jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (James Wilbur Lewis) (05/04/88)
In article <5125@xanth.cs.odu.edu> k*nt@xanth.UUCP (K*nt Paul Dolan) writes: > > The story is, one of the net's true twits has put hands to > keyboard and produced the following classic piece of illogic. I defer to your universally acknowledged expertise in all manners of twit-dom. > There's not much functional left of > him above the cheekbones, if this is a typical example. Sad. There's more than enough functionality left to rip your argument to shreds. Allow me to demonstrate: >In article <23841@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP >(James Wilbur Lewis) writes: > >>It >>does, however, give drug decriminalization advocates a valuable piece >>of ammunition/data: tobacco, one of the most physically harmful >>addictive substances known to man, is cheap, widely available to >>children everywhere, and has been that way for years...yet society >>hasn't collapsed from the "horrors of nicotine addiction". In fact, >>now that the dangers of smoking are well-known, it is rapidly going >>out of fashion. > >>If tobacco were illegal today, all the arguments used by anti-drug >>people would apply to it. Yet the widespread, devastating >>consequences of legalization they predict have simply not >>materialized, at least not to the magnitude that the Ray Franks and >>K*nt Paul Dolans of the world would have us believe. > > Then he turns right around and says "the widespread, > devastating consequences of legalization ... simply have not > materialized". Great logic! Not logic. Simple observation. Have you EVER heard of anyone turning to crime because of a nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine addiction? Of course not, because on the free market they're all so cheap that it's no big deal to bum a cigarette, or panhandle for a fifth or a cup of coffee! Have you ever heard of tobacco farmers booby-trapping their fields or stocking up on automatic weapons? Do Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds executives go around offing each other (and unlucky bystanders) to improve their market share? Are there many people being blinded by drinking wood alcohol these days? How does the conduct of legal alcohol vendors differ from that of Prohibition-era bootleggers? How much money does organized crime make from _legal_ drugs today? Do I need to go on? In your case, I think so: Opiates and coca derivatives (things go better with Coke!) were available OTC until the early part of this century. Where were the widespread consequences to society then? (Opiate bans were instituted not for any compelling medical or sociological reasons, but as a means of harassing Asian immigrants, then the major user population. This fact has been well- documented many times already on the net.) You see, back then people settled for laudanum, which is nowhere near as addictive as morphine or heroin. Now, since it's ALL illegal, why should dealers fuck around with kid stuff like laudanum when they can offer more "bang for the buck" with heroin...or even worse, highly purified synthetic opiates (no quality control, don't ya know?) and the concomitant risk of accidental overdose? (Nobody dies from opiate addiction per se. The long-term physical effects of opiate use are quite minor; it's the impurities and variation in quality that kill people.) Marijuana was legal until the end of Prohibition. The reasons for the ban had little to do with public welfare and everything to do with greed and racism. Nitrous oxide is perfectly legal, and has its recreational uses. Yet how many people have tried it, or even *know* about it? You can *really* fuck yourself up on nutmeg, or San Pedro cactus [hi RS! When are you and me and Ray Frank going to have that dinner we talked about?], or Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds (massive hallucinogens!)....all of which are legal. But none of these substances are widely abused, or even widely *used*. So where is your evidence that drug legalization will result in a massive increase in the drug-using population? How many people died this past year from complications resulting from use of cocaine/crack? About 500, if I remember correctly. From a user population of...what?...ten million? (5% of the population? That sounds a bit low, but for the sake of argument let's accept that. That figure is favorable to your position.) I will be VERY generous and assume that if coke were legalized, EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE US, all 230 million of them, would start using it. Expected death toll? About 11,500. Much less than tobacco. Less than the number of people killed in car accidents. But is that figure considered "devastating"? Well, do you hear people calling for a ban on driving? And this is a gross overestimate of the death toll! Let's not forget the current laws making it difficult for the general public to obtain hypodermic needles (to make it harder for people to use IV drugs.) Great, now they're forced to choose between sharing needles and going cold turkey. Which do you think they're choosing, eh? Oh sure, they can use Clorox, but the drug laws have driven the IV drug using population underground, so now they can't be identified or reached with this sort of information. So the major mode of AIDS transmission is more or less attributable to drug laws.... >>"Tobacco kills 350,000 Americans a year." > >Now lets see. That's sort of like dropping a one megaton bomb in >beautiful downtown Norfolk, taking out the entire city population, and >a spare hundred thousand souls from Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, >and Virginia Beach. Did these people volunteer to be nuked, the way all those smokers voluntarily smoked with full knowledge of the consequences? Such rigorous logic! >If it were done that way, the screams of outrage would shake the >heavens. Still, it would be a mercy, compared to the reality. In >reality, most of those deaths involve long hospitalization, intense >and unremitting pain, and