no one in their right mind would do crack or heroin. how 'bout extacy? 'cid? straight cocaine? marijuana? speed? alcohol? tobacco? caffeine? where's the line between what someone in their right mind would and wouldn't do? because in quantity, everything i just mentioned will kill you.
You seriously think that my two friends, one a former crack addict and one a former heroin addict, both of whom now lead normal and acceptable family lives, need to be protected from themselves? In what way?
Because pot isn't as addicting as crack or heroin, and it doesn't fuck with your mind the way PCP does.
not that i really wanna turn this into a debate right now either, but how many times, even just in the time that i've known you, have you tried to quit smoking?
You seriously think that my two friends, one a former crack addict and one a former heroin addict, both of whom now lead normal and acceptable family lives, need to be protected from themselves? In what way?
NOW live normal lives? What sort of lives did they live before? Where would their lives be now if they hadn't been addicts?
not that i really wanna turn this into a debate right now either, but how many times, even just in the time that i've known you, have you tried to quit smoking?
Too many!
That's why I think smoking should be outlawed. Maybe then I'd really quit.
take the nicotine in all the cigarettes you smoke over the course of a year and ingest it all at once and it'll kill you just as fast as if i were to take all the caffeine i ingest over the course of a year and take it all at once.
I've never heard of a guy killing a family of 4 because he was hallucinating on Marlboro lights. I have however heard of a guy on PCP or meth killing a family. It happend recently with the 2 douchebags that went on a killing spree. They both claimed they were on meth when they did the crimes. They had been burglars for years apparently but only recently got into meth and they lost it. Cigarettes don't do that.
I don't come in here much because there's absolutists, same with the abortion debate on both sides. I don't think pot=heroin or PCP. Nor do I think Miller Lite or Marlboro = Heroin or PCP. They all have their destuctive qualities in some ways, some more than others and it becomes a question on how much as a society you want to tolerate or I should say how much risk you're willing to take.
I don't think pot is a very harmfull drug. Sure it can be abused like alchohol but it doesn't have the additiction rates that heroin or meth do. Heroin, meth etc also tend to make a person more violent than some of the other drugs. So it's not a matter of me deciding who gets to smoke what it comes down to a society saying we think this is enough of a public nuisance to warrany outlawing it. Now you'll get no argument from me on Pot. I'm sorry if I can't equate beer and heroin as being on the same level, you'll never convince me of that. Pot yes, heroin no.
We put limits on many things and anything can be abused and harm another. We have speed limits because we as a society have said what amount of risk we're willing to take. I'm willing to legalize pot but some will now say, why not heroin ? Well why not 100 mph speed limits in school zones too ? Who are you to tell me I can't drive 100 past the school. Again it's what amount of risk we're willing to take.
They both claimed they were on meth when they did the crimes.
the crime was the crime....doing the drug wasn't the crime.
plenty of people do drugs and DON'T go on killing sprees (and plenty of people go on killing sprees who aren't on drugs).
remember, meth was illegal when those criminals did what they did. You can't control something that is prohibited. Alcohol taught us this. The spike in crime was one of the main reasons that we repealed prohibition.
the crime was the crime....doing the drug wasn't the crime.
Well it's still illegal so actually it was a crime as well. I'm sure if you had your way these fine gents could get some down at WalMart, perhaps they would then join big brothers and mentor someone.
plenty of people do drugs and DON'T go on killing sprees (and plenty of people go on killing sprees who aren't on drugs).
True, but doing meth sure as heck doesn't help the situation. These guys were professional criminals for years but never violent, they took some meth and something changed. Coincidence ? I'm sure, It's not like meth makes a person violent. Yea I know other things do.
That's the problem with the whole debate, the absoultist attitude. Pot doesn't = Heroin and neither does Bud lite = meth.
If heroin was legal...would you be more likely to try it? I doubt it. Â Â
Perhaps not now at this stage in my life, but when I was 18 you'd have been wrong I probably would have tried it because hey why not, I can and if it's legal it must be o.k.
That's the problem with the whole debate, the absoultist attitude. Pot doesn't = Heroin and neither does Bud lite = meth
the laws are currently quite absolutist themselves.
