recorded time, people have used substances for the pursuit of happiness. They always will. It is very difficult for people to accept others telling them what to eat, drink, smoke, etc. It is human nature. If they outlawed eating meat, I imagine many people would find that difficult, and a rampant underground meat market would spring up overnight. They would become outlaws. When they outlaw tobacco (and they will) we will have even more outlaws.
By definition, the war on drugs can never be won. It would not only require that all current people cease using "drugs", but everyone born after today would also have to never use "drugs". That is the only way it could be "won". And as such, it never will be.
You cannot legislate human nature. And some people prefer pot over budweiser and marlboro's. Some people function better on opium, heroin, laudanum, or what haveyou and live long and productive lives while using it, including a large number of our founding fathers ... and 110 year old chinese opium addicts.
A great many of the artists and authors that are taught about in school were drug users. Most of the philopsophers that permeate textbooks used drugs. Almost every artist in your CD collection, were/are "drug" users, many of the most prominent folks in our history books were "drug" users, the father of modern psychiatry was a well-known cocaine addicts, heck, even our President is who he is today partly because of his own dabbling in "illegal drugs".
Face it, without illegal drugs, we wouldn't have forefathers, art, philopshy, and many other things, and the world would be a very boring place.
Like a hammer, or a baseball bat, drugs are just a tool. You can build a house, hit a homer, or whack someone over the head - but without hammers and baseball bats, the world just wouldn't be the same.
The "war on drugs" is a means of selective prosecution, revenue enhancement, and job creation. It can't be won, and therefore is a perpetual money machine. Heck, it's darn brilliant if you sit and think about it. I would have thought the hard part would be selling it to the American public, but courtesy of public schools, soccer-mom hysteria, and mass media brainwashing, they succeeded. They sold it, you bought it. Now we have wire-taps, "money laundering" (whatever that is) laws, civil forfeiture, the war on cash, know your customer profiling, no-knock warrants, "routine traffic stops", oh gee ... what am I forgetting.
And they have freedom loving, patriotic, limited-government "conservatives" cheering them on. Who'd have thunk it?
Well, I would have because history has shown that the public of a country is easily manipulated into all kinds of irrational things (German folks really didn't have anything against Jews prior to the 1930's).
I'm still not sure this works, for me. It doesn't allow defining what the 'conservative' position is in the first place. How far back do you go? It still sounds very fluid.
I see what you're saying, that this is one definition of 'conservative', one that defines positions on a given issue based on existing laws, etc.
But I think I'm asking about something different -- I'm looking for a definition of the 'political philosophy' that has come to be known as 'Conservative'.
A million years ago, when I was younger, 'L' meant collectivist/socialist and 'C' meant capitalist/individualist.
It seems that the definitions are shifting, at least that's my perception.
Care to comment on the X-Y axis theory I proposed?
I'm sorry, I should have mentioned it.
I basically agree, yes. Altho I do think that is simplifying it a bit, but it's a good working model.
I'm not talking about the 'change' concept, myself, mainly because everyone I know on all sides of all issues want 'change', if not on a grand scale then on a small one.
I'm a system's architect. My 'OOA' is that there are two parts to politics, the same as any other 'problem-solving' system --
Each has it's own pitfalls, but the real devil is in the details. When it comes to deciding on 'goals' for our laws, that to me is not subject to the 'L/C' distinction. Pretty much everyone desires freedom, prosperity, and all that.
The seperation comes in when discussing the details, the 'methods' to achieve those goals.
And I see two clear-cut philosophies to achieve goals we set for our govt:
I *thought* this was the meaning of "politically liberal" v. "politically conservative". I'm pretty sure it use to be, anyway.
Don't forget, they sell "patches" for tobacco addictions which don't word so well because tobacco contains over 200 pschoactive chemicals and the only thing the patches give you is nicotine. Tobacoo is great because it actually binds to Mu (heroin) receptors, as well as those stimulated by Ecstacy. Albiet it much more weakly. When you do Tobacco, you do a few drugs at once ... again, albiet in doses much lighter than a straight-up user of any of the individual drugs. This is why it's so hard to quit. When you quit tobacco, you aren't quitting one drug, you are kicking a few drugs that you have been using in very low doses for decades. And just like heroin users cease to get high after a few months and have to use just to maintain or feel "right", this is pretty much the experience with tobacco. That initial head-spinning nasuea goes away, and you have to smoke to stay straight.
Everyone is an addict. To something. Maybe it's running, mabe it's food, maybe it's sex or gambling or porn or caffeine or television.
It's your right as a free person to be addicted to whatever you want, so long as you are not hurting someone else. And if you do hurt someone else, it is the action of hurting that should be illegal, not what you ate, drank, smoked, or watched on TV before you committed the act.
It's mind-boggling to think of the time, money, and energy we've spent worrying about what others put into their bodies, or how others conduct their private lives. For me, the golden rule of conservatism has always been "above all, mind your own business."
As with everything else, it all comes down to the money. It's not so much a "war" as a business pan.
That's what my X-Y chart gives. The goals are plotted out on the C/L axis, and the methods on the individualism/totalitarianism axis. Gun control is an example where the Conservative goal is promoted by appeal to individualism as a motive, and the Liberal goal is promoted via governmental power. Abortion is the inverse, with the Liberals appealing to individual choice and the Conservatives seeking governmental restriction.
I'm looking for a definition of the 'political philosophy' that has come to be known as 'Conservative'.
If anything, I think the basic philosophy is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", while the Libs is, "Try something new, even if it's wrong." As such, Conservatives are concerned with consequences, while Libs try to deny or escape them.
I've been trying to kick this oxygen thing, but my body goes into severe withdrawl and I relapse.
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