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[calvinhobbesliker]

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

All drugs should be legalized.

Amen.

I don’t use them, but I think people are going to do them anyways, and by legalizing them, it would get rid of a lot of crime.

And taxing them lets states raise money, wile saving money by not having to support as many prisoners

[Guest]

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

All drugs should be legalized.

Amen.

I don’t use them, but I think people are going to do them anyways, and by legalizing them, it would get rid of a lot of crime.

And taxing them lets states raise money, wile saving money by not having to support as many prisoners

….and puts the gangbangers out of business :-D

[MrMalachiCrunch]

Being a drunk……has some consequences in life that are perhaps not so desireable.

Do I really have to translate this sentence?  Ugh, ok, let’s disect it.  “Not so desireable” that means bad ok.  So being a drunk… has consequences in life, it bad.   Therefore, not good, therefore something I would advise AGAINST.

Getting drunk once in life, maybe a few times per year does not mean you are a drunk.  A drunk is somebody who gets drunk all the time and has problems with alcohol and is in fact an addict.

[Jermofoot]

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

All drugs should be legalized.

Amen.

I don’t use them, but I think people are going to do them anyways, and by legalizing them, it would get rid of a lot of crime.

And taxing them lets states raise money, wile saving money by not having to support as many prisoners

….and puts the gangbangers out of business :-D

I agree with this for all of these practical reasons.  I mean, there are still limiting factors you’d want to have in place, but the Drug War is lost.  We are throwing money away when we could be not only saving money, but making money, all the while having a better grasp and control of drugs in general.  I wouldn’t want people to do PCP, but jail time is not a solution to someone with a drug problem.  Selling PCP, sure…but if you take the criminal element out of it, the desire to break the law and benefit from it disappears.

Furthermore, I believe in consensual crimes being decriminalized (doing drugs, actions between consenting adults, etc.), and that applies to this.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Being a drunk……has some consequences in life that are perhaps not so desireable.

Do I really have to translate this sentence?  Ugh, ok, let’s disect it.  “Not so desireable” that means bad ok.  So being a drunk… has consequences in life, it bad.  Therefore, not good, therefore something I would advise AGAINST.

Getting drunk once in life, maybe a few times per year does not mean you are a drunk.  A drunk is somebody who gets drunk all the time and has problems with alcohol and is in fact an addict.

No, but you might want to rewrite it.  The way it read to me was that there are some things not so great about being a drunk, unless you are inherently a dickhead, but no matter who you are if you smoke pot, you wasted your life.  And you compared a generic drunk to two pot smokers that are obviously successful.

[MrMalachiCrunch]

I did not compare drunks to potheads, or at least did not intend to.

I would not think Richard Bransons life a waste nor that of Bill Maher.  You are free of course to disagree but would like to know the basis of your reasoning

[allboxcars]

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

All drugs should be legalized.

Amen.

I don’t use them, but I think people are going to do them anyways, and by legalizing them, it would get rid of a lot of crime.

And taxing them lets states raise money, wile saving money by not having to support as many prisoners

….and puts the gangbangers out of business :-D

not a chance. They’d just become smugglers, permitting customers to dodge the tax man just like smokes.

#537

[Jermofoot]

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I did not compare drunks to potheads, or at least did not intend to.

I would not think Richard Bransons life a waste nor that of Bill Maher.  You are free of course to disagree but would like to know the basis of your reasoning

Well, my bad then.  I took both thoughts along as your total opinion.

On the surface, I think you should do what you want as long as it doesn’t affect others, and be happy.  But most people don’t have that set of circumstances, and there are stages of addiction/substance abuse that also vary with what you are taking.  You can waste your life in booze, weed, heroin, cocaine, but the reality is it can take more of another to screw things up.

