Imagine being happy with your tax dollars funding the "investigation, detention, arrest, or prosecution" of people using substances rather than teacher's salaries, solving homelessness, public transportation, or exploration of space.
We as a society generally need criminal justice reform, but it wont come at the hands of addressing the illness of addition through exploring space instead. better bus schedules doesnt magically demilitarize the multibillion dollar industry predicated on a loophole in the thirteenth amendment. I can only hope the decriminalization of psychedelic drugs is predicated on sound research but alas, it feels like most SF legislation is brinksmanship between seattle and portland to see who can pedal their city into oblivion fastest with random virtue signalling.
The war on drugs is over and the drugs won.
I'm confused if this even reaches the bar for a strawman... Today, I am legally allowed to drink bleach. It's not breaking the law, just my body.
I cannot, however, take psilocybin, which breaks the law, but gives new insights into the body.
We are indeed trapped in some orwellian hellscape.
The freedom to kill yourself in public is no kind of freedom at all. I also don't see the legalizers working to "solve homelessness", just to enable it, while expecting the government or someone else to "solve" it.
Without the option to crash - you aren't a pilot.
If and when we find the secret to immortality - this right to end your own life how you see it will be eroded by corporate greed.
Tangential point, back to the main one.
There are 2 classes of drugs I would not legalize and you named one of them. the opioid and amphetamine are a chemical moth to the flame trap - And I support making that trap harder to find/get into...
Psychs on the other hand, RC's of course are dangerous due to their inherent novelty, Don't do the same things as Meth/fentanyl/crack, and generally are less dangerous/abusable. Basically anything that rewires the dopamine reward circuit should be highly suspect at best - and banned at worst.
Most psyches build a tolerance quickly in the brain - resulting in weeks/months between effective 'trips'. To abuse psyches is tough - and not desirable (after a trip most people want a rest for a long while from doing that again)
Yeah - freedom of brain chemistry should also be an unalienable right. If the government tells you what is allowed brain chemistry and what is not: that's government mind control...
If someone controls what you ingest, see and hear: they control (to some extent) what you think.
Above I am speaking solely of recreational use.
>> freedom of brain chemistry should also be an unalienable right
So, personally I completely agree with your first statement (now) about making the trap harder to get into. I also - as a matter of logic and principle - agree with your second statement.
The problem is that those two statements are completely contradictory. Doesn't the right to control your brain chemistry include the right to do meth? Even if it makes you psychotic? And even if your psychosis ends up violently harming others?
So I think it goes to whether we're willing to take some rights away to have a society that's sustainable and livable for a majority of people. And where to draw the line is something I think every thoughtful person needs to wrestle with. I certainly support the right to suicide, but not the right to do so in front of children, for example. If you take it from the principle of "everything is legal except that which harms others," at least there's a starting point for a logical position that doesn't contradict itself.
I used to be super libertarian but Ive come to realize that this only works if you, the one availing yourself of liberty, are the one that bears the consequences of your bad decisions. Increasingly, it seems, you do not. The dumber and more anti-social you act, the more victim status you are awarded with as the left half of our polity trips all over themselves rushing to make excuses for you.
And then all the people who'd just like to sit in a park while also not being menaced by drug addicts are told to shut up.
No thanks. We, as a society, cannot handle the liberties we already have.
This has nothing to do with the vast range of laws we have in the books. It's a question of complete lack of enforcement.
When defecating in public at a park carries no consequences whatsoever, do you really have a law that makes that illegal?
Some guy just shot and killed four people in Memphis. Google it. The man was arrested in 2020 for "attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, using a firearm to commit a dangerous felony and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon". It took until April of 2021 to convict him to three years. He was released 11 months later.
As the Mayor put it, four people would be alive today and, my addition, a number of others would not be wounded in the hospital, if this person --who is and was an obvious danger to society-- had been where he belonged, in prison.
Laws mean nothing when they are not enforced.
Another tragic example is what has been happening at the US border since the new administration took office. It's a mess. It's criminal, but nobody is enforcing the laws. So much fentanyl and other drugs is coming in that I am sure we have lost control. In my town alone I think we've had over 300 deaths so far this year due to fentanyl.
We have laws. Things are illegal. And yet, you can't sit at the park with your kids to enjoy a nice sunny afternoon because the laws mean nothing when the people we elect to look after society choose not to enforce them.
This is not a formula for a society that trends towards better outcomes. It's crazy. You have people who have never even thought about owning guns asking about gun ownership and buying firearms because they no longer feel safe.
Not to go too far. Over a year ago, I caught and arrested a guy who broke into my neighbor's home across the street. The guy probably caused over $10K in damage to the home entering, destroying the security system and breaking through the door from the garage into the home. This guy, we came to find out, had a prior record in another state. We finally went to the hearing last week. It took almost a year. I don't think the guy did more than 30 days in jail. What did the DA's office, led by George Gascon (I can only describe him as demented and, yes, with history in San Francisco) do? They let the guy go. He is supposed to enroll in some kind of a counseling program. Brilliant. I hope he doesn't kill anyone when he returns to crime.
I truly don't care what anyone wants to put into their bodies or do to themselves.
My problem comes in when they affect others. That applies to a wide range of situations from excessive drinking to smoking (ever go to a concert and you have to sit in a cloud of smoke, breathing what came out of others' mouths?) and more.
I think everyone should be free to do as they please to themselves. The red line is when their choices infringe on someone else's right to not be affected in any way by their decision. If you choose to smoke, that does not give you the right to have the smoke that comes out of your mouth go into my lungs.
Respect for freedom requires respecting everyone's freedoms and rights. A self-serving stance will never result in expanding freedom.
Why is this important?
To continue with the hypothetical, if the smoker does not respect the right of the non-smoker to breath clean air, the non-smoker will eventually want to (need to!) seek ways to restrict the smoker's freedom to smoke. Everyone loses because society becomes more restrictive.
In a sense, not much different from the concept of freedom of speech. In order to preserve it you have to allow --and protect-- that with which you disagree to have a voice.