Let's talk about drugs.

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The government has no right to legislate what one puts in his or her body. Drug addiction is a health issue, not a criminal one. When you make something illegal, it doesn't cease to exist and it certainly doesn't kill the market for it. It only creates a black market for it and causes way more problems than it was by itself. You're creating a whole criminal class of people. The laws have absolutely no effect at reducing drug use and in fact drug use is more prevalent now than ever before so if anything, it's had the complete opposite effect.

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I suppose the privacy aspect you are putting forward could be convincing, if you had no dependents, no family and if drug users could keep themselves from crime and reliance on the welfare state. If you can meet all of these criteria then by all means, go forth and destroy thy brains.

I have yet to meet a drug user who does not meet at lest one of those categories. I have watched families endure the descent of their children into addiction. Even the richest heroin users tend to have children, who watch and learn this behavior. But if you are wealthy enough to isolate yourself and consider a drugs to be a worthwhile life pursuit. If you think you can be free from addiction or that cannabis will not reduce you ability to think or work. Then first of all, you are very sad. Secondly you may be close to justifying the libertarian argument for drug legalization.

However, at the same time, alcohol results in high quantities of people who will drink to get drunk, and who even are "alcoholics" and have an addiction to the use of that drug. In terms of automobile wrecks, alcohol has played an enormous role. In terms of destroying households, the use of alcohol is so common in these stories that the drunken dad is an outright trope used in narrative. Even further, people can actually die and do die from the drinking of alcohol, but marijuana isn't lethal to use because of the dosage rate necessary to cause death.

Now, I suppose you might say "well, cannabis users get high", but that's irrelevant to your earlier claim on risks. Even further, I see no reason to think that getting buzzed is so much better than being high, it is not as if drinking a drink is the best thing to do before or while driving. Nor is either drug necessary in any sense of the word. Given that alcohol is in most ways the more dangerous drug, I don't see a strong reason to seek to ban the others, while keeping the beer here.

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Care to tell us your opinion on the matter? Also stated anything about my position that is not discussed in my earlier posts. If you think that we are in disagreement, please let me know how.

Except Jacoby doesn't make a comment on "privacy".

He states this:
1) "The government has no right to legislate what one puts in his or her body. Drug addiction is a health issue, not a criminal one." Which is to say that the government should not be overly involved in a person's health or personal choices, other than ones that really are transgressive.
2) "When you make something illegal, it doesn't cease to exist and it certainly doesn't kill the market for it. It only creates a black market for it and causes way more problems than it was by itself. You're creating a whole criminal class of people." Which is a statement that illegalized activities don't disappear and they create worse environments for the people who get into them, as we now have addicts who are afraid of asking for help due to the illegality of the activity. You also have more openly criminal people involved who often times will do horrible things, and distribute worse product, which will result in unnecessary deaths.
3) "The laws have absolutely no effect at reducing drug use and in fact drug use is more prevalent now than ever before so if anything, it's had the complete opposite effect." That laws to prohibit use of drugs are ineffective and thus should be gotten rid of due to them having an opposite impact. (This point, I actually disagree with on factual grounds, but it is his point)

So, everything you say just is not in response to Jacoby. That being said, he is putting forward the libertarian argument.

Ok, my position? I usually express this through attacking people I disagree with, but my position on the matter is this:

I strongly believe that soft-core drugs, such as marijuana, should be legalized. The illegalization of these drugs provides no economic benefit(while legalization clearly does), it does not prevent usage as these drugs are prominent in high schools and in colleges(a fact known from experience) and these drugs are in general, not worse than pre-existing drugs. Finally, legalization will decrease the number of criminals and decrease punishment of otherwise law-abiding citizens, which is in and of itself a good, as well, it will decrease the sources of income for actual criminals.

Secondly, I tentatively think that hard-core drugs should also be legalized. This also will undermine organized crime, as organized crime is known for smuggling drugs, and using this to make lots of money. As well, legalization will help prevent these drug users from suffering from bad material, it will make it easier to prevent overdoses(an issue addressed with the idea of the safe injection sites some nations have looked into) and it will allow addicts and their families better ability to handle the situation without sending anybody to jail, so that way addicts can actually get the help they need. Note: it may be undesirable that heroin be sold from vending machines, so maybe some regulations in some way shape or form, but nothing too stringent.

