>>Pot is such a touchy subject... on the one hand I know people who've
smoked it
>>for years with no (noticeable) ill effects, no gating themselves into
harder
>>drugs, etc etc, and then I know those (my brother first among them) for
whom
>>pot was a gateway drug, and which did ruin a large chunk of his life, and
>>has resulted in personality/brain changes -- he's slower than he was, he's
>>less emotive, less demonstrative, and there are hardcore scientific
reasons
>>for that.
>
I find it amusing that pot is called the gateway drug when nearly everyone
who smokes pot or does hard drugs or is an alcoholic smokes cigarettes, yet
nicotine is not called a gateway drug

>What scares hell out of me is, if drugs are legalized, what's to stop
>people from being as stupid with them as they are with alcohol, and getting
>behind the wheel stoned?  Not a pretty prospect, from where I sit, and just
>the thing to increase the already intolerable slaughter on the highways.
>
People who do drugs are already doing those things. That's why the charge is
"Driving under the influence" so that it doesn't matter what substance the
driver was under the influence of. Legalizing drugs doesn't change that one
way or another. At the moment there are two problems - the problems caused
by drugs being illegal, and the problems caused by the drugs themselves. If
you legalize drugs you remove one of the problems, the same problems that
were caused by prohibition of alcohol.
>
>>So I can sit here on one side of the issue and say adults should be able
to
>>do what they want,
>
>Unfortunately, some of those adults are only chronologically adults.
>They're not mature enough to have the judgement to know when to and when
>NOT to.
>
This has always been true. What illegal drugs do is put them in the path of
children, and have them sold by pushers who work to get their buyers hooked
on harder drugs. Putting them in the stores with cigarettes and alcohol will
put them on the same footing, so that fewer kids are exposed to them.
Prohibition fueled organised crime in the 20s and 30s, making drugs illegal
has fueled a huge criminal element.

>>legalize it (and tax holy hell out of it)
>
>Indeed!  Tax it to the max.
>
I'm for that

>>sitting on the other side of the issue thinking in advance of all the
people
>>who will try it once it's legal -- and how many of them will be devastated
>>by it. (or what it leads them into)
>
>Exactly . . .
>
or how many families and lives have been destroyed by illegal drugs that
wouldn't have been destroyed if it hadn't been illegal. How many people
would never have come in contact with drugs if they hadn't been in the
school yard. How many people would never have been inticed to try drugs if
they didn't have the aura of being forbidden, so that by trying it "just
once" you were bucking authority. How many people have been made criminals
by the "zero tolerance" laws, leaving children without a parent, young
people cut off from their chance to finish school and have a career. How
many people were sold "cut" drugs to get them hooked on something they were
never planning on trying.
>
>>The main problem is that there
>>seems to be a serious lack of critical thinking in so many areas of our
>>society...
>
>Amen.
>
Exactly. People are mistaking the effects of criminality for the effects of
the drugs - they're two different things.
>
Laurie you can't solve one problem by creating another Phoenix

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha