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Drugs Debate

Alcohol is the worst drug ever, what's new?
It's ridiculously dangerous while driving, you become agressive, you can drink yourself in a fucking coma, etc... Unless you use it responsibly, I guess.

The laws on drugs are absolute bullshit, and that's the exact reason why people have the wrong view on drugs. Alcohol is 'ok' because it's legal, but it's actually one of the most dangerous drugs ever. There are way more Alcohol addicts then there are Cocaine addicts. Except for the fact that it ruins your body (but then again, so do alcohol and cigarettes), and that it may ruin your life, there are more positive points on cocaine than there are on alcohol. You don't go out drunk on a business meeting do you? Alcohol is fucking useless.

And like akuchi showed us, the chances you die from XTC are so fucking low it's ridiculous. And by the way, it's proven that XTC is way more healthy than Cigarettes, Alcohol and even Marijuana. Yes, marijuana.

Then we have speed. Except for it being chemical junk. and the reason its chemical junk is solely because its illegal. If it was sold legally, seriously, it would be up to 50% healthier than it is now. Maybe even more. Dealers mix it with all sorts of crap just to make more money, if it was sold legally there wouldn't be a problem at all. Same with alcohol if it were illegal. There aren't any downsides on speed in my opinion, at least none that affect someone besides yourself. Try driving under the influence of amfetamine, you'll never drive that good.

If you can't use drugs responsibly, maybe it just isn't for you.
If you cant eat responsibly, you become fucking fat.
 
Llama said:
So anyways drugs can mess you up a bit like thinking the current year is 1997.

But anyways my opinion on drugs is pretty much null.
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ahahahaha

OK I have to admit that was fucking hilarious.

And Jackal maybe they just always hid it from me since I appear to be pretty straight edge. I dunno.
 
no i was not a bad enough dude

some drugs are bad because it is impossible to practice moderation with them.

i am also not in favor of drugs which have shitty physical consequences.
 
sorry gorm we've been told off for shitting on monks thread and I think if we continue he'll start cutting himself again
 
akuchi said:
yeah, and the decisions are for the most part arbitary.

hundreds of thousands of people, millions in fact, have died as a result of alcohol.

the death toll for ecstacy/MDMA is I believe somewhere around 200 in the UK since 1987.
SHUT UP I FAILED MATHS OK

in ONE year alone in the UK [2004, because it was the first that popped up on a quick google] no less than 8,380 deaths were directly attributed to alcohol - that's medical causes, not even counting drink driving, alcohol induced violence, being pissed and falling in a river etc.

yet alcohol is sold in shops all over the country and possession of MDMA can and often will land you with a very hefty prison stretch.
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You have to factor in the fact that because alcohol is sold legally, the potential market for it is far bigger. you need to express the amount of deaths as a percentage of total users and not as a number as the amount of people that possess mdma and the amount of people that possess quantities of alcohol vastly differ.

How many people have actually used MDMA? Almost none, because it is illegal. Therefore it's 200 deaths on how many users? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? That's I don't know, a 2% death rate. slightly less. Of course this is hard to tax, but that is the sense of proportion. (I'm aware this is over a 20 year period which makes the calculations difficult, but you get my point)

Alcohol and its related deaths are far bigger, but alcohol is sold legally, so you have to factor in that the amount of deaths caused by alcohol is actually on a country's population (slightly less if you want to include straight-edge, non-drinking people.)

8000 deaths on 80 million people, that's 1 for every 10000 or 0.01%. See the difference?
 
It's actually quite impossible to die of MDMA alone.
Proven.
And that's exactly what this thread is about, altmer, drugs are seen as "bad things" because it is illegal, while alcohol is far more dangerous than most drugs.
The majority of the people are misinformed, if you like it or not.
 
No quality control means a lot of crap gets cut with drugs, a lot of drug-related deaths can be attributed towards this. MDMA sold in shops would be correctly regulated, you'd only get pure stuff.
 
i think the biggest problem for me with the drug debate is how "wishy-washy" or "slippery slope" it bcomes (sorry for the the cliches but its all i can think of)

People want marijuana to be legal because there are a lot of people that smoke weed. So whats next? I think if harder drugs become just as popular as weed, then their users would want legalization too. Accordingly, i think that the legalization of alcohol is bullshit, the actual drug has no benefits to the body. The funny thing is, i even drink on an irregular basis and only find myself doing it because its the social norm amongst my friends and kids my age (i'm 19 and in college). Compromises constantly have to be made because the hypocrisy with society and our drug laws

Therefore, as in line with my belief system, i think there are only too "fair" solutions. Completely legalize all drugs or make all of them illegal. I wouldnt mind either of these approaches.