And no...each drug has it's own unique qualities, as do all substances. Rat poison and milk are both legal substances, but this doesn't mean that we consider rat poison = milk.
Why can't I do 100 through a school zone ? I'm not hurting anyone, it's my choice.
you are endangering others.
the act of taking a drug doesn't in and of itself endanger anyone else.
if a drug is found to in and of itself by it's use cause someone else to be endangered, then it should be controlled. Of course, when it's prohibited, it's not as easy to control.
if meth was legal, would you use it?
if meth was legal, would you run the risk of the guy next door blowing up his garage tryingto cook up a batch?
And no...each drug has it's own unique qualities, as do all substances. Rat poison and milk are both legal substances, but this doesn't mean that we consider rat poison = milk.
That's why we differentiate between which drugs should be legal/illegal. Apparently heroin = bud light to some.
So I'll leave you to your noble cause of legalizing crystal meth.
That's why we differentiate between which drugs should be legal/illegal. Apparently heroin = bud light to some.
but that isn't how we are differentiating.
and "legal" doesn't necessarily mean without any controls (for instance, plenty of "legal" drugs require prescriptions, don't they?)....lack of control is what you wind up getting with "illegal"
So I'll leave you to your noble cause of legalizing crystal meth.
You know, illegal meth has a whole boatload of problems...I just think that making it legal and controlling it could help to alleviate some of these problems.
Do you think that people who do heroin or crystal meth and *don't* get violent or hurt anyone should get in trouble?
(Ideally, I mean...aside from the "it's against the law, so they should get in trouble" response.)
Do you think the number of heroin and/or meth users who actually commit an act of harm or violence against others is the majority or minority of those users?
NOW live normal lives? What sort of lives did they live before?
I meant "normal" in the drug bigot view of the world. Meaning that they're not doing much that the superior race of straight-edge folks (or users of approved drugs) would object to. I don't really subscribe to the idea that there is such a thing as normal. Their lives before were somewhat unusual, but I wouldn't classify them as abnormal. Tens of millions of people (hundreds of millions, probably) have dealt with addiction, yourself included. So there was nothing particularly weird about that.
Where would their lives be now if they hadn't been addicts?
Who knows? Where would there lives be now if they had studied harder in grade school? Where would their lives be now if they hadn't lost their first true loves? Where would their lives be now if they had gotten a different nickname in high school, or tried out for the sports teams, or moved to a different town, or went vegan, or watched less (or more) TV, or got more involved in local politics, or went hiking more, or volunteered their time reading to old people, or changed their oil more frequently...or made any of a hundred million decisions in a different way than they had?
"Who knows?" is the correct answer to all of those, and I don't really see how it matters. It's not like you care about drug addicts, THX. You've said too much for me to believe that. So when you faux-agonize over how people's choices re: drugs have made their lives turn out possibly less than ideal, it sounds pretty empty and hollow.
The fact remains that both of these people are doing just fine -- raising families, earning money, being good, non-violent members of society. They both got through their difficulties through their own initiative and the caring of loved ones, and neither one of them needed the assistance of being persecuted or prosecuted in order to do so. Each of us could sit here in judgment of other people's choices, and each of us could find a million mistakes in each other person's life, and recommend ways to improve. Yippee for us...but others could do the same in looking at us.
I think you've got to choose whether you want your views on this subject to be defined by a shallow and stereotype-laden collection of misconceptions and delivered through a hypocritical superiority complex, or whether you want to come to fully-informed, well-grounded conclusions based on logic and the real world. There's plenty of information out there if you want to do the latter, including that article, which basically slices and dices most of what's been said about heroin in this thread. If you want to stick with the former, you're all set...exceptionally well-prepared, in fact.
I do debate whether drugs should be legal or not, and to what extent, but it's not a huge internal struggle of mine.
I understand that, and I don't really fault you for that (most people are the same way)...but I think if you are going to speak in favor of policies that result in the incarceration of people, with all that implies -- breaking up of families, seizing of homes and property, ruination of lives, prison rape and beating, banishment from most workplaces, stigmatization, etc. -- you ought to make sure that you are right in doing so. It's not something to be taken lightly -- these are real lives of real human beings that we're talking about meddling with.
Of course, the Surgeon General (or nominee? I forget) recently said that he thinks it would be smart to ban cigarettes...so maybe you'll get an easy opportunity for empathy before too long.
