Locke9-05

It seems as if you might not have a full understanding of the justice system then. The justice system is in place as a balance between the government and the people. The justice system is in place to punish people for doing irresponsible things that put the safety of others in harms way (at unnecessary risk. I already explained this to you. People who speed in motor vehicles are punished because they put the lives of those around them in unnecessarily risky situations. People who do marijuana for selfish "recreation" are punished because similarly to those people who speed, they put people around them in unnecessarily risky situations (due to the mentally unstable side-effects they experience such as psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, and schizophrenia-like symptoms). Society cannot tolerate such irresponsible, irrational and rash behavior. If this was pure anarchy, then such behavior would naturally be the norm, because people would do whatever without thought or care of the consequences, but unfortunately for those who would so foolishly subject the individuals around them to an environment that is--to say the least--unhealthy, unpleasant, and potentially hazardous, this society is not an anarchy. This is a collectivist society, our government preserves the rights of the collective and smoking pot is not a right when it becomes a hazard to the safety and health of those around the user.
An association is all that's needed for society to condemn the use of such a drug. Why? The same reason I've explained over and over. Marijuana has no fall-back positive value to society. If it did, that would be a different story. If it actually contributed something that balanced out the negative factors, balanced out the unnecessary risk and worthlessness of the drug, then it would be an issue to actually think about, but the fact of the matter is, it's a useless selfish ignorant indulgence that induces side-effects similar to those you would find people in a psychiatric ward experiencing... Only those who experience those side-effects from marijuana choose to take a drug that induces such side-effects (it's an issue of conscious choice, rather than those who have mental disorders that they cannot help). And It doesn't really matter whether "violence" has ever been directly documented as a "result" of the drug or those very unpleasant side-effects of the drug, the mental instability and unpredictability is enough by far for society to put the clamp down, so to speak. It's unnecessarily risky to law-abiding citizens and therefore society says "no." Just like speeding in a motor vehicle is unnecessarily risky to law-abiding citizens.
Yes there are several things about that graph that are quite "striking," though they aren't the things you mentioned. First of all, the "graph" comes from a site called "DrugFacts.org," a blatantly biased site that spews anti-drug war, pro-drug propaganda. Secondly, the graph itself is called "Modifiedmurderchart." If you need to verify, simply right click on the image, select "copy image location," and paste it into any open text field. This bring the credibility of the graph into extreme question. It's nothing more than propaganda and for that reason should be completely discredited from this debate. In fact, this exact graph has been presented in this long debate at least 4 times, 3 times by one poster in the past, and now once by you. It has failed all 4 times. As for your blaming crime rates on the prohibition itself, that is a ridiculous theory. The ironic thing is, which group of people chose to commit the crimes that contributed to the crime rate? Anti-prohibitionists. So the very people who shared your viewpoint were responsible for the crimes that you're now trying to blame on the law... How amusingly ironic. It's no different with marijuana. The law doesn't cause crime. People who break the law cause crime. People in this case who are on your side of this debate--which doesn't give a whole lot of credence to your position and the arguments you're conveying. It seems you're trying to blame crime on society and the law, when quite obviously those who share your same viewpoint are many of those who commit crimes against society and defy society's reasonable laws in the first place. How logical!
Hah! Drug addicts stopping their blatant defiance of society's reasonable laws that preserve the health and safety of nonusers is what would do that. Society won't make marijuana legal just because some criminals who continue to defy society's laws wants it to. Once again, it's no different than speeding. Society won't allow people to drive as fast as they want just because a few reckless assholes bitch about speed limits constantly. The ironic thing is that you never hear people bitch about speed limits and you have to wonder why? Why do people want so desperately to be able to do drugs that send them into highs that induce side-effects like psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, impaired cognitive abilities, and schizophrenia-like symptoms, but they don't feel the same about driving really fast? I guess the drug addicts are more selfish for their cause than the reckless speeders/daredevils. It's really quite amusing.
What do you mean? Drug prohibition doesn't increase organized crime... Do laws create crime? Do laws force criminals to commit crimes? Is that the "argument" you're asking me whether or not I "dispute?" Hell yeah I dispute it... Laws don't create crimes... Criminals create crimes. Selfish idiots who do drugs commit crimes. Ironically, the people who would defend the same position you're defending commit crimes, which is one reason that your argument holds so little water. Criminals don't get to demand things of society, and they don't seem to get it... Drug addicts continue to commit crimes against society and they continue to demand that society legalize the substance they've been continually using to defy society's laws... They've made the choice continuously, it's a matter of human free will... Yet they act as if society's somehow at fault. How incredibly logical! It makes so much sense. And they put the safety and health of those around them at risk with the mentally unstable side-effects they experience every time they use such drugs. The arguments in defense of legalization are so incredibly illogical. They're a series of self-defeating paradoxes and that's one of the many reasons why society will not have it.

