Maybe it's harsh, but I can't get my head around the kind of thinking that results in those kinds of arguments.
Alcohol is an addictive drug. Some people have addictive personalities and become addicted to it easily. The same addictive personalities are prone to becoming addicted to other drugs as well as behaviours like sex and gambling.
Most people have to capacity to recognize the signs of addiction and moderate their behaviour. You construct an argument that manages to deny that by attributing to all the drugs except alcohol an almost magical ability to immediatly addict anyone who uses it.
I read the Shaefer Commission report from the 70's, and I did some research on Robert Shafer. I've read several articles laying out the horrors of marijuana from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and did some research on who they are. There is something very wrong with the "drug warrior" mentality that argues that Schafer is lying to me and RWJF is telling the truth.
Correction. The head of the Shafer Commission was Raymond Shafer, not Robert, if you’d like to research his credentials as a political conservative.
Look, you asked, what’s the difference between alcohol and other drugs? I thought about it, and said, one difference I see is that alcohol provides some nutrition and positive health benefits.
That doesn’t mean I support drunkenness, or that I think alcoholism is a good thing.
All drugs can be addictive. You do a risk/benefit analysis. Is the benefit derived from marijuana worth the deficit? How about the benefit from LSD? How about alcohol?
And then you decide what substances should be totally pervasive; what substances should be legal but controlled (alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs in our country) and what substances should be illegal if not prescribed for legitimate medical reasons (that’s when the benefit outweighs the negative).
I really don’t think that is stupid at all.
And I don’t believe any drug magically addicts anybody. I also freely acknowledge that there are addictive personality types that are far more subject to addiction of all kinds than other personality types.
You are projecting arguments on me that I don’t make.