Betruger wrote:Diogenes wrote:Yes, unlike the stuff YOU guys are shoveling!
Show how the stuff we're "shoveling" is so.
If you can't see it for yourself, I cannot show it to you. I'll give you one example though. MSimon has alleged (at least a half dozen times.) that it's easier for children to get Drugs than beer. I pointed out to him (probably 5 times or so.) a Rock of Crack costs $20.00, and a crack fiend will beat the shit out of you if you try to take it from them. A beer costs $1.00, and people who buy it by the 18 or 30 pack, won't even notice when one (or even several) is missing. No matter how many times I point this out, He still repeats "Children can get drugs easier than Beer."
What can I make of this but shoveling "stuff"?
Betruger wrote:
When it deals with something so dangerous that people shouldn't mess with it. Here's an example. During FIRE season, the state often issues a blanket fire ban. (Prohibition in your vernacular.) Anyone caught using fire outdoors can be fined, and for subsequent offenses can be jailed.
Apples and oranges. Neither fire nor dry vegetation are biochemically intricate and self-determining beings or interactions.
And when they are combined with stupid people and flames, there still isn't!
Betruger wrote:
You see, your personal liberty stops when your insistence on doing something stupid becomes a threat to others.
There is no inherent support for total prohibition in this premise. Owning or using guns isn't automatically a threat to others. Owning or using drugs isn't inherently a threat to others.
Absolutely right. Keep the stuff in the trunk and never use it, drugs won't hurt you. Guns will even protect you while they're in the trunk, if you let enough people know you've got them, and that they can come out of the trunk and do their business.
Guns CAN be misused (Like firing them into the air recklessly.) But drugs can ONLY be misused. Drugs, when used properly, are like guns used recklessly. There's a good chance someone is going to get hurt.
Betruger wrote:
Using guns or drugs in ways that harm others is punishable by law, and it's using them in that fashion that's harmful to others and consequently punishable. It's abuse, not use, that's harmful and duly punishable.
Misusing guns is wrong because you increase the chances that someone is going to get hurt. Misusing guns is very much like using drugs normally in this regard. Sometimes the drugs don't kill until years later, like the bullet that paralyzed but didn't kill till years later.
Betruger wrote:
How is all the energy used in bailing water out of a ship doing any good, even when you are barely keeping up with the water flowing in?
That's a metaphor for the war on drugs sinking faster than people can help?
It's a metaphor for sinking if you DON'T bail. Fighting the war on drugs is the same thing as trying to bail water. If you stop, you are going to sink. I personally worry we are going to sink anyways, but from the much bigger holes caused by financial mismanagement from Washington. That doesn't mean that the smaller social holes caused by the drug scourge isn't significant.
Betruger wrote:
Betruger wrote:
Even if that were the case, you first have to use before you can be chemically unfit for rational decisions. If not for those that follow, you're responsible for that first act of drug use.
This presumes one can make a rational decision about something they truly don't understand until they've tried it, and at that point it is too late.
Bogus. Show how the dangers of drugs is something that can't be understood till experienced first hand.
Easy. Look at all the crash test dummies who have crashed!
Either they WANT the misery they have chosen, ( a thoroughly ridiculous notion) or they don't know what they are getting in to.
Betruger wrote:
How can you argue what the dangers are? Have you been an addict of every single drug to the point of absolute bottom out and everything in between (stealing relatives' property to buy more drugs etc)? If not, you "truly don't understand".
We can find out the response to various chemicals by testing them on rats. The same information can be had by observing the test results on the volunteer human subjects.
They end up "F*cked up like a test rat!"
(A friend of mine's favorite saying. Former Cocaine\Heroin user. Now he just drinks a lot. )
Betruger wrote:
This is equivalent to arguing sex ed is no use as a preventive tool.
Not seeing the equivalence here.
Betruger wrote:
The effect of the "Pleasure Button" is well known. Very few can resist the urge to push it once it's activated. The first push is one too many. Could YOU resist something better than sex?
Fallacious. No, but I don't see why you couldn't also admit you need help, and stick yourself into rehab. I can't see why you wouldn't stick
someone into rehab either. I've had one friend who injected some kind of crap.. Don't recall what it was (was too young) but it was one of the drugs you prepare by spoon+lighter. He got so deep into it that there was no way he could deny he was out of control and needed rehab. I took him there myself. Others saw as much and wised up. Where is your evidence, other than dramatic anecdotes from famous people, that the dangers of drugs can't possibly be comprehended from seeing what it does to others?
What evidence is better than that? (to those who have seen it themselves.) You yourself pointed out that it was firsthand witness that scared others straight.
Betruger wrote:
And you haven't answered to the fact that responsibility for the first use is individual.
It isn't. It's mostly the responsibility of whomever exposed them to it. If it wasn't provided, they couldn't be tempted.
For some people, drugs are no different from handing them a box and telling them to pull the pin out of the top, unknowingly connected to a hand grenade within. For others, it's a cute magic trick. People don't know which genetic box they've been handed till after the effects have manifested themselves.
It's like the Lady and the Tiger story. Deadly for some, but harmless to others. It is irresponsible to push people into confronting such a choice. Like the Whopper from "War Games" said. "The only winning move is not to play. "
Betruger wrote:
Do you think all those cigarette smokers knew that tobacco would kill them? It took DECADES for people to realize this. It took decades before people realized that Opium derivatives were dangerous and caused addiction!
Why not include the couple thousand years that opium was used without knowing the exact medical/biochemical consequences of use, to make it even more dramatic sounding? What's your point either way? This isn't inherent support for prohibition. You don't write laws for decades or centuries past, but for the present and near future.
The point is that nobody understood how deadly they were until enough time had passed that people noticed a pattern. It isn't instantaneously obvious, and as a result, people get sucked into short term fun for long term misery. (sounds like our economic system. Spending other people's money is very much like a drug. It releases dopamine and seratonin, etc. just like a drug does, and THAT's why irresponsible members of congress can't control our spending. )
I've long said, "stop the congressional junkies from getting their fix! "
Betruger wrote:
History ought to be a guide. The fact that it truly screws up so many people's lives ought to be enough warning for anyone, the problem is, there is so much ignorance out there (and propaganda by the Marijuana corps) that people do not have the ability to properly weigh the consequences.
Faulty argument. A failure to correctly inform people once, doesn't mean it's impossible to do it correctly. In this respect history is no guide. Nowhere in history was man ever equipped with technology to understand the exact science of drugs. Nor did he have such ubiquitous (and ever more in the future) IT to distribute the "correct" knowledge to "properly weigh the consequences".
You don't need a degree in biochemical engineering to understand that screwing with your endocrinal systems will F*ck you up. One need only look at the results of so many examples to understand the threat. A threat that might not be readily apparent from looking at your gas spectrometer.
Betruger wrote:
Was gonna say more but, ironically enough, I'm headed to the loo to paint the head because I partied too hard.
My sympathies.