__________________
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."
-John Locke

"What worries you, masters you."
-John Locke
___________________

nerv14

Are you arguing that alchohol should still be illegal? It has similar side effects as marijuana, by imparing the individual that uses it, and during prohibition the homicide rate increased during prohobition. So it wasn't just that people commited more crimes by breaking the added law but most likely prohibition increased the murder rate. Oh yeah, and people still drunk alot of alchohol, but not as much as when it was legal of course.

Your can't really compare smoking marijuana to speeding. Speeding is illegal because it stops a huge percentage of people speeding and the law makes sense. If someone speeds they will most likely eventualy hit someone who isn't speeding and kill them , while if someone smoke marijuana in their own house, where it would have to be smoked, no one else would get hurt. If people under the influence of marijuana drive cars or were harrasing people outdoors they would get arrested. That way the aspect of marijuana that would hurt other people would be outlawed.

It doesn't make sense to punnish the people that would use marijuana in a safe way on account of a few selfish indivuals, we are in a collectivist society lol

Even if criminals are the ones who break the laws it doesn't make sense to keep a unless law in place if it doesn't make sense, because even if someone is breaking a law we should at least see why they break the law. We can't have a problem with giving into criminals if the criminals are right.

Attached Images

	homicide rate during prohibition.jpg (28.0 KB, 2 views)
	alcohol consumed during prohibition.jpg (20.4 KB, 1 views)

LiveUninhibited

I offered my view as how the justice system should work. I don't think there is any consensus on how it actually does work. There are people who believe it deters people, you believe it is there for punishment, and I believe its primary reason to exist is to incapacitate serious criminals. All three of these reasons and more have been cited for enforcing the law, and I believe a pragmatic approach that would benefit the most people would be to emphasize incapacitation and restitution over punishment. Under this approach, crimes with no direct victim would not be enforced.

Okay so according to a professor of psychology, Dr. Earleywine of USC, in reference to the study on marijuana and psychosis:

I agree: some degree of paranoia would be reasonable for somebody who is using an illegal drug, and it isn't surprising that marijuana users are more paranoid than those who have less to fear independently of the effects of the drug itself.

The site may be biased, but the graph is generated from FBI data, which is unbiased. The graph has been modified to highlight the periods of aggressive drug/alcohol enforcement.

I don't think you can say it was the anti-prohibitionists who contributed to the increase in homicide during alcohol prohibition. In fact, I would argue that the opposite is true. Organized crime benefited from alcohol prohibition because they could make huge profits that they were willing to kill for. Groups like the Chicago Outfit contributed to the increase in violence yet benefited immensely from prohibition just as the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, etc. do today. I don't see what's unreasonable about this assertion.

Well lets look at organized crime on a very basic level:

info:QggzYd0SWnYJ:scholar.google.com/ - Google Scholar

So, organized crime normally, "...exists and thrives because it provides services the public demands... Organized crime depends not on victims but on customers." However, it is also clear that organized crime does cause victimization, but this is incidental to the business. The normal modes of justice are closed to those who are outside the law, and they feel they must take their own justice into their own hands when they get "screwed" on a business deal. Since they are already outside of the law, they also can eliminate competition by violent means, which is why competing gangs bring violence. Basically, providing a legitimate outlet for these goods and services that the public demands would remove the economic basis of organized crime and reduce crime overall. This is why homicide went down after alcohol prohibition.

Just think about it. Who joins gangs? It's not normally some affluent kid with all the opportunities in the world. Drug smuggling is very lucrative just as alcohol bootlegging was. The illegal drug trade offers the poor slum kid a possible, if dangerous, way out of poverty. If we make drugs like marijuana legal, the gangs will be deprived of a major source of profit and will be less attractive to those trying to escape poverty.

