I'm going to assume that you're a younger guy? Back when I was in high school I might have thought the same way - this was before I actually made friends with some drug users and tried some myself in college.
Drug users are not bad people. Most drug dealers are not bad people. On my floor in college, the kid who sells drugs is a pretty cool kid: good student, active in sports. There's some social problems he runs across because he's "the kid that sells drugs," but he's a pretty cool guy. He's a typical college student who just happens to sell drugs to the kids who want to buy drugs.
That is not deserving of death. When you talk about killing somebody, you're talking about ending a life, unconditionally terminating a person's future. Some things are worth that (I will hold to my dying day that enjoying the Twilight book series is admitting your lack of will to live), perhaps, but drug selling and drug use? No. Not at all.
As I said: I tried marijuana a handful of times, and I thought it was pretty relaxing. Nobody was harmed. (To go to the extreme, if you use a vaporizer, you're not even risking lung damage, which means that your body seriously is not injured in any way, even minute.) It was voluntary on the part of myself and some friends. We were okay with paying for those drugs; the kid who sold them was fine with trading them for money.
Do I deserve to die because I voluntarily used chemicals? Does the dealer deserve to die because he gave a product to somebody who wanted it? Who is the criminal here?
Enforcing drug rules is basically punishing people not for actually doing anything bad, but for doing something that the government is telling you is a no-no. If I told you that it was bad to, say, whistle, and you whistled, and I told you I'd kill you if you didn't stop, maybe you'd stop, but that doesn't solve the real problem, which is "unalone is a dick who's setting arbitrary, pointless rules". The problem isn't your whistling, it's me.
It's fun thinking of things so black-and-white when you're young, but once you reach the ripe old age of 18, you'll start maturing a little bit.
You seem to be saying, in essence, "except for the drug dealing he is a pretty good kid, so therefore he is a pretty good kid." Um, what if you include the drug dealing into the equation, and all of the possible damage to the lives of people he is selling drugs to, or perhaps even to their friends, families, and loved ones?
(You didn't say the kinds of drugs, and maybe you believe that whatever he is selling is not bad, since you argue that marijuana is harmless and maybe he is selling only marijuana. But you did not say that and it is a pretty important caveat.)
While not condoning or agreeing with newt0311's argument, I wonder if whether the difference is a fundamental idsagreement with the place of individual human rights? Because newt0311 cites China and Singapore approvingly, I wonder if he believes that the harmony of society (or some other group-level values) are so important that the wishes and desires of individuals merit little consideration? In other words, drug addiction is so bad in its costs to society in general that the very lives of the individuals taking drugs are insignificant compared to the interests of society as a whole?
I only suggest this because if the disagreement is really at this level, arguing specifics and details will not be very fruitful.
Unless he's forcing people to buy from him, I don't think it makes sense to demonize the delivery guy. Gun dealers have helped introduce unimaginable pain to millions of families, but I'm sure there are some really "good guy" gun dealers.
I think unalone was just suggesting that newt0311 hasn't gotten out of the textbooks and actually studied the drug issue from the human side. That not all of these people he wants to murder are faceless mob gangsters, some are just like him.
It's easy to sit in your apartment and write Asperger's induced rants about how X is bad and that if we simply kill Y% of the population X will cease to exist and 100-Y% of the population will then enjoy Z% more happier lives. As long as the numbers work, what's the downside?
Empathy can't be taught, but ironically there are drugs that can help.
I'm a big fan of individualism. I don't remember the last time anything great was made by anything other than individual will, so perhaps I'm biased. People who think we should be cogs in a big machine can feel free to disagree with me.
You seem to be saying, in essence, "except for the drug dealing he is a pretty good kid, so therefore he is a pretty good kid."
Not quite. It's more that I'm saying drug dealers aren't just drug dealers. The people who sell drugs are rarely more or less scummy than other people. Saying you want to kill them for drug sales is ridiculous, and it's vilifying a lot of people who are more than just drug dealers.
"Um, what if you include the drug dealing into the equation, and all of the possible damage to the lives of people he is selling drugs to, or perhaps even to their friends, families, and loved ones?"
