Thread: Why are drugs illegal?

Now i can understand how drugs like Heroin, Cocaine and PCP are illegal. but why are marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms and LSD illegal? let's look at some of the arguments

Argument: They impair your judgment.
Response: Alcohol does the same

Argument: Tobacco and Alcohol have been part of our culture for a long time
Response: Marijuana and mushrooms have been part of other cultures for long periods of time. Does this mean that their culture is less important than ours? This does not apply to LSD though.

Argument: They are highly addictive.
Response: Most psychologists will say that they do not have much addictive potential and Nicotine is be very addictive.

Argument: They are very harmful
Response: Only one study has suggested that Marijuana causes lung cancer and other studies have shown that Marijuana smokers do not have higher lung cancer rates. There have not been any cases (that i know of) of people overdosing on Marijuana, LSD or mushrooms. While people have overdosed on alcohol and we all know that tobacco causes lung cancer.

feel free to discuss/poke holes in my arguments.

Prohibition obviously didn't work when it was tried for alcohol, and it doesn't work for drugs. The reasons for the laws against drugs are much more complicated than just trying to get people not to use them.

There is a lot of money being made on both sides by keeping so many drugs in the black market. It has nothing to do with what seems logical and what a free society should allow individuals to choose for themselves.

It's politics and money, therefore rational arguments are useless.

It's politics and money, therefore rational arguments are useless

ah, that make perfect sense

i'm pretty certain people have died as a result of mushrooms and LCD

i doubt that the LD50 for psilocybin is 280mg/kg which is like twice that of caffine and a usual recreational dose is 10-50mg and i don't think that there is a LD50 for LSD

Originally Posted by Pyrofan1

ah, that make perfect sense

Not that they shouldn't be pointed out. It may change someday, as more people stop and think about it, and get sick of all the people incarcerated for victimless crimes.

I think it's already changing. I know that in colorado you can legally have 1 gram of Marijuana.

Because they are a threat to your precious enslavement.

I know that in colorado you can legally have 1 gram of Marijuana.

Fantastic. That doesn't help.

Drugs can be medicine. Don't be suprised if they ban the really good medicine. Then who would profit from sickness. No-one. See the idea of it. Diabolical.

If you want to get yourself extremely frustrated and baffled out of your skull, argue with somebody who thinks marijuana should be illegal while alcohol should be legal. The inconsistency in that stance is so enormous that it absolutely blows my mind that there are people out there who don't see it. It is insane. I have seen so many people out of control and very dangerous to themselves and others because of alcohol. I have lost friends to alcohol. People are dying of alcohol overdoses and drunk driving wrecks all over the world right this second. But not one person in the history of the world has ever died of a marijuana overdose. It is impossible. Marijuana also makes people less likely to be violent, and it does not impair driving anywhere near as much as alcohol. The inconsistency in the law is just ridiculous, and the fact that it remains really lowers my faith in humanity. Not one person should ever have gone to jail for owning or selling marijuana. It is sick.

LSD and psilocybin are nondeadly and nonaddictive, so it is baffling that they are illegal. Those are drugs that don't even work well when you do them a second day in a row. There is no good argument that they should be illegal while alcohol should be legal.

I think there are a bunch of reasons for the illegality of nonlethal psychedelic drugs. There were corrupt reasons for their illegality, and further corruption of different kinds and large scale ignorance have kept them illegal. Marijuana was made illegal because it was popular among Mexican Americans and the government thought making marijuana illegal would slow down Mexican immigration and encourage Mexicans to leave the U.S. in large numbers. LSD was made illegal because it was associated with the hippies of the Vietnam War era, and conservatives despised the hippies. I'm not sure about the other psychedelics. They remain illegal because older conservative people associate the drugs with hippies and laziness and in many cases with false idolization. They see them as spiritual agents that are not Christian and therefore must be evil. There is also a lot of ignorance about those drugs. Most people who think LSD should be illegal probably couldn't tell you jack about it but are still convinced that it turns people into killers and that people can overdose on it. One of my brother's school teachers once talked about how her house was robbed and figured that the guy who burglarized her house must have been on marijuana. That type of ignorance does a lot to keep our drug laws the way they are. Also, the alcohol industry makes a fortune off the fact that sometimes people drink just because they cannot find their usual drugs. It is very common for pot smokers to run out of pot and not have access to another bag for a few days and use alcohol as a subsitute, unless they have access to LSD or mushrooms or something. The alcohol executives know that, and they have a lot of money and influence. I think organized crime probably has something to do with the fact that marijuana remains illegal since they know how to dominate an illegal market and because drugs cost so much more when they are illegal. A lot of pharmaceutical companies were take a major dive if marijuana became illegal. That includes companies that make medicine for nausea, body aches, insomnia, restlessness, glaucoma, and all kinds of other things. Those companies have a great deal of money and lobby influence also.