unbelieveable expense. So what you're saying is that all these people....many of whom chose to smoke until the day they died....need K*nt Paul Dolan and others like him to pass laws preventing them from doing things which they ALREADY KNOW TO BE HARMFUL? Because _you_ are better qualified than they are to make that decision? Well. We all know how many people die similarly gruesome deaths from cancer and heart disease, and that many of these deaths are preventable through a sensible diet and exercise program. If you're going to be a consistent paternalist, you had better advocate government-mandated diets and daily calisthenics....because, of course, all those people are too stupid to do what K*nt Paul Dolan thinks right, so you'll just have to *force* them. And they'll thank you, because it's all for their own good. Riiiiight. Lest you other readers think I've gone off the deep end, here's what K*nt had to say about caffeine in an e-mail exchange last summer: >Would you ban caffeine, then? [...] [JWL] >> Yes, I think that caffine is a dangerous, extremely addictive >> psychoactive drug whose use should be controlled. [KPD] No straw man here. If he's willing to ban caffeine, then where the hell does it stop? Forget about "slippery slope" arguments, he's leaped right into the abyss! But it gets better: Why "we", the body politic should be able to tell you what to do with your body? 1) You show yourself mentally deficient by being unable to understand the true consequences of your behavior. Protection of the mentally deficient from their own inadequacies is a long upheld social responsibility. A totally gratuitous cheap shot....remniscent of the good ol' days when we had Eric Mading to kick around. That whipsong got a little old after a while, you know? 2) The long term police and mental health attention you will require is very costly, and "we" have to pay for it. KPD is apparently adept at making medical diagnoses over the net. He certainly has enough experience with mental health attention....(another cheap shot, yes, but turnabout is fair play!) How much police attention will I require if drugs are legal, hmmm? "we" have to pay for it? What you mean "we", paleface? Ever heard of insurance? Unless "we" are in the same insurance pool as drug abusers, "we" don't have much to worry about, eh? (Non-smokers are entitled to lower insurance rates, the same should be applicable to those who abstain from other dangerous drugs.) 3) The medical costs of trying (probably fruitlessly) to repair or limit the damage your actions do to you drive up the cost of all health care. On what planet? Apparently one where the supply of health care is fixed, and hospitals are forbidden to expand their facilities should demand for medical services increase. (Another error in this item is the assumption that drug bans reduce the demand for health care. See above comments re: lack of quality control in an unregulated black market.) 4) "We" don't want you to become a dependent, unproductive member of society while still in the prime of life; it drives up "our" taxes. Drug use, in fact, can increase productivity. Those engaged in creative pursuits often find drug experiences to be a great source of inspiration. Robert Hunter and Ken Kesey immediately spring to mind. How "productive" are most people on this net before their first cup of coffee, which YOU YOURSELF characterize as a dangerous drug which ought to be banned? "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- attributed to one P. Erdos, who is rumoured to have been a fine device for turning *amphetamines* into theorems. If you're so worried about taxes then why doesn't it bother you that the government is spending money right and left on drug enforcement that is doomed to failure? 5) "We" aren't happy when your fellow drug users rob and attack us. (Did I forget to mention having my computer stolen from my home while I was at school? Most theft traces back to a need for drug money.) Like I said, you don't hear of many thefts to support alcohol or nicotine habits...because they're CHEAP on the free market. Even a heroin addict who is too zoned out to hold a job could PANHANDLE enough money to support his habit....if only it really were a free market. If drugs were legal you would probably still have your computer. Now, back to KPD's latest article. >If those [I edited out a list of gripes which I've already addressed above] >are considered _minor_ consequences by the drug advocating >public, I can see why you all are unwilling to listen to the evidence >on the social costs of your own habits. Astounding. Any negative consequences from legalized drugs are surely offset by the massive negative consequences of current drug laws. Forget about political theory for a moment....sheer *pragmatism* dictates the obvious course of action! >You want to flame me about this, email it; What? And spare you the public embarrassment of having your lovely arguments eviscerated by a "mental deficient"? Not on your life, you arrogant bastard. -- Jim Lewis U.C. Berkeley
greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak) (05/05/88)
In article <23872@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis) writes: >Drug use, in fact, can increase productivity. Those engaged in creative >pursuits often find drug experiences to be a great source of inspiration. >Robert Hunter and Ken Kesey immediately spring to mind. How "productive" >are most people on this net before their first cup of coffee, which YOU >YOURSELF characterize as a dangerous drug which ought to be banned? >"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- >attributed to one P. Erdos, who is rumoured to have been a fine device for >turning *amphetamines* into theorems. And he still is, as of last report. He once tried an "experiment" where he gave up speed for several days. He felt fine, but he couldn't get any work done. So he went back on speed. -- gatech!phoenix!greg Gregory A Nowak/Phoenix Gang/Princeton NJ 08544 "Take 2*3*5*7*11*13. It's divisible by 59." --Matt Crawford