If it's their choice to buy drugs, then if he wants to peddle, he should peddle. (I honestly don't know what else he sells. I don't buy drugs at all, so I've never asked.) You can argue over whether or not drugs are good for people, if they help them relax or if they're burning people out, but in the end it's the choice of the people who want to buy the drugs. And there's some complexity to that argument - I think that the only meaningful things worth doing are the things that actively help people, but that means that I dislike people who write slush stories or directors who are sloppy with camera work or pretty much most people, if I'm going to stand absolutely by that metric. But that's not a reason to incriminate somebody. It's their choice to sell and I think they have that right.
I wish you would just make the libertarian argument that people should be allowed to do whatever damage they want to themselves, as long as they don't damage others, and be done with it. I can understand that argument, because it appeals to the idea that government action intended to stop one bad thing can lead to something much worse.
But you seem to be actively defending the idea that there is nothing immoral in a vocation that will inevitably destroy the lives of many people. You point out that the people being destroyed are complicit in their destruction, but I do not see that as a fully qualifying factor. If someone was contemplating suicide, and someone else happily persuades them to go through with it instead of trying to talk them out of it, that's a morally neutral choice?
You also seem to be equating bad camera work and writing with drug dealing, which I will assume is not what you meant because that would be pretty silly. Now, if you are just re-iterating the point that you do not want to incriminate drug dealers, that position can be defended. But if you honestly believe that there is nothing morally wrong with intentionally and actively enabling people into addiction, I doubt that the gap between our views on morality can be bridged.
I suspect there is some misunderstanding about where you are arguing for not criminalizing activities versus defending their morality. If so, could you clarify?
You state: "But if you honestly believe that there is nothing morally wrong with intentionally and actively enabling people into addiction, I doubt that the gap between our views on morality can be bridged."
Do you believe that liquor stores, grocery stores, corner shops, restaurants, and bars are all immoral? Should their owners refuse service to any customers that they believe to be at risk of alcoholism? Should pharmacies do background checks on customers purchasing Tylenol to determine whether or not they are addicted to painkillers? I think this argument boils down to legality, not morality.
I think the point originally being made was that a significant portion of drug dealers are NOT intentionally enabling people into addiction. Certainly this varies by drug dealer, and there is a big difference between selling marijuana and selling heroin or crack. A lot of these dealers are simply supplying people with a product that they are purchasing for personal use because they think it makes their life better.
I think it's also important to recognize that morality is subjective, and that it's one of America's founding principles not to legislate morality. Your belief that something is immoral, or even the belief of the majority, is not significant justification for legislation.
There's a big difference between drugs and suicide. Suicide is final. Any damage drugs do are usually temporary. I think that people using drugs should talk to people as much as people thinking about killing themselves, because with drugs you can go too far, but that's not the same thing as thinking that the people using drugs are bad people. Similarly, if you're selling drugs, you should only be selling to the people who want drugs. There's nothing immoral about selling to people who want them.
My argument was that making crappy products is a harmful thing. I recently broke up with a girl who was as close to a soul mate as I've ever found because she was insistent that everybody was like Sex and the City characters, and that my personality type was incompatible with her character. People who write and produce crap damage people's minds, and I will always find that repugnant. In my mind, making bad things is just as bad as selling bad product, possibly even worse because you ought to know better. That said, I don't think it's fair to persecute people who make crappy things. The best solution is to make better things and lead by example.
I'm not a libertarian. I think that there ought to be solutions to the drug problem. I just think that such solutions should be enticing people to do something better with their lives rather than punishing them for using.
It seems that I can't respond directly to newt0311's response to you, because the post is "[dead]". But I just wanted to say that had he started with this level of analysis, he might not have gotten so many down mods or at least got his more serious points noticed. Studies on recidivism rates are very relevant to this discussion, and it is disappointing that citations to serious studies about it are now grayed out and buried deep in a comment thread. It would be useful for the debate to have some arguments in favor of keeping drugs illegal that include empirical data, and I think newt0311 could have contributed some of that, had he not led with the "kill all the drug users" opinion.
To respond to you, the idea that the solution to the drug problem is the same as the solution to crappy writing is interesting. Not sure I agree, but interesting nonetheless.
and all of the possible damage to the lives of people he is selling drugs to
Why oh why are we always making victims of the users?