Wow, you and I must be reading separate posts. The first sentence of his post was a direct call for privacy.

Given that I cut his post to pieces and analyzed each piece, I don't see your issue. Jacoby doesn't sell this on privacy, he sells this on rights. People have the RIGHT to do X. He doesn't say that governments cannot monitor and publish who does what drug though, even though he may very well agree that they should not.

Yes, because the right to privacy is not a right. You are just being needlessly belligerent now.

No, he didn't say "PRIVACY", he said the right to put whatever you want inside your body. The right to privacy has tended to be something very very very different in legal practice, and it refers to the nondisclosure of information, and the non-intrusion of outside parties into one's domain for the purposes of gathering information in its various forms.

I am not being needlessly belligerent, and I clearly already gave you an explicit difference:
"He doesn't say that governments cannot monitor and publish who does what drug though" (Note, it is implicit that this concern is a privacy concern) He just states "People have the right to do X", which is not a matter of privacy. People doing something is a matter of their right to do that thing.

If anything, you are being obtuse on a matter where I have made the situation clear.

Sorry, weren't we just debating abortion.? Isn't one of the claims of the pro-abortion position, that a woman's body is her business? That this is a private space that the government has no right to restrict? Sorry there actually is an implicit link between privacy of the body and privacy in general. It does not just relate to the passage of information.

Yes, abortion is actually based upon a right to privacy. A right to privacy may entail a right to non-intervention(after all, how can you have intervention on an affair that is labeled a private medical endeavor), but a right to non-intervention does not entail a right to privacy.

You seem to be confused on a point of basic logic.

Just about ant claim to the right to nonintervention that involves the human body has an implicit right of privacy attached to it.

Most advocates would hold to that, yes. But they are not the same claim. I've already pointed that out.

Really? Is that why I only took two hits off the pipe after waking up?

It's not like everyone takes as many hits as possible when there's a joint or a pipe being passed around. There's always people who count themselves out of the circle after they don't want any more. Some people blaze on occasion, others empty bags every opportunity they get. The common sense rule of not generalizing applies here as well.

Anyways, I believe in legalizing marijuana, ecstasy, and maybe a psychological evaluation before you're legally allowed to get shrooms or acid but I don't believe in legalizing hard drugs. However, I do believe it's ridiculous that the law's right on their asses and that drug offenses are so strictly punished when there's bigger fish to fry.

People argue alcohol is just as bad as hard drugs, but heroin and meth have destroyed neighbourhoods more than anything else. PCP is REALLY f****d up, never mind cocaine being a hell of a drug. It's a slippery slope from personal harm to societal harm when it comes to these type of drugs.

I think all these drugs are dangerous and I don't want to use them at all.

However, alcohol and tobacco are already legal . When you weight in their side effects, it is pretty hard to believe the line drawn between cannabis and tobacco makes any sense at all.

Also, there is no proven link between "losing your mind" and Cannabis consumption, if you think there is, source would be useful. There is however, plenty of horrible evidence that excessive alcohol does have that effect.

Most commercial alcohol drinks are quite diluted. In my country there's people that get high with medicinal alcohol and it does destroy populations. And medicinal alcohol is pretty easy to get. If the drugs you mentioned were legal, there would be ways to regulate and tax them so that most people wouldn't get them in pure state. Another thing is that if the milder drugs that are currently illegal were less expensive it would be easier for people to choose the one that doesn't destroy their brains.

Right now, you can choose between 95% alcohol and beer. And most people pick beer.

We also need to verify why the drugs you mentioned destroy neighborhoods. Is it because of the drugs themselves, or because of the violence their illegality produces?

It is true that nobody should be getting these things. And no, not even alcohol or tobacco because it is all harmful. But making them illegal has certainly not stopped people from consuming them. It just allowed criminals to tax them so that every time they are consumed, violent criminals and also guerrillas in some countries win money, and that's tons of money.