Posted on 02/03/2003 9:54:04 AM PST by MrLeRoy
As law enforcement lobbies members of Congress and state legislators coast-to-coast for more funds to finance the war against illicit drugs, Utah's Legislature considers liberalizing Utah's liquor laws.
As leaders obsess over how governments will help pay for the costs of medical treatment, Utah's Legislature is considering liberalizing Utah's liquor laws.
Someone should teach Utah's legislators that alcohol is the most abused drug.
Pretend for a minute that humankind had not discovered alcohol until Drexel distilled it in 2000. After years of testing, would the Federal Drug Administration allow it to be sold as a drink? At best, the FDA would place it under a restrictive prescription schedule, complete with a list of warnings against side effects and addiction potential.
Studies that tout alcohol's benefit on heart health illustrate that some "scientific" testing is actually designed to justify our habits. If Drexel had discovered alcohol and tried to market it as a heart medication, the FDA would have denied the proposal because of its dangerous and addictive side effects.
Ancient beers and wines had minor food value. In specific times and places, they were safer to drink than the waters. Through the ages, humans experimented with wines and spirits, not to improve their food value, but to increase their alcohol jolt.
The snobbishness surrounding wine consumption is misleading, for vintners are just as obsessive about high alcohol contents as are the distillers of whiskey.
Alcohol, with tobacco and marijuana are the big-three hypocrisies in the American war on drugs. Proponents of these substances would have us believe they are really good for us because they are (in the popular cliché) "natural."
This logic is laughable. Mankind has so hybridized the plants involved in wine and the various types of cigarettes that nothing is natural about any of the products.
For example, mankind has so thoroughly hybridized marijuana in the past four thousand years that the original plant probably does not exist anywhere on earth. People tinkered with it -- especially since the late 1970s -- to increase the psychoactive buzz, not its dubious medical properties.
Neither the war on drugs nor the medical crisis can be taken seriously when billions are squandered to treat conditions and illnesses caused by culturally accepted drug abuse. When we are really serious about decreasing medical costs and drug abuse, we will end recreational consumption of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana.
Some do, some don't. I am convinced that many if not most liberdopians just want to have risk-free cheap drugs for themselves, and to have their messes cleaned up by the taxpayer just as happens with most alcoholics now. They justify and rationalize the behavior through the simple psychological defense mechanism of denial. Like alcoholics, they refuse to admit that they are or ever will be irresponsible in the use of addictive psychoactive substances. The plight of other drug abusers doesn't even register on their radar screens. They just don't see themselves as drug abusers with addiction problems despite all the objective evidence to the contrary.
That addictive mindset accounts for their obsession with dope and dope legalization issues 24/7.
Then there are the tee-totalling atomistic social-autistic libertarians who don't use drugs and never will use drugs (we will have to take their word on that for now) but who rage like brute animals against illusory statist chains on their behavior. The mere thought that there are state-imposed risks attached to their indulging in destructive behavior they have no intention of ever indulging in and have never indulged it, drives them absolutely nuts. They hate the state, they hate taxes, they hate public roads, they hate libraries, they hate most of their neighbors, they hate other people in general, but they hate themselves most of all for being such miserable and nasty little cretins. In their ideal world social darwinism is king. Drug abusers, including themslves, can die and go to hell. In fact, all of society can die and go to hell; their small comfort being the fleeting bitter solace they get from sucking on the pacifier of social isolation and the strict avoidance of even the least shared social responsibility.
There are a few responsible, clear-thinking, non-dysfunctional pro-dope libertarians out there. They are just naive and have yet to subject their ideology to intelligent scrutiny.
Thanks for confirming yet again that while freedom-lovers have facts and logic, Drug Warriors have only personal attacks.
Actually, I thought it was an eloquent description. I was moved.
Embracing argument ad hominem now, I see.
It's one thing to say that drugs are dangerous. It's quite another to suggest that the decision to legalize/not legalize should be based on that danger.
You forgot to close your sarcasm tag (< / sarcasm >).
"Walters was in Las Vegas to convince Nevadans that legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana is a bad idea. [...] He said baby boomers might think it's harmless that their kids are experimenting with marijuana as they did. He said the marijuana sold to teenagers today is more potent and dangerous than the strain their parents used when they were young." - Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 25, 2002
That is always the intent of emotional arguments, to make you "feel" that the person making the argument is so "right" that examining the underlying premises of there arguments is unnecessary.
It's one thing to say that drugs are dangerous. It's quite another to suggest that the decision to legalize/not legalize should be based on a danger scale.
Well said!
So if it's OK to legalize (or not) based on danger, what's wrong with a danger scale?
Actually, "there" should have been "their", but I didn't notice it until I'd already hit the button. But it seems the basic idea got through anyway. This is the same tactics the dems use when they argue that the evil Republicans want to starve poor babies and throw old people out on the street, so they can give big corporations more tax breaks and expand their stock portfolios.
I never said that. In fact, my point is just the opposite.
I have no problem with a person saying that a drug is dangerous. Or that a drug is not dangerous. Or that one drug is more dangerous than another drug.
"what's wrong with a danger scale?"
When it comes to drug legalization, however, I'm saying that a "danger scale" is irrelevant. Using such a scale says non-dangerous drugs are legal and very dangerous drugs are illegal, and somewhere in between we go from legal to illegal based on some arbitrary danger point.
For starters, this method would make the drugs used in chemotherapy illegal. Also, it ignores other factors, such as those listed in my post #86. It attempts to quantify something (danger) that is subjective as it's sole criterion.
Every time you post that "alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, yet alcohol is legal and marijuana is not", you're using a "danger scale" that I will not recognize.
OK.
Every time you post that "alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, yet alcohol is legal and marijuana is not", you're using a "danger scale" that I will not recognize.
Alcohol seems to be worse than marijuana based on the factors you listed in #86.
Opinions? Everybody's got one.
You don't recognize it? The "danger scale" is the entire basis for the WOD. The feds can throw out whatever ICC argument they want, but the basis of the CSA and laws against "drugs" is that they are "too dangerous". Thats why there is the "Class schedule".
Almost everything government "regulates" is done so on the basis of "danger".
If you don't buy the "Danger scale", then on what basis do you support "drugs" being illegal? I don't tgink you have ever answered that question. In fact, your posts that I have read on this topic in the past seem to indicate that you in deed do support "Drugs" being illegal on the basis that they are "too dangerous". Please clarify your position.
Opinions?
No, statements supported in post #91, to which you refused to respond.
He did, in post #86.
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