You are free to form your own opinion about "illegal" substances, but no one should be penalized for behavior that does not infringe on the rights of another individual. In short, Marijuana and all other drugs should be legal. Acts which violate the rights of others, committed under the influence of substances (or any condition really) is no different than an act committed with a clear mind/body.
Trying to prevent crime by criminalizing victimless actions only creates more crime.
I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, how would you feel about me constructing a nuclear reactor in my backyard for fun? Or manufacturing a bomb or rocket?
I would feel okay with that, knowing logically that the likelihood of you successfully blowing anything up is extremely low, in your back yard. But if you did, my distant relatives would sue the crap out of your distant relatives somehow :)
In any case, I'm more comfortable with these scary and unlikely exceptions than with the government arbitrarily trying to prevent criminal acts by criminalizing things they believe (without sound research) may potentially lead to some harmful side effects.
That is much scarier than a nuclear reactor built in a back yard.
Smoking marijuana isn't the same as building a bomb. If I accidentally light a joint, the people in my immediate radius aren't blown to pieces (although they might choose to get blown).
Not even close. And Marijuana is less dangerous for society and individuals as alcohol, automobiles, etc.
HOWEVER, if we say that anything should be legal as long as it doesn't encroach on someone else's freedom, where do you draw the line with hard drugs such as PCP/Crystal Meth that may increase violent tendencies with the user?
I could potentially see many making the argument that legalizing certain things simply hurts the lower class or keeps them in poverty, such as crack, etc. Should there be rules protecting people who aren't educated enough to make good long term decisions for themselves?
I think runTIME may be making a subtly different argument.
Let's say I have a 1,000 acre ranch and I build a nuclear reactor on it. I go to extreme lengths to make sure it's safe and secure. As far as my neighbors are concerned my operating a nuclear reactor has no impact on them. However, now I have the potential, should I choose, to make nuclear weapons, radiological "dirty" bombs, or otherwise contaminate the general vicinity (for potentially very large values of vicinity) with radioactive byproducts. It is for this reason that the operation of nuclear reactors is highly regulated.
One could imagine how this argument might apply to personal drug use. Drug use itself may not instantly impact anyone else but suppose that, as in personally operating a nuclear reactor, it enabled individuals to have a far greater negative impact on society than other normal human behaviors might.
I don't buy it and I'm not sure if that's the argument that runTIME was making, but it's an interesting argument I think.
Yes. If it turns out that people on PCP or some other hard drug are more dangerous/quicker to violence, is there a limit of how much personal freedom we should grant if there is an increased risk of possible damage to society.
And for all crimes they commit which violates someone's rights, they should be prosecuted. If meth or any other substance has a high probability of encouraging someone to perform violative acts, there's a strong deterrent from doing them in the first place.
Example: If I hold a knife in my hand, it is more likely that I will hurt someone than without it. This deterrent causes people to be more careful when holding knives.
Holding the knife itself is not a deterrent, just as using a substance is not in itself a deterrent, but the possibility of hurting someone else is greater.
The most egregious example occurred in 2006. U.S. District Judge William Alsup found the D-L test to be a specific identification test and declared, grandiosely: “Despite the many hundreds of thousands of drug convictions in the criminal justice system in America, there has not been a single documented false-positive identification of marijuana or cocaine when the methods used by the SFPD [San Francisco Police Department] Crime Lab are applied by trained, competent analysts.”
I am surprised, as Judge Alsup has a good reputation in general...but an opinion is only as good as the quality of the data it's based on. The SFPD Drug Lab has turned out to be disastrously unreliable, and was shut down a couple of months ago. http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/massullo_order.pdf If you are interested in reading about the conclusions of the judge who investigated the goings-on.
Interesting article, horrific story, but one oddity stuck out: "The Duquenois test was developed in the late 1930s by a French pharmacist, Pierre Duquénois, while he was working for the United Nations division of narcotics."
The UN wasn't founded until 1945. How did he do this work for the UN in the late 30s? Should that be late 40s?
I'm not pro drugs per se, I just think that a lot of the research and theory is fascinating. For example, check out these two videos from last year's Horizons conference.
http://vimeo.com/10931182 (Alicia Danforth - Little Pieces of a Big Dream: Participants’ Stories from a Cancer Anxiety Study with Psilocybin)
Both videos are a lot more intellectually interesting than 99% of the stuff that gets posted on HN. In fact they're both a lot more compelling than the average TED talk.
Or check out this podcast by the founders of Erowid, The Role of Drug Geeks in Society:
I realize this stuff will never be popular on HN because it's just too long and it's somewhat difficult to fully grok, but nevertheless I think there is a lot of really cool stuff out there.
I don't use drugs myself, but this article is very interesting because it contains science and statistics and talks about a specific chemical test, its history, its serious flaws, its misuse, and how its misuse has become a tool to imprison obviously innocent people. There's enough science geek content in the article that I think it makes sense to be on HN.
The fail here is your request; you can't "turn" the userbase into anything. The userbase is what is is. That's why we have the upvote/downvote system. Downvote the articles you don't find relevant. Or ever easier, don't read them/comment on them.
Trying to prevent crime by criminalizing victimless actions only creates more crime.