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Stephen <mca### [at] aolDOT com> wrote:
> On 03/08/2010 9:07 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> > On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:49:19 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> >
> >> On 03/08/2010 5:33 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> >>
> >>>>> You're still buyin' the first round, so it's OK. ;-)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> And you're still buying the last one ;-)
> >>>
> >>> And you're still buying the *next* one. :-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Wa Wa Wa Wabits!
> >
> > D-d-d-d-d-ducks! ;-)
> >
>
> F-f-f-f-f... :-D
Fuuu...
(google for it)
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On 8/3/2010 1:06 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> We know what open drug use *has* done in
>> cases where it took place, because people get stoned, drive, go to work,
>> etc., all the damn time, and get other people killed/hurt.
>
> That's about the "after" issues, which yes, if they break the law, they
> should be punished for. I've never said "don't punish those who put
> others in harm's way". But I have a hard time criminalizing, say,
> smoking pot because it's *smoking pot*. If they get in a car and get
> stopped, throw the book at them. If they stay at home, leave them alone.
>
Which is only relevant if you have some minimal certainty that they will
stay home. You have, seems to me, if you are dealing with something
strong enough to be a serious problem (pot not being one of them), you
can treat them like, say, a viral outbreak - a) as a potential host, or
b) as a carrier. The later you don't **allow** to leave. The former, you
make damn sure isn't exposed in the first place, so can't become a
threat. With dangerous drugs, that can and do cause problems, we have
done the absurd equivalent of the former, attempting to tell people,
"Don't breath, you might catch it!", when its so prevalent and available
that almost everyone **will be** exposed. We are, for the most part,
unwilling to do the later at all, because its not seen as necessary, or
worse, its seen as *more wrong* to have drug clubs, and semi-safe
places, instead of having everyone do it, and random place they can
find. Not that I think, even if such existed, it would be a reasonable
solution, any more than allowing opium dens once was.
There is a third option - cure the actual condition, so it doesn't
spread. This is expensive, doesn't produce nice, convenient, politically
useful, results, which can be shown on the nightly news, to *prove* the
money isn't being wasted. And then.. there is the subset of assholes,
who, much like the anti-LGBT types, who react to the problem they way
anti-LGBT have sometimes been treated when dealing with AIDS, and just
proclaim, "Why the fuck should we help these people, its their own
fault!" I massively object to this argument, for the simple fact that
its a case of herd immunity. If you don't fix the AIDS problem, the risk
of my, and everyone else, being impacted by it increases, for every
single new person infected. Same with drugs. The more people are taking
hard drugs, and not being helped to quit, and the more time is wasted
*not* finding a better, more effective, solution, that actually cures
the addiction, the higher the risk that I, someone I know, or one of my
own family members, will end up at risk, because of it. I would have to
be an idiot to just shrug it off as either, "Their problem, since they
chose that life.", or, "Not my problem, since its some other random
person that will end up in a gang shoot out, or next to some Meth cooker
that gets the formula wrong and blows up 2 city blocks."
You have to stop people needing them, and using them when its dangerous,
or you can't stop people selling them. All you do is put people in jail
*after* they caused the inevitable. And, even "legal" drugs that you can
get via prescription, have a black market, with the same gang warfare,
where its rare enough, and people willing to doctor the product. The
only thing worse, is not controlling them at all.
>> If I was also suggesting stopping hang gliding, or skying, you would
>> have a point. What I am talking about is the equivalent of someone
>> suffering damage that leads them to, without real control, start hang
>> gliding into buildings, or skying through crowds. The initial decision
>> to hang glide, or sky, is not at issue, even if the *reason* for the
>> damage, by pure accident, was a result of slamming into a building, or
>> skying through a crowd of people. Its not relevant to the problem.
>
> "skying" - I'm not sure what that is.
>
Yeah, yeah.. I know, some thigs I spel bawdly.. lol
> But when someone starts engaging in that kind of behaviour, they then
> have the choice to either listen to what others say ("dude, that's messed
> up, you need to get some help") or decide on their own that that's
> destructive and dangerous behaviour, or they can be taken into custody at
> that time for their illegal activity. Saying "the drugs made me do it"
> is an excuse.
>
> Jim
The former pretty much *never* happens. You have to decide that its
something worth stopping, and then, like a lot of things, a certain
percentage will find that they simply *can't*, no matter how much help
they get, because their brain chemistry just doesn't work that way, and
so they have a harder, or impossible, time stopping. That is why, if you
want to cure everyone, and break the whole drug abuse cycle at all, you
need to find something that corrects the problem, not just hope people
give it up, then stay that way. This is true for everything from crack,
to anabolic steroids, to race car driving. If you are prone to "needing"
the fix, more than average, even deciding that you need to stop may not
be enough to stop, once started. Something like crack just amplifies the
problem.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:25:32 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> But when someone starts engaging in that kind of behaviour, they then
>> have the choice to either listen to what others say ("dude, that's
>> messed up, you need to get some help") or decide on their own that
>> that's destructive and dangerous behaviour, or they can be taken into
>> custody at that time for their illegal activity. Saying "the drugs
>> made me do it" is an excuse.
