Drug Legalization - Expensive and Deadly Lie

Washington Witness ^ | by Eric Lobsinger

[RLK]

Legalizing drugs will produce a nation of zombies who are impossible to live with individually and who will impose their stunted mentalities politically.

[Pistias]

Here we go again...

[ravinson]

Substitute the word "guns" for "drugs" and you can use the same narrow-minded arguments to scare people into giving up their 2nd Amendment liberties.

[StDonTheBaptist]

Drug legalization is no doubt the brain child of someone on drugs. Someone who only thinks of themselves.

[perez24]

Your argument doesn't hold up because there's nothing the in the constitution which guarantees the right to use drugs.

[BrooklynGOP]

...or alcohol...or cigarettes...or sex...

[RLK]

Substitute the word "guns" for "drugs" and you can use the same narrow-minded arguments to scare people into giving up their 2nd Amendment liberties.

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As an individual with an IQ above room temperatue I wouldn't substitute the word "guns" for "drugs" because guns are not drugs.

[laredo44]

No one is completely sheltered from the violence, destruction, and costs that arise as a result of drugs.

No one is completely sheltered from the violence, destruction, and costs that arise as a result of tyranny. Liberty is far more important than this petite minded war on drugs.

[BlackbirdSST]

Your argument doesn't hold up because there's nothing the in the constitution which guarantees the right to use drugs.
Well, show me in the Constitution the authority to wage a WOD's. Blackbird.

[Rodney King]

Your argument doesn't hold up because there's nothing the in the constitution which guarantees the right to use drugs

An interesting interpretation that the only rights that we have are those enumerated in the contitution.

[Rodney King]

Although tobacco contributes to roughly 400,000 deaths per year, marijuana is much more carcinogenic than tobacco, which means it supresses the human immune system in a more fatally powerful way

Actually, that is not what carcinognenic means.

[Rodney King]

Moreover, researchers have found a correlation between increase drug use and the increase likelihood of committing domestic abuse.

I am sure this is true. However, people who assume that correlation=causation know absolutely nothing about statistics, which weakens their credibility. For example, 100% of all murderers were found to have eaten within the previous 72 hours. Does that mean that eating causes people to murder others? Of course not. As I said, I am sure that this correlation is true, and the causality is probably there as well. However it is a poorly written paper that throws out correlations and just assumes that they prove causation.

[Rodney King]

Great Britain experiemented with softening its heroin laws from 1959 to 1968. The result was that Scotland Yard had to double its narcotics squad just to keep up with the ever increasing drug related crimes

Interesting. What then explains the rise in drug use in the U.S. from 1959 - 1968?

Well, I could pick apart more of this but I hope that you guys get the point. There are a lot of good arguments that can be made against legalizing drugs. The author of this piece, however, wastes his time with opinion disguised as fact and other shoddy journalism.

[ravinson]

Your argument doesn't hold up because there's nothing the in the constitution which guarantees the right to use drugs.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that we should have no liberties that aren't specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights unless you wish to affirm that the government has a right to control practically every aspect of your life.

[ravinson]

As an individual with an IQ above room temperatue I wouldn't substitute the word "guns" for "drugs" because guns are not drugs.

It must be awfully cold in your room.

[jejones]

Read the Tenth Amendment; it seems pretty clear to me.

[Green Knight]

Last I checked, guns don't alter your mind.

[ICU812]

Perhaps some may interpret these last few points as attacks against alcohol too. Tobacco and alcohol, however, cannot be grouped together with drugs for one simple reason: the dangers behind tobacco and alcohol are far less severe than drugs. Although alcohol is a factor in half of all murders, sexual assaults, robberies, a nd violent crimes, this is actually rather benign compared to drugs.

LOL. I swear that last sentence is so badly thought out that I could almost believe that the author is secretly for legalization and that this entire article is an attempt to point out the absurdity in prohibitionist arguments. The author says, yes its true "alcohol is a factor in half of all murders, sexual assaults, robberies, and violent crimes this is actually rather benign compared to drugs". Hmmmm. Even if drugs were a factor in ALL "murders, sexual assaults, robberies, and violent crimes" it would not make his previously quoted statistic "benign". As for tobacco, the CDC has said that it kills more people than AIDS, murder, suicide, fires, alcohol and all illegal drugs COMBINED.( Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, May 23, 1997)

Even though 400,000 babies are born every year to some sort of disability because of irresponsible, drunken mothers, drugs are still worse. For example, mothers who smoke marijuana give their babies a 500 percent greater chance of developing disabilites and eleven times greater chance of getting leukemia over mothers who drink alcohol while pregnant.

Meaningless statistic, try comparing marijuana to tobacco since they have similar delivery systems. Smoking tobacco during pregnancy is estimated to account for 20 to 30 percent of low-birth weight babies, up to 14 percent of preterm deliveries, and some 10 percent of all infant deaths.

Cocaine is addictive to 75 percent of first-time users. Compare this to alcohol, which is addictive to 10 percent of first-time users.

Meaningless statistic, alcohol is tried by many more people so it only makes sense that a smaller PERCENTAGE of people would become addicted to it, however the actual number of alcohol addicts would be much, much larger than cocaine addicts.

Although tobacco contributes to roughly 400,000 deaths per year, marijuana is much more carcinogenic than tobacco, which means it supresses the human immune system in a more fatally powerful way.

This joker doesn't even know what "carcinogenic" means. A carcinogen is something that promotes abonormal cell growth(namely cancer). Do we really need to argue about which substance, marijuana or tobacco, kills more people with cancer every year?

Therefore, while it is true that alcohol and tobacco are unkind products, to argue that drugs ought to be legalized because alcohol and tobacco are legal completely ignores the vast differences in harm between the legal and illegal.

There is no bright dividing line between what drugs are legal and which aren't. The only reason tobacco and alcohol are legal today and marijuana isn't is because there are enough alcohol drinkers and tobacco smokers to make their prohibition politically impractical. BTW, no one I know is arguing that "drugs ought to be legalized because alcohol and tobacco are legal", we're merely pointing out the absurdity of treating them differently. The "because" of drug legalization is that its not the government's job to protect us from ourselves but only to protect our rights.

And something I like to inject into every WOD thread that I'd like an answer to from a prohibitionist that considers himself a constitutionalist: If it took the 18th amendment to the Constitution to ban alcohol in 1919 then why is no such amendment necessary to ban other drugs today?