"I can't believe the level of infatuation some people here have with drugs. What's the attraction?"
Torp, you're missing the point. The point is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can't ingest. By itself, that isn't behavior harmful to others. Therefore the act of ingestion should not be illegal.
including increased insurance premiums that might have been avoided had you fought it and won? hell the way i figure it is i win if i make them spend more money for the trial than they collect in the fine.
sorry, but that just isn't true...lots of people in their right minds do drugs of all kinds
and where do you stop?
do you protect people who eat nothing but fast food from themselves?
do you protect people who handle poisonous snakes from themselves?
do you protect people who skydive from themselves?
do you protect people who drink alcohol from themselves?
do you protect people who have unprotected sex from themselves?
what business is it of yours to decide what my right mind is or is not and what you should and should not protect me from?
No one in their right mind would ask all those silly questions.
fine, thx, let me do this then.....
no one in their right mind would do crack or heroin. how 'bout extacy? 'cid? straight cocaine? marijuana? speed? alcohol? tobacco? caffeine? where's the line between what someone in their right mind would and wouldn't do? because in quantity, everything i just mentioned will kill you.
so, you want to outlaw my asking questions you think are silly?
because I think that saying you have to protect people from themselves is silly.
are people free are aren't they?
are you the world's mother or something?
not the marijuana...far as I can tell, no one has ever been able to overdose on marijuana...and I don't think it's because no one has tried either.
smoke enough of it and you'll asphyxiate yourself, crabby.
the lack of oxygen will kill you, not the THC.
I mean, a piece of (non-hemp) rope or a plastic bag are not marijuana.
I just can't go along with heroin, crack, pcp...
I'll let you smoke all the pot you want though.
why is it up to you to decide what I can and can't do to myself?
I mean..."let me"?
fuck that
you aren't my mother
why is it up to you to decide what I can and can't do to myself?
Without going into a long debate, I'll simply say, that's how society works. You just don't get to do whatever you want.
you don't get to do whatever you want to SOMEONE ELSE
ok then, jt. what's the differentiator between heroin, crack, pcp, etc, and pot? why can you personally go along with one and not the others?
I'm not talking about doing just whatever we want.
There's where I agree with you on how the drug laws are enforced. It's a crock of shit.
ok then, jt. what's the differentiator between heroin, crack, pcp, etc, and pot? why can you personally go along with one and not the others?
Because pot isn't as addicting as crack or heroin, and it doesn't fuck with your mind the way PCP does.
THX,
You seriously think that my two friends, one a former crack addict and one a former heroin addict, both of whom now lead normal and acceptable family lives, need to be protected from themselves? In what way?
Did you read the article about heroin or not?
Did you read that whole article or not?
No, it was a much too long an article.
Did you know you're like a drug bigot or something?
I can live with that label.
Because pot isn't as addicting as crack or heroin, and it doesn't fuck with your mind the way PCP does.
not that i really wanna turn this into a debate right now either, but how many times, even just in the time that i've known you, have you tried to quit smoking?
Sorry Lance, I didn't mean to ignore you.
You seriously think that my two friends, one a former crack addict and one a former heroin addict, both of whom now lead normal and acceptable family lives, need to be protected from themselves? In what way?
NOW live normal lives? What sort of lives did they live before? Where would their lives be now if they hadn't been addicts?
not that i really wanna turn this into a debate right now either, but how many times, even just in the time that i've known you, have you tried to quit smoking?
Too many!
That's why I think smoking should be outlawed. Maybe then I'd really quit.
That's why I think smoking should be outlawed. Maybe then I'd really quit.
seriously?
seriously?
No, I don't really mean that.
well then, the follow-up is simple. why should tobacco fall in the legal category when its just as addicting as crack and heroin?
Simple answer: You can't overdose on cigarettes.
G'nite Sam
Time to hit the hay.
you aren't?
didn't you just say...
Simple answer: You can't overdose on cigarettes.
take the nicotine in all the cigarettes you smoke over the course of a year and ingest it all at once and it'll kill you just as fast as if i were to take all the caffeine i ingest over the course of a year and take it all at once.
