Daily Mail - The use of drugs is not a statement of freedom. It may be a dependency.

[edgarshade]

Dr Robert Lefever's Blog

28 June 2012 9:14 PM

With reader comments

Not all users of mood-altering drugs are addicts. Some use simply for transient pleasure. Some use because of peer pressure or because they think it's clever. Others - maybe ten to fifteen percent of the total population - have an addictive tendency. We can stop our addictive behaviour for a time but then we return to it.

A compulsion is not merely a habit taken to extremes.

The danger of libertarianism in drug use is that addicts do not recognise this addictive state in ourselves. We believe that our problems lie in the outside world rather than inside ourselves.

Legalisation of cannabis would be a catastrophe. Dealers would love it. They already love the legal status of alcohol. It enables them to fuel resentment over artificial divisions in the legal status of various mood-altering substances. Even more, they would love the legalisation of all drugs. Dealers and cartels want to see the social normalisation of their activities. Then, like the Mafia, they can get down to serious business.

More...
http://lefeverblog.dailymail.co.uk/...tement-of-freedom-it-may-be-a-dependency.html

 

[O JMASTA R]

Probably one of the worst articles I have read in awhile

 

[2c-goinsane]

what are they talking about drug dealers/cartels are already loving it and have been since the beginning. when are they going to realize making something illegal automatically gives it a market in the black market where people can make more money than if it was legal.

 

[Folley]

This is obviously just the propaganda response to the Cartel Leader thanking the US for keeping drugs illegal. Unless he is actually that naive... no... I still have more faith in humans than that.

 

[thujone]

This article might make sense to someone living outside of the U.S. in a first-world nation that actually respects rights but in the U.S. and increasingly in Canada too, keeping drugs illegal gives the authorities a green light to strip a person of their dignity and rights for nothing more than possession of a dimebag. If you ask me, that alone does more harm than all the legalization in the world would.

I agree that people should be encouraged to live free of substance addiction, but throwing someone in jail and closing off bright opportunities for the future does the exact opposite. Maybe we should be asking the fundamental question of why we need drugs in the first place. We have to go through our lives being made to feel powerless by those with more power than us, and incompetent by those who have had more experience, and generally downtrodden and disrespected by anyone who thinks they can get away with it. Maybe if drugs were legal, legitimate and taxed, we could use that extra income to help address that fundamental issue underlying it all and truly strike a blow against addiction.

 

[23536]

keeping drugs illegal gives the authorities a green light to strip a person of their dignity and rights for nothing more than possession of a dimebag

essential to their viewpoint is that anyone in possession of a dimebag has already stripped himself of all dignity. It is the worldview of the 12-steppers, generalized to society at large