What's the argument against full legalization? - Page 3 - U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum

QuiteNice · #31 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

OK this is the last post I'm gong to make about this because I'm tired of debating this issue.

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Originally Posted by Slon

Are people able to accept a ban on any of the drugs? Remember the problems we had with criminals when alcohol was banned? Well, we now have them with other drugs.

Yes but as I mentioned it is hard to ban drugs that are socially accepted. Narcotics are not socially accepted, therefore are easy to ban. The ban on alcohol is never going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Slon

From what I read about cigarettes, they are VERY difficult to quit and VERY addictive.

Right but you can't compare cigarettes and heroine. One is a mind-altering substance and the other is not. That's like comparing a hand gun to a nuclear weapon. I was just pointing out that they have different effects on people's minds.

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Originally Posted by Slon

How many people get drunk and beat their wives? Right, but as you said before, not as many people rob stores to buy alcohol: it's not that expensive. But people still perform illegal acts under the influence of alcohol.Same with alcohol poisoning.

Right exactly my point. Before you said that people would commit less crimes if drugs were legal. I was simply pointing out the fact that even though alcohol is legal, people still commit crimes under its influence and are more llikely to commit crimes under the influence of mind-altering substances.

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Originally Posted by Slon

So, why do we need the State to tell us not to use the drugs?No, we don't. I don't need my government to protect me from myself. This nanny-state bullshit has got to end. I mean, if we allow the government to protect us from anything they want, they would ban alcohol, cigarettes, cars, and virtually anything else they want. I don't know about you, but I think I deserve the right to do whatever I want to myself.

That's your opinion.

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Originally Posted by Slon

People already develop addictions. So, guess what? The fact that they are illegal only helps druglords.

Right and we already established that legalizing drugs will make them more accessable enabling more people to try drugs and develop drug addictions. I mean sure there is more violent crime associated with the underground drug trade, but its a trade off with having less people using drugs.

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Originally Posted by Slon

Plus, we already have alcohol, except there is a chance kids will try it under parents' supervision.

Yeah right, but do you really want kids trying heroin and cocaine under parents supervision? Because I'm sure some parents with bad judgement might give it to their kids.

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Originally Posted by Slon

What's the chance of a kid admitting to using an illegal drug as opposed to a legal one when looking for help?

Right but that would be accomplished with simply decriminalizing drug use, not making it legal and giving people access to all drugs.

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Originally Posted by Slon

Yes, and people are currently more likely to buy cars and get into crashes, more likely to buy alcohol and overdose. This can be said about anything, and yet everything isn't banned.And yet cigarettes are still legal. In any case, this type of reasoning applies to virtually any endeavor. Companies try to get people to get "addicted" to gambling, video games and many other things. It's how business works.The way I see it, video games are a much bigger/similar problems in terms of stopping people from going to work. Any form of entertainment stops people from going to work. And yet, we don't ban movies and video games, do we?

Right but the bussinessses here are not dealing with potentially addicting or lethal substances. The only bussiness that is dealing with potentially mind-altering, addictive, lethal substances is alcohol and I've already mentioned before why we can't ban alcohol.

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Originally Posted by Slon

Do we not have separation of church and state? I'm sorry, but "the government won't get as much tax revenue" and "God says so" are not really very solid arguments.

Yeah but separation of church and state does not change the fact that our laws are based on British law system which is based on pure Christian doctrine. Just because we have separation of church and state does not mean our origins have changed.

QuiteNice · #32 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

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Originally Posted by Slon

See, here is the problem. The "greedy" drug companies want to make profits off of other people's addictions. You are not the company and you are not the other person. Therefore, you are not even part of the exchange. So you can't defend yourself. Even if the addicted person were a victim, which he is not (since he made the choice to buy the drug and get himself addicted), and the company were the perpetrator, it would be like saying you have the right to defend yourself about some guy across the street who attacked another homeowner. Quite simply, you can't defend yourself against someone who didn't attack you.

I'm just saying if we allowed "cocaine companies" or "heroine companies" to advertise the way alcohol is advertised (i.e. on TV or in magazine) by using marketing and psychological tactics to entice people to try drugs, we'd have a serious proble. Any person who were to pick up a magazine and read it would be a victim. I wouldn't want to be a suggestive teenager reading a heroine ad. in a magazine.

Slon · #33 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuiteNice

OK this is the last post I'm gong to make about this because I'm tired of debating this issue.