>>
> The former pretty much *never* happens.
Depends on the drug and the individual.
> You have to decide that its
> something worth stopping, and then, like a lot of things, a certain
> percentage will find that they simply *can't*, no matter how much help
> they get, because their brain chemistry just doesn't work that way, and
> so they have a harder, or impossible, time stopping. That is why, if you
> want to cure everyone, and break the whole drug abuse cycle at all, you
> need to find something that corrects the problem, not just hope people
> give it up, then stay that way. This is true for everything from crack,
> to anabolic steroids, to race car driving. If you are prone to "needing"
> the fix, more than average, even deciding that you need to stop may not
> be enough to stop, once started. Something like crack just amplifies the
> problem.
I've already stated that crack and other drugs are not drugs I'd be for
the legalization of - so using those extreme examples doesn't work in
this discussion.
Some percentage of people can't resist alcohol - they *need* their fix.
They're called "alcoholics". So because some people can't resist the
addiction, should all of us have to go through prohibition?
Jim
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On 8/6/2010 2:04 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:25:32 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>>> But when someone starts engaging in that kind of behaviour, they then
>>> have the choice to either listen to what others say ("dude, that's
>>> messed up, you need to get some help") or decide on their own that
>>> that's destructive and dangerous behaviour, or they can be taken into
>>> custody at that time for their illegal activity. Saying "the drugs
>>> made me do it" is an excuse.
>>>
>> The former pretty much *never* happens.
>
> Depends on the drug and the individual.
>
>> You have to decide that its
>> something worth stopping, and then, like a lot of things, a certain
>> percentage will find that they simply *can't*, no matter how much help
>> they get, because their brain chemistry just doesn't work that way, and
>> so they have a harder, or impossible, time stopping. That is why, if you
>> want to cure everyone, and break the whole drug abuse cycle at all, you
>> need to find something that corrects the problem, not just hope people
>> give it up, then stay that way. This is true for everything from crack,
>> to anabolic steroids, to race car driving. If you are prone to "needing"
>> the fix, more than average, even deciding that you need to stop may not
>> be enough to stop, once started. Something like crack just amplifies the
>> problem.
>
> I've already stated that crack and other drugs are not drugs I'd be for
> the legalization of - so using those extreme examples doesn't work in
> this discussion.
>
> Some percentage of people can't resist alcohol - they *need* their fix.
> They're called "alcoholics". So because some people can't resist the
> addiction, should all of us have to go through prohibition?
>
> Jim
No the argument I am making. What I am saying is, if you want to solve
the problem, you don't throw the guy who is an alcoholic, or worse, got
that way due to a very high susceptibility to it, in a jail. All you get
is more and more people in jail. You make sure there is an "effective"
solution. Problem is.. Most of the solutions are programs like AA, which
"inflate" their success rates by only counting people that remain in the
programs, then claim to do *better* than government run programs, which
are mandated to both report drop outs, and track, as well as possible,
whether or not their patients are still off it, for a certain number of
years. The *real* effectiveness of purely, "lets talk about this",
programs tends to be between 90-95%, which is *exactly* the rate you get
from people that decide to quit, without any intervention, and succeed.
In fact, that only counts the number of people that "try" to stop.
Nearly 57%, in the case of alcoholics, who actually do quit, never went
to such a program, compared to 10% that did, and 29% that decided to
stop due to health issues. Government programs, which involve actual
psychology, as well as a real understanding of the biology involved, and
what limited methods of pharmacology we have to deal with it, depending
on the drug in question, tend to have at least "measurable" rates, which
do not fall in the range of, "statistical error". Mind, I am having a
bit of an issue finding real statistics, instead of 40 million pages of
stuff advertising the latest, "This isn't AA, or a government program.
We cure people using, bible verses, toothpaste, pink unicorns, hair die,
rainbow socks, etc..."
I am a bit amused by the statistics found on one site that, to drum up
their own supposed better program, talks about AA and professional
programs, pointing out that they both sort of fail in the long run, and
mentioning of AA:
"In every category, the people who got no treatment at all fared better
than the people who got A.A. "treatment". Based on the records of
re-arrests, only 31% of the A.A.-treated clients were deemed successful,
while 44% of the "untreated" clients were successful."
We need better solutions. Its irrelevant what drug, or how strong, or
for what reason, the person has a problem. If all you do is jail people
that hurt others, while taking them, what you end up with is a lot of
people in jail, an almost meaningless decrease of drunks/druggies among
the cured, and a *constant* replacement of those same people by anything
from 5x to 20x as many new users, most of which won't quit on their own,
won't be successful if they try, and will eventually end up in a jail
some place.
