[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If something activates the reward centre in your brain, and all those happiness hormones get produced and flood your mind and body, and you can have it legally, it is no point to assume that people would shy away from it. Exactly the opposite.

But why do you want to use a drug? The motivation for usage is different for people. Some use it for a type of escape or for numbing pain, while others do it out of irrational rebellion. Making something legal when the thing itself is proliferated already to every corner of society (really most every row of lockers had one guy selling it in my high school) doesn't seem like it'll have much negative effect. Like I said you can't ignore the nature of a taboo. Are you actually saying that there aren't alot of people that do things because they're taboo? Sex is a taboo in conservative culture and as a result being ignorant of it leads many people to experiment, and then unsafely. Denying something raises curiosity, especially in immature teens.

I have rejected the use of drugs as a "cheat" in general before, so I also do not accept that comparison of a golf cart on a golf course when you miss a limb. There is no such thing like a happiness pill that is your free ride into Nirvana and enlightenment becasue you are handicapped, or lazy.

And many scientists, therapists, and cases of success disagree with you. What you seem to be expounding here isn't a scientific reality but more of a moral disagreement. Whats a cheat? If it works it works. And I never said it was a miracle drug. What I said was that under correct circumstances an individual is aided in facing himself, but that its still about that individual taking action with what he learns of himself. You in this case I think are simplifying what I and others are saying, and perhaps on purpose out of disdain for the argument.

And to end my participation in this thread: I must say that I find modern society's example to raise young people in a culture or responsibility - not really convincing by results, because manners and behavior are in free fall, egoism is on the jump-rise, and short-sighted day-to-day pragmatism and self-deception about unpleasant grim truths are the rule.

If we make laws to match the attitudes of our time then we'll just reinforce this. But then you will deny freedoms to those who are capable of this because of a minority who are not responsible. It doesn't add up in a free society to rule by the worst case. Whatever the cumulative effects of smoking or drinking or eating too much food that is my job to regulate it. The government isn't here to tell me whether my interest in somethig is acceptable unless it directly infringes on the interests or rights of others. Children offer a difficult compromise in this since they are considered to not have the ability to make their own decisions. But babying the population because parents don't do a good job these days is not an answer.

BTW I don't find it acceptable to detail 3 paragraphs of arguments and rebuff other people's points of view then declare you're out of the discussion. You either argue or you leave, you don't get to do both. I just think thats disrespectful.