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Originally posted by Arbiter If addicted drug users aren't using drugs consensually, then they can hardly be held responsible for their drug use under the law. They either have control of their behavior and can stop taking drugs if they wanted to, or they cannot. If they can, then addiction is not a factor which warrants consideration in a legalization debate. If they cannot, then how can you justify punishing them for engaging in a pattern of behavior they have no control over? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The point is that they used to be consentual when they started to take the drugs. If you get drunk and drive a car and kill someone could you say you were not responsible because you were drunk? No, because you were responsible when you decided to take the first drink.

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That's really just conjecture. It may result in less efficient work, or it may not. But there are plenty of other things which may lower work efficiency which are perfectly legal: you might cut yourself with a knife, and that would reduce your work efficiency, but should we outlaw knives for this reason? Clearly not.

Well, continuous drug use certainly results in a reduction of work efficiency as well as it does in the possible death or prolonged health care for the individual.

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I have no compassion for people who are unwilling to accept the responsibility for the consequences produced by their own decisions. If I were to treat them compassionately, I would implicitly be encouraging their thoughtless or inept behavior. But thoughtless and/or inept behavior should be discouraged, not encouraged. Freedom comes with responsibility, that much is inescapable. If people try to take advantage of that freedom while shunning the responsibility associated with it, then they aren't deserving of compassion.

I partially agree with you here. But there are several groups that don't quite fit into this picture, mainly minors and people under severe stress for whom the moment of weakness could result in a lifelong and potentially lethal addiction.

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The analogy doesn't really work. If someone misuses a drug, then their poor decision-making was the direct cause of their physical condition. In an automobile accident, not wearing a seatbelt is merely a contributory factor, and it can only be speculated as to how much of a contribution that decision made.

Again I say, that analogy was presented to show that the government sometimes does need to force people to do something that's good for themselves because they are otherwise usually too lazy to do such a thing themselves.

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But another thing I feel the need to point out here is that you wrote "In the real world we unfortunately live in, people often don't think until it's too late." That is very true, but I do not feel it is the role of society to play nanny for the poor decision makers among us. We can't just abandon the hope that people can be intelligent and foreseeing because it appears not the be the case. Rather, we need to motivate themselves to develop those traits by creating an environment in which they are rewarded for thoughtfulness and punished for thoughtlessness. Creating a society where law is a crutch for bad decision-makers is self-defeating. It may appear to prevent unfortunate circumstances in the short-term, but it fails to encourage people to maximize their potential and results in stagnancy. We don't develop as humans if the motivation for us to do so is removed - at least not most of us.

I do agree with what you said here. However, if things get out of control, the whole society begins to suffer because of the poor decision making of some of its members.

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It is already very easy for kids to get their hands on these substances, at least in the urban United States. In fact, it's fairly easy everywhere I've ever lived, including the town with the single lowest crime rate in the country. I don't see any compelling evidence to suggest that if hard drugs were legalized, children would use them more.

Well, the US is kinda weak on that issue. But in some better organized countries the illegal substances are rather hard to get.

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It's generally the impurities and a lack of a precise dosage which cause serious health problems as a result of drug use. People who buy drugs under our present laws do so from shady criminal organizations which adhere to few, if any, standards. If people knew exactly what they were taking, they would be a lot less likely to use it unwisely. That's why overdoses associated with over-the-counter medications are so rare - because the amount you should take is right on the box, and there are never any impurities.

Yes, but it would mean that the state is practically sponsoring an inherently harmful activity.

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That is true, but the crime would likely be significantly less than it is presently, which is, after all, an improvement.

That is rather questionable. A majority of hard drug addicts are small thieves and don't have a job. It's not that they lost a job because of the drugs, it's that they simply have a sort of mentality that makes them incapable of pursuing a career. So they'd still be stealing in order to get high.

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I am not convinced that anti-drug legislation is having a significant effect to deter drug use. People don't believe they will get caught because 99% of them never will. I've never heard of anyone avoiding drugs because they were illegal.

Well, several of my friends actually smoked weed in a public place, got caught, had to pay a fine, their parents nagged a lot, and they decided not to do it anymore. If a person is at least somewhat concerned about his/her future, then the possibility of having a criminal record is rather worrying and does act as a deterrent.

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According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, more than 50% of high school students in the United States have used illegal drugs. I don't really see that it would increase much if those drugs were legal, and that's certainly not a minimal level by any standard.

I'd say that's more of a problem with the US inner city police which infact seems to be rather scared when it comes to reducing criminal activity in their area of jurisdiction.

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He's fulfilling a demand which, were it not met by him, would be satisfied elsewhere.

Well, I guess you could say it's a contribution, but not a beneficial one.

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I don't see any negative effect produced by his presence in society rather than in prison. He is currently self-sufficient rather than dependent on society for food and shelter.

He is creating addicts which will cost the government way more than it will cost it to provide him a shelter and food. But this is more the matter of a prison and punishment system for which I too believe is inefficient.

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While I admit that were that scenario the case, I might lose my ability to think about the issue objectively and therefore hold the irrational belief that this man should be in prison, I don't see what relevance this scenario has to the argument.

Because it shows that the cocaine selling person is a harmful element in the society.

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How so? Instead of rotting in prison while making room for a new drug dealer to seize his territory, or for a new drug dealer take up the trade, he's back where he used to supporting himself. I see no benefit in pushing the boulder all the way up the hill at the cost of this man's freedom, only to have my money and his sacrifice squandered in a Sisyphean struggle to prohibit people from dealing illegal drugs.

