| HappySqurriel said: The current drug laws of the United States (and most developed nations) are entirely arbitrary and it would make sense to come up with a set of rules/guidelines that determine which drugs should be over the counter legal to everyone, drugs that should be age restricted, drugs which should require a prescription, drugs that should be illegal to sell but decriminalized to have in small ammounts, and completely illegal drugs. At the same time, there needs to be an understanding in society that drugs with restrictions have serious risks associated with their use and we need to start eliminating lawsuits related to people knowingly taking pharmaceuticals that have well known side effects because they ended up encountering the side-effects that the drug had. |
Yes. This is my main problem, that the laws are totally arbitrary.
You want pot to be illegal? Then outlaw alcohol and tobacco too, because they are both more harmful to society than marijuana.
You want heroin to be illegal? I have no problem with that. But putting marijuana in the same category with heroin and the other narcotics is just plain stupid.
These are three fundamental questions that should be asked about every drug, including the ones that are currently legal:
1) Is it physically addictive (NOT is it psychologically addictive)? If so, how physically addictive?
2) Is it physically dangerous? If so, how physically dangerous?
3) What is the social impact of the drug (on families, on crime, etc.)?
And one more that we don't ask enough, especially after all the recent explosions in drug cartel violence along the border:
4) Would society be better off if we did just go ahead and legalize it?
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
