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To: Grumpy_Mel
“Drugs, for instance, don’t have the intermediary steps: Drug user is addicted and needs a fix - drug user shoots someone and steals their money to buy drugs. That’s a potential scenario, but it’s DIRECT harm. It’s also a potential scenario which has played itself out as an actuality far too many times for me to count.”

Um, I’m seeing numerous intermediary steps here

1) Drug user takes drugs | Person eats red meat

2) Drug user gets addicted | Person develops heart disease

3) Drug user needs money for fix | Person needs to drive to supermarket to buy more red meat.

4) Drug user shoots some-one for money | Person crashes car into school bus during heart attack.

Where’s that logical difference again?

Well, one obvious logical difference would be that with a drug user who is addicted and needs a fix, there is a direct likelihood that said user will seek to obtain the money to buy the drugs, regardless of how said money is obtained. It's a direct example of causation. We KNOW this to be the case, as decades of crime statistics demonstrate.

Concerning red meat consumption and heart disease, there are numerous factors which contribute to heart disease, and red meat consumption is actually questionable as to whether it is one of these factors, or to how much it actually does play a contributing role. Further, eating red meat doesn't then require a person to even operate a motor vehicle, nor does it guarantee the subsequent and exceedingly unlikely and unfortuitous timing which your example uses. Nothing about eating read meat even presents the potential for a person to operate a motor vehicle, and in fact, doesn't even present a solid potentiality for a person to even HAVE a heart attack. The same is manifestly not true about the abuse of many addictive narcotics. That's the logical difference.

371 posted on 08/22/2007 1:25:22 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Fred Dalton Thompson - POTUS 44)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Well, one obvious logical difference would be that with a drug user who is addicted and needs a fix, there is a direct likelihood that said user will seek to obtain the money to buy the drugs, regardless of how said money is obtained. It's a direct example of causation. We KNOW this to be the case, as decades of crime statistics demonstrate.

You're right. Drug prohibition has caused crime to increase, exactly the same as alcohol prohibition did. That why Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has called for an end to the drug war.
.
381 posted on 08/22/2007 1:56:02 PM PDT by radioman
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