Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
I'm in that freaky minority who doesn't do drugs and has no desire to start, but nonetheless wants them legalized. Remove the criminal element from it and half of our society's problems would go away. Sure there would still be addicts, but I hypothesize they'd be fewer, because there would be less of a desire for anti-social types to engage in the "bad" behavior to begin with. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, dump more resources into education. If the common person had the level of education about some of these substances that I have, more people would eschew them as I do.
I'm in that freaky minority who doesn't do drugs and has no desire to start, but nonetheless wants them legalized. Remove the criminal element from it and half of our society's problems would go away. Sure there would still be addicts, but I hypothesize they'd be fewer, because there would be less of a desire for anti-social types to engage in the "bad" behavior to begin with. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, dump more resources into education. If the common person had the level of education about some of these substances that I have, more people would eschew them as I do.
I'm of that minority viewpoint as well. I don’t believe that any of us should waste our lives away with mind-altering substances (life is too amazing for us to ignore it like that), but if a particular person does no harm to other people, and abuses his body on private property, and doesn’t expect me to fork over money to clean up their pathetic lives, then I say that they can do as they like.