greatdevourer said:
Now we're moving on to excuses. You can't really say "because we have these evils, why not have those as well?", because it will continue moving back and back.
Back and back to...what...exactly?
Why
cocain was illegalized, according to wikipedia:
By the turn of the twentieth century, the addictive properties of cocaine had become clear to many, and the problem of cocaine abuse began to capture public attention in the United States. The dangers of cocaine abuse became part of a moral panic that was tied to the dominant racial and social anxieties of the day. In 1903, the American Journal of Pharmacy stressed that most cocaine abusers were "bohemians, gamblers, high- and low-class prostitutes, night porters, bell boys, burglars, racketeers, pimps, and casual laborers." In 1914,
Dr. Christopher Koch of Pennsylvanias State Pharmacy Board made the racial innuendo explicit, testifying that,
Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain. Mass media manufactured an epidemic of cocaine use among African Americans in the Southern United States to play upon racial prejudices of the era, though there is
little evidence that such an epidemic actually took place. In the same year, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act outlawed the use of cocaine in the United States.
The ban of
Heroin:
Following the Spanish-American War the U.S. took over government of the Philippines. Confronted with a licensing system for opium addicts, a Commission of Inquiry was appointed to examine alternatives to this system. The Brent Commission recommended that narcotics should be subject to international control.
This proposal was supported by the United States Department of State and in 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt called for an international opium conference, which was held in Shanghai in 1909. A second conference was held at The Hague in 1911, and out of it came the first international opium agreement, The Hague Convention of 1912,
aimed primarily at solving the British-caused opium problems of China.
The history of Extasy
and
Pot
My point is that while that these drugs are bad for you in one way or another (some more than others), their criminalization is new, and that by decriminalizing some of these drugs, we are not reverting back to a barabrian society. I agree that no brain altering substance should be used while driving, and I fully support the illegality of driving under the influence. Just like with alcohol, if the drug use causes crime, abuse, child neglegence- then the same laws should apply.
Look at it this way; if someone wants to get drugs, they will get drugs. If someone is against drugs, they will not do drugs. The reason I support the legalization of some drugs is not because I love crackheads, but because I think that the laws surrounding first time offenders of minor crimes involving drugs are insane. You can go to jail longer for possession than do for raping a 10 year old (source
Reefer Madness). That needs to be changed.