Yes but as I mentioned it is hard to ban drugs that are socially accepted. Narcotics are not socially accepted, therefore are easy to ban. The ban on alcohol is never going to happen.

Right, but only because they figured out through experience that banning drugs does not work. See: Prohibition. This is why I have trouble understanding why the ban on other drugs exists. See, it IS possible to ban alcohol. It HAS been done in the past.

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Right but you can't compare cigarettes and heroine. One is a mind-altering substance and the other is not. That's like comparing a hand gun to a nuclear weapon. I was just pointing out that they have different effects on people's minds.

Nicotine is mind-altering.

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E. Nicotine is a mind-altering drug that produces a fast-acting low-grade stimulant high that quickly wears off. Let's break this complicated sentence into some easy to understand parts.

http://www.tgorski.com/Prevention/Pr...g%20020109.htm

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Right exactly my point. Before you said that people would commit less crimes if drugs were legal. I was simply pointing out the fact that even though alcohol is legal, people still commit crimes under its influence and are more llikely to commit crimes under the influence of mind-altering substances.

Well, they probably would commit less crime if the drug were legal. The wife-beating example was just an example, did I say they would commit more crime with legalized drugs? Think about it. A guy who legally bought heroin decides to go home and beat his wife and then feels bad about it: 1 crime. A guy buys heroin illegally, goes home and beats his wife, and the next day needs another fix, but to get it, he needs to rob a store to afford the expensive illegal drug: 3 crimes.

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That's your opinion.

That's fine, then. You can sign up to have the government ban you from ever purchasing the drugs.

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Right and we already established that legalizing drugs will make them more accessable enabling more people to try drugs and develop drug addictions. I mean sure there is more violent crime associated with the underground drug trade, but its a trade off with having less people using drugs.

A drug addiction is a man's personal choice. Getting shot by a drug dealer in a driveby is not. I mean, are you also in favor of banning chainsaws because someone might one day decide to cut his hand off?

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Yeah right, but do you really want kids trying heroin and cocaine under parents supervision? Because I'm sure some parents with bad judgement might give it to their kids.

You can set an age restriction on it if you want. Kids already try alcohol with their parents. The point is, a parent can give a drug illegally to their kid, anyway. It's their decision, ultimately. Just don't punish me for it.

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Right but that would be accomplished with simply decriminalizing drug use, not making it legal and giving people access to all drugs.

I don't understand what that sentence means. Decriminalizing drug use and NOT making it legal? Anyway, we would accomplish the return of rights to people to do whatever they want to their bodies. Think of it as taking away control of ones body from the government and returning it to that person.

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Right but the bussinessses here are not dealing with potentially addicting or lethal substances. The only bussiness that is dealing with potentially mind-altering, addictive, lethal substances is alcohol and I've already mentioned before why we can't ban alcohol.

The point is, you CAN ban alcohol. Do you not understand that it has been done in the US? Have you ever looked up prohibition? When it was illegal, gangs appeared and started getting rich off of it, kind of like what we have right now with other illegal drugs. Then, alcohol was made legal again and those gangs more or less disappeared. As for other substances, take a look here:

http://www.rwjf.org/newsroom/activit...d=10144&type=2

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Yeah but separation of church and state does not change the fact that our laws are based on British law system which is based on pure Christian doctrine. Just because we have separation of church and state does not mean our origins have changed.

Right, but Britain abolished witch burning, did they not?

Slon · #34 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuiteNice

I'm just saying if we allowed "cocaine companies" or "heroine companies" to advertise the way alcohol is advertised (i.e. on TV or in magazine) by using marketing and psychological tactics to entice people to try drugs, we'd have a serious proble. Any person who were to pick up a magazine and read it would be a victim. I wouldn't want to be a suggestive teenager reading a heroine ad. in a magazine.

Yeah, and I wouldn't want to be a retard watching a commercial for some shit I don't really need to buy. No reason to outlaw it. Stupid people do stupid things. I guess we'll just have to let the government control every aspect of our lives, right?

QuiteNice · #35 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slon

Nicotine is mind-altering.

http://www.tgorski.com/Prevention/Pr...g%20020109.htm

I meant intoxicants, I guess mind-altering was the wrong term. I'm talking about the types of substances that people are not allowed to use while driving. The ones that are intoxicating.

Slon · #36 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuiteNice

I meant intoxicants, I guess mind-altering was the wrong term. I'm talking about the types of substances that people are not allowed to use while driving. The ones that are intoxicating.