*Ninja edit: Misty's link is amazing, it was a great read*
 
Twilight :) said:
I would have to say that it's somebody's choice in the end if they want to potentially fuck up their life.

The only viable reason I can see for associating with drugs is some type of income. I'm not saying it's a particularly good way to make said income, but it's pretty much the only borderline viable reason I can see for someone getting involved. The kids who do drugs to get "fucked up" just make me lol.

I get offered free weed all the time by "friends." I'm quite proud of myself for never giving in yet. It's been about 2 years.
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I understand that you have your own opinions and are certainly entitled to them, but why does wanting to get "fucked up"(as you call it) on drugs a bad thing? Sometimes I smoke or otherwise ingest drugs, and it gets me high. Being high feels good. What's the problem? Are you honestly trying to say that it is a better idea to get into drugs so that you can sell them, rather than just using them recreationally?

And furthermore, why does using drugs potentially fuck up your life? If all I want in life is to sit in my run down home getting high all the time, what's morally wrong with that? I'm not hurting you or impeding on any of your freedoms. Everyone has a different idea of what they truly want in their life.
 
Part of me wants to just have all drugs legalized. For starters, crime rates would have a chance of plummeting. Mostly this would be because a lot of things that would be considered crimes would no longer be crimes, but one would think that there would be a reduction in drug-related crimes if the drugs became more readily available. In addition, as others have said, at least some of the drugs that are currently outlawed (cannabis being the principle one) are not nearly as bad for you as legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco products. As others have pointed out, alcohol-related deaths make up a significant amount of all drug-related deaths, and I'm sure that tobacco products have had their fair share of mortalities, too. Lastly, there is the issue of whether or not our government has the right to decide what is or isn't moral, and whether or not it should act to further these morals. Is a government deciding how we think something we really want?

However, I also see the negative side to legalizing all drugs. There is the possibility that with legalization, a larger body of people will be moved to try the drugs, and as a result more problems will occur. More people may act irrationally in order to fuel their habit, and as a result violent crime would increase. Even without this hypothetical increase in violent crime, as more people do these drugs, more lives will be ruined. While I'm not saying you're going to die cold and alone in a dark alley somewhere if you are an occasional pot smoker, a life built around addiction is generally not a fulfilling or even good one.

One solution to this dilemma would be to have only some of the drugs legalized, while others would remain illegal. This raises the question of what, then, should be legalized? What kinds of requirements would a drug have to pass in order for the drug to become legalized (or even stay legalized, for that matter)? Would dangerous but socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol be banned, or would they be grandfathered in?

Personally, I support the legalization of cannabis, although I would only use it occasionally if ever. I have seen firsthand what it has done to people who smoke too much, and while it may not be scientifically sound to use anecdotal evidence to support an opinion, I have observed that overuse of cannabis leads to a dulling of the mind. I would not like this sort of thing for myself, but I don't think that prohibiting others from choosing to do the same is right.

As for alcohol, I do believe it is dangerous unless done in moderation, and the potential to become addicted is high. However, I do not think that it should be made illegal. The Prohibition has taught us that trying to ban alcohol only leads to more problems. In addition, it is too deeply entrenched in our society for a Prohibition movement to gain any considerable support.

In any case, I think people should be better educated on the subject of drugs. Many school programs seem to stop at "JUST SAY NO!" without showing kids why it's bad for them to do drugs. Even if the stance is supported, the "evidence" out there is often skewed and/or outdated. I think less teenagers would be likely to do drugs if they were presented with real facts on these drugs.
 
I'm a pretty big fan of drugs, as a lot of you know. The only one I do regularly is weed, although I drink on occasion, I enjoy zooming (mushrooms), salvia, and I've tried a few other drugs, but didn't really like them.

I support legalization of drugs for the sole reason that I can't see any reason they should be made illegal. I would like to begin this debate with just challenging people to put forth one logical argument for the criminalization of any narcotic.

Bullshit argument #1: Drugs are bad for you and shouldn't be legal because it's harmful.
Uhh, what the fuck? Coke is bad for you. McDonald's is bad for you. Shit, just about everything is bad for you in some way. It's all about balance: everything in moderation. You can't ban something because it has negative side-effects; everything had negative side-effects, so you're just being ridiculous.

Bullshit argument #2: If we make drugs legal, more people will do them.
Maybe, but why is doing drugs bad? I don't give a fuck what you think I should do to my body, I'll do whatever the fuck I want to it. Also, while I do believe that legalizing drugs will probably increase their usage.

Bullshit argument #3: [Insert-drug-here] is immoral.
I don't know if anyone has said this, but I really don't think I even need to respond.

