I don't want to live in a society of drug addicts, I want to live among people of sound mind, body and spirit, who conduct themselves honestly and honourable among their peers.
Should we be fighting all forms of escapism? Movies, books, comics, computer games? Daydreaming?
If not, why are "drugs" different?
Does this apply to all psychoactive substances? Tobacco? Alcohol? Chocolate? Nutmeg?
> I don't want to live in a society of drug addicts, I want to live among people of sound mind, body and spirit, who conduct themselves honestly and honourable among their peers.
Wouldn't we all? I do not think that eradicating drug use will bring about this this utopia, though.
Do people escape through books and movies? Not usually to the point that they become dangerous.
Let's be adults here.
Society doesn't havena lifestyle. Individual members of society have lifestyles, so I'll rephrase that question to be more correct:
What about the fact that drugs are incompatible with the lifestyle we want our people to have?
Now it sounds as authoritarian as it is. And who is "we"? Sure, the majority is against drug legalization, but this is in a society where everyone has been exposed to lies and propaganda demonizing drugs since their childhood. Before the propaganda started, people didn't care about drugs.
What about the fact that religion is incompatible with the lifestyle I want people to have? Isn't it better instead of allowing churches to exist to find the root cause which is forcing these people to seek comfort and stability from these lie-peddlers?
I don't want to live in a society of devotees, I want to live among people of sound mind and spirit, who think for themselves and strive to consider the big questions in an intellectually honest way.
[1] (that is, whatever we decide to lump together under that ridiculous umbrella term)
Depression, anxiety, moderate mania, genetic dispositions to addiction... how do we "find" these? The unfortunately thing is, we've been trying this the world over for a century and no one is meaningfully closer. In the meantime, we're destroying families and feeding an industry worth 10's, hundreds of billions founded on illegal drug trade.
Thing is, you likely already do live in a society of drug addicts. Whether discussing decriminalization or legalization, what you're allowing is those addicts to step out into the sunlight, so the society can help them reduce or end their drug usage.
Remember that laws of morality are a very tricky thing, and tend usually to inadvertently oppress significant parts of a population. Allowing a society to internally act on its compassion instead of outsourcing responsibility to a law seems to have a better outcome.
Says who? Billions of people consume alcohol and tobacco every week - these are drugs too!
I fail to see how unwinding with some weed/hash at the end of a day or at the weekend is a bad thing, or how it's any different to alcohol.
If I want to smoke a little pot on the weekends, I am going to do it. If you have a problem with it, I don't care, because you're not invited to my smokeout.
You are treading a dangerous line trying to write lifestyles into law. That's the same school of thought that people that oppose homosexuality and premarital sex use to to justify their unfair restrictions.