Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
And? Hard data? Studies?
All drugs should be legal for over 18s
- Thread starter Wizard of Whatever
- Start date
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
You can have licensed laboratories that do fast turn around blood tests and authorized legally to give anti-biotic prescriptions.
Boy would doctors hate that.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
They are that way because the drug is illegal and so expensive and hard to get.
You are the stupid one. How many drug users do you know, I would guess not many. I know a whole group of people that chose to use heroin for a specified time and then stopped. Withdrawal took 3 days with no help.
Your idea regarding antibiotics is terrible, and shows a poor understanding of biology/medicine. For example, antibiotics can treat more than can be detected in your bloodstream, so requiring a blood test would often be pointless. They can also seriously disrupt the normal workings of your body, if the wrong one is taken, if the dose is too high, if taken too long, etc. And often come with bad side-effects. There are also numerous antibiotics, and it requires a trained person to know what antibiotic to take for the ailment, if indeed one is necessary in the first place.
Seriously, do not mess with antibiotics. For your own health and the health of the wider population.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I'm not a researcher. You can find the same data, online, that I could, if that is what you want. I've lived here since 1981 and I can see the way it has progressed as the laws and politics changed.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
How many drug users did you work with as part of your job? Several hundred in my case, over a five year period. Their dependency plunged them into cycles of poverty, incarceration, family disintegration and homelessness, as well as nasty health effects. Getting clean tended to take years, with lots of help, if they didn't die first. Your fairy tale about short-term planned use followed by a quick termination is the sort of hogwash that feeds the public ignorance. The estimated 110,000 drug overdose deaths in the US, in 2023, cannot be remedied with fairy tales. While some decriminalization has helped with users in getting therapeutic help, legalization of production and distribution is not the answer. Decriminalized and legal are two quite different concepts. One makes getting help easier. The other makes obtaining a dangerous and life-destroying substance easier - that's not a reasonable goal for any society.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
I've known many users of many drugs over the years and none fit your description.
Your back-handed way of calling me a liar, let's me know your experience is very limited and exaggerated.
Complete legalization of all the illegal drugs has never been tried, so you have no data on what the result may be.
The goal of any society is maximum individual freedom. If not, that society is worthless. If someone stumbles help them. If not, or if they don't want help, leave them alone. This goes for more than drugs. Anything else tends more and more toward totalitarianism as time goes on.
But he knew a guy!
No. The goal of any society is the best tradeoff between protection of your individual freedom and protection of OTHER'S individual freedoms. That's why heroin and fentanyl is currently illegal - because abuse of those things leads to crime and the loss of other's freedoms (through assault, theft, vandalism etc.) Even if you are 100% sure you would never do that. That's why drunk driving is illegal, even if you think you're the best drunk driver ever. That's why firing your gun into the air is illegal, even if you're positive your falling rounds won't hurt anyone.
In all cases, our experience teaches us that that's what happens when you abuse drugs/drive drunk/shoot in the air.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
Another back-handed stab at calling me a liar. You're all so transparent.
I knew a lot of guys. Probably more than all of you put together. I bet none of you have really used many drugs, lived among the drug culture, or had friends who used drugs safely for over 50 years. And if not you have no place to talk down to one who has much more experience than you.
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Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
The totalitarians excuse, let's restrict you for the good of others. You don't know if total legalization will work because it has never been tried and people like you are too fearful to allow it to be tried. For the rest see post # 27
We're back again to you not understanding why it's wrong to put other people at risk.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
You don't know if other people will be more, the same or less at risk. That is the true understanding.
And to end this discussion I swill paraphrase Ben Franklin. He who trades freedom for peace and security, deserves neither peace, security, or freedom.
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Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Worth reading this. This was not about drug use per se, more to combat the spread of HIV.
en.wikipedia.org
Drug policy of Portugal - Wikipedia
For someone who seems to value "true understanding", you really should learn to use his actual quote, rather than paraphrase incorrectly.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin, in the Pennsylvania Assembly’s “Reply to the Governor,” November 11, 1755
Note the rather important difference that the qualifiers he actually used give to what he is saying. He was not advocating that no freedom should be traded for peace/security, but that essential freedoms should not be traded for a little temporary safety.
Even to him the context and the balance of the trade mattered. He might have different views to others as to what was an essential freedom, but he was not advocating what you incorrectly paraphrased his quote to suggest he was.
I hope you are wise enough to recognise what the teacher has taught you here.
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TheVat
Valued Senior Member
To be accurate, it was a backhanded way of calling you full of shit. Not quite the same as being a liar, though those aren't mutually exclusive categories. Your knowledge, at least of opiate and meth addictions, is anecdotal and limited, and doesn't reflect the sufferings of hundreds of thousands. I suspect you haven't personally witnessed the "dope fold" (or more extreme version that's now called the "fentanyl fold") or the other degradations I mentioned in my previous post.
We have data on what happens when they are decriminalized. Again, reading comprehension is fundamental: decrim is not legalization. I've already explained why legalization is not a sane option for opiates or meth. And Bill seems to have covered the matter of why societies cannot have absolute freedom. I see no reason to keep circling back on the same argument.
Finally, how "free" is an addict? Think hard about that.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
More blather. I would guess the drugs whose use you describe so positively were pot, and psychoactives like mescaline, psilocybin and acid. Did these friends also use meth or opiates safely for over 50 years? I am doubtful.
Also, thought experiment for you:
You're boarding a plane. Would you like your pilot to have the freedom to use any drug? If not, why are you restricting their freedom?
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
No, it's experiential, which is more than I can say about someone looking in from outside. Your insults show how little you know about it
I've witnessed many people on many drugs. I saw my friend sliding down the wall coming off heroin. From personal experience I know the lure of certain drugs. But I have never met one person who didn't have the will power to quit if they really wanted to.
Legalization is the only sane option, you are just afraid to try it. And personal freedom and responsibility is the best argument for legalization, except among those who think they know what's best for others or who are just ego driven totalitarians.
As free as they really want to be.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
The blather is all yours. And meth and other amphetamines were among the first drugs I had experience with. Also had experience with coke and barbs, as well as the ones you mentioned, and friends with heroin experience. No not for 50 years but no one had any trouble quitting when they really wanted too. So don't talk down to me about drugs, you who have had no personal experience of drugs.
Another thing, three addicting substances are legal. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.
False and misleading and you know it. If their job requirements require no drugs that is a different story, so stop your fascist bull crap