Its fairly irrelevant, given this basic problem, what drug you are
talking about. No, banning it doesn't work, isn't effective, and causing
"huge" problems on its own, generally. But, if 90% of your programs are
pure gibberish, 5% are professional programs, which don't fair much
better, and the people with the purse strings keep denying every attempt
to find something that *does* work, in favor of lining the pockets of
the people running ones that don't, often for ideological reasons, or
worse, refusing to fund *anything* at all, for similar reasons... Well,
we already know what that results in.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:36:16 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> [...]
There's not a lot there I can (or would) disagree with. However that
seems to go against what you were saying earlier about needing to protect
people from themselves by making use of certain drugs illegal.
How do you reconcile those two positions?
Jim
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On 8/9/2010 11:36 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:36:16 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> [...]
>
> There's not a lot there I can (or would) disagree with. However that
> seems to go against what you were saying earlier about needing to protect
> people from themselves by making use of certain drugs illegal.
>
> How do you reconcile those two positions?
>
> Jim
Not at all. The problem is that you can't make something illegal by
simply declaring that it is, and everyone either stops using it, stops
making it, or stops selling it. To have any such ban work, you have to
fight a war of attrition. Remove the need, you remove users, which
removes sellers, which removes makers. The entirely system of the "war
on drugs" is run 180 degrees backwards from this reality. The need keeps
increasing, even without new users, who also keep increasing, so we
arrest everyone arbitrarily, in hopes it somehow fixes things, then play
political football of manufacturers and sellers, which does litter more
than shift those two aspects from one group to the next, without every
getting rid of it.
Only by addressing the root cause, which is the **need** for the drugs,
can you make any headway at all with the rest. However, if you have no
means the fix the core problem *at all*, then you are in a BP situation.
You can't fix the core problem, so you spend what ever effort and
resources you *do* have, and how ever ineffectual your results are,
attempting to lessen the impact, and clean up the mess. But, the problem
isn't ever going to go way, until you plug the real source in the first
place. Its like trying to bail water out of a boat, on the assumption
that the problem is solely how fast you can get the water *out* of the
boat, while ignoring the fact that you parked the damn thing under a
waterfall, water tends to fall down hill, for some odd reason, and your
boat is basically "container" shaped. If all you look at is how fast you
can pump out the water, (i.e., how many drugs you capture or people you
jail), your entire effort is wasted. **BUT**, if you can't, or are not
allowed, to move the boat, all you are left with is finding new ways to
remove the water, without addressing the real problem.
Thus, there is no conflict between making some drugs illegal, and fixing
the problem on a user level. You do the former because its better than
doing nothing, but you *must* pursue efforts to also do the later, or
all you will ever manage to achieve is a slower disaster.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 8/9/2010 5:48 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 8/9/2010 11:36 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:36:16 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> There's not a lot there I can (or would) disagree with. However that
>> seems to go against what you were saying earlier about needing to protect
>> people from themselves by making use of certain drugs illegal.
>>
>> How do you reconcile those two positions?
>>
>> Jim
> Not at all. The problem is that you can't make something illegal by
> simply declaring that it is, and everyone either stops using it, stops
> making it, or stops selling it. To have any such ban work, you have to
> fight a war of attrition. Remove the need, you remove users, which
> removes sellers, which removes makers. The entirely system of the "war
> on drugs" is run 180 degrees backwards from this reality. The need keeps
> increasing, even without new users, who also keep increasing, so we
> arrest everyone arbitrarily, in hopes it somehow fixes things, then play
> political football of manufacturers and sellers, which does litter more
> than shift those two aspects from one group to the next, without every
> getting rid of it.
>
> Only by addressing the root cause, which is the **need** for the drugs,
> can you make any headway at all with the rest. However, if you have no
> means the fix the core problem *at all*, then you are in a BP situation.
> You can't fix the core problem, so you spend what ever effort and
> resources you *do* have, and how ever ineffectual your results are,
> attempting to lessen the impact, and clean up the mess. But, the problem
> isn't ever going to go way, until you plug the real source in the first
> place. Its like trying to bail water out of a boat, on the assumption
> that the problem is solely how fast you can get the water *out* of the
> boat, while ignoring the fact that you parked the damn thing under a
> waterfall, water tends to fall down hill, for some odd reason, and your
> boat is basically "container" shaped. If all you look at is how fast you
> can pump out the water, (i.e., how many drugs you capture or people you
> jail), your entire effort is wasted. **BUT**, if you can't, or are not
> allowed, to move the boat, all you are left with is finding new ways to
> remove the water, without addressing the real problem.
>
> Thus, there is no conflict between making some drugs illegal, and fixing
> the problem on a user level. You do the former because its better than
> doing nothing, but you *must* pursue efforts to also do the later, or
> all you will ever manage to achieve is a slower disaster.
>
Sigh.. NEVER post when half asleep. lol I don't want to even count how
many errors I made, given the ones in the first paragraph. :p
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:39:29 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Sigh.. NEVER post when half asleep. lol I don't want to even count how
> many errors I made, given the ones in the first paragraph. :p
Heh, I know the feeling. :-)
Jim
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