Locke9-05

Your view on how the justice system "should" work is irrelevant to this debate. If the justice system in general worked as you think it "should" work, society would start easing up on all crimes simply because "people will continue to commit them." It's that same old paradoxical argument that society is somehow wasting resources to punish people for doing illogical, unreasonable, and outwardly hazardous things. It's not a "waste" of resources to punish people like that. As for those people who think the justice system serves as a "deterrent," well it's quite obvious that the only individuals who can answer that question would be those "deterred" from committing crimes because of the justice system. I've said before, I wish I could drive fast, but it's illegal and I would get written up for it so I don't. So yes, for some the justice system also serves as a deterrent. But the primary and obvious function of the justice system (what it actually does) is to punish people for doing irrational, unreasonable, and hazardous things that are outwardly risky to those around them. There is no conforming "consensus" needed to define that--that's what it does.
First of all, it isn't "one" study on marijuana and psychosis he's responding to, it's the medical condition called cannabis psychosis, which has resulted from numerous studies and numerous conclusions. That quote of Dr. Earleywine's is nothing more than unsupported psychobabble in rhetoric form. He provides no studies of his own, his "conclusions" are based nothing more on opinionated nonsense--hardly what I'd call reliable, and he's using this to challenge an actual medical condition confirmed from the result of numerous studies called cannabis psychosis.
It's not something to use in a debate, however. It's more than "biased," it comes from a propaganda website. Also, the graph still doesn't prove anything, if you notice, the crime rate was on the rise before "the war on drugs" even began. And that still can't be blamed on such laws. If you blame crime on society and the laws society creates, you're negating free will. Pure and simple. That argument relies on the absolutely absurd and ridiculous basis that society's laws somehow force criminals to commit the crimes that they do. And of course, once again, there's the double-standard that so many of the criminals are pro-drug advocates who support legalization, despite their continued defiance of society's reasonable laws. It really doesn't make sense.
I don't think I did. I said criminals caused the increase in crime. Why is that again? Oh that's right! Criminals commit the crimes. Interestingly enough, so many of those criminals during the prohibition time period were also anti-prohibitionists. So now that I think about it, yes, anti-prohibitionists can be blamed for the rise in crime--they committed the crime...
Oh, you don't? Let me tell you... It negates free will. Who makes the choice to commit crime? Criminals. That's all that needs to be said to destroy that absurd "argument." Your argument relies on the basis that society's laws somehow force criminals to commit those crimes and it's simply ridiculous. Why was there a benefit from the prohibition for organized crime? Because anti-prohibitionists were willing and chose to break the law to get alcohol. If they chose not to break the law, if they respected the prohibition for the reasons for which it was implemented, and chose not to defy it, organized crime would not have flourished. On the same basis, who chose to sell alcohol when it was illegal? Society sure as hell didn't. No, criminals in organized criminal factions did. The criminals are responsible and who enabled them? Anti-prohibitionists who were so willing to break society's laws, that they supplied organized criminal factions with income just so that they could. Point and match. Reasonable arguments do not blame society for crime. Society and the justice system do not commit the crimes. In this case, anti-prohibitionists enabled organized crime to make money by supplying them with income. Nowadays, pro-drug legalization advocates--or at least drug users--enable drug gangs (and the violence that comes with them), by choosing to break the law and pay money for drugs. This comes down to human choice, and the only argument that can get past that is one that subsequently attempts to refute human choice, which is what your arguments have now tried to do.
Beautiful, that just proved my point. Organized crime depends on what? Customers. Who chooses to break the law and continue to allow organized crime to flourish? Customers. Who are these customers? In the case of the prohibition of the 1920s, they were anti-prohibitionists. Nowadays, they're drug users, addicts and a good portion of pro-drug legalization advocates. So all those individuals who attempt to use "crime" as an argument against a law they'd like to see removed are actually the basis and dependent factor (as the article above even stated) to that crime. They choose to commit petty crimes (which still must be enforced), at the same time supplying organized criminal factions with income--which results in suffering of innocent people in the longrun. That article pretty much singlehandedly destroyed your position.
It went down after the prohibition because anti-prohibitionists no longer chose to supply organized criminal factions with income to continue their operations and crime dealings. This will and always has come down to human choice and the individuals at the heart of it are the ones supporting legalization--in both cases, because when they don't get what they want, they'll commit crimes over it, setting in motion the almost inevitable chain reaction (as the article above stated) of suffering and criminal activity. In other words, is society right to give petty criminals (anti-prohibitionists) who supply organized criminals with the funds they need to continue their operations what they want? Is that how things work? No. Society learned it's lesson, society understands human choice and there's no way that drug addicts and users who continue to enable worse crime because of their own foolish choices will get what they want from society. It will not happen.
It's the same old sob story. I lived in a very poor neighborhood when I was first growing up. There were always "opportunities" for me to become involved with such "lucrative" dealings as drug smuggling, or drug gangs. I could have "escaped poverty" (what a laugh). I chose the high road. Once again, what do we have? Human choice. There are so many people who share that same story, there are even success stories of people who started from literally nothing. So that argument of yours still relies on one basis--denial of human choice; denial of free will. It just doesn't work.

