Weena wrote:
How many people are going to start doing any kind of drug if they're legal tomorrow? With maybe a small exception on marijuana, it's only going to be people who'd end up doing those drugs regardless of their legality.
The Opium War completely destroys this argument. You can go on saying and believing this if you like but it's simply willful ignorance since I pointed that example out to you before. There is also the more contemporary example of modern-day Russia.
Weena wrote:
People are going to do drugs. You aren't going to stop it short of iron-handed fascism....allow bureaucrats and drug enforcement workers to feather their nests fighting an unwinnable battle (because we aren't an iron-handed fascist regime)...
...and still have people getting high anyway...
Could you define "fascism" as you are using it, please?
Not all societies have rampant drug problems (legal or otherwise) so your initial assumption is faulty.
But those societies that do (China and the EU) manage their drug problems don't do it through legalization, whether drugs are legal or not.
If we assume that people will steal/cheat/murder/etc, would the appropriate response be to legalize that as well? And no, the "but unlike those crimes, drugs don't harm anyone but the user" argument has already been defeated, so you can't invoke that.
If you don't like cops and narcs "feathering their nests" by fighting an "unwinnable battle", then why are you so ardently opposed to completely changing tactics by looking at the reasons people turn to drugs in the first place, trying to deal with social problems by constructive and non-violent means?
Why is fighting an eminently "unwinnable battle" against poverty-driven crime okay, but fighting an "eminently unwinnable battle" against drugs is not okay?
Weena wrote:
We can either legalize, eliminate the black market (which would dramatically reduce prices and remove the violence associated with it)...
Quote:
Do you really think legalizing drugs would actually solve any of those problems? People would still be upset, still taking drugs, still have to pay for them somehow. Do you really think they're going to get jobs and pay, or just go without?
...suffer the violence that comes with black markets...
...The purpose of legalizing is removing the criminal element.
This won't happen because people who are compelled to seek drugs will still do crazy things to get them. If corporations make far stronger variants of the drugs - which they will - no one will be interested in weed any more than cigarette smokers are interested in natural tobacco.
Your reasoning is also faulty in that you predicate your argument on the basis that the problem with drugs is the associated violence. For reasons that have already been explored, this simply isn't true; drugs are enormously destructive even when they don't cause violence.
Weena wrote:
...reduce prison costs...
...pay increased prison costs...
To what end? Where do you think the money should go instead?
Weena wrote:
...actually get product information to people...
...have people dying from overdose because they lack information on what they were sold...
Given your own persistent, willful ignorance - e.g., in this very thread, the causes and legacy of the Opium War - what makes you think this will be any more effective at allowing others to make wise choices based on facts? And no that is not an insult - it is a relevant case example.
Information has been made available to you and you reject it; what makes you think others will do any different - suffer their own mistakes (and blame themselves) - any more than you do?
Weena wrote:
and you could take a similar approach we've taken with cigarettes and use tax revenue to educate as well as treat addiction as the medical problem it is.
Which isn't working.
There are new young smokers every year. Cigarette companies aren't going out of business anytime soon, all this has done is effectively cuff the state to the cigarette corps by making them reliant on the tax revenue.
I think smoking is retarded, but I also think that extorting smokers for tax money because it's more politically popular than taxing the general population is evil. It is, in the final analysis, no different than a modern-day Jew tax: tax the unpopular folks, not those who benefit from their money.
Curiously enough the same people who find it unfair to heavily tax those who benefit most from the status quo, don't have a problem heavily taxing those who benefit the least. Why are you okay with overtaxing smokers, but not overtaxing the rich?
Weena wrote:
We can ban them, give criminals huge profit margins
You really think that pot dealers are rich, rich as corporate raiders?
If pot were legal, how would it be better that LEGAL drug cartels profit off addiction?
Weena wrote:
Implying criminals don't do this to a far greater extent. Why do you think crack cocaine came around? How many people have been sold some kind of soft drug laced with a hard drug? How do you stop that from happening in a black market?
Crack came about because criminals were looking to process cocaine using chemicals available to the socially marginal - as opposed to state-of-the-art labs that turned tobacco into cigs and corn into HFCS. Never mind that to argue that criminals can actually do industrial research better than organized, above-water businesses directly contradicts your pro-free market claims (and doesn't even stand up to a moment's thought - are criminals going to be scientific wizards comparable to the guys at pharmaceutical corps?)
Cigarette and pharmaceutical corps have been killing people for decades. "Legalization" hasn't changed that. Your argument that legalizing drugs would prevent criminals from killing people vacillates in the face of the fact that legalization would lead to a "pusher lobby" popping up overnight and brainwashing impressionable people like you.
Why do you think that legalization, industrialization and "oversight" of a questionable field would play out any different than it has with cigs - where it has descended into not only acceptance, but reliance upon and even subsidy of, an industry that kills thousands yearly?
Weena wrote:
This is funny because I don't watch Fox News and legalizing drugs is generally opposed by conservative types.
Fill in the blanks, then. Where do you get your ideas?