You mean kind of like painkillers/flu medications that say on the bottle not to use while driving?

QuiteNice · #37 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slon

You mean kind of like painkillers/flu medications that say on the bottle not to use while driving?

Flu medication usually says that because it causes drowsiness. Painkillers cause drowsiness, hallucinations, and dizziness. But thats besides the point because those drugs serve purposes such as treating illness or relieving pain after someone has surgery. The potent substances are usually controlled and prescribed by doctors when someone needs them to treat an ailment.

drgoodtrips · #38 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

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Originally Posted by QuiteNice

Flu medication usually says that because it causes drowsiness. Painkillers cause drowsiness, hallucinations, and dizziness.

Hallucinations? Sounds like your doctors have been giving you some wacky painkillers!

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But thats besides the point because those drugs serve purposes such as treating illness or relieving pain after someone has surgery. The potent substances are usually controlled and prescribed by doctors when someone needs them to treat an ailment.

Heroin was once used to treat pain and to help people kick morphine addiction. Cocaine can be used, among other things, as a potent local anesthetic, and to help revive people whose hearts are failing. Virtually any drug can be useful or harmful depending on how it's used or abused. But your arguments seem to imply an implicit trust of your well-being to the government (which is motivated by monetary expediency and not by concern for your warmth and fuzziness) to tell you which ones are good, and which ones are bad. The truth of the matter is that the "bad" ones might actually be of some use to you in some situations, and that the "good" ones may wind up hurting you due to medical incompetence or doctors getting kickbacks from pharmeceutical salsemen for moving a lot of product and using you to do it.

The main point is that prohibition of drugs does not exist to help you - it exists to help those who have deep pockets and a huge vested interest in it. That it helps you is simply what politicians on soapboxes tell you to make you happy and to cast your vote for them based on their "clean up this town" platform.

drgoodtrips · #39 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slon

You mean kind of like painkillers/flu medications that say on the bottle not to use while driving?

Interestingly, many illegal drugs would seem to have little effect on the ability to operate a car. Cocaine, for example, impairs driving ability no more than nicotine or caffeine. Alcohol, on the other hand, is probably the single worst substance for drivers outside of muscle relaxers due to its complete annhialation of basic motor skills. And yet, we're willing to tolerate alcohol up to a point in the bloodstream, whereas we'd be willing to crucify someone who was driving "on drugs".

It has always seemed strange to me that we as a society selected what is probably the single most destructive drug known to man (alcohol) to be socially acceptable. But then again, when public policy is based on demagoguery rather than rational analysis, all sorts of strange things happen.

CommissionLover · #40 (**permalink**) 04-24-2006

I think, that it would be smarter to campaign for the decrimilazation then legalization. Lets face it too much money on both sides of the aisle to end it now, we all know we love law enforcement jobs as much as we hate the criminals that create the law enforcement jobs. In other words one will have to find a way of dealing with drug legalization as not to threaten the DEA jobs out there, dang now where would we be without them!

FreeThinker · #41 (**permalink**) 04-25-2006

an interesting article on the FDA's statement last week about marijuana:

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http://www.slate.com/id/2140503/?nav=ais

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration reported that it had definitively established that marijuana has no medical use or value. Definitively? Established? I don't think so.

The FDA's announcement begins by acknowledging the claim that smoked marijuana may be beneficial for some conditions. Then the agency points out that among drugs with a potential for abuse, marijuana is lumped in with the most dangerous drugs, the ones that have no potential medical benefits and the highest likelihood of misuse. The FDA next affirms that a collection of federal agencies have together concluded that marijuana is both dangerous and medically valueless, based on scientific studies in humans and animals. The announcement—actually, it's an "inter-agency advisory"—concludes by asserting, with a boldness that might belie a certain uneasiness, that it is the FDA's job to approve drugs. Take that, state legislatures and voters.

The FDA's statement implies that the agency reached its conclusion about marijuana after conducting a new serious analysis of the existing scientific literature on the drug. But of course no such analysis was reported in the medical literature and, in fact, no identifiable official at the FDA took responsibility for last week's advisory. It was just put out there as a statement of fact.

