So a totalitarian government is ideal?
I love my children more than life itself; at the same time, I take a very strong stance on personal accountability. That's not to say that I wouldn't help, but if my son (in his adult years) chose a course of action, who the hell am I to tell him how to live his life? That's
his decision and therefore,
his debt, regardless the cost. If he were to overdose on a substance, I'd be extremely torn up about it... I'd be devastated. Just because I mourn the loss of a loved one does not mean however, that I have a right to deprive others of personal choice and freedom. How many alcohol related deaths happen each day? Should we go back into prohibition over it?
Studies (
example) also show that making drugs illegal only exacerbates the problem. People are going to do what they want, regardless of the law. So why waste time and money by trying to prosecute them for a personal decision? Then spend even more housing them in jail for years on end? Why not just legalize it, and offer help to those who need it? Less money and less of a problem. If they overdose... then that's what we call natural selection.
I see where you're going with that, but it's a logical fallacy.
1. Mary started with Marijuana and later died of a heroine overdose.
2. John tried Marijuana
Therefore:
3. John will die of a Heroine overdose
That's bad reasoning.
I've used Marijuana for years, sometimes heavily, other very infrequently, and others not at all and don't use anything harder than alcohol these days, and very rarely at that. When I was 17 however, I got addicted to crystal meth. Was it the Marijuana I had tried months earlier that got me to Meth? No, it was my "best friend" who offered it to me, at which point
I made the conscious decision to try, and then continue use. For that decision,
I suffered consequences for
my actions. Was it my friends fault that
I got addicted? No,
I chose to try it... there was no gun to my head. In that moment, I certainly wasn't thinking "I wonder if this is better than weed... let's find out because weed is awesome!!!" Rather, I had several issues in my life at that point that put me in a place where I would try and do just about anything because I was mad at the world and had a 'who cares' attitude. Again though, it was certainly not because I smoked some grass once or twice before that.