__________________
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."
-John Locke

"What worries you, masters you."
-John Locke
___________________

Locke9-05

Yes, I'm arguing that alcohol should still be illegal. No, prohibition didn't increase the homicide rate, anti-prohibitionists who broke the law by continuing to supply organized criminal factions with income (enabling their criminal operations) increased the homicide rate. Criminals are the ones who choose to commit crimes, people arguing for legalization of marijuana seem to like to bypass that little detail.
Does speeding hurt people? If I speed in a motor vehicle, am I hurting someone? If I speed on a deserted highway with a speed limit, am I hurting anyone? No. But I'll still get pulled over if there's a highway patrolman. Because my behavior is unnecessarily risky. Is someone who's smoking a joint hurting someone else? Are they hurting someone else just by smoking a marijuana joint? No. But they'll still get written up and taken downtown for it because the side-effects they might be experiencing range from paranoia, impaired cognitive abilities, hallucinations, psychosis, and schizophrenia-like symptoms--all very unstable, unpredictable side-effects that are unnecessarily risky. The only thing that's different between marijuana and speeding in terms of the justice system is the activities themselves. The conditions and reasons for punishing offenders are the same.
There is no "using marijuana in a safe way." It's an unpredictable drug. I've listed off the side-effects many times and they're unstable and unpredictable. Side-effects like that experienced from a recreational drug are in no way "safe."
The law makes perfect sense. The criminals aren't right. Recreational marijuana is unstable, unpredictable, and unnecessarily risky. It creates an environment that's unhealthy, unpleasant, and potentially hazardous to those around the user. The law is 100% reasonable, criminals defy the law for their own selfish want, not for any other reason. There is no "seeing why they break the law," they break the law because it prevents them from selfishly indulging on a worthless drug that's unnecessarily risky to those around the user. That's the extent of it.

__________________
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."
-John Locke

"What worries you, masters you."
-John Locke
___________________

LiveUninhibited

I did not say that the justice system should ease up on crime in general, I said it should ease up on crimes with no direct victim because resources should be directed towards crimes with real victims. What is clear is that marijuana does not cause its users to invariably commit crimes against other people. My position is that if and when this does occur, society would benefit more by keeping 1 marijuana user who is demonstrably dangerous (i.e. did or tried to victimize somebody, or drove while intoxicated, etc.) locked up 10 times as long than it would from locking up 10 random marijuana users. This is not getting soft on crime, it is applying resources in a way that benefits the most people. What do I or you care if somebody is using marijuana or alcohol in private? I only care if they drive intoxicated or commit some victimizing act. For both alcohol and marijuana users, this group is a minority of overall users. Focus resources where they count.

I believe I explained this when I said:
The graph only highlights the times where there was a war against alcohol/drugs on a federal level. The crime associated with alcohol prohibition gained momentum as more and more states became dry (alcohol free by law). Similarly, drug arrests were on the rise prior to the federal war on drugs, which indicates more aggressive enforcement on a local/state level.

Everybody is constrained by their social conditions. An ex-con in most cases could not become a doctor or a lawyer. If you sufficiently limit their options in conventional society, then a criminal lifestyle will be encouraged. Does this negate free will? No. But choices are made in a context. By having a policy that incarcerates people for using marijuana, we are changing the context of these people's lives so that they have fewer opportunities to turn their lives around, or to continue being productive citizens in most cases. If they had victimized somebody, then the law needs to come down hard on them to prevent them from doing so in the future. Until that day, which will never come in most cases, there is no need to ruin their lives.

You speak as if what is a crime is automatically bad. Sure criminals commit crimes, but perhaps those acts should not have been crimes in the first place. It was once illegal to help black slaves escape - obviously the law doesn't always correlate with justice. When the law is not just, those who believe in justice should work against it. I do not wish to legalize drugs because I like drugs. I actually dislike using marijuana, which is the only illegal drug I've tried, and I don't like to get drunk either. But I do think that the drug war does more harm than good, and believe it is unjust to incarcerate people and destroy their lives just because they wanted to do a drug.

Organized crime is based upon customers who desire a good that is illegal. If the good or service were legal, it would no longer need to be supplied by the black market, and the good or service would no longer be associated with crime. It is the law that is providing this negative context that exacerbates the social problems associated with victimless crimes like marijuana use. As long as the good or service itself does not inherrently victimize somebody, then it should be legal.

They didn't make the choice to stop helping organized crime, they chose to buy legal, regulated, taxed alcohol because it was cheaper and safer. This choice wasn't available before legalization.

