Gnarls wrote:
Yeah, please do. It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts. On the buttons issue, how many of those folks who currently 'like' buttons are actually addicted? That stuff along with crystal meth is some of the most addictive substances I have ever seen.

This shit is bad mate and if you want proof I'll take on a tour of the flats.

Yes it's bad, but it's not the drug itself that's the problem. Look at who's using it, if it wasn't buttons it'd be something else. The reason it's buttons specifically is all about the price.

It is highly addictive but the primary reasons for use are socioeconomic. Those individuals who do become addicted would simply abuse another substance in its absence.

I'd have it the other way around mate. I just don't think I'd want such highly addictive substances legalized. For instance, how do you know you have an addictive personality and that trying that drug could possibly open a door to a lifetime of pain? Aren't we supposed to protect the weaker members of our society? Research has shown that those who experiment with drugs at a young age are more likely to become addicts and our addicts are getting younger and younger.

Dude, go to Eldo's and you can get you drugs with a girl to get your rocks off. Two for one special! Do you really think legalizing drugs is gonna solve that problem?

I skeem prevention is much better than cure although as I said previously, a distinction needs to be made between hard and soft drugs.

Cheers

P.S. Kickass debate mate!

doesn't matter whether it's legal or illegal, there will
always be abuse, like apex says, it's not the drugs, it's
the peole using the drugs..... at least if you legalise and
regulate it the govt could derive some sort of tax from it
that could then be ploughed back into educating people, never
mind the time and energy and money that the cops would save and
redistrebute into other areas....jails would be less full...

this whole illegal drugs issue costs us so much that one has to
ask if is worth it...i think not. i'm not saying it's the perfect
solution but it would be a whole lot better than what we have at
the moment....and it would mean that our doff coips won't be banning
playboy playmates from entering our country...seriously, who in their
right mind bans a hot woman from our shores for a joint....and then paris
hilton would have to go back to porn for public attention...like i said,
everyone wins

Gnarls wrote:
I'd have it the other way around mate. I just don't think I'd want such highly addictive substances legalized. For instance, how do you know you have an addictive personality and that trying that drug could possibly open a door to a lifetime of pain?

But that's not how physical addiction works - there is no drug on the planet that you suddenly find yourself addicted to after a couple hits.

All physical addiction is is the fact that your body has become so used to having a certain substance present that it no longer functions correctly without that substance. To get to that point you have to been using for long enough that your body has become so used to it. The more addictive a substance the quicker and stronger that dependency develops but you still need to have abused the substance in the first place.

People who become addicted to something were abusing its use to the point that addiction set, they weren't simply innocent experimenters caught in a trap.

Having an addictive personality is something different but that still doesn't make for some innocent person getting 'trapped' by drugs. That person will follow their path no matter what drugs are or aren't available to him, if it's not one thing it'll be another. Making drugs illegal or not also makes no difference here, in fact being legal would offer much more support and help prevent many of the problems that come from criminalizing a person like this and forcing their use underground.


Aren't we supposed to protect the weaker members of our society? Research has shown that those who experiment with drugs at a young age are more likely to become addicts and our addicts are getting younger and younger.

Dude, go to Eldo's and you can get you drugs with a girl to get your rocks off. Two for one special! Do you really think legalizing drugs is gonna solve that problem?

Again, these are symptoms of socioeconomic problems - the real problems that lead to these issues have nothing to do with drugs, the drug problems are symptomatic. Fixing the problems that lead to this behavior would result in a reduction in said behavior - the current system of criminality in fact worsens the problems that lead to this behavior.



I skeem prevention is much better than cure although as I said previously, a distinction needs to be made between hard and soft drugs.

But there is no prevention. As has been proven over and over again, prevention does not work (and attempting it actually makes things a lot worse for both individuals and society as a whole than they'd be without it). Just like abstinence only sex education actually leads to large increases in teenage pregnancies.

The current system has nothing but decades worth of failures behind it (See Truth About Drugs thread in anything goes for an example). To continue with a policy that has failed so badly for decades, throwing away trillions in cash that could instead actually help society and wrecking millions of lives, while expecting something to miraculously change instead of acknowledging the failure and finding a solution that works is madness.

Cheers

P.S. Kickass debate mate!

Yeah, it's been fun

I don't know mate. Maybe seeing this stuff up close and personal has made me inherently biased. Usually, I've found that if you invite drugs, invariably they bring along they uninvited guest socio-economic problems. I agree that we're looking at this problem the wrong way but with the tsotsi's currently running our guv'ment, legalizing everything feels wrong to me. Be like handing out guns and then pleading innocence when the kids is shooting each other. That's kinda why I wanted your opinion on how you check things should work.

I mean, how do you responsibly use heroin or buttons or meth?

Laterz