I typically don't post here anymore but after reading some of this amateur perspective I simply have to put in my two cents.
This may take a while.
Landerpurex wrote:
Anyway, to answer your questions in short, I'm 21 and of course I've been under the influence. And yes, I happen to have my license. If you took two seconds to look to the left of my post, you'd see that I joined in 2004, and if I weren't old enough to drive, I'd had to have joined the site at a preeeeeetty young age. So you can take your condescending attitude and generalizations and cram them, if I were to put it politely.
A lot of people who are over 21 don't have their liscense. Like my girlfriend, for example. We can't assume you have one because you joined runevillage in 2004. Especially since most people that play runescape start playing when they're 10 years old. To make that assumption would be a
generalization.Landerpurex wrote:
if I choose to do drugs, it's simply because I want to, not because I'm concerned with my image or something like that. I'm fully aware that there are lots of people out there who do have that mindset, but ultimately...who cares? How does their VIEW of themselves and drugs affect you? It doesn't.
When someone decides to impair their judgement and motor skills and cognitive thinking, it impacts each person they encounter and interact with, whether directly or indirectly. For example, I get in my car tonight to go to walmart to get some toilet paper, but on my way there, a drunk driver swerves over the center line and engages me in a head on collision. The steering column slams into my chest, my lungs fill up with blood, and I die within 45 seconds. Because he made the decision that he wanted to abuse drugs because he wanted to do it before he thought about anyone else besides himeslf. Drugs are selfish by nature and function. Which brings me to my next point.
I'll let these next few lines next to each other speak for themselves.
Landerpurex wrote:
I've never driven while significantly under the influence of anything. I wouldn't drive while under the influence of drugs, because they do still alter your mindset and therefor your perception, motor skills, etc. A lot of people would tell you otherwise, but I don't like to drive under the influence of drugs nor do I fully trust myself to do so.
Landerpurex wrote:
I can easily drive after I've had a few drinks, whilst still under the legal limit.
You do trust yourself to drink and drive. You just don't admit it to yourself that it's wrong - You only admit this to other people when it's convenient in an argument. The legal limit is arbitrary- A fraction of a second of distraction or poor reaction timing can kill you or anyone else when you are traveling down the road in a hulking mass of metal.
Landerpurex wrote:
I also know people who can down a fifth of liquor in a night and drive better than most people when sober.
Maybe you don't know how alcohol works. Some of your jovial, more festive, and cocky and stupid friends may say things like this to you to impress you but trust me - It isn't true. And you shouldn't be impressed. And if you
know this to be true from experience you must have rode in the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by someone who just drank a fifth of liqour. In which case not only are you irresponsible, neglectful towards other drivers, but you are also a poor friend and have judgement so poor if you drank even 1 beer you might still be under the legal limit set forth by arbitrary law, but as far as the legal limit regarding what qualifies to be intelligent and not mentally
you might be pushing it.
Quote:
Where did you come up with the spiked drink thing? Are you saying drugs should remain illegal because of the danger of someone killing someone else with them? That doesn't make much sense.
I'm pretty sure that is a reasonable and rational argument. Drugs kill people all the time. So yes, it makes sense. Just last year in my hometown there was a young girl about 19 years old who was out with some friends one night partying. She was drunk and her friends convinced her to try some heroin. Since her judgement was so impaired, she tried it. It killed her. Why was she drunk? Because alcohol is easily obtained, popular amongst youth, and like every other drug, feels good (at least temporarily). Why did she try heroin? Because her friends asked her to. Why did she die? Because drugs are dangerous. You can't imagine the scope of the grief of her family - A young girl who had so much to live for and her whole life ahead of her, dead because she made a few poor impulsive decisions (Like the decision to drink) because the decisions were available to her and she was not educated enough to know better.
You are arguing for self-preservation and isolationism - Every man for himself. Which basically means you're throwing every person out there who doesn't have the the means to obtain proper education on drugs and alcohol or the proper care or motivation or positive influence in their life to the wolves. Illegalizing drugs saves lives. Whether you like it or not.
Landerpurex wrote:
And about the vehicular manslaughter, it's a lesser charge than murder, sure; but it's still a very bad charge and likely one that will ruin your life, especially when important people (read: employers) learn that it was alcohol-related. Who wants to be known as the drunk driver who killed someone whilst driving drunk? The social fallout is almost certainly worse than anything the courts can do to a person.
You know what's worse than a court ordered sentence or social fallout? Being dead. Like a bright young intelligent and beautiful girl named Jessica that I once knew, that I once kissed, and later became distant with, who last year was driving home from a party drunk, flew off the road, and into a lake. They found her in the back seat with her keys clenched in her cold dead fist. She drowned. Drinking won't just ruin your life - It will kill you, and ruin anyone's life who is close to you and holds you near their heart. Grief and sorrow and losing one of your kids will make you feel a lot worse than prison or community service.
Landerpurex wrote:
@Nateman: it would be bad if companies did that, but then, in this view, it is the responsibility of the user to have the correct knowledge of what they're using. You're further supporting the parent-state by defending these small-minded victims of poverty who will fall prey to drugs because they don't know their true effects.
Once again, basically what you're saying is that anyone without a proper education or means of obtaining one due to social circumstances can just go ahead and get addicted to drugs and kill themselves or other people for all you give a damn. It's their fault for being so poor and not having good schools afterall.
Nate is right. His point is that disengenous business practices such as misleading advertising, propagandous information and intelligent manifestation of misguiding the public is a prevalent theme in capitalism. And he's right. Pharmacutical companies do it every single day. Why? Because they have the money and they can. No politician is going to stop someone who puts food on their table from selling their product to the public. And what the public doesnt know won't hurt them. Or will it?
Quote:
It's apparent that if drugs were made legal, they'd likely be heavily regulated, like over-the-counter drugs that can be dangerous if abused. I wish we could arrive at a world where people are level headed, where there are no biases either way, just the facts and the people have the right to choose whether or not to ingest based on those facts.
This is the inherent fallacy in all of it. In your entire perspective, this is the problem: Wishful thinking.
There is no sacred place, no perfect world in which everyone is educated and can know everything there is to know about everything everywhere in the world. It might have been that way back in the time of Ancient greece, when you could know everything about the world by just reading a few books, but that's simply not the case anymore. People don't have time to read the fine print thats 35 pages long when they get their prescription at walmart. Should they? Yes. Do they? No. Why? Because people have
to do. And everyone knows that. It's by design. There are always biases. This is how the cognitive structure of the human psyche works. There are always facts and people always have the right to choose to ignore or ingest those facts. They also have the choice to marr and misconstrue those facts into something more tangible yet less true. Go ahead, legalize drugs, everythings going to be okay. We're all educated adults here, we can all just make the decision to not do drugs. And before you know it, *Poof*, drugs will be gone forever because nobody will do them. The consequences of the legalization of serious and harmful drugs even further than the ones already out there would be very bad. It would change our society completely. It would make us a more dangerous and distrusting culture than we already are. When was the last time you saw the ingestion of alcohol have good consequences? What about pot? Heroin? Have you even thought about this on a cost/benefit analysis level? Let me do a thought experiment for you:
The legalization of drugs:
Benefits:
Less intensive war on drugs, thus less stringent justice system, more available funds for police force, but cops have guns and they can all get high on coke if they want, so lets just cancel this out.Cons: Easier access to potentially fatal and certainly harmful substances which result in the injury, poor health, and death of innocent people without the means to obtain proper education on the effects of drugs and innocent bystanders who get in the way of drug users.
Drugs when used recreationally are self-serving mechanisms with the only benefit being a temporary high to the user, and the consequences being shared by all of society.
