So, the economist and time agree: It's about fucking time to LEGALISE IT

[East Coast Hustle]

in other words, almost everyone ITT aside from Pent, TGRR, and myself is missing the fucking point. It's not about whether pot is good or bad or drugs in general are good or bad or whether prohibition is costing us more than legalization would financially and socially, IT'S ABOUT WHETHER WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES FOR OURSELVES. Period.

I'm an Anarchist,  I'm in favor of people being allowed their own choices.  However that doesn't mean that my freedom to choose something I enjoy is worth the risk of children hurting themselves.  if we HAVE to have government, might as well have it protect children at least right?

My problem with prohibition is that it doesn't.  It may protect a few from trying drugs, but at the cost of causing more to move from pot to hard drugs, and at the cost of others getting shot.

you're an anarchist who wants the government to legislatively protect children?

wut?

government's sole purpose is to protect us from other governments and to regulate taxation and commerce. They have no business protecting us from ourselves and they have no business pre-emptively protecting us from others. period.

Sure, if they're gonna be there, and protect anyone, why not children?

because that's not their fucking business nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights. Including my right to do stupid shit and fuck myself up any way I see fit.

what kind of anarchist are you? I think you should revisit the definition of the term.

The kind who doesn't think that allowing the government to define what rights you do and don't have is a very good idea.  But that if you are going to do it you have to actually let them do so. and one of the rights they haven't chosen to grant you is the right to fuck yourself up.

What kind of statist are you not letting your duly elected representatives choose how they wish to represent you?

where did I ever say I was a statist?

[East Coast Hustle]

also, BH is either trying to intentionally derail a very interesting discussion or he's really just that big of a fucking idiot.

RCH,
finds it nearly impossible to believe that someone who would post on PD would earnestly espouse those views

[AFK]

in other words, almost everyone ITT aside from Pent, TGRR, and myself is missing the fucking point. It's not about whether pot is good or bad or drugs in general are good or bad or whether prohibition is costing us more than legalization would financially and socially, IT'S ABOUT WHETHER WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES FOR OURSELVES. Period.

Right, but here's the sticky widget.  A 14 year old, who's brain is still in the process of developing, cannot make an informed decision the same way an adult with a fully developed brain can.  This is why we have laws around statutory rape.  It is why there is a legal drinking age.  It is why we don't let 14 year olds drive a car.  Government is already making laws to protect children because of this biological fact.  Prohibition is just another one.  Unless you are advocating to strip away all of these other laws that protect children based upon their inability to make adult decisions, (I'm sure Uncle BadTouch would just LOVE that), then I'm afraid that argument really doesn't work, or I should say, it isn't sufficient.  

[P3nT4gR4m]

Slight diference with prohibition - it's killing a fly with a flamethrower. Statutory rape =/= Totally banz0ring sex. Underage driving is not solved by banning cars.

[fomenter]

Underage driving is not solved by banning cars.

yes it would be, by prohibition logic we should ban adults from driving because some fourteen year old might steal his dads car,  his dad just parks it in the driveway and isn't capable of controlling his own children,  isn't smart enough or a good enough parent to hid the keys or  teach his kid how dangerous it is to drive a car with a undeveloped brain and motor-skills, so its the governments job to step in
drivers licenses and laws legislating the rules of the road are not enough to protect children, and if even only a few more kids steal cars and drive than would if it were legal for adults to drive...  it is to many... so cars should be outlawed... do it for the children.





edit 4 punctuation

[Cait M. R.]

You know, I totally support legalization and think prohibition is retarded.

But you're being a gigantic dick for no real reason, Fomenter. I can definitely see where he's feeling unwelcome here.

Just sayin'.

[fomenter]

i haven't challenged RWHN's professionalism at his job or the importance of the work he does or done any of the things that have pissed him off in this discussion so far and he is free to call me on it if i do..

i am just taking the prohibition logic and applying it to cars the same way it is applied to drugs to make a point....

[Fuquad]

finds it nearly impossible to believe that someone who would post on PD would earnestly espouse those views

Think of the dolphins.

[East Coast Hustle]

in other words, almost everyone ITT aside from Pent, TGRR, and myself is missing the fucking point. It's not about whether pot is good or bad or drugs in general are good or bad or whether prohibition is costing us more than legalization would financially and socially, IT'S ABOUT WHETHER WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES FOR OURSELVES. Period.

Right, but here's the sticky widget.  A 14 year old, who's brain is still in the process of developing, cannot make an informed decision the same way an adult with a fully developed brain can.  This is why we have laws around statutory rape.  It is why there is a legal drinking age.  It is why we don't let 14 year olds drive a car.  Government is already making laws to protect children because of this biological fact.  Prohibition is just another one.  Unless you are advocating to strip away all of these other laws that protect children based upon their inability to make adult decisions, (I'm sure Uncle BadTouch would just LOVE that), then I'm afraid that argument really doesn't work, or I should say, it isn't sufficient. 

yeah, but as an adult I'm still allowed to drivea car and drink a beer so that analogy holds no water.

[BabylonHoruv]

also, BH is either trying to intentionally derail a very interesting discussion or he's really just that big of a fucking idiot.

RCH,
finds it nearly impossible to believe that someone who would post on PD would earnestly espouse those views

Yeah, I was being a dick.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that a government is ok when it tells us which brown people to shoot and not ok when it tells us which drugs to take though.

To me it's just not ok.  And if you are going to make a utilitarian arguement for allowing something which is not ok, as opposed to a philosophical one, then because it protects the children is about as good as the arguement is going to get.

If it really were just about limiting people's ability to make their own decisions then no, I wouldn't bother wasting my time protesting or agitiating against the drug war and I'd be spending my time on more important limitations of decision making, like trying to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, or trying to get them to stop giving our money to Goldman Sachs.

