Mexico Legalizes Personal Possession of MJ, coke, meth, LSD etc.

All of which overlooks the fact that heroin, meth, and cocaine are drugs. Illegal drugs. And it's impossible to become an addict of an illegal substance that you never took. There's a choice that was made to take those drugs to begin with. So your cancer analogy doesn't apply.

 

I see your points, certainly, and I spent years working in addictions, to boot. I'm well aware of the dangers. Probably more so than most. But I'm still of two opinions: 1) that there should be no law telling me what I can and cannot do with my own body and 2) keeping these things illegal does nothing but create a profit motive for criminals with the black market it creates.

Drug users will continue to use drugs. The drug war simply isn't working.

 

Except for the extreme correlation between gambling addiction or sex addiction. Nobody ever made people have sex. Have you ever known anybody with an extreme sex drive one day decide to give up all sex? It is a compulsion and the compulsion towards pleasure seeking behavior is the disease. When an addict "chooses" cocaine over gambling, the brain builds reinforcement loops around cocaine that make return to cocaine over a sudden switch to gambling a near certainty. But if they had satisfied themselves with gambling first, they loops would have been built there.

If you like, it would be better to say that the drug addiction is a symptom of a cognitive abnormality rather than the abnormality itself, but that is just splitting hairs. In the same way, cancer for the genetically inclined is a symptom of a defective gene being expressed.

I guarantee you that a properly trained neurosurgeon with carte blanche to perform immoral surgeries on your brain could make a few lesions and you would become an extreme addict of some sort in short order.

 

Schizophrenia is defined by delusional thinking (along with other criteria), but you're right that paranoia is not ubiquitous among schizophrenics (it does characterize a major type of the disease, though). Nevertheless, the disease
severely effects one's behavior.

Similarly, addiction severely effects one's ability to function normally in society by interrupting one's thought processes with constant craving sensations. It is true that addictive behaviors are necessarily triggered by drug use, but that doesn't make it any less a disease.

 

Is sex illegal?

And even someone with the "extreme sex drive" is still responsible for his actions, right? If your wife cheated on you and blamed it on her sex addiction, would that be ok? We're all attracted to others besides out SO, but we find a way to control those urges.

By your reasoning, nobody is responsible for anything they do -- it's all chemistry. A wife beater, for example, can blame bipolar disease or the fact that he's an alcoholic that gets angry when he's drunk. Someone who molests children is definitely suffering from a mental illness, right?

 

And you seem to be missing the point. If my wife was a sex addict and was compulsively sleeping with everybody in the neighborhood, I would divorce her and move out, since I know what she is, and asking her to change and spouting sermons about hellfire, damnation, and moral behavior will have no effect. I'm not trying to excuse behavior, I am trying to explain and understand.

Telling drug addicts that they just need to straighten up and fly right is about as ineffectual and meaningless. Telling them what bad human beings they are only reinforces the drug taking cycle. They are what they are, not out of some great moral fallibility and desire to be evil. The fact that you aren't doesn't confer upon you some special holiness.

Which is why we keep track of them once they are out of jail.

 

I don't think anyone is saying it's OK. What people are saying is that it's a disease. Just because it's a disease doesn't mean it's ok. They should still get treatment, and try and stop using.

 

I understand your position, and you make a lot of sense. The problem that I have with the legalization of illicit drugs has to do with the perception of government action or inaction. There is the erroneous perception of some that if government legalizes the sale of a substance that the government (through the FDA for example) has made that product safe.

There is no way to make safe cocaine or safe heroin. The misconception that legalization would give some would be lethal.

 

Well that perception is just all-around silly. I can't imagine that people would have the same perception re: tobacco and booze, and if they do, I'd advise them to come out from wherever they've been hiding for the last few decades.

No....but it can be made safer than what can be bought and purchased on the streets from dealers with no scruples at all whatsoever.

If I chugged a bottle of Jack Daniels Belushi-style or out of a beer bong there's a good chance it would kill me same as doing too much blow.

 

Substance use, like anything else you do in life, any other behavior, from your choice of a mate to your occupation to your propensity towards violence, is influenced by a combination of social and biological (i.e. brain chemistry) factors. And individual choice plays a factor, as well. Some people who are genetically predisposed to addictive behavior avoid those addictions... look at AA, where people recognize their lingering dispositions to alcohol and thus choose to avoid that behavior completely. And some people who aren't especially predisposed to an addiction can nonetheless become addicted to an addictive substance, be it cigarettes or whatever.

It's never as simple as saying that addiction is a disease. We are all responsible for our own actions. It's not just brain chemistry; there are plenty of factors at work. Predisposition to addiction is biological, or being more likely to become addicted if you choose to take those drugs is biological. But the actual process of becoming an addict involves a personal choice at some point to take the drug.

 

So I just booked my 4th trip to Mexico in the next 6 months -- do I have a problem ?

 

Good idea, but I have no editing rights.

 

Tipjar donation would get you those rights.

 

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You're comparing apples to oranges. You aren't willingly getting bit by that mosquito. You know what you're doing to yourself when you take drugs. I could understand legalization of mar1juana, but seriously I think people are taking this too far to say that hard drugs like meth, lsd, and heroin should be legal...

 

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So you think that those people will be better off by making those drugs legal?? Let's pretend that narcotics are legalized. Ok, so now not only are the lowlife addicts who have been "genetically pre-disposed" (as you are claiming) at risk to hurt themselves and society, but the rest of society has a higher chance of succumbing to the same thing.

 

No, I think they would be better off in treatment. I think they would be worse off in jail.

You're confused, and your confusion is causing you to lash out at people you know nothing about. Now, I could rashly conclude from that behavior that you're a "lowlife", or I could make an effort to understand why you have acted like an ******* in this particular instance. In other words, people have their moments of weakness, but they're more complicated than they appear on the surface. Drug addiction harms everybody, so why not take an approach to it that minimizes the harm?

 

All you guys that think meth monkeys and crack heads are in their predicament because of personal choices need to meet a few. And after you meet them, pray to God nobody at a party somewhere offers your son of daughter some of that vile stuff. Unless, of course, you can accept a possible future of prostitution and homelessness for your child. If that's the case, no worries.

There's a large percentage of the human population, both in our community and worldwide, where the concept of "personal responsibility" just doesn't apply. You're more likely to teach these people calculus than a libertarian or conservative value system. That's just the way it is. Instituting a libertarian utopia of personal responsibility means that the dark underbelly portion of society will live without consequences and the rest of us will have to put up with them. Be careful what you wish for.

 

Good post. The difference between personal repsonsibility and group responsibility is trivial. Actions we take as individuals and as groups both have consequences, and the criminalization of drug use (and distribution) is no exception. To ignore our group responsibility for the harms of the drug war is not only hypocritical, it's stupid.

 

If you take the argument for the legalization of cocaine and meth to its logical conclusion, you would also advocate the legalization of agent orange and DDT.

People want to use them and the government really has no business declaring them illegal. My point is that some substances are so deleterious that they should not be legal. Cocaine and meth fall into that category.

 

The government has every reason to regulate dangerous pesticides just as it has every reason to prevent you from feeding your kids crystal meth for breakfast.

Let me ask you a question: if making a dangerous substance illegal has the effect of increasing the total harm caused by that substance, is it still a good idea to make it illegal?