The Drug War

[Kim]

Originally Posted by shiney

As long as nobody starts using the topic as a platform for legalization or to push views on why x sucks or how great drugs are or how the government lies and seriously they don't cause that much harm I am okay with it but the moment it goes that direction the topic dies. Please quote this PM in your opening post.

I wanted to start a discussion on the drug war, checked with shiney, and here we are. Need to be really careful with this topic, because it would be really easy to go somewhere we don't want to even on accident.

It can be agreed that a lot of money is spent on the drug war, and that most everyone is at one extreme. Usually, either you agree that drugs are bad, and that it is the government's job to protect us from drugs and the negative affects, or you push for legalization.

Drugs undoubtedly have very negative effects, and only some of them are health related. The question is whether or not we should be protecting people from themselves. Is it their right to harm themselves? If you say they have the right to harm themselves, then should police stop trying to stop people from committing suicide? The principle is similar, if not the same. What also needs to be taken into account is the effects drugs have on those that aren't taking them, and for this I will use a personal example.

I had a friend in High School, whom we'll call Mike, who was in and out of rehab all the time, and you could see the toll it was taking on his family. Last time he got out of rehab, he moved away from his family, by his choice or theirs I don't know. After all this myself and my roommate Adrian were basically his only real friends left, because when he wasn't on drugs, Mike was a good, fun kid.

Several weeks ago, Mike called up and asked if he and a friend named Derrick could stay at our house for a night or two. We said sure. He and his friend show up and we're having a good time seeing Mike after missing him for a while. We found out that Mike and his friend were on their way to Mexico, as Mike had a warrant out for his arrest. On their way they had been stealing from stores all the way down, and selling the stuff at pawn shops, trying to get enough money for the trip. Although we should have, we didn't say anything and agreed to let him stay one more night. During the day, Shawn's longboard went missing. Shawn is another roommate. Most of us didn't notice, and the person who did notice, a roommate named Logan, thought it might have been missing already. Later that night, Logan get's a call from one of Shawn's friends who had been over earlier, asking Logan to move his laptop to Shawn's room from the band room. Logan goes to do so and finds, surprise, no laptop. He calls Shawn's friend to make sure that was where it was, asks everyone who lives at the house if they've seen it, and decides it was Mike. Adrian takes Mike's license plate number, and we confront Derrick as Mike was asleep on the couch. After a long talk, and several threats to call the police, we finally got him to admit the stuff was in the car, and we went and got it out. They had also stolen a bag of Logan's tools, which he managed to get back at the same time. We kicked them out, and called the cops on them the next morning after much internal deliberation. Needless to say Mike is no longer our friend and Mike now has no friends. Derrick beat the crap out of Mike in California and left him stranded at a homeless shelter.

Mike is a good example of what drugs can turn someone into. Of course there are arguments that it depends on the person, and not all people who do drugs are like that, but there are too many cases like this for it not to be taken into account.

An argument for allowing drugs is that the government would generate revenue from taxes and it would keep drug dealers and the like from making money off of it. There are others, but I'll address those later tonight.

Anyways, let me know your oppinion on this topic.