Diogenes wrote:A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step.
truism
Actually, i'm not going to belabor the point. If I were so inclined, I could find more examples than anyone would care to look at.
But you will carry on with another hollow post saying how you wish you were inclined to type more about it but wont, except to say how you wish you were inclined but [etc]
While this may be the tactics that the proponents of drug usage follow, I don't think it serves any worthwhile purpose.
Sideways talk
As this particular article was timely
Darwin articles are news everyday.
From time to time, I may find another example of a drug addicted criminals being incredibly stupid, and I will post it for everyone's amusement.
Fluff. Take all the articles and other data points and squeeze a single synthesis from em. Or keep cherry picking single articles and spamming them as "clear evidence" without any actual analysis, with as much credibility as screaming " LOUD NOISES! ".
This is the same methodology I follow for posting Media Bias, Bad Democrats and "Doomed" news.
Meaningless
You may, if you wish, tally the "Data Points," but anyone that's had experience with these people are fully aware that this is not an outlier,
How do we know he wasn't stupid to begin with? Or a criminal to begin with? "Anyone knows [such and such] proves [your favorite argument]" is fallacious. Single data points are cherry picking, and drawing conclusions with zero discussion of the details is akin to a court of law skipping all due process.
but an example of their consistently stupid behavior, and how it adversely impacts others.
Can't see that without integral statistics, without the full picture. The full picture you paint simply won't convince people who disagree that govt ought to trump personal liberty.
The collateral damage argument is just an appeal to emotion. It might be tragic but then so are other crimes. That it's tragedy isn't the point. What those people arguably put their relatives thru is no different from a more direct trauma or offense, e.g. harassing them directly by, say, stealing their property and selling it for druggie's profit. Which is exactly one of the things druggies' relatives go thru, and it's not the drugs that's to blame but the druggie. At no point do the drugs suddenly get a mind of their own to dictate to the druggie what to do. At no point is the druggie made to do anything, no matter how difficult it is
not to cave in to cravings for more drugs.
The argument resides not in repeating the same thing over and over like your counter-arguers were idiots, quoting articles to reiterate the same badly made arguments that they understood the first time. The argument is in clearly and transparently articulating why drugs are reason enough to support a govt solution that obviously isn't working, that actually does comparable amounts of damage as the drug use you deplore, in arguing why govt should be given sovereignty over freedom of choice, and so on.
MSimon and Tom Ligon have it right. I don't know how anyone can pretend to be American, to stand for all the things America is supposed to stand for, and trample individual freedom like this. It's enough to make a would-be immigrant have second thoughts.. Maybe America is just a dream. Maybe Americans don't really believe in those fundamental notions, only when it's convenient.
E.G.
In another thread I pointed out that the "inconvenience" of dealing with potheads isn't an excuse for handing over individual freedom to the govt, so the govt can "protect" us from ourselves and the "inconvenience" of those druggies nearby. Choice of word which you derided... Choice of word which I'd actually taken from your own posts.
There are more instances like this, but I don't know if it's worthwhile being that thorough, pointing em all out. Not when you don't even seem to make sense nor be really honest about this whole deal. E.G. when stalled, falling back to large bold text and calling others idiots. Zero credibility there. Same with arguing that people can't possibly fathom what the consequences of taking drugs are... except the consequences are in the news and on the grapevine. What a ludicrous argument..
Contributing to big govt just so it can "protect" us from our own freedom of choice, by wasting our tax money with busts and other utterly ineffective tactics? What?? Was I just teleported back to the socialist euro country I left for the US, expressedly to get away from that sort of thing?