What are your thoughts on, specifically, his being for the decriminalisation of drugs, specifically marijuana? It affects a lot. It makes a legal booming (regulated) business. Takes away crime, and makes the incarceration rate drop dramatically.

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I'm against a full-spectrum decriminalization of drugs because it's such a wide category. On one side, there's marijuana, which sits next to alcohol and tobacco as pretty harmless, and on the other side there's concentrated heroin, crack cocaine, and a bunch of toxic substances that can seriously kill someone quite easily. Honestly, I'm for the decriminalization of marijuana and perhaps a decrease in stringency of jail time for other soft drugs, but the really hard stuff needs to stay highly illegal.

That said, I would love to see the Mexican drug cartels have to face American big business. The cartels won't know what hit them.

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Tahu 1000 - Former Member

Awesome statement.

I'm mostly behind Ron Paul and consider myself to be libertarian on most things these days. I'm 100% for the decriminalization of all drugs. When you do drugs, the only person it affects is you. And if it doesn't, say you kill someone while tweaking on meth, you get prosecuted all the same for murder.

I see no reason why Americans shouldn't be able to choose what they do and do not ingest. Besides, if all drugs became legal, the people who are gonna do them would keep doing them anyway, and the people who never do them would continue on as well. I don't think things would change much on that front.

I'm tired of this notion that the government needs to protect us from ourselves. We should crash and burn on our own, maybe there would be less stupid people in the world if drugs were legal, accessible, and killing idiots and junkies. And besides, if those drugs were legal, maybe there would me much more information available that wasn't biased or meant to scare. Like studies that could tell you just how much acid you can take before you fry your brain.

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Drug abusers would pay 0 attention to this.

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I agree with everything Lander said.

and, Cam,
a *lot* of substance abusers would pay attention.

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I don't think it's as much a matter of paying attention, but a matter of simply knowing. Whether they follow the advice is up to them, but what do you think people are more likely to listen to?

X is really bad for you, these are all of the things it does to you. You shouldn't ever do it.

This is how much of X you can take before you die or are permanently harmed.

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Sounds a bit like natural selection then.

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Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

Personally i believe people should be able to do whatever they want as long as they aren't bothering or harming others.

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There are 10 types of people in the world, the ones that understand binary, and the ones that don't.

Thanks Lou for the help with the avatar.

So what do you do if addiction to heroin/meth/whatever causes people to hurt others via physical violence and robbery?

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I don't think substance abuse is an excuse for any crime. You'd put them in jail where they rightly belong if they did something illegal. They just wouldn't have drug charges as well.

If drugs were decriminalized it would give addicts one more reason to get help. They wouldn't fear being on paperwork as an addict...and not all substance abusers are addicts, anyway. Even those who have done "harder" drugs don't have to be addicts.

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You don't think that people on Meth are being negatively effected into crime? Dave Mustaine (Founder, rhythm guitarist+singer of Megadeth (If anyone doesn't know)) commented in his book that he had done cocaine and heroin, but he had never seen anything worse than meth.

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I absolutely believe that some people on meth have commited crimes because of it. I feel the same about other drugs as well. Addiction is a disease, though....not a crime. Yes, punish them for their crimes...but again, not their addiction.

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Calling addiction a disease is disempowering to the individual who has full responsibility and choice over their actions.

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Under the influence is a perfectly easy to make a case of "My client's mental state was not his own" and such insanity pleas. In relation to the previous debate, a drug doesn't instill the desire to do crime. Instead, it fuels it in that mental boundaries are shifted, even removed, and some desires are made stronger with the drug's effect on the mind.

There's also the much less extreme but much more common fact that addictions to the more extreme drugs do financially and emotionally affect its addicts, and the close friends or family of the addicts. It physically tends to affect only the user, but the potential for it to become a problem past that is far, far too great for me to let that statement pass.

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Goten is dead!

Cam, it's a matter of brain chemistry being changed throughout the addiction. The brains reward system is effected.

Kik, as far as the legal system goes.....drugs aren't an excuse for anything, even in court. "I was on drugs" won't hold up in court in the US (and probably not in most other countries as well)....ever. Unless it was somebody else's responsibility (such as the FDA approving something harmful or someone else putting a substance into a person's body without them knowing.

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That's still not a disease.

But I'm willing to wait while I try and catch alcoholism.

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They should take each drug and weigh it up against alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs. Certain drugs should not be allowed as they are really bad.

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Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

Took the words right out of my mouth. I dunno how familiar you are with law, Kikori, but anyone that says (to my knowledge) "I was on drugs when I did this" the judge, and hopefully jury; will simply say "so what?". The 'my client wasn't in his right mind' defense is far more common with insanity, apparent mental illness, extreme feelings of depression as in the case of postpartum depression, and aggravated charges. The difference being a person can obviously control their drug consumption, whereas a disorder or the onset of depression is something certainly out of your hands.

Following is something I found with a quick search, admittedly it doesn't seem to be the most reputable source, but it states the basic gist of what I'm saying.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/ ... 30275.html

In response to the rest of your post, see my earlier posts. People should be able to choose whether or not they do drugs, and subsequently, they must deal with the consequences. How it affects their family, friends, and in what ways are their problems, not the government's.

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Given the infamy of what some lawyers these days have pulled (both in cases mass-published and some personally told about) and the assured desperation of certain users to potentially perjure themselves for a defense, I'll admit it was an assumed statement. I stand by my position that there are assuredly people who would attempt it, but after looking, I did find a more clear summary of how drug use deals with criminal cases.

So yeah, I am running by pure assumption on the legal half of my post. And running by experiences personal, witnessed, and discussed with people affected by drug users.


It's not the Government's problem, but the post I initially responded to stated "A drug user only affects himself when using drugs", which unfortunately is the same level of BS'ing as my previous post's legal approach. Enough drug users and distributors get away with it because friends turn blind eyes (be honest, how many friends do each of you have who smoke the oh-so-terrible Marijuana?), are scared to call in, or are codependent-types* who feel it is their responsibility to work on the habit. Enough users negatively end up affecting their friends, family, and associates, whether in broken trust, physically, or financially. Even if it's not a legal defense, there is no denying a drug still alters one's state of mind (else it would likely not be used), still feasibly claiming some responsibility for actions as well.

*Codependency is a psychological condition very commonly associated with someone intimately close to a chemically dependent person. The "good wife who loves her alcoholic jackass husband too much to get out of there". Not really a choice they fully know they're making, and a common enough occurrence to account for quite a few depressed lives.

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Goten is dead!

When I said it only affected them, I should have been clearer. I was speaking physically. Of course it sometimes (often?) affects those around the user. Though in the case of hardcore users, they usually prefer to be around other users so in the end, they're hurting themselves...and other users. Not sure what the point is there, but users usually isolate themselves from their family so there can't *really* be much of an effect.

As I said, in the case of theft or abuse, they will be prosecuted accordingly. In the case of emotional duress and abuse that doesn't fall under the law, it's up to the family to react, not the government.

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