> Putting substances into your own body should not be illegal
Why is this so? By axiom?
Any parent will forcibly forbid her child to put any substance in his body. We make things illegal exactly because we recognize that a sufficiently large portion of the population is unable to handle a certain freedom. Now what exactly made you conclude that a sufficiently large percentage of the population can handle their use of drugs?
Because arguably, the reason you shouldn't put these substances in your body is because doing so can be unhealthy. Criminal charges and prison are definitely unhealthy.
Making a person's diet a matter of law just goes against the values of many people. I'm well aware of the fact that some compounds lend themselves to addiction/habituation but so do many legal ones. You don't see people throwing winos and pack-a-day smokers in prison unless they otherwise break the law in a way that infringes the rights of someone else.
Likewise, if someone fails to use intoxicants or other recreational drugs responsibly and develops a debilitating habit, it makes more sense to do as we do for people who want to quit drinking or smoking, not as we do for people who rape and murder.
> Likewise, if someone fails to use intoxicants or other recreational drugs responsibly and develops a debilitating habit, it makes more sense to do as we do for people who want to quit drinking or smoking, not as we do for people who rape and murder.
Does your scheme involve coercion of any kind? If not, then why is not working already? People are already free to seek help for their drug addiction.
> Criminal charges and prison are definitely unhealthy.
Making someting illegal does not mean you have to put people in prison. You do understand that we can forbid a drug and try to stop the sale of drugs, and still provide support for people who develop drug habits?
Funny that you mention cigarettes. I'm quite sure that cigarettes will be made illegal at some point in the future.
Actually, it basically does mean you have to put people in prison. What else are you going to due if its illegal? Fine them? Great, they'll never pay the fine, do more drugs. Now what? Fine them some more? Okay...it only goes on so long until they go to jail.
Any punishment oriented consequences are simply going to either be too harsh, or too lenient.
According to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, yes. The rights belong to the people, not the government. It's the government that gets the restricted set. One group of people shouldn't be able to tell another group what to do if it's not violating anyone's rights.
I'm not saying everyone can control themselves. I'm saying trying to prohibit is less effective and more destructive than education, rehab, and prevention. I for one do not want a society entirely engrossed in recreational drug use but prohibition is not the answer. When you prohibit heroine you get krokodil.
Should we make fast food illegal? Since there are probably more people harming themselves with unhealthy food than drugs. It's a dangerous precedent you set when trying to restrict people's freedoms based on perceived use of them.
I doubt Mexican drug cartels will suddenly become any nicer when confronted with competition from legal businesses. Whatever they are doing now, what's going to stop them from continuing to do it? Obviously not the police.
If a few owners of a legal pot shops end up in a vats of acid, demand might return quickly. I'm not stating that this will happen, I'm just sceptical of the idea that criminal organizations will just quit and go home just because we legalize the sale of drug X.
Did you ever see the Sopranos episode where they tried to shake down a Starbucks? The legal pot shop owners will eventually be CVS, Walgreens, etc. There's nobody to dip in acid.
I'd love to see Mexico and Colombia license all production to pharma/bio companies. These cartels are tough, but I can't imagine they'd survive long against, e.g. Monsanto. Lesser of two evils, but at least one is less violent and sorta civilized.
> The legal pot shop owners will eventually be CVS, Walgreens, etc.
I find your assuredness amazing. The truth of the matter is that nobody has the slightest idea how the legalization of cannabis is going to play out. The coming few years are going to be very interesting. Your prediction is that pot shops will end up on High Street. My prediction is that pot shops well end up in poor neighbourhoods.
I think we have a good idea since it's already in progress. Have you been to Denver? They're really everywhere. And they'e so far been operating under a cloud of uncertainty due to federal laws that will soon likely clear.
It's also been pseudo legal in California for a decade. Dispensary owners haven't been slaughtered, and cannabis is the biggest illegal drug market.
Americans won't tolerate people being dipped in vats of acid. You cannot compare our system of law enforcement to Mexico's, they're vastly different. Our police will stop that. We've dealt with exactly that sort of organized crime before. Alcohol was once controlled by violent criminals, as were casinos. There are a number of reasons why violent organized crime is able to take hold in an impoverished region like Mexico but won't here.
It is only the large profits enabled by the prohibition of drugs that enables them to conduct their business the way they do. Prohibition contributes to violence further by the fact that disputes cannot be settled through the courts.
It's true that I don't like the result of this study. My experience is that plenty of healthy, smart, motivated, effective people consume cannabis quite regularly. I have been smoking marijuana quite regularly since I was about 19 years old (which is 13 years ago now) and of course I don't like to think of myself as cognitively impaired.
However, I think that studies like this are particularly vulnerable to this critique of methodology. Any time you assess the performance of a large group and then divide that group into subgroups, you are going to find trends of varying levels of statistical significance.
That is why, in every scope-and-methods class in every college across the country, the various methods for ascertaining causality are demonstrated and taught.
Reading only the linked article and not the study itself, I so far have the impression that none of these were seriously considered - presumably on the basis of ethical treatment of humans subjects. You can't just take a group of people with a particular set of desirable control features (perhaps, in this case, a typically shaped hippocampus) and force-feed them cannabis smoke for three years.
On the other hand, it's just as easy to read this study as meaning that people who performed poorly on the relatively specific requirements of this study seemed to prefer to smoke marijuana. If this study were about serious science, the conclusion might be the utterly uninteresting sky-is-blue headline, "absent-minded people likely to smoke weed."
Why is this so? By axiom?
Any parent will forcibly forbid her child to put any substance in his body. We make things illegal exactly because we recognize that a sufficiently large portion of the population is unable to handle a certain freedom. Now what exactly made you conclude that a sufficiently large percentage of the population can handle their use of drugs?