Not only is the phsiological comparison between alcohol and marijuana not valid but the legal, cultural and historical comparisons between the two intoxicants are also bogus. Great harm comes to countries and cultures when intoxicants are legalized and the legal and societal proscriptions against their use are loosened. It may be an inconvenient fact to your argument but the so called “legalization” of drugs has been a disaster wherever it has been implemented. The experiences in the Netherlands and Switzerland ,despite the nonsense and propaganda spouted by vested advocates, has not been good. America IMHO is already in decline, things will be worse with marijuana legalization and the ease of procurement.Young people will suffer the most. But cheer up. Your arguments are winning. The drive for legalization is prevailing. Soon marijuana will be readily available in Colorodo, California and Washington despite Federal laws which are being ignored. “Decriminalization” is becoming widespread. People like me who think its a huge mistake are becoming a minority. Enjoy your dope, but like I said, I prefer to have as little to do with you and your ilk as possible.
The only physiological comparison I've made even implicitly is that both are mind-altering substances that can lead to dependency (more so in the case of alcohol). The relevance of your alleged physiological differences has yet to be shown.
but the legal, cultural and historical comparisons between the two intoxicants are also bogus.
Any such comparisons are in your mind - as is the relevance of the alleged differences.
the so called “legalization” of drugs has been a disaster wherever it has been implemented. The experiences in the Netherlands
That is not legalization but decriminalization.
and Switzerland ,despite the nonsense and propaganda spouted by vested advocates, has not been good.
Needle Park was a stupid idea, and as could have easily been predicted created a small magnet to hyperconcentrate users and sellers. Statewide legalization will be a very different animal.
Enjoy your dope,
I use no drugs, legal or illegal.
but like I said, I prefer to have as little to do with you and your ilk as possible.
And I prefer to have as little as possible to do with those who substitute personal smears for reasoned debate - except to expose to others the moral, factual, and logical emptiness of their position.
“Great harm comes to countries and cultures when intoxicants are legalized and the legal and societal proscriptions against their use are loosened.”
As a conservative you ought to rely more upon prescription than proscription, especially for so-called crimes which run entirely counter to the natural law understanding of crime. I see no reason why “societal” standards of conduct have to follow legal proscriptions. Unless you live in a corrupt civilization such as our own, where gubmint intrudes itself into every nook and cranny of our lives.
Might I suggest that if it is so that legalization of drugs leads to their abuse that this is the fault of the previous prohibition, rather than its removal? I see no good reason to assume otherwise. It would be as if we suddenly turned away from socialism—the impossible dream—and left everyone on their own two economic feet. Proletariat wouldn’t know what to do, and society’d grind to a halt as we’d storm the capital and demand they save us from ourselves. For no one’s been raised to be anything beyond minimally self-reliant for more than a century, and we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. Would this be freedom’s fault? I’d rather blame gubmint for replacing the ethic that built this country with gross subservience.
That being said, there remains the giant flaw in your case for the War on Some Drugs. Let’s say sudden legalization of marijuana would bring chaos. Are you saying alchohol consumption is relatively orderly? Is it even possible to think that? I guess so, since most everyone drinks and not everyone wrecks their lives and the lives of others. But that’s a crooked way to look at it. Because by any measure alchohol causes much, much more damage than any other mind altering substance. This is so despite the much vaunted and sacred cultural/historical habits grown over the generations you imagine render it harmless. Or harmless enough to be legal.
Other drugs were legal or mostly so in the past, though certainly they’re more potent, and various other changes, foremost the replacement of personal responsibility with what can be termed the Freudian Ethic, have made them potentially more dangerous. You can always argue legal marijuana would cause more trouble than booze. But is the scourge of alchohol, however relatively benign you account it, truly a-okay? You’re fine with all the addiction, all the accidents, all the disease, all the lives ruined, and so on? Why? Where is the line? What does it take to require proscription, and what is it about weed which booze lacks?
The answer is always something along the lines of it’s been there for thousands of years, and we’ve evolved customs to deal with it. But those customs don’t work all that well, so far as I can tell. There seem to be a panopoly of evils, and precisely the same sort of evils associated with illegal drugs, resulting from alchohol abuse. The real answer is that we’re used to alchohol. It’s been around not long enough for us to use it wisely, but long enough for us to treat its adverse effects as a natural part of life. Marijuana et. al. haven’t been grandfathered in thusly, and as such still seem like something only dirty hippies and other burnouts use.
That’s the beauty of democracy. Non-politically-favored minorities can go suck an egg. Highs for me and not for thee.