The Energon Pub

Siren Prime wrote:

hellkitty wrote:Frankly, I feel that once you're a certain age, if you want to destroy your body and mind, that's really your decision, isn't it?

True.
I've always heard "everyone has the right the be an idiot".

I don't like it, but it's true.

Not really. They don't have the right to do something that overtly adversely affects my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (certain restrictions apply of course).

Most crimes you can think of, be they motivated by greed, anger, or lust, fall under the category of stupid, but we don't consider theft, murder, or rape to be rights protected by the U.S. constitution. Heck, try fielding ignorance of traffic laws as your defense if you go to court for running a red light. So no, you don't have the right to be an idiot, or at least, to do idiotic things, not in America anyway.

Why?

Disregarding the alarming image of the guy back home who pulled a girl's ears off because he thought they were attacking her, there's still less dramatic drug-related concerns like drunk driving, unprotected sex, abuse and neglect, or loss of financial independence to consider. All of these can potentially harm me, either directly, or by raising my taxes. No man is an island, even in the most individualistic of cultures; we pay for the mistakes of others, so it's in our best self-interest to to try and prevent those mistakes or at least minimize their consequences.

And of course there's the other inherent problem about the "once a person reaches a certain age" philosophy - that the idiocy of adults has an odd habit of trickling down to minors, children who are biologically programmed to imitate the observed behavior of adults as an essential mechanism for learning.

Caelus wrote:

Siren Prime wrote:

hellkitty wrote:Frankly, I feel that once you're a certain age, if you want to destroy your body and mind, that's really your decision, isn't it?

True.
I've always heard "everyone has the right the be an idiot".

I don't like it, but it's true.

Not really. They don't have the right to do something that overtly adversely affects my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (certain restrictions apply of course).

Ah. Also true. Yes.
I neglected that part.

You have the right to be and idiot until you start ruining things for others.

But it still is true universally. All people have the right to be stupid, ignorant, and/or down right idiodic.
That's their choice. You got the right to choose.

But I didn't say that means they can't be (or shouldn't be) punished for it anyway.

I guess another question would be: can you stop someone from doing something by making it illegal? and a sort of corollary: will making something legal cause someone to do it?

Organized crime makes alot of money off of drugs. What drug do they make the most money off of? Would it be reasonable to make that drug legal, therefore cutting out a large part of their revenue?

Maybe this idea would corrupt a large percent of the population. Maybe people would want to be high all the time. Some people are now anyway. Other people hit the bottle. Would this increase due to legalization?

Personally, I would not use. I might have, though, if I were still a teenager, and that is a bit scary. I did smoke cigarettes for a time, and I did binge drink. Would that have led me to stronger drugs? But I did try the one, twice (I was really dumb,) and I disliked the paranoia. I wonder what determines whether people like them or not...

Lorekeeper wrote:I guess another question would be: can you stop someone from doing something by making it illegal? and a sort of corollary: will making something legal cause someone to do it?

Well, the answers there wouldn't be yes/no, they'd be in terms of percent-variance accounted for.

Obviously, not everyone abides by the law, and not everyone does everything that's legal (e.g. I don't smoke or drink).

I suppose an anarchist might optimistically believe that people would continue to do as they do in the absence of legal restrictions, but I don't. Making something illegal, especially something like drug use, makes it just a little more inconvenient, which at least decreases the number of people involved somewhat. I mean, it's the same reason that making voting even slightly more inconvenient for one ethnic or economic group is so morally reprehensible - it'll have significant consequences for voter turnout.

Although, mostly I'd expect that it discourages people from initiating addictive substance use, rather than discouraging them from continuing it.

On the other hand, I will concede one point. If we look at anti-drug efforts as an attempt to protect the naive from harmful substances, isn't it odd that we do so by penalizing users (especially ones who may already be addicted)?

You wouldn't send someone to jail for eating bad peanut butter or tomatoes (thank God because that experience was bad enough as was), you'd pursue harsh legal action against the distributors. Unfortunately, while I'm sure there are forms of cocaine or meth worse than others, none of them are really safe enough to pass FDA approval, so it's not like you can allow for the legal production and distribution of either, and then prosecute a public company for it. You're stuck having to tackle (relatively) organized crime.

And marijuana is whole other ball of wax. It really doesn't belong in a conversation about cocaine or meth.

Hell, its status as a gateway drug may be inadvertently due to Nancy Reagan's just-say-no-program lumping it in with the harder drugs.