Being as you are a fellow college student I'm sure you have witnessed somebody who OD'd on alcohol get taken away in an ambulance, about once every two weeks, just as I have. except for during the first week of a semester, when you see like three or four people od on alcohol.
No, that is actually a rarity on my campus.
Now based on your own logic here, isn't liberty not enough of an argument? Before you said if it's hurts the person, it's their own business so long as they don't hurt anybody else. let them learn from their own mistakes, and all that. It is possible for a person to OD on heroin and learn from it and not make that mistake again. let them ruin their own lives. If they do this and die, good it's one less heroine user on the street. It's their own fault anyways. not everybody will turn into a heroine addict if we legalize it etc. and not every person who experiments with it will become an addict. some people just want to experiment here and there, and are smart enough not to keep doing it. they shouldn't be punished because of the idiots.
I support the decriminalization of all drugs. However, I do not support the full legalization of drugs such as heroin, crack, etc. due to their affects on the
vast majority of people who use them. If people want to do these drugs, that's fine by me. That's their decision to make. But I don't think they should be legalized. (and so you are aware, legalization and decriminalization are two completely different things).
What I mean by government intervention, in this case, is that the government should be responsible for promoting educational awareness to these drugs in poor, ethnic neighborhoods, where these drugs are most prevalent. The government should also be involved in efforts to get these drugs off the streets, and arrest those who deal these drugs. Those who use drugs such as heroin, crack, etc. on a regular basis should be sent to rehab, because of their adverse affects and high addiction rate. That's where I think the government should be making decisions for the people, when it comes to someone's health which has already been deteriorated by a substance or social morre.
i could even go on to say how I experimented with LSD, crack, cocaine, opium, salvia, tranquilizers, and vikadin. I could go on further to say that I did LSD once, had a bad trip, never did it again. In fact I only did coke twice out of curiosity, and all of the other drugs I did were only once, and it's been over six years since I did them. I only tried them out of curiousity and then stayed away from them except slavia and vikaden. Those were both less than a year ago.
That's your business. And, might I say, you are an idiot for trying any of those.
Like me, you too support the govenrment telling people what they can and can't do, even when it doesn't hurt anybody else. so to claim, that you support liberty and I don't is quite hypocritical. There is no reason why it's okay for you to say the government can step in and make decisions for adults, but I can't. We both believe the governement gets to tell us what we can and can't do. we just disagree on when. so you just shot down the whole liberty argument, and admitted that more than just liberty needs to be taken into consideration.
Except, the problem is, drugs such as heroin have such high addiction rates and the consequences of heroin use are so adverse that there's really no comparison to my stance and your stance on alcohol. You support the continuation of an arbitrary drinking age based on your assumption that people under the age of 21 aren't "adult enough" to drink, and I support lowering the drinking age because I think that, once someone is an adult, he or she should make their own decisions.
I do not support the criminalization of hardcore drugs. I believe that the government should intervene only when someone's health is at risk. The vast majority of heroin users destroy their lives, these drugs destroy neighborhoods and have been the subject of gang activity in some of our cities for decades. I think the government needs to work to get these drugs off of the street and rehabilitate those who are addicted to it. Legalizing these substances wouldn't make any sense.
Alcohol is an entirely different story here. People can and do drink without throwing their lives away, and yeah, people at a young age can do the same. The difference here is, alcohol is legal. The vast majority of those who drink don't become rampant alcoholics, nor do they crash their cars into pedestrians, nor do they destroy their families. Hardcore drug users often become addicted, they often destroy their lives, they often leave a dark mark on society... and I think the government should help clean up that mess through rehabilitation and educational programs, in addition to raids.
statistics and infromation need to be considered, as you just demonstrated when you commented on how much more harmful and addicting heroin is than alcohol. that is information you took into consideration, and came to the conclusion that it would be bad for society.
Now I believe based on stats that lowering the drinking age would not be good for society. Now obviously you have every right to disagree, but if you want a strong argument, you have to provide some type of evidence that this will not lead to an increase in ruined lives. to say that if people ruin their lives, well then too bad because it's their own fault, would be the complete opposite of everything you just claimed to believe in this post I am quoting.
Again, these are two completely different scenarios. Next, you'll ask me if I think it's alright for people to crash planes into giant buildings and if the government should stop them. I still believe that the government should not interfere in an adult's ability to make a responsible, well informed decision, and I'm not giving you any statistics because I am not here to cater to you.