Again, alcohol and cigarettes are legal, so clearly society has not learned its "lesson" according to your position. There must be some other reason that alcohol is legal while marijuana is not.

We are told of these stories, and there are a few examples, but the fact of the matter is that most people who are born into poverty stay there, and social mobility requires either a truly extraordinary individual, some luck, or sometimes both. We cannot base policy upon the few who can rise above their circumstances. If society is as collectivist as you say, we should make policies that benefit the most people. Fewer are harmed, and more are benefited, when we spend our criminal justice resources on crimes that have victims.

Locke9-05

Society cannot play the game you're suggesting it plays. Society cannot actually wait until bad things happen with a substance that causes such mentally unstable and unpredictable side-effects. I take that back, society can wait, but society would be foolish to do so. Why is this? Because recreational marijuana--besides all its many negative, unstable, and unpredictable factors--has no actual beneficial value to society. So there's no reason for society to actually wait for victims to cry out in suffering. That makes no sense, that is a complete fallacy. What society has done makes perfect sense--attacking the problem at its source (implementing consequences for the use of said worthless, potentially hazardous substance. A substance that causes such mental instability has no place in such a society, no matter where it is being used, and like I said, society cannot discriminate, because when you give people an inch, they tend to take a mile. This has been observed throughout the ages--such cliches are not thought of without reason.
I understand the idea of your explanation, but what I don't understand is the constant denial of free-will and human choice which seems to make up the basis of your position. That paradoxical double-standard fallacy is what destroys the pro-drug argument. Criminals commit crimes. You're talking about people not being able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars (as doctors, lawyers, etc.--professions you specified) simply because of a choice they made that resulted in consequences they were well aware of. Yes. That's the way things work in this society, and that's the way they should work. The only people that kind of system might "encourage" to commit crimes are those who already had their minds made up... Once again, you're conveniently bypassing choice. The choice they made to indulge in a substance that was worthless (had no value to society), and at the same time potentially hazardous--the choice that yielded consequences they were aware of before making the choice--resulted in their life changing for the worse. As well it should. That's how the justice system works, and I explained to you why society can't simply wait for their to be a victim of such a foolish, irrational "act." Besides, an ex-con is still able to make a living, which is really all they need to be able to do. I don't really want a doctor diagnosing me who has committed crimes, even done marijuana... Think about it, psychosis, schizophrenia-like symptoms, impaired cognitive abilities, and they'd be giving me medical advice. I don't want a lawyer representing me in a court case with the same "qualifications" either. Our choices define us. It's the way of the world.
No, and I defended just crime above. However, there's no way you can compare doing marijuana to slavery (I know you probably weren't, but even throwing that in there as an example is insulting and somewhat offensive), and there's no way you can compare marijuana to stealing food to survive, etc. It's a selfish indulgence by definition. Not only is it not necessary for any aspect of human life, it's also negative and outwardly unhealthy, unpleasant, and potentially hazardous to those around the user. So yes, marijuana use (for recreation) is a bad thing. You see, I'm not even opposed to medicinal marijuana--if it's regulated and enforced. Why? Because it has a purpose and value to society Yes, they desire a good that is illegal for good reason in this case. And your theory about the black market is incorrect, the black market will always exist, the black market isn't even "exclusive" to illegal goods. When the price of certain legal goods become incredibly inflated for whatever reason, you would find those goods on the black market for lesser costs. The black market supplies whatever is in demand and the black market will never falter. And yet again, here's the "let's have society wait around until someone actually gets hurt" fallacy. That's not how things work. Irrational, foolish and outwardly potentially hazardous things like recreational marijuana use and speeding in a motor vehicle are punished by law because society is not willing to simply wait until someone actually gets hurt. Why? Because it's not worth it. Because the "activities" are irrational, foolish, they contribute nothing beneficial to society, and they're outwardly harmful as well. It makes no sense to simply allow people to par take in such idiotic things until there is a victim from them.
Yet that's what their choice resulted in. Because before that, they were willing to break a perfectly reasonable law--contributing to criminal empires--simply so that they could have a useless drink here and there. Simply irrational, and thoughtless.
We've been over this many times. Society made a mistake in legalizing these things, and there's not much that will result from complaining about it. Society's "learned lesson" comes in the form of the war on drugs and marijuana. Society's not going to simply give the criminals who choose to contribute to the increased crime rates by committing the crimes they do (drug-related crimes in this case) what they're demanding. That's never how things work. The source of this problem is the criminals who do the drugs, society's laws are designed to punish them for doing such foolish, irrational, and outwardly harmful things, and hopefully prevent things from escalating into situations where there actually is a victim/victims