Ares,
I've never heard of a guy killing a family of 4 because he was hallucinating on Marlboro lights. I have however heard of a guy on PCP or meth killing a family. It happend recently with the 2 douchebags that went on a killing spree. They both claimed they were on meth when they did the crimes. They had been burglars for years apparently but only recently got into meth and they lost it. Cigarettes don't do that.
I don't come in here much because there's absolutists, same with the abortion debate on both sides. I don't think pot=heroin or PCP. Nor do I think Miller Lite or Marlboro = Heroin or PCP. They all have their destuctive qualities in some ways, some more than others and it becomes a question on how much as a society you want to tolerate or I should say how much risk you're willing to take.
I don't think pot is a very harmfull drug. Sure it can be abused like alchohol but it doesn't have the additiction rates that heroin or meth do. Heroin, meth etc also tend to make a person more violent than some of the other drugs. So it's not a matter of me deciding who gets to smoke what it comes down to a society saying we think this is enough of a public nuisance to warrany outlawing it. Now you'll get no argument from me on Pot. I'm sorry if I can't equate beer and heroin as being on the same level, you'll never convince me of that. Pot yes, heroin no.
We put limits on many things and anything can be abused and harm another. We have speed limits because we as a society have said what amount of risk we're willing to take. I'm willing to legalize pot but some will now say, why not heroin ? Well why not 100 mph speed limits in school zones too ? Who are you to tell me I can't drive 100 past the school. Again it's what amount of risk we're willing to take.
the crime was the crime....doing the drug wasn't the crime.
plenty of people do drugs and DON'T go on killing sprees (and plenty of people go on killing sprees who aren't on drugs).
remember, meth was illegal when those criminals did what they did. You can't control something that is prohibited. Alcohol taught us this. The spike in crime was one of the main reasons that we repealed prohibition.
If heroin was legal...would you be more likely to try it? I doubt it.
crabgrass 6/17/03 9:26pm
Well it's still illegal so actually it was a crime as well. I'm sure if you had your way these fine gents could get some down at WalMart, perhaps they would then join big brothers and mentor someone.
True, but doing meth sure as heck doesn't help the situation. These guys were professional criminals for years but never violent, they took some meth and something changed. Coincidence ? I'm sure, It's not like meth makes a person violent. Yea I know other things do.
That's the problem with the whole debate, the absoultist attitude. Pot doesn't = Heroin and neither does Bud lite = meth.
Perhaps not now at this stage in my life, but when I was 18 you'd have been wrong I probably would have tried it because hey why not, I can and if it's legal it must be o.k.
BTW Crabs, Why have speed limits ? Why can't I do 100 through a school zone ? I'm not hurting anyone, it's my choice.
night crabs
the laws are currently quite absolutist themselves.
And no...each drug has it's own unique qualities, as do all substances. Rat poison and milk are both legal substances, but this doesn't mean that we consider rat poison = milk.
you are endangering others.
the act of taking a drug doesn't in and of itself endanger anyone else.
if a drug is found to in and of itself by it's use cause someone else to be endangered, then it should be controlled. Of course, when it's prohibited, it's not as easy to control.
if meth was legal, would you use it?
if meth was legal, would you run the risk of the guy next door blowing up his garage tryingto cook up a batch?
Great point Crabgrass.
I find that we agree on many things.
;)
That's why we differentiate between which drugs should be legal/illegal. Apparently heroin = bud light to some.
So I'll leave you to your noble cause of legalizing crystal meth.
but that isn't how we are differentiating.
and "legal" doesn't necessarily mean without any controls (for instance, plenty of "legal" drugs require prescriptions, don't they?)....lack of control is what you wind up getting with "illegal"
You know, illegal meth has a whole boatload of problems...I just think that making it legal and controlling it could help to alleviate some of these problems.
I mean, we require ID to get cigarettes and alcohol...do you think an illegal drug dealer asks for ID?
I don't know, I'm sure you could tell us.
it was a rhetorical question
no
there are no controls for being a drug dealer outside of not getting caught.
Do you think that people who do heroin or crystal meth and *don't* get violent or hurt anyone should get in trouble?
(Ideally, I mean...aside from the "it's against the law, so they should get in trouble" response.)
Do you think the number of heroin and/or meth users who actually commit an act of harm or violence against others is the majority or minority of those users?