I think of all things legal and illegal to take, pot is the least harmful in any sense of the word.  Smoking it is probably the worse thing you can do, but it has been proven to have beneficial purposes too.  A little booze is good for you too, but we’re talking 2 drinks a day at most, and probably more wine than anything unless you are drinking unpasteurized beer.  Here’s an article today I ran across concerning pot vs. alcohol: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/147392/  Of course doing nothing is also your choice, I just feel the way we approach drugs is completely stupid.  Did prohibition work?  So why would the same thing work with any other drug?  Granted you still want some protection and limits to occur…

@allboxcars:

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Brain:

All drugs should be legalized.

Amen.

I don’t use them, but I think people are going to do them anyways, and by legalizing them, it would get rid of a lot of crime.

And taxing them lets states raise money, wile saving money by not having to support as many prisoners

….and puts the gangbangers out of business :-D

not a chance. They’d just become smugglers, permitting customers to dodge the tax man just like smokes.

#537

I do live in a tobacco state, but who does this?

[allboxcars]

@Jermofoot:

I do live in a tobacco state, but who does this?

Could just be a Canadian thing… where taxes are high and temperatures are low… too low to grow tobacco I guess.

#543

[MrMalachiCrunch]

Actually a fair bit of tobacco is produced locally to me in Ontario.  Some taxes in Canada are high.  I think our corporate taxes are lower, tobacco and alcohol are taxed more.  Think of taxes on your cigs as health care premiums.  When you finally get to dying from the smokes then government pays for your medical expenses.

Much of the local cig production is done on native land reserves inside Canada.  They can sell smokes without taxes, its technically illegal to sell them or take them off reserve for anything other than personal use.  A carton of smokes that might cost 60 bucks at the corner store can be purchased underground for 10-20 bucks.  Not the same quality and it comes in a big clear bag of 2000 smokes I think. but most don’t care.  it takes money from the health care system and promotes illegal activities.

[KurtGodel7]

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I did not compare drunks to potheads, or at least did not intend to.

I would not think Richard Bransons life a waste nor that of Bill Maher.  You are free of course to disagree but would like to know the basis of your reasoning

I’d like to comment specifically on Bill Maher. While I’m not familiar with the majority of his work, I have seen his movie Religulous; as well as some of his television appearances. Nothing I’ve seen of him so far has made me want to see any more.

Intellectual discipline and intellectual rigor begins with the humility required to work hard. The attitude that, “I need to work as hard as possible here, because otherwise I’ll make a mistake or fall prey to intellectual shallowness. Only through this relentless hard work can I maximize my chances of being right.”

From everything I saw, Bill Maher utterly lacks this humility. He strikes me as being smug and condescending to those who disagree with him. He seems to believe that he’ll be right about things not due to effort on his part; but because he’s Bill Maher. I have no respect for the kind of person who thinks this way, or for any conclusions that result from that kind of thought process.

To return to the subject of the film he’d made. He managed to find a rabbi whose views would be considered far from mainstream, both in general American society and within the Jewish community. He interviewed this rabbi as part of his movie, and interrupted him in such a way that the rabbi was prevented from finishing very many of the points he’d tried to make. Maher then stated that the rabbi had attended a “Holocaust denial conference” in Iran. The rabbi agreed he’d attended the conference but denied Maher’s characterization of its nature.

But supposing, for the sake of argument, that Maher’s characterization of the conference was accurate, what could any of that possibly have to do with the theme of the movie? Am I really supposed to consider something like that relevant to whether God does or doesn’t exist? If Maher expects his audience to be persuaded by stuff like that, it’s obvious that he either a) has no respect for his audience, or b) is himself persuaded by this sort of technique. If the latter, we should have no respect for the rigor of his thought process. If the former, he is a mere propagandist who has chosen dishonest tactics to promulgate his views.

The movie did make one good point; which was to provide information about an Egyptian religion that had existed prior to Christianity. Something like that really is relevant to the movie’s theme. But that was an oasis in the midst of a desert; with the overwhelming majority of the movie being like the interview with the rabbi.

Because politics are off-limits on this board, I will not comment specifically on which of Maher’s views I agree with, and which I disagree with. But where his opinions overlap with mine, it is because I’ve reached my conclusions independently from him; and not because I have any respect for his thought process or his opinions.