Besides presidential voting in November...Follow

I don't expect you to understand.

I see that you decided to use "you're" this time

Drug abusers give casual drug users a bad name.

Sorta like Alcoholics & most everyone else.

Let me start by saying that I agree with legalization in principle, but I disagree with this particular argument. If this was true, then no one would ever smoke pot because alcohol is legal. Clearly, people choose to use illegal intoxicants even when there are legal alternatives available. So the idea that by legalizing pot, we'd somehow reduce the number of people moving on to heroin (or whatever) is badly flawed. All we'd accomplish is to move the bar of what is legal a bit. So the guy who decides to try an illegal drug instead of legal alternatives (like alcohol and marijuana) would now move directly to cocaine, or meth.

At the end of the day, we do kinda set a somewhat arbitrary bar in terms of what is legal and what is not. There's a decent argument that setting that bar as low as possible means that for someone to get involved with the most harmful substances would require more "steps" involving illegal acts. Assuming we can agree that people don't normally progress directly from drinking a beer to shooting smack, then this is a valid argument. Knowing that what he's doing is illegal should provide some disincentive to progressing down a drug use track. I happen to believe that illegality absolutely does play a huge role in people's choices in this regard.


IMO, what would be far more helpful in this regard would not be legalizing the next step (marijuana currently), but decreasing dramatically the age at which the currently legal substance(s) may be purchased and consumed. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that very very very few people first start taking drugs in their 20 or 30s. Most people start in their teens and then progress to harder drugs. Often, this happens because it's easier to obtain illegal drugs than legal alternatives when you're under the age at which you can purchase those legal alternatives.

In my experience, what usually happens is that when people get into their 20s, one of two things happen. They either realize that they can drink socially and legally and go "wtf am I risking jail to do these other substances?" and thus quit using, or they're already so into the drugs their doing that alcohol just gets added to the list and they continue using. I just think a lot of addicts could be prevented from becoming addicts if they were able to scratch that itch earlier in a legal and relatively safe way. If you've been drinking since the age of 15 (or even earlier, and not in hiding), by the time the opportunity to use anything else comes along, there will already (hopefully) be a bit more responsibility adopted with regards to such substances and the choice between getting drunk legally and getting high illegally will not be made as often.


If such a change were made (and yes, it would involve social changes as well) then we can and should talk about looking at other substances. Again though, it requires looking at where that bar should be set and then making a decision as a society. I just think that a lot of people choose to bypass the real questions about this issue and just toss around half true "facts" about whatever substance they happen to think should be legalized. I think that's a silly way to approach the issue, and ultimately will lead to a slippery slope type result.




I'd really love to hear where these statistics come from. I don't think that's true at all.



These could both certainly be factors, but I suspect that other socio-economic factors may be more significant here. Increased sense of lack of purpose or possibility of success in life tends to correlate with drug use (especially heavy drug use). Increased presence of gangs and their penchant to recruit the youth in their areas is another huge factor. Lack of alternative means of gaining money tend to make selling drugs appear more attractive. A dealer in a middle class neighborhood is much more likely to simply know a guy who has a supply, buys some, and then sells it to his friends, never ever dealing with anyone he doesn't know personally (making the possibility of arrest very near to zero). A dealer in a poor neighborhood is much more likely to be part of a larger drug distribution system, competing for customers (cause of the whole "no other sources of money" issue), dealing on the street, and willing to deal with pretty much anyone who walks up. I've known a few "dealers" living in middle class neighborhoods. None of them ever did it for the money.

Edited, Nov 1st 2012 6:24pm by gbaji

As I said, disparity in how we treat classes of people with law enforcement and our judicial system is a great reason to address those disparities. I don't think those disparities are a good reason to knock the law off the book.

I don't have anything really against weed. I smoked it in college (I majored in art so let that be your guide) and, once I got out, the risk/reward wasn't there since I'd be facing the DuPage County Court instead of some student judicial board. But I don't really have a good reason to broadly legalize it either (I'd be all for medical exemptions with strict guides) and tend towards cautious about the notion. I wouldn't put any effort into stopping a legalization effort but I probably wouldn't sign their petition either.

Nothing to do with legalization directly, but I also happen to think that people massively downplay the negatives associated with marijuana compared to alcohol. If the usage patterns of the two substances were more similar, a point could be made for marijuana being the same or even less harmful. The problem is that (in my experience at least), the usage pattern is *not* similar. Most people who consume alcohol regularly do so in the "couple beers/drinks after dinner, or social drinking at a party" mode. Those who don't we generally point to as having some form of drinking problem. So binge drinking or walking around with a flask taking a swig regularly is generally frowned upon.

