[geeks] OT: response to "small town"

[Mike Meredith]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:16:36 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> God (or nature if you are an atheist) also made various poisons that
> will kill you in seconds.

Oddly enough some of those same poisons are also good for us in the
right dosages. In fact most things are poisonous if you take enough.

> I think the whole "it's natural therefore good" idea is pretty stupid,
> personally.

Definitely. It's the same stupidity as the "unnatural is wrong" and
"chemicals are bad" (that one really makes me laugh); I can't resist
poking fun at these stupidities.

> Outside of a tiny minority, most drug users I have met are more than
> just high. Their performance, ethics, loyalty, and behavior sucks,
> causes me grief, and costs companies I work for a lot of money.

Given that drug use involves some sort of illegal activity many people
keep quiet about it and you don't necessarily know. It may only be a
minority of drug users who are like the above, or it could be the
majority ... without honest statistics we'll never really know, but it's
possible to compare with legal recreational substances.

Alcohol fucks up a lot of people every year; some become addicted to it,
and eventually suffer the medical consequences of excessive consumption
and others allow their behaviour to become anti-social through excessive
consumption. But the vast majority of us can consume alcohol safely.

Do all illegal recreational drugs match this ? No of course not, but a
number do. The others are comparable to nicotine in being extremely
addictive and actively hazardous to health (some illegal drugs are
dangerous because they're illegal ... pharmaceutical heroin is one of
the safest high-end pain killers out there). For some reason nicotine
products have not been made illegal, but other methods of control have
managed to reduce consumption ... despite the drug pushers fighting
every step of the way..

> I'm sick of putting up with that and 

Perhaps I'm not understanding what the problem is, but surely if
someone's drug use is causing problems at work they would be warned and
then fired if it did not change ? In fact treat them just the same as if
they were causing a problem for any other reason.

> having people tell me it is
> harmless.

Oh dear! Drug use causes no harm to society :)

The consequences of drug use cause quite a bit of harm to society, but
the consequences of drug prohibition also cause harm to society. We'll
ignore the harm to the individual, because frankly I don't care that
much. Now does removing the cost of drug prohibition reduce the cost to
society ? I believe it would even if drug usage rates went up, although
there's some evidence that drug usage rates might remain unchanged or
even drop.

After all, if we can put the drug barons out of business with cheap high
quality legal drugs, we can generate quite a bit of tax revenue ... make
the drug users pay for (or at least make a significant contribution to
the cost of) the costs of drug use. We do it for tobacco and alcohol,
why not other drugs ?

> IMHO, legalizing drugs can't be safely done in a society that lacks
> personal responsibility.

IMHO, people won't take resposibility for their actions unless society
gives them the responsibility. But I think we can agree that personal
responsibility is a good thing.


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