Thats exactly the point. Most truly recreational drugs do not create an alien reaction in people but instead magnify, focus, or exude things in a person which are not normally so prominant (or not prominant) under the sober circumstances. This is where clinical use of LSD to cure alcoholism (the original use of the drug before Timothy Leary popularized the acid culture) comes from, and it showed great success before the wholesale criminalization of it. The higher awareness of ones own neurosies helped to force people to accept a fact that they refused to, as accepting a truth or a necessity of change is often denied by addicts.

Who really cares whether the effect can be measured as beneficial by today's standards, often very conservative mainstream standards. Being drunk makes you giddy or stupid or horny or emotionally loose, but its my right to want to be obnoxious. The effects only matter when they are prohibitively and statistically unacceptable. Driving is probably more hazardous statistically as smoking weed responsibly is. Having unprotected sex is probably statistically more likely to create a physical dependance on the systems of the government (STD treatment) than weed is for cancer or addiction.

Good post kiwi.

Well, just what the heck does pot do for you anyway? I don't know how anybody can think there is no serious health consequences in smoking that stuff. I mean, OK. You want to smoke it, fine. Maybe we should decriminalize it. But you're fooling yourself if you think the stuff has no health degradation consequences. Or societal impacts. But yeah, I agree with one point. Alcohol abuse ain't a bed of roses either.

Great post, P_Funk.

Unlike alcohol, LSD can't be used to escape your problems. LSD will only magnify and push them down onto your psyche. (Which is why it was useful to help alcoholics)

We take risks everyday. It isn't up to you to decide which risks I should be allowed to take.

Which drugs do you do and why do they work for you? What kind of sexual kinks do you have? What kind of things turn you on and why? Does it have to make sense to me? Do I need to experience it the same way you do to justify it?

I know there are health concerns for weed, just like there are health risks for eating transfats. Using weed as a crutch for enjoying life or for relieving the stresses of my life is bad, but occasionally using it recreationally for fun isn't very dangerous. Walking down the street of some cities is like smoking a pack of ciggies a day. Jaywalking instead of crossing in a crosswalk is more dangerous. The personal choice for the value of the risk taken is mine. Most people say a drug is bad and as the conversation goes you can wittle them down to them saying there exists a potential danger. But much of the potential danger is a result of already reckless people making the same bad choices they make. Women can be dangerous in their choice of sexual partners, and this can lead to many social issues since a rape or an unhealthy dangerous sex life is bad if it becomes a common thing in our society, but we don't believe in telling people how to conduct their sex lives. Drugs are called something different because of their assigned danger above other things, but saying that they're barely dangerous like many legal things then makes it irrational to insist they stay in that same category.

Actually, I agree with you here. As long as there is no significant data to show any direct correlation to rising crime through nominal usage. I've actually become much more libertarian style thinking on this issue. Seems like the costs of going after those who do the stuff in the privacy of their own home is not cost effective. Hey, I'm all for people to be free to do what they want. Even if harmful to themselves. The only caveat is that it is not used to usurp the liberty of others. And that means have your pot, but don't expect to burden the tax-payers to clean up your problems which may result. Of course, I'm not sure that recreational pot usage would do that. I myself would never touch the stuff.

You know what...I can accept that. It makes sense to me. Just make sure there is no undue burden on the taxpayers later and I think it truly is your business and freedom to do it.

The risks you take should not present a risk to me or mine, though. Your "rights" as you may see them stop where mine start, and vice-versa. I don't tell you what to believe, or what to wear, or anything else, great or small. But if through your drug use you harm others, directly or indirectly, then you have no right to say your risks are yours alone. Where do you think the money you blow on dope goes anyhow? Mother Teresa's mission? The Red Cross?

I wish druggies would spend more time thinking about how they could take risks to help others instead of withdrawing from the real world into their own private pharmaceutical sanctuary with the flimsy excuse of "hey I'm not hurting anybody.":nope:

I wish people like you would quit trying to jump to their moral sanctuary of "hey why arn't you hurting anybody." *rolls eyes*

Me, or anyone else for that matter, smoking pot, hurts no one. Directly, and as far as I'm aware, indirectly. I've never commited a single crime high, I've never driven high, and I'm a hard-working person. Get off your moral-highground and get off my back.

Yeah, where does that money go, anyway? You must deal with some really exceptional ones to have a conscience so clear....

I'll stand on my moral highground and sleep comfortably. As for being on your back - hey, you put that monkey there.

Where does my money go? To my friends, the ones with the supply. Where does that money end up? In the hands of their friends, who grow it. Where does that money go? On cheeseburgers and videogames. GASP?! Awful!:shifty:

Jesus Christ, it's like you think I'm dealing with Detroit smack dealers to buy my pot.

Well the whole burden argument seems a bit strange to me anyway because nobody is making these laws to keep people from being a burden. If anything the stigma and the ensuing jailtime and of course the sting on your resume of being a convict all make someone more likely to be a burden. Jails cost money, as do prison time for dealing weed or something. The approach of criminalization has actually made many people a burden. The costs of incarceration are in the tens of thousands. Treatment while also expensive can be cheaper in some cases.

Point is that the growth of the drug industry is related to the way the so called war on it has been prosecuted. If anything the policies which comprise the war on drugs have contributed to the wealth of those who these policies are directed to fight. So the burden on the taxpayers goes beyond the use of the addict and also into the realm of how we attack the issues. Basically if we make a fire bigger in the process of extinguishing it then we're to blame partly for the increased burden of fighting it, even if someone else lit that fire. This is where those radical progressive ideas come from that people don't like. So what I'm saying is that the burden of the drug war will get greater because of more than just the poor choices of the people who use.

This leads to the other point about drugs that I feel that most people reject or don't think about. Drug abuse (different from use) is often a symptom of something else. Attacking the symptom isn't likely to lead to direct results in prevention or elimination. Drugs are used as a coping mechanism to, as you say, withdraw from the real world. However this desire or drive to withdraw often isn't the result of sloth or avoidance of responsibility but of a dysfunction in their life or psychology. Abused people often use drugs to deal with pain that others don't see or that they have a hard time coping with. There are other reason like this. This isn't a universal admonishment of responsibility for someone's problems but often a lack of support or a tauma cause people to fall into these things, and often as a result of their living conditions anyway which might be a factor in their trauma (say a dysfunctional family where someone is abused and then that same family is poor at helping someone in need of support) incline people to make some decisions, where some make the right one and others the wrong. Many drug users are lost people who were abandoned or left in a bad position at a young age or are coping with problems stemming from childhood or adolescance. Whatever your take on whether these people are sympathetic or not is really relavent I think. The fact is that they're a burden whether we approve of their excuse or not and so one doesn't ignore a fire just because we loathe the person who started it, to use that metaphor again.

These people are hurting others but often they are hurt themselves. This is a fact that you can take however you want but it is true. They call it dysfunction for a reason. Once people are addicted they feed their addiction by committing crime, therefore hurting others. In some cities that have tried giving the junkie a steady supply of drugs crime went down. So it isn't all just a dark crime war to be fought by police but there are other options.

But the topic here is about the use of drugs in a way that is NOT like the above described cases. So the distinction should be made that there are two ways to use drugs, safely and unsafely. I believe that there are many safe ways that are made illegal, and already there are many acknowledged healthy or at least accepted ways to use drugs, be it through prescription or at the pub. The real thing I think is that we need to reset the markers which define use and abuse.

Much like alcohol, marijuana inhibits the functions of short term memory and attention. So regardless, these people should stay the hell of the roads.

Which is what I said.

How do you know you aren't?

By the way, is this a five-minute argument or do you want the full half-hour?:p