But it's not. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences (an organization chartered by Congress to provide independent, nonpartisan scientific and technological advice) examined this same question in considerable depth and published a 288-page report of its findings. Put together by 11 distinguished scientists and physicians, the IOM report examined the known and potential harms of marijuana use and the known and potential medical benefits. The report is broad in its vision and thoughtful and cautious in its interpretations and recommendations. Its authors acknowledged that the medical uses of marijuana entail some risk of harm—for instance, it's pretty clear that inhaling marijuana smoke can't be good for the lungs, and who knows if there are significant psychological side effects for some users. But the authors concluded that these risks were not terribly high. They also found that other putative risks often attached to this drug—the potential for addiction, for instance, or for marijuana serving as a "gateway" to further drug abuse—were much overstated. The report urged further study to determine the real level of risk.

In examining the potential medical benefits of medical marijuana, the IOM report was equally cautious. It described relief from nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy, appetite stimulation for cancer and HIV patients, and treatment of muscle spasticity for patients with multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injury. Though these benefits seem real, the authors of the IOM report point out that we really don't know yet if they are significant or valuable enough to warrant the use of medical marijuana. Again, the report urged further study to determine the real level of benefit.

However, in the seven years since the IOM report was issued, virtually no research on potential risks and benefits has been done, because the government has blocked such studies. So, we know neither more nor less about medical marijuana than we did seven years ago, whatever the FDA says. Why would the agency inaccurately claim that the science is settled when it isn't? I hardly need to say it: This isn't a medical or scientific conclusion. It's a political one.

This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA. Another recent example: the agency's decision to block over-the-counter availability for emergency contraceptives in the face of overwhelming evidence that the treatment is safe and effective, and support for over-the-counter availability by the FDA's own advisory committee. From my standpoint as a doctor, the question is this: What do you do when federal agencies become so politicized that their recommendations can't necessarily be trusted? Do you have to treat other things they say as suspect? I depend on good advice and honest information from government agencies in the daily conduct of my work. I need to know what epidemic illnesses are circulating in my neighborhood even if that information might put a government agency in a bad light. I need to be able to trust government-sponsored research (especially because, goodness knows, I have learned not to trust manufacturer-sponsored research). I need to know that the advice I glean from government-sponsored agency Web sites will lead to the best care for my patients.

Marijuana as a medicine—whatever its risk and benefits are eventually determined to be—may turn out to be much less important than the question of whether we can count on agencies like the FDA to be honest in their dealings.

Sydney Spiesel is a pediatrician in Woodbridge, Conn., and associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Yale University's School of Medicine.

drgoodtrips · #42 (**permalink**) 04-25-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by CommissionLover

I think, that it would be smarter to campaign for the decrimilazation then legalization. Lets face it too much money on both sides of the aisle to end it now, we all know we love law enforcement jobs as much as we hate the criminals that create the law enforcement jobs. In other words one will have to find a way of dealing with drug legalization as not to threaten the DEA jobs out there, dang now where would we be without them!

You're absolutely right. Manageable steps toward sanity is the only way it will happen.

drgoodtrips · #43 (**permalink**) 04-25-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreeThinker

an interesting article on the FDA's statement last week about marijuana:

Very interesting indeed, and very much an example of some of the points that I've been trying to make. Specifically, that honesty and general welfare are not what dictates policy regarding drug use - politics are.

FreeThinker · #44 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006

so why dnot' all the people who use, have used, or at least advocate marijuana, raise their voice together.. start off with ONE STATE.. and put their influence on the governor and teh state government to unban it.. Surely Nevada or California can lead the way - and I am sure many celebraties would not mind using their influence to make sure it it de-criminalized.

dsanthony · #45 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006

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Originally Posted by Slon

But doesn't legalizing anything encourage its use indirectly? If we legalize video games, aren't we indirectly incouraging their creation, purchase and use? That's not a very good argument. In any case, why do we have alcohol legalized?

This has been argued often, but is pointless. Many "drugs" were grandfathered in when modern pharmacology laws came into being. If aspirin were created today, you'd likely need a prescription to buy it.. same is true of sleeping medication.

Alcohol (and to a lesser extent) tobacco have been a culturally accepted vice for millenia. But, as you recall, alcohol was outlawed for a time in the US.

I've done my share of "recreational" drugs when I was younger, though I don't any more. I can honestly say I don't think my "rights" would have been violated if I hadn't been allowed to use those drugs (and in fact, I wasn't allowed to use them--I did it anyway as most kids and young adults do)...

Illegal drugs are addictive, dangerous and can cause anti-social behavior. I think you'd have to put forward an argument why they should be legalized, rather than ask others to argue whey they should not be legalized.