In my humble expirience the big evil dealer forcing the innocent child into a drug addiction is a myth or a very rare exception at least. The demand makes
the market, not the other way round.
I for one am a smoker. It might kill me, I should quit, it's an absolutely stupid, useless habit. Using the above logic I could comfortably blame it on the tobacco industry. They seduced me, they deal it to me.
Unfortunately that's not how life works. I can blame it on them all I want, it's still my life and my health and mydecision.
I do place some culpability on the tobacco industry. That in no way obviates your personal responsibility for your choices. But I do think that promoting a product that you know will result in addiction and ill health for many people is morally negative.
So, I place some responsibility for both you and the tobacco industry for your addiction. In the end, you bear more responsibility (and bear all of the consequences). But that does not make the tobacco industry morally neutral or good, in my opinion.
In the unlikely case that this cool, athletic drug dealer produced the drugs in his dorm room himself, I would agree with your position, but unfortunately the drug trade doesn't start in the dorm.
Do you realize how many truly good people's lives are destroyed in the process of keeping supply of drugs up with demand in America?
What about cool, athletic Juan in Mexico who was executed for refusing to join the Zetas? What about mayor Carillo who was gunned down in an intimidation assassination? What about Jake who died of an overdose in the frat house because he thought drugs were cool?
> Do I deserve to die because I voluntarily used chemicals?
I'm not going to go there, but ask yourself how innocent you really are.
I'm not going to go there, but ask yourself how innocent you really are.
I'm not innocent. I'm a human being. I've offended people and made an ass of myself and done things that I regretted. Does that make me somebody worthy of death? (Frankly, if I were to make a list of "things that would be good excuses for somebody else to kill me," drug use wouldn't be in the top 10, because at least that hurt nobody.)
What about cool, athletic Juan in Mexico who was executed for refusing to join the Zetas? What about mayor Carillo who was gunned down in an intimidation assassination?
That's a good reason to encourage legalization followed by business supervision. Used to be people were killed over alcohol. Now people have turned winemaking into an art, and not many alcohol gang deaths occur.
What about Jake who died of an overdose in the frat house because he thought drugs were cool?
What about my grandmother, who died of lung cancer? Or the people who die of alcohol abuse?
The solution is education. My college has many hard drug users, and zero hard drug deaths.
Unless you produce your own drugs and consume them secretly, that is not true.
The only people hurt were hurt due to illegality. Who is hurt when you drink wine? Used to be wine was illegal, and people got hurt until alcohol was legalized.
The reality is, drugs are not legal. You can't go there.
Drugs being illegal isn't hard reality. The solution is to legalize them rather than to stop persecuting the people who are using them.
My mindset - one that many other people share - is that you should worry less about the law and more about whether or not what you're doing is moral and good. I'll break the law if the law is bad, without feeling very guilty.
I agree with that too, but collateral consequences are not to be overlooked. If you break a bad law which, in turn, causes people to suffer, you should feel guilty.
It depends. If I'm making drugs illegally, and in doing so I shoot some guy to keep him away from my drugs, then I should feel guilty. But if I'm not directly involved in that violence, then my feeling guilty for that illegal process only encourages the people who would use your morality to enforce their own corrupt principles. Not feeling guilt for the things you didn't do forces the corrupt laws to look at themselves and eventually revise.
How do you define direct vs. indirect involvement?
If a weapons dealer sells a terrorist a bomb knowing it will hurt innocent people, the dealer might not directly detonate the bomb themselves, but I think we would still hold the dealer partly responsible for supplying the tool.
Likewise, if a buyer buys an illegal good and it is known that, somewhere down the line, people were killed in the process of getting that good to the buyer, the buyer shares responsibility for supplying the motive, money.
Have you ever gone 1 mph above the speed limit? Jaywalked? Loitered? Looked at pornography before you were old enough? Groped someone before you were of age? Had sex before you were of age? Drank underaged? Smoked underaged? Had a friend give you a few vicodin when you sprained an ankle? Given yourself a few dodgy deductibles when you filed your taxes?
All these things are fairly minor, but they are all CRIMES. Crimes that people perpetrate all the time. And we'd have to put nearly everyone in jail if we strictly followed 'reality'.
You're arguing for the other side now. You just (correctly, IMO) attributed the violence of the drug trade to the fact that it is illegal.
