TallDave wrote:
I think part of your confusion on this issue is that drugs are currently unregulated. Legalized, regulated drugs would carry giant warning labels:
"THIS PRODUCT IS EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE"
"DO NOT USE MORE THAN ONCE PER TWELVE HOURS"
"THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THIS PRODUCT MAY BE EXTREMELY DETRIMENTAL TO HEALTH"
"ADDICTION PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GETCLEAN"
And the taxes on the drugs would go toward educating people on the dangers of drugs and helping them get clean.
I have speculated about some form of licensing as a plausible methodology. We license dynamite users and other dangerous substances, but the concept of licensing is hardly compatible with a "Right."
TallDave wrote:
I am thinking that you agree with this notion in theory, yet I don't believe you would find it tolerable in practice. 27% of the Adult male population addicted to Opium would be a dire threat to our civilization and our country.
I doubt it matters much at all. Addicts with legal access to their drug (like Halsted) generally manage to be productive.
How do you explain the Chinese problem then?
TallDave wrote:
But if you thought it was a problem, then you could mount a campaign to convince them to stop -- VOLUNTARILY.
It would work as well as trying to convince someone to voluntarily wake up while under anesthesia. Drugs ALTER will power. Drugs can induce all sorts of feelings that cannot be countered with reason, because they work at the basic level of physiological processes.
TallDave wrote:
You cannot criminalize people's choices regarding what to do with their bodies. You don't have the right.
You know that right the government has to draft you and force you to fight? Well, the right they don't have to do that works just as well to prevent people from taking drugs. You may think they don't have the right in theory, but in practice it certainly appears that they do.
I was thinking about this issue earlier, and it occurs to me that people don't have a right to piss in the drinking water. They have a right to piss, but not where others have to drink it. Now you may argue that it's only a little piss, and you can't really taste it, and it really doesn't harm anyone, but I don't want any piss at all in my water supply. That's how I feel about drugs in the community.
TallDave wrote:
Your argument on the draft doesn't hold much water. The state may *temporarily* suspend the rights of citizens for the sake of defending the nation from an existential threat to their lives and liberty.
What was the existential threat to the North during the Civil war? They drafted Irishmen off the ships and sent them to die against southern guns. While we're about it, what was the existential threat that dragged the world into world war I ? All this time I thought it was just a big ego trip.
You see the funny thing is, when you're the government, you can claim something is an "existential threat" even when it's not, and you can draft people and send them to their deaths at your discretion.
What gives them the right? Whatever it is, it also gives them the right to interfere with personal drug use. That's the difference between pragmatism and philosophy.
TallDave wrote:
It may not permanently take them away for the purpose of forcibly attempting to make us better people according to the guidelines of self-appointed moralists.
It is not for the purpose of making them "better people" it's for the purpose of preventing them from turning others into "worse people." The injury is in the spreading of the meme. Stop it there, and you prevent innocent people from being harmed. It is an act of preemptive self defense. It's a lot like preventing children from playing with fire before they burn something down.