First of all, that man is engaged in an activity which he knows is harmful to the people and society around him. The fact that he may in the future be replaced by another dealer is irrelevant here. The important thing is that each person should be held responsible for the action taken against the benefit of the society.

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Whoa, I didn't expect this thread to grow that much Neway, instead of having a bunch of green boxes, I'm gonna reply briefly and talk about the key points here - poverty and legalisation

First of all, I'm not exclusively blaming our problems on "people from other countries who use drugs". Keep in mind that we're not that much of a poor country: I reckon we're not as wealthy as the US, but we've got less poverty than most Latin American countries, by far - and ironically, our crime rates don't reflect this reality. This is because we've become a gateway for illegal products from neighbouring countries to Europe/North America. How it happened? Look at the map and try to see our borders - it's virtually impossible to look for drugs in all that space.

This is not Holland we're talking about: Brazil is a huge country, slightly smaller than the US - and, there's the Amazon in the North (and to make things worse, we're neighbours with Colombia and Bolivia, which produces large amounts of drugs, instead of Canada). The drug produced here is not for local consumption: it's mostly for export (in fact, most drugs are not even produced here - we're often a gateway, like I said).

Legalising drugs here is utopic because of all the criminal organisations I told you about, and we just don't have the necessary structure to do it - I already told you guys about it and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that we're a developing country: no matter how many advances we've had in the last couple of centuries (which was quite a lot), we still got some problems (mainly in the social part) which we've got to focus before adopting this policy. Why the government allowed criminal groups to become this powerful? Well, it never allowed them to do anything, in first place: the revenue was large enough for these groups to become their own armies. Why don't we attack them? Because there are innocent people living where they are: things aren't that easy. The situation in which we live here is far different from what you experience in Europe/North America.

I'm glad this thread opened such constructive discussion, by the way And beema, I'm not trying to convince anyone, I just wanted to show a bit of the reality I live in

Oh, I'm not planning on living anywhere else (well, maybe, for a little while, I'd like to go to the former Soviet Union or to the Far East because of the chicks, but I would get back afterwards ). No matter what, despite of these tiny problems, my country is still gold

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Originally posted by Lira Disclaimer First of all, I'd like to say that I'm not against drugs: whoever wants to use them should be allowed to do so if there are no harmful consequences to other people who have got nothing to do with it. Also, this is not a "everytime you masturbate God kills a kitten, please think of the kittens" thread - I'm actually looking for discussion, and people who can prove me wrong. Last, but not least, this thread DOES belong to the chill-out room. That being said, let's focus on the topic, shall we? Some of you probably use drugs (hemp, heroin,...) and most of you probably live in "most developed" countries. Why am I comparing these two facts? Because you'll hardly feel the consequences of drug using as much as we do here in South America. As you know, there's a lot of money involved in drug dealing (Europeans and North Americans pay 10x more than its original price), reason why this activity became so intersting for criminal organisations (let's face it, drugs are illegal and most countries wouldn't be able to support the legalisation because of their health system). Because of the impressive revenues earned by this trade, small criminal groups became stronger as time passed by, leading to the creation of para-military armies in Colombia and a pseudo civil war in some parts of Rio de Janeiro, where drug dealers have weapons better than our own army. Like a cancer, it quickly spreads to other cities, and because of the greed of drug dealers, they join other activities such as kidnapping and robbery in order to support this commerce - and this is why I'm posting it here on the chill-out room. Not long ago, my girlfriend was blitz-kidnapped by drug dealers, who wanted money and her mobile phone (I don't know what the proper English word for this event would be... they kidnapped her for a couple of hours, got all they wanted from her and then let them go). She never used drugs, mind you (she's ironically alergic to most of these sorts of substances, including legal drugs like alcohol). One of my best mate's father had also been blitz-kidnapped some time ago. Heck, even I, who also never used drugs, by the way, had my watch nicked by a bloody drug addict. No, Brasilia is not a dangerous place actually (countless times I was hanging out on the streets after midnight, and oldskool TA's may remember I once crossed the city on foot in a tour with a Japanese tourist), but I reckon the situation is getting worse... and all these crimes were linked to drug dealing. Coincidence? Not really. That's why I'm telling you guys of the situation down here. Many of you complain about immigration, but you're not aware of the harm done in our countries because of things some of you are also to blame. You guys complain about September 11th, but we lose far more people here every year in this terrorism sponsored by these people who want to get "high". I guess you guys got what I mean by now. I'm aware of the fact we've got drug addicts in Brazil too, but I'm doing the best I can: spreading the word, both here and there

and the moral of the story is:

take ecstacy, coz its made in holland.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Contributing to the society? How? By selling cocaine? By creating more drug addicts which will likely loose their jobs and turn to criminal activity to finance their addiction?

i think you will find that the MOST addict drugs by far which contribute to a massive amount of "low life" addicts is heroin and crack (meth).

meth especially is not (as far as i know) made in south america and afghanistan is the biggest producer in the world of opium for heroin i think

cocaine is addictive yes, but i know a lot of people who take cocaine, they always take it when theyre out clubbing etc but none of them have lost their jobs or steal from people.

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although on a another point i think cocaine is the biggest issue as it can easily fetch £50 a gramme but it is dangerous (although less addicitve than tobacco)

so i think no matter how lenient you will make the drug laws cocaine (like heroin) could never be lkgal as it is to easy to OD

IMO tobacco should be illegal. some peopel spend thousands a year on it, its as addictive as heroin almost and even kids to it at such yougn ages and get addicted asnd beat up old grannies over soem money for some fags. and it gives you cancer (biggest cause of death in the uk) and it affects other peopel thru passive smoking

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