Presumably because of the implicit assumption that banning harmful things is inherently a good idea. We haven’t really discussed that issue because it is not necessary to hold the position that banning people from making choices harmful to themselves is not justified to argue against drug prohibition. Drug prohibition clearly fails on its own terms without needing to convince proponents of the fact that even if it worked it would still be immoral. Many people here would probably take that fact for granted however and so people were presumably voting down the implicit assumption in the statement. They would expect further justification for the claim.
Isn’t that pretty much what CronoDAS said, though? The stated premise of banning certain drugs is that they are harmful (either individually or socially). So, again, drug prohibition fails on its own terms, because they are not even choosing the most harmful substances to ban.
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would start with things like rat poison and cocaine, and work its way down as far as things like tobacco and alcohol and cheesecake, but probably leave out things like psilocybin and THC.
But of course I’m presuming there is a serious attempt to ban harmful substances. In reality there is a serious attempt to ban getting high, which is not the same thing at all.
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would not necessarily start with rat poison because while rat poison is more harmful than other substances, it’s less harmful relative to how people use it. The fact that eating rat poison causes more damage to you than smoking weed is irrelevant; eating rat poison is an unusual use case for rat poison, but smoking is a typical use case for marijuana.
Just curious: Why did at least 2 people vote CronoDAS’ comment down?
Presumably because of the implicit assumption that banning harmful things is inherently a good idea. We haven’t really discussed that issue because it is not necessary to hold the position that banning people from making choices harmful to themselves is not justified to argue against drug prohibition. Drug prohibition clearly fails on its own terms without needing to convince proponents of the fact that even if it worked it would still be immoral. Many people here would probably take that fact for granted however and so people were presumably voting down the implicit assumption in the statement. They would expect further justification for the claim.
Isn’t that pretty much what CronoDAS said, though? The stated premise of banning certain drugs is that they are harmful (either individually or socially). So, again, drug prohibition fails on its own terms, because they are not even choosing the most harmful substances to ban.
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would start with things like rat poison and cocaine, and work its way down as far as things like tobacco and alcohol and cheesecake, but probably leave out things like psilocybin and THC.
But of course I’m presuming there is a serious attempt to ban harmful substances. In reality there is a serious attempt to ban getting high, which is not the same thing at all.
(Responding to old post.)
A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would not necessarily start with rat poison because while rat poison is more harmful than other substances, it’s less harmful relative to how people use it. The fact that eating rat poison causes more damage to you than smoking weed is irrelevant; eating rat poison is an unusual use case for rat poison, but smoking is a typical use case for marijuana.