However the drug war seems like a much easier problem to fix, to me, and the utilitiarian problems accompanying it, the people being shot for the profit of drug runners, the full prisons, and the drugs which are far less safe than they would be in an open and regulated market place, those are the real problems, to me, not the fact that the government is telling some people what they can and cannot do, that's what governments do after all.

[East Coast Hustle]

those problems are all directly related to the government's restrictions on personal choice, so to try to separate them in this argument is disingenuous.

also, the government telling us which brown people to shoot while they give all of our money to Goldman Sachs, while utterly reprehensible, is a red herring.

[AFK]

RWHN, I highly respect your perspective because you deal with the damage that drugs do, but it seems like you're overgeneralizing a little. Frankly, my parents are incredibly responsible people, and absolutely great parents, and nonetheless they (both!) actually recommended I try weed. They did this when I was 18 and it was great advice. I have been smoking pot daily in the past few months and it's actually been a very good thing for me. I'm still somewhere around the top of my class (as far as actual involvement, interest and knowledge in my field, not grades) and probably by far the heaviest stoner in said class. Using weed more regularly did not affect me for the worse.

Am I overgeneralizing or is it maybe that you haven't been exposed to the many examples of how this sort of thing ends up going bad? 

This is anecdotal evidence, and obviously I am not saying pot cannot be damaging to people. I've seen it myself with a close friend. But there are invariably other factors in play. When a person is happy and healthy and social, weed doesn't kill that. When a person is in a bad situation, under emotional duress and isolated, it can be worse.

Yes, it can be much, much worse.  And the point is too many kids are in that situation and when a drug like marijuana is introduced it makes things worse.  This is one of the things we are trying to combat. 

My point, I think, is that every case is different, and people should be allowed to make these decisions for themeselves. That includes parents making bad parenting decisions like giving/recommending/praising weed to/before children who should not be using it. It seems to me that drug abuse and damaging drug use are far more often symptoms than causes, or if not symptoms, simply part of a bigger ugly picture. If parents take part in causing a young person to do something damaging to themselves, chances are their attitude towards drugs are not the only facet of the situation. In the big scheme of things, addressing that as a problem is putting a bandaid on an open gut. It's not going to fix dysfunctional families, it's not going to fix rotten communities, and it's not even going to make parents stop intentionally or unintentionally fucking up their children.

I hope you see what I'm saying.

I see what you are saying but I personally believe that is an irresponsible tact to take.  Additionally, you are assuming that they only thing we do to combat bad parenting is to ban a substance.  We in fact do much in the way of educating parents on the dangers of parental modeling and the consequences of inadequate parental monitoring.  We obviously can't reach all of them but we reach who we can. 

[AFK]

also, in America we believe in being free to make our own choices and not being fucked with for them UNTIL they have a direct negative impact on another individual. Restricting our choices pre-emptively because they MIGHT turn out poorly is just fucking unamerican.

Well, actually, marijuana was scheduled after it was determined to have had direct negative impacts on other individuals. 

speaking for myself, if the government legalized marijuana as a private enterprise, I'd be the first one to donate some of my profits to enterprises such as yours whether or not I was required to by the state and I suspect that there are plenty of others out there who would be happy to do the same if they didn't have to worry about being jailed for making the source of their income known.

(please to note that I do not currently make an income from marijuana, but I'd sure like to go back to it.)

While I appreciate the sentiment, a) I have little faith it would happen on any kind of broad scale, b) I don't want to get money for my non-profit that way especially when I know the consequences of the decision that put those wheels into motion.

[AFK]

in other words, almost everyone ITT aside from Pent, TGRR, and myself is missing the fucking point. It's not about whether pot is good or bad or drugs in general are good or bad or whether prohibition is costing us more than legalization would financially and socially, IT'S ABOUT WHETHER WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES FOR OURSELVES. Period.

Right, but here's the sticky widget.  A 14 year old, who's brain is still in the process of developing, cannot make an informed decision the same way an adult with a fully developed brain can.  This is why we have laws around statutory rape.  It is why there is a legal drinking age.  It is why we don't let 14 year olds drive a car.  Government is already making laws to protect children because of this biological fact.  Prohibition is just another one.  Unless you are advocating to strip away all of these other laws that protect children based upon their inability to make adult decisions, (I'm sure Uncle BadTouch would just LOVE that), then I'm afraid that argument really doesn't work, or I should say, it isn't sufficient. 

yeah, but as an adult I'm still allowed to drivea car and drink a beer so that analogy holds no water.

It wasn't meant as an analogy.  It was to demonstrate that we already allow and encourage the government to make laws restricting behaviors in the interest of protecting children.  The point is that government does make laws and policies to protect children and some of those do place some limits on adult behavior, for example the laws around statutory rape.  One of the roles we gave government when societies were formed was to help maintain the peace and stability of the society.  I see this as a part of that role. 

[East Coast Hustle]

also, in America we believe in being free to make our own choices and not being fucked with for them UNTIL they have a direct negative impact on another individual. Restricting our choices pre-emptively because they MIGHT turn out poorly is just fucking unamerican.

Well, actually, marijuana was scheduled after it was determined to have had direct negative impacts on other individuals.  

umm...how does me smoking marijuana have a direct negative impact on another individual?

also, no one's arguing that marijuana should be legal for kids or that providing it to kids shouldn't come with huge penalties and/or jail time. You still haven't explained how it is philosophically justifiable for the government to pre-emptively restrict my rights based on what might happen. It is the EXACT same thing as if the government decided to legislatively prohibit driving a car because I might allow that car to fall into the hands of an unlicensed minor.