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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (66148)	11/7/2002 11:13:25 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I don't disagree at all. I think drug use is stupid, self-destructive, and many other things, all bad. But that doesn't mean government should treat adults like children and tell them they can't do it. Society should prohibit activites which have a reasonable possibility of danger to other people. Driving drunk. Shooting off firearms in crowded places. Things like that. But IMO, society has no business entering the home and telling people what they can and can't do with their lives when there is no reasonable possibility of harm to other people. Of course there is always a potential of harm, just as you are a potential harm to others on the road even if you're carefully complying with all the traffic laws. But people do dumb and potentially self-destructive things all the time and we don't outlaw them. In this community, we lose more people to scuba diving accidents than we do to drug-related deaths. Should we outlaw scuba diving? (That would have to include kayaking, too, which is the most dangerous water craft in these waters.) People race cars and motorcycles (on tracks, not the streets), skydive, sail alone around the world, and do all sorts of other potentially quite dangerous things, legally. People have, IMO, the right to decide to live dangerously as long as they don't endanger my life and health. They can smoke, drink, and, I believe, do drugs in their own homes and it's none of my, or Uncle Sam's, business. That doesn't mean I have to think it's a good thing for them to do, or that I wouldn't be very upset if I found my kids doing it. But if freedom means anything, it means the right to be stupid when you only put yourself at risk.

To: one_less who wrote (66148)	11/7/2002 4:21:11 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

One of the best ways to eliminate it for at risk youth is to take the profit out of it. Drug sales remain one of the few ways to wealth in the inner cities. If drugs were legalized that profit center might disappear. There hasn't been a huge market for rum running since the repeal of prohibition. One of the reasons children are recruited to work in the drug trade is because they get lighter sentences. If drugs were legalized, they would no longer be valuable in the business. Most people who are not users, and some people who are, would like to see drugs disappear. The questions is, does illegality help make them disappear? The success of America's war on drugs seems non-existent. As someone here said, insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Good metaphor for our War on Drugs.