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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: peter michaelson who wrote (15110)	11/6/1998 1:24:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18691

My opinion on this matter may be construed as radical. I believe an adult should be allowed to put anything into his body he wants. Cocaine, heroin, Twinkies, even Denny's coffee. I balance this with the belief that the taker of a drug is 100% liable for any actions he might take. Take LSD? No prob. Drive on LSD? Big fine - say $1000. Drive on LSD and hurt someone? Jail time. I advocate freedom within our own bodies. At the same time, I advocate responsible care of those freedoms. Decriminalize drugs. Criminalize doing dumb things on drugs. (Criminalize or penalize doing dumb or mean things period - like robbing a convenience store or filling your garage with oily rags.) About drugs - maybe the elegant solution is to make them available by prescription. This way a doctor will act as a gatekeeper - allowing the bad risks (either physical or emotional - a heart case or a bipolar person has no business playing with mescaline) to be weeded out some. It's legal to have and take some amazing drugs currently - by prescription. Taking one without a prescription is effectively a Federal crime. A reasonable but sound penalty structure needs to be built up here - balanced against a provision that a doctor needs reasonable cause to deny a prescription for a, uhm, discretionary intoxicant. It gets complixcated - but I believe there is a viable balance between basic freedom to alter my consciousness and a basic reassurance that I won't run you over or stab you or wig out on your front lawn. :-) On a practical level - if the Gov't legalized hard drugs and set up stores which sold cheap material of known purity and dose - (regulated like alcohol, tobacco and firearms are today - sorry, no kids!) a multibillion dollar subeconomy would be wiped out overnight. And our Coast Guard could go back to the better duty of picking hapless sailoes out of broken boats.

To: peter michaelson who wrote (15110)	11/6/1998 7:41:00 PM
From: Lee Lichterman III	Respond to of 18691

>>It may come down to random attitudes of the majority about particular random things. These attitudes change and re-change. <<< Good point and so true. I guess I am not religious enough or something but the masses do make the rules. My favorite is how people that cannot have kids are considered heros when artificial high tech means are used to produce 7 kids thus passing on multiple copies of inferior genes. The same with natural born deficiencies solved by multiple organ transplants. (here in Boise, we had Julianne Purdome who became a national obsession after receiving 7 internal organs). In other words it is considered favorable to enable the spreading of inferior genetics which in turn will lead to weaker and weaker offspring in future generations. This wouldn't bother me so much except that when the break through in cloning was announced, it was suddenly considered a horrible thing that cannot be tolerated due to interference with mother nature. Huh????? We can counter the natural survival of the fittest and declare the weak heros but passing on our best minds and bodies through replication is immoral. While I understand these thoughts are not mainstream, they are practical. BWTHDIK, Lee PS- Will this rally never end? I want puts on IBM, MU, XRX .......