I meant "normal" in the drug bigot view of the world. Meaning that they're not doing much that the superior race of straight-edge folks (or users of approved drugs) would object to. I don't really subscribe to the idea that there is such a thing as normal. Their lives before were somewhat unusual, but I wouldn't classify them as abnormal. Tens of millions of people (hundreds of millions, probably) have dealt with addiction, yourself included. So there was nothing particularly weird about that.
Who knows? Where would there lives be now if they had studied harder in grade school? Where would their lives be now if they hadn't lost their first true loves? Where would their lives be now if they had gotten a different nickname in high school, or tried out for the sports teams, or moved to a different town, or went vegan, or watched less (or more) TV, or got more involved in local politics, or went hiking more, or volunteered their time reading to old people, or changed their oil more frequently...or made any of a hundred million decisions in a different way than they had?
"Who knows?" is the correct answer to all of those, and I don't really see how it matters. It's not like you care about drug addicts, THX. You've said too much for me to believe that. So when you faux-agonize over how people's choices re: drugs have made their lives turn out possibly less than ideal, it sounds pretty empty and hollow.
The fact remains that both of these people are doing just fine -- raising families, earning money, being good, non-violent members of society. They both got through their difficulties through their own initiative and the caring of loved ones, and neither one of them needed the assistance of being persecuted or prosecuted in order to do so. Each of us could sit here in judgment of other people's choices, and each of us could find a million mistakes in each other person's life, and recommend ways to improve. Yippee for us...but others could do the same in looking at us.
I think you've got to choose whether you want your views on this subject to be defined by a shallow and stereotype-laden collection of misconceptions and delivered through a hypocritical superiority complex, or whether you want to come to fully-informed, well-grounded conclusions based on logic and the real world. There's plenty of information out there if you want to do the latter, including that article, which basically slices and dices most of what's been said about heroin in this thread. If you want to stick with the former, you're all set...exceptionally well-prepared, in fact.
It's not like you care about drug addicts, THX.
You're right, I don't care. They've made their bed so to speak.
I do debate whether drugs should be legal or not, and to what extent, but it's not a huge internal struggle of mine.
I'll chew on the last two paragraphs of your post for awhile.
I understand that, and I don't really fault you for that (most people are the same way)...but I think if you are going to speak in favor of policies that result in the incarceration of people, with all that implies -- breaking up of families, seizing of homes and property, ruination of lives, prison rape and beating, banishment from most workplaces, stigmatization, etc. -- you ought to make sure that you are right in doing so. It's not something to be taken lightly -- these are real lives of real human beings that we're talking about meddling with.
Of course, the Surgeon General (or nominee? I forget) recently said that he thinks it would be smart to ban cigarettes...so maybe you'll get an easy opportunity for empathy before too long.
Whatever happened to not injesting the drugs in the 1st place?
What good ever comes of taking meth, heroin..etc?
I can't believe the level of infatuation some people here have with drugs. What's the attraction?
Personally, I wouldn't care all that much if they banned cigarettes.
I think it would give me an incentive to quit.
btw: I've always thought the punishment for drug offenses to be extremely harsh. I'd rather have violent offenders in jail than pot smokers.
"I can't believe the level of infatuation some people here have with drugs. What's the attraction?"
Torp, you're missing the point. The point is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can't ingest. By itself, that isn't behavior harmful to others. Therefore the act of ingestion should not be illegal.
But in your last post, you said you didn't give a damn...That they had made their "Bed", so they should sleep in it... Right?
My statements aren't contrary to each other.
I do think the punishment is often harsher than the crime.
However, those committing the crime are aware of the potential punishment.
If you're willing to commit the crime, you'd better be willing to do the time.
I think $100 for a speeding ticket is excessive, however, if I got one, I'd pay it.
come on, jt. at least make them find you guilty of speeding before just paying it. :)
You ever fought a ticket?
Scribe just tried that and wished she had just paid it.
By taking time off of work, I'd lose more money than it would be worth.
including increased insurance premiums that might have been avoided had you fought it and won? hell the way i figure it is i win if i make them spend more money for the trial than they collect in the fine.
If people drive so fast they run up a $100 speeding ticket, it should actually be doubled.