On 28/07/2010 5:22 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:15:23 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Oh, give me a break. Yeah, there are some "low level" things, like pot,
>> for which this is a believable assertion.
>
> The people who are for the prohibition of drugs use the same logic that
> brought about alcohol prohibition in the 30's.  It's not about the costs
> to cover treatment and such - it's about it being "bad" for people to do
> that.  It's about one group of people asserting their sense of moral
> superiority.
>

I'm with you on this.

> Understand, I have never done drugs, I never intend to do drugs, and I
> have no desire to do them.  I personally wouldn't because I do think it
> would be bad for me (in a number of ways).  I come at this from a
> standpoint of not having experienced anything related to the types of
> drugs we're talking about (I once got pretty tripped out on Hydrocodone,
> which I react very badly to, but that's a slightly different story
> because it was something obtained with a prescription).
>
> If someone wants to be addicted to cigarettes, pot, alcohol, etc - as
> long as they're not impacting me (through secondhand smoke, for example),
> I don't care.  They can knock themselves out.  Once it leaves them, just
> as with alcohol, then there are consequences and let the consequences be
> steep (as they are for DUI, for example).
>
Understand that I have taken (not done :-)) drugs and I’ve seen people 
get into bad states with them. I’ve seen young and old people of both 
sexes lying unconscious in the street covered in their own vomit, 
fights, dui, families kept poor and abused, lives ruined. The list is 
endless and then we move away from alcohol.
If you tell some people that something is not allowed then that will 
make it exciting and glamorous to them. Prohibition did not work in the 
USA and the “war on drugs” is IMO a waste of time and resources.

> Legalization can make those drugs a tax base (as with cigarettes and
> alcohol, and being in Utah, I know a thing or three about alcohol taxes
> because they're DAMNED high here) and legalization can turn it into an
> actual industry, with quality control and the like.  I don't think it's
> naive to think that - I think that's what we saw with alcohol when
> prohibition was repealed.  Sure, some people still make their own hooch
> at home (we've been known to make wine ourselves), but the vast majority
> comes from licensed establishments and sales venues, and there are pretty
> strict controls over the production of alcohol.
>

Consider the Netherlands where pot while not legal is controlled and 
sold in coffee shops. This has not made the Dutch into a nation of pot 
heads. Most Dutch people I’ve met and worked with are quite dismissive 
of cannabis, it’s what you try when you are young.

> It's been done before, and the only thing stopping it from being done
> again is people who - as I said - try to assert that they have a moral
> imperative (and hence a moral superiority) to prohibit those substances,
> and I for one, thing that's total BS.
>

Total BS, I agree

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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