Bullshit argument #4: There's no benefit to doing drugs.
While this isn't really an argument against legalization, I just wanted to point it out because I literally lose mountains of respect for anyone who says anything like this. A short list of things humanity owes to narcotics:
- A very good chunk of the music we listen to. Everything The Beatles ever wrote, most good hip-hop, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, etc.
- Most of late 17th-early 19th century English literature

Yeah, I'm not even going to continue. Like I said, everything has an upside and a downside. A lot of artists, myself included, draw a great deal of inspiration from the altered mentality brought about by drug use.
 
Well Basics, argument number 1 is also a little different though. Sure McDonalds and Coke are bad for you, but when you eat and drink them, you're not hurting anybody. But with drugs, they can prove very harmful to other people, such as second-hand smoke, drunk driving and the altered mentality.

Some of these drugs are made illegal, because although you may use them responsibly, unfortunately, a huge chunk of people don't seem to get it that they have to be used in moderation, and therefore start to use them so much that it harms other people too. If everyone was using them responsibly, then sure, maybe there would be more favour for legalization, but as it stands, the chunk of people who don't feel like using drugs responsibly are the reason that a lot of drugs are legal.

If any drugs were to actually be made legal though, weed would be the only one, since the other illegal ones seem a lot more dangerous.
 
It's already been discussed; you won't die from a THC overdose just like you're very unlikely to die from an ecstacy/MDMA overdose and you won't ever ever die from LSD.
Most drugs are not dangerous; I've done pretty much all of them.
The only drug I've ever taken that REALLY had an addiction/death potential was heroin.. and I don't think most people want to take heroin anyway.
Crack from what I've heard isn't actually that addictive - I know maybe 20 people that have done it and all but one have said they didn't particularly want to do it again - the one girl that decided she wanted to do it again took it very occasionally over a period of months then decided it was rather shit after all.
Cocaine is certainly not addictive - yes, you want more after your first line but that passes pretty fucking quickly and it's so expensive it's quite obvious you're not going to get more.

I should perhaps edit that to say that obviously sustained cocaine use will result in addiction of some kind - I'm just merely trying to bring up the point that you're not going to get addicted if you use these substances even the slightest bit reasonably.


Forgive me for the trip down my drug-addled memory lane - but people keep saying drugs are dangerous and awful and they're patently not.

If we legalized all drugs we'd save lives. I don't think I even need to bring up the cases of those that have got filthy rich and powerful from the control of drug running.

Drug dealers would cease to be a problem.
I fear it's the only solution.
 
Lexay said:
It's actually quite impossible to die of MDMA alone.
Proven.
And that's exactly what this thread is about, altmer, drugs are seen as "bad things" because it is illegal, while alcohol is far more dangerous than most drugs.
The majority of the people are misinformed, if you like it or not.
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I was merely pointing out that you need to factor amount of deaths as a percentage of users or the values aren't comparable.

I didn't say anything about the moral stigmatisation of drugs.

Like I've stated before, I'm for legalisation but I'm not taking them myself.
 
How can you expect alcohol to be made illegal when its been used for millennia and tobacco was used extensively before it became clear that it was bad for you.

They are two exceptional cases so it better not to compare it to LSD, heroin etc.
 
SkarmBlissCounter said:
How can you expect alcohol to be made illegal when its been used for millennia and tobacco was used extensively before it became clear that it was bad for you.

They are two exceptional cases so it better not to compare it to LSD, heroin etc.
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I'm sorry, but there's way too much wrong with this post to let it go.

Ever heard of peyote? It's smoked (well, it WAS smoked) by Native Americans as part of their religious rituals; it gives an out-of-body feeling, which made them believe it brought them closer to their greater powers. It was illegalized by white men, pretty much based solely on the fact that the "Injuns" liked it so much. They smoked it for HUNDREDS of years, long before this wonderful country of ours was ever established. So shouldn't that be legal, too, in your opinion?

The use and history of a drug should have absolutely no bearing on this debate whatsoever. That's like a fraternity who hazes their pledges, and when those pledges become brothers they turn around and haze the pledges after them. Why? "Because it's tradition." Fuck that noise. Just because alcohol has been imbibed for thousands of years doesn't make it any less dangerous. Were there drunk driving accidents back in 1875? Were there wasted airline pilots in 1776? Times change. Laws need to do the same.
 
While alcohol being legal and marijuana not being legal may not make much sense, I don't see how that is a decent argument for the legalization of marijuana. Perhaps it should be an argument for prohibition.

The real argument against the legalization of marijuana, completely unmentioned in Basics' post, is that marijuana can make you a danger to others. That is, as you requested, a logical reason to ban it. I don't care if you hurt yourself with your drug habits, but I care if you hurt somebody else. That is punishing others for your own poor choices.

Yes, I know that alcohol puts you at a far higher risk of hurting others. I know that. That doesn't mean that marijuana should be legalized.
 
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