I think all of those factors come together and keep drugs illegal. I hope it changes, but it is going to take a great deal of social disgust with the illegality of those drugs for that to happen.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

It's politics and money, therefore rational arguments are useless.

haha that pretty much sums it up.

btw can you get addicted to aspirin?

btw can you get addicted to aspirin?

i would assume in the same way as other pain killers.

well i didn't know drugs were so easy to make!
But they still don't touch alcohol on a criminality basis. If you were caught with fruit and yeast, in doesn't necessarily mean your making alcohol, its essentially unprovable. Alcohol can be made by taking a trip to your local store, no fuss, no suspicion. Doing the same for drugs is far harder.
You guys cited birdseed as a source of weed seeds. For bird seed you need a specialist store, surely, and if it was a reliable technique the government and police would soon learn about it and deal with it.
And if your caught with weed seeds, surely it will be very easy to prosecute an individual with conspiracy or an attempt to commit a crime.
Moreover, the knowledge required to ferment alcohol can be found in any science text book. Creating drugs is far harder information to come by for the general public (heck, i didn't know many of these methods until today).

But seriously, making alcohol illegal is an unpoliceable task: the evidence to prosecute a person, would be dubious: he was carrying fruit and yeast! Whereas I cannot say the same for drugs: he was caught carrying drug seeds, or, he had bird feed, and yet has shown no history of a liking for birds, or he made a trip to the forest to pick mushrooms! Come on. Surely, Alcohol is substantially more difficult to prohibit, and punish offenders when compared to drugs. Alcohol is at a whole different level.


And, Universal mind said that people should have a right to harm themselves. Ofcourse, I agree when their acts do not affect others. But the problem here is deciding where to draw the line. In Britain, we have a Public health service, which means people who unecessarily harm themselves cost the taxpayer, maybe this does not apply to America. Yet, aditionally, coming from a socialist point of view, people also owe something to the state, and hence they should try to be the best that they can be, particularly relating to employment. Impairing ones health does not help this end.

We try to allow some open discussion of this topic. It still goes by the way side. Inevitably the where and how to obtain and find specifics on drugs in discussed.

I think that in itself is an argument against rational thinking.

- Accountability for your own actions.

It does effect more than the user.How obtuse can you possibly be?
I have written, thought and deleted four times now. Why? Because it is apparent that no matter how I word it, it will not sink in.

An argument can be brought to the table, but not comprehension.

Originally Posted by psychology student

well i didn't know drugs were so easy to make!
But they still don't touch alcohol on a criminality basis. If you were caught with fruit and yeast, in doesn't necessarily mean your making alcohol, its essentially unprovable. Alcohol can be made by taking a trip to your local store, no fuss, no suspicion. Doing the same for drugs is far harder.

First of all, alcohol is a drug. It does not have any legitimate reason to get some special exception from the label "drug". Alcohol is a drug, and it is one of the most dangerous ones there is. Also, buying morning glory seeds, growing a salvia plant, going mushroom picking on your friend's farm, and mixing ayahuasca vine and chacruna that came in the mail in inconspicuous boxes are all easier to do than making alcohol and raise the same amount of suspicion, which is about none.

Originally Posted by psychology student

And, Universal mind said that people should have a right to harm themselves. Ofcourse, I agree when their acts do not affect others. But the problem here is deciding where to draw the line. In Britain, we have a Public health service, which means people who unecessarily harm themselves cost the taxpayer, maybe this does not apply to America. Yet, aditionally, coming from a socialist point of view, people also owe something to the state, and hence they should try to be the best that they can be, particularly relating to employment. Impairing ones health does not help this end.

Then what do you think of banning high fat foods? Refined sugar? Tobacco (It kills 1/3 of its users.)? Not exercising? Lack of sleep? How far should the government go in telling us how healthy our lifestyles have to be? All of those things I just listed are worse for your health than the general frequency of use of most psychedelics.

Originally Posted by Mrs. Jones

haha that pretty much sums it up.

btw can you get addicted to aspirin?

OH yeah. You also build up a tolerance, just like every other drug, and need to take more and more for the same effect...

And that's when the ulcers start to appear in your stomach.

Originally Posted by Pyrofan1

i would assume in the same way as other pain killers.

Not really true.

OTC painkillers (Aspirin, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofin, etc) have a mainly psychologically addictive quality. Let's say you take them for headaches. Then your brain basically tells itself, "I have a headache. I know that (painkiller) will get rid of it. I need to have (painkiller) to get rid of this headache." You'll find that you won't be able to get rid of your headache without taking that drug.

Perscription painkillers are almost all Opiates. Morphine, Codeine, and then the derivatives of other major opioids (oxycodone, oxycontin, etc). These are physically addictive in the same way that Heroin, an opioid, is. That's just one reason they are perscription. They bind to your neurotransmitters and pretty much won't let go.

I'm pretty certain people have died as a result of mushrooms and LCD and the addictive properties are more mental rather then physically, so while it is easier to stop smoking something like marijuana then, say, stopping doing cocaine, that doesn't mean it isn't a difficult process.

Reading over that, I'm not sure if that last bit was very clear..

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