There's no violence in the tobacco or alcohol trades, largely because they are legal and regulated. It is a logical fallacy to blame the consumer for systemic violence.
The other side argues:
a) because illegal drugs should be legal (at this point in time),
b) contributing to demand by buying or selling illegal drugs is acceptable (at this point in time).
I'm arguing, or at least trying to argue:
a) because illegal drugs are not legal (at this point in time),
b) contributing to the demand for illegal drugs by buying or selling is not acceptable due to the violence that it fuels (at this point in time).
I define something acceptable as something morally permissible. If that makes sense.
> It is a logical fallacy to blame the consumer for systemic violence.
I would be sincerely interested in this topic, if you would like to go there. :)
> I would be sincerely interested in this topic, if you would like to go there. :)
Sure, do you blame consumers for buying clothing products that were manufactured using sweatshop labor? No, because the consumer had no intent. You blame the company that operates the sweatshops.
Do you blame civilians in Africa or the Middle East for the atrocities committed against aid workers? No, because the starving civilians have no intent of hurting aid workers. You blame the corrupt governments that perpetrate the atrocities.
Your argument when it comes to drugs rests upon the combination of current legal status and some moral presuppositions. I think the question of moral acceptability is orthogonal here. It is empirically true that people will purchase and use drugs, no matter what your moral sensibilities tell you.
Blaming the consumer is a fruitless effort when it comes to actually promoting better health and safety in society.
This argument could just as well be used to claim that our government is acting immorally by continuing to enforce policies that all evidence suggests promote violence.
In symbolic terms:
government:drug laws == consumer:drugs
We can fix things on either side. Moral arguments are irrelevant -- we should fix whichever side yields the most productive result.
jfornear, you're missing the points we've all made. The drug trade only results in violence because right now, every step to bring drugs to consumers is illegal. That means that it's unmonitored, and results in violence. Since you're breaking the law either way, no matter what you do is illegal, so there's no incentive to be peaceful in your processes.
If the drug trade were to be legalized, suddenly people could profit more by accepting business regulations, and violence would lower.
The point I've made elsewhere here is that it used to be producing alcohol led to violence, thanks to the Prohibition. Once alcohol legalized, businesses started making drinks rather than criminals, and the violence stopped.
No, I agree with your point. I just take it further by holding consumers responsible for fueling that violence when they could have done otherwise, not contributed to demand by obeying the laws.
To make an analogy, it is similar to supporting sweat shop labor by buying Nikes (or whatever companies still use sweat shop labor). The argument in the case of illegal drugs is that handing over money to people engaged in violence makes it more likely the violence will continue.
Drug users are not bad people. Most drug dealers are not bad people. On my floor in college, the kid who sells drugs is a pretty cool kid: good student, active in sports. There's some social problems he runs across because he's "the kid that sells drugs," but he's a pretty cool guy. He's a typical college student who just happens to sell drugs to the kids who want to buy drugs.
That is not deserving of death. When you talk about killing somebody, you're talking about ending a life, unconditionally terminating a person's future. Some things are worth that (I will hold to my dying day that enjoying the Twilight book series is admitting your lack of will to live), perhaps, but drug selling and drug use? No. Not at all.
As I said: I tried marijuana a handful of times, and I thought it was pretty relaxing. Nobody was harmed. (To go to the extreme, if you use a vaporizer, you're not even risking lung damage, which means that your body seriously is not injured in any way, even minute.) It was voluntary on the part of myself and some friends. We were okay with paying for those drugs; the kid who sold them was fine with trading them for money.
Do I deserve to die because I voluntarily used chemicals? Does the dealer deserve to die because he gave a product to somebody who wanted it? Who is the criminal here?
Enforcing drug rules is basically punishing people not for actually doing anything bad, but for doing something that the government is telling you is a no-no. If I told you that it was bad to, say, whistle, and you whistled, and I told you I'd kill you if you didn't stop, maybe you'd stop, but that doesn't solve the real problem, which is "unalone is a dick who's setting arbitrary, pointless rules". The problem isn't your whistling, it's me.
It's fun thinking of things so black-and-white when you're young, but once you reach the ripe old age of 18, you'll start maturing a little bit.