A different perspective on legalization

Frankly I hadn't thought about it in this way, but it makes sense. Of course the argument is too philosophical for most politicians, which means that the people who would be doing the selling (of the idea, jeez) would be clueless about the product...

From mykeru

I wouldn't have a problem with decrimininalizing most classes of drugs, simply for the list of contradictions that prohibitions present to a supposedly free society. The state shouldn't be able to dictate what sorts of crap people put into their bodies. If people want to free-base Drano, that should be their right. The rational for prohibiting drugs is that people can do some pretty stupid things while on them. The rationale for decriminalizing them is that people also do some pretty stupid things to procure them and, if mere procurement is a crime, then you're taxing the system with what the system shouldn't be concerned with in the first place. Besides, there's other things that make people do some pretty stupid things: Greed, jealousy, avarice and stupidity itself. Might as well criminalize that too. But we don't because we make the distinction between potential and action. That is to say, if someone knocks over a liquor store to procure drugs or just because they're greedy, then I fail to see the point in criminalizing greed rather than, say, knocking over liquor stores.

Then there's the huge in-your-face contradiction of allowing the #1 make-people-stupid drug, which is alcohol, to remain legal while prohibiting an entire class of drugs that are, by any measure, fair more benign. Fully half of all murders and domestic violence cases are alcohol-related. By not figuring the booze into the equation, while sending people up for being caught with a pot seed lining their pockets, we're missing out on the major etiology of violence. Alcohol also doesn't mix well with an entire class of medications. In the case of Xanax a little alcohol is a nice way to relax yourself into a coma.

In practical terms, if you had to get in the passenger seat of a car driven by someone who was completely ripped to the tits, would you rather them be drunk or stoned?

I rest my case.