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.

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

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ah, that make perfect sense

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

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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

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Originally Posted by Pyrofan1

ah, that make perfect sense

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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.

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

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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.

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Fantastic. That doesn't help.

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how so? an eighth is ~3.5 grams

You are allowed to grow a plant. Otherwise it's just tyranny. I don't care if you say your allowed a little bit of it. It only becomes widely useful when you grow crops of it and distribute evenly integrating into society.

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distribute evenly integrating into society.

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i think that's already happened.

You think wrong. Prision is where you will go if you grow some. Police say so. (to punish and enslave)

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Prision is where you will go if you grow some.

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only if you get caught

Exactly. That's the spirit. Take the law into your own hands. I highly recommend it. Just don't lose. Remember how many police and secret police and intelligence agencies and armies are against you. And don't lose.

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.

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Originally Posted by Universal Mind

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.

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Same here.

I hate to think about because I get mad about where my tax dollars are going.

The "war on drugs" is just another way to appropriate money by taxing the people and get them to willingly part with their money so they can use it to research military technology. Did you know that stealth technology was initially engineered and perfected using the money from the war on drugs? Even though it was never used in a single mission that it was originally created for. That's why bloated secretive government sucks.

In 1989, the U.S. invaded Panama, supposedly to root out the dictator and international drug runner Manuel Noriega. President Bush portrayed Noriega as a brutal dictator and vowed to "end 21 years of dictatorship" by invading the country and arresting Noriega. Bush failed to mention that Noriega had been on the CIA payroll for 10 years-including the year 1976, when Bush headed up the CIA-collecting up to $100,000 annually.

The U.S. invasion of Panama, justified in part as a war on drugs, is only one example of U.S. hypocrisy when it comes to combating "narcoterrorism." Not only did key U.S. officials wine and dine Noriega throughout the 1970s and 1980s with full knowledge of his involvement in the drug trade, but Noriega's successor, Guillermo Endara-handpicked by the U.S.- was equally if not more involved in narcotics trafficking. In fact, Endara, as nearly all other senior government officials who were given Washington's stamp of approval, was head of a Panamanian bank known for laundering drug money.

Currently, the U.S. claims to be waging a "war on drugs" by funding the Colombian government, which is the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid. Yet a 1994 Amnesty International report showed that government-supported paramilitary groups, which have killed 20,000 people since 1986 - many of them human rights workers, union leaders, and heads of political organizations-are knee-deep in the drug trade. Many of the death squad leaders responsible for atrocities in Columbia were trained at the SOA. More than 10,000 Colombian military personnel have been trained at the SOA-more than any other country.
http://www.peaceactioncny.org/Images...bombers_b2.jpg

Oh, Ron Paul is against the war on drugs :D

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Not one person should ever have gone to jail for owning or selling marijuana. It is sick.

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Indeed.

The propaganda has spread far and wide, too.

Here in the island country of Japan, most are so ignorant to marijuana that I've been asked many times if it's an injection drug like heroin. LOLZ.

I agree, i remember my health teacher saying once that there are no such things as natural drugs. she said that all drug are synthesized from toxic chemical which they don't remove from the finished product. and when i brought up things like mushrooms, marijuana and peyote she said i was just flat out lying.

The 'health teacher'' lol. Lets all trust the health teacher.

What about DMT? or any of that strong hillusination types.

If you do drugs, you will become addicted. Then you will steal from other people for drug money. Finally, you will either kill someone, be killed, or end up in prison. This happens every single time someone does drugs. Nobody escapes from drugs, unless you absolutely never try them. That's why they are illegal, DUH!!!

But alcohol is good. It only kills more people than every other drug combined (besides lung cancer from cigs... if you want to count that), and is physically more addicting than anything else besides heroin.

So don't do drugs, only alcohol. But you have to wait till you're 21!... Because 21 is the magic age where you are automatically mature enough to drink it. If you are under 21 when you drink it, you will die.

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Originally Posted by LucidFlanders

What about DMT? or any of that strong hillusination types.

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DMT is in your body right now. It is a neurotransmitter produced by the pineal gland. We all have it in our bodies. Lock up everybody!

I'm glad you mentioned DMT. That is a drug that is not deadly, when people are on it they would not even consider trying to go anywhere and wouldn't be able to if they did, and the idea of somebody being addicted to DMT is just hilarious. I would love to see somebody argue why DMT should be illegal.

The law sucks. Legalise drugs and you'll break an enormous vicious cycle in which most people who made those laws get money.

Drugs have no reason to be completely banished. But I don't think they should be used in public, either (just like cigarretes). Alcohol is a bit different though.

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Originally Posted by Universal Mind

DMT is in your body right now. It is a neurotransmitter produced by the pineal gland. We all have it in our bodies. Lock up everybody!

I'm glad you mentioned DMT. That is a drug that is not deadly, when people are on it they would not even consider trying to go anywhere and wouldn't be able to if they did, and the idea of somebody being addicted to DMT is just hilarious. I would love to see somebody argue why DMT should be illegal.

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I find it hilarious that it's one of the most illegal substances known to man, yet we have it in our brains creating our dreams. Police should lock the world up for breaking the law every night. Hell, not only do humans have it, but it's in every eco system. WHO THE HELL MAKES THESE LAWS? they break them everytime they sleep. I'm not gonna say sure, go do drugs. I wont do drugs, my moms a bum on the street with aids, and into needles, booze, lieing, pan handling etc. i don't wanna turn out like her, but damn some of the drug laws are insane. INSANE I TELL YA! weed is one of the most harmless drugs, isn't it? yet illegal, and not even addictive, nor able to kill you from overdosing. Just relaxes you i hear, tried it once. Maybe they made those hillusination drugs illegal because the images and how strong they are? i mean you aint going to go "AHHH" in your head from smoking weed, or marijuana.