Regular marijuana smokers tend to follow usage patterns much more akin to "drinking problem" consumers of alcohol. They tend to smoke *a lot* when partying, and as they build up a tolerance to it, this amount keeps increasing (much like alcoholics do). And they tend to carry it around with them all the time, lighting up and taking a few puffs whenever the opportunity arises (much like a guy with a flask might drink alcohol). While I suppose a few such users might exist, I've yet to meet anyone who regularly smoked pot, and simply kept some at home, smoking a small amount each evening as someone might consume alcohol. Just from my personal observations, pot smoking seems to always progress. The longer someone smokes, the more they smoke, the more frequently they smoke, and the more ridiculous the places/times they're willing to smoke become. As I mentioned earlier, these are behaviors we'd associate with alcoholism if the person were drinking instead of smoking.

Now this could certainly be social in nature. Perhaps if it were legal, more people would simply use marijuana as they'd use alcohol (in a non-addictive kind of way). But this most likely would be because of people who currently do not smoke pot because of the risk/reward factor Joph mentioned and currently don't have a drinking problem deciding to use marijuana in the same responsible manner they use alcohol. I suspect this still leaves the bulk of the current pot smokers (who tend to be those most fighting for legalization) having the same problems they have now. I guess I just don't share this kind of utopian outcome that pot smokers see resulting from legalization. I suspect we'll see a lot of problems with people having the equivalent of alcoholism with regard to marijuana use.


Whether that's better or worse is a matter of opinion and speculation. My personal reasons for supporting legalization (for a lot more than just marijuana) arise from my principles regarding personal freedom and personal responsibility. I have no issue at all giving people the freedom to take actions which, if abused, could be harmful to themselves, as long as *they* take responsibility for their choices and actions.

I'm not gonna rant, I just like this here though:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/larry-king-talks-marijuan_n_1938001.html

You know what's funny? My late staunch Republican father was all in favor of legalizing everything, and taxing it heavily. (To be fair, he had a heavy Libertarian streak.)

His view was that it was the fastest way to cull the population of the "useless" types. Anyone who couldn't control themselves and OD'd, too bad. Society was better off without them. Same thing with seatbelts; he was against mandatory seat belt laws, because to him anyone stupid enough not to wear a seatbelt was too stupid to live anyway.

He had little sympathy for any addict as he quit smoking cold turkey when he learned my older sister had asthma. That, and his younger brother was an alcoholic, and my dad simply learned not to keep any alcohol stronger than egg nog in the house. If he had been able to bottle up his willpower and sell it, he could have been rich.

Eggnog is not an alcohol, it's a mix.

And you've just hit the nail on the head why Libertarianism really just doesn't work in a society with more than a dozen people.

The only thing I see going for its legalization is that it's natural. Other than that, I see no reason why it should be legal.

To the extent to which you aren't negligent, yes. He's negligent for not taking the minimum safety precautions, you're negligent for hitting him. The blame is shared between you to the extent of which you're responsible. It might be that an airbag would have seriously reduced his injuries. It might be that he could have died even with them, etc.

It's like if someone walked onto a construction site without a hard hat and a worker, through an act of negligence, dropped a hammer on their head. The worker is still responsible for whatever negligence led to the damage, but he's likewise only responsible for the damage that would have been caused had the victim taken the appropriate precautions. The victim is at fault for not taking the requisite steps to protect themselves.

And, of course, all of this is within reasonable boundaries. Requiring someone to wear their seat belt is WELL within what would be considered reasonable. Requiring early warning systems, like those you see in the newest cars, obviously is not.

And the fact that everyone likes to forget is that cars are extraordinarily powerful machines. You're responsible for a giant hunk of metal barreling around the world at 60+ mph. Yeah, the government has every right to put restrictions on what is, and is not, the acceptable use of such a machine.

What you are willfully ignoring is the fact that we are discussing negligence. When it's a case of one person intentionally harming another, whether or not the victim took precautions makes no difference. It might have reduced the damage done to them, but the fault lies entirely with the person who sought to cause them injury. If I intentionally slam my car into yours, it doesn't make any difference if I only intended to give you severe whiplash, not kill you. Whatever damage is caused belongs completely to me.

In cases of accidents, there is no intention to harm. All damage done to the people involved (and society at large) is the result of negligence. As such, each person is liable to the extent to which their negligence contributed.

Yes, what is "reasonable" is going to change over time. That's not an impressive statement, it's an obvious one. It is now reasonable to expect a person to have a telephone. A century ago, it wasn't. There are always going to be cases where it's hard to say whether or not an assumption is reasonable or not. This clearly isn't one of them.

What you are taking an issue with is not a particular of this case, it's a particular about the nature of law. Every legal system is under constant revision, because law is relative to the culture and time it is functioning in. In our culture and time, it's perfectly reasonable to expect someone to take the three seconds to buckle their seatbelt. Just like it's perfectly reasonable to expect that an adult without a disability be able to read and write.

The issue here is that you're intent on making this about a single person against the world. That's not the case here. This is about a society at large setting parameters for what does, and does not, constitute liability. And that is completely logical.

Puff, puff, pass.