Lawful but Immoral

[The Dark Umbra]

Laws around the world prohibiting homosexuality, or any other sex act.

What moral right does the state have to tell people what they can and can't do in private between consenting adults?

So raping a 3 month old child is okay

wtf? I said 'between consenting adults' and you come out with this?

Just in case you really are that dense, I'll spell it out for you. Rape, by definition, is without consent, and 3 month old children are not adults.

or newborn puppy

Puppies cannot give consent, and nor are they adults.

Or what if the consenting adult is mentally retarded?

It depends how retarded, if they are capable of understanding what they are doing then yeah. If they aren't capable of understanding it, then they are not able to give informed consent.

kk got me there i didnt read about the whole consent thing. Oh side note i would say affirmative action is immoral because why should someone get something based on the color of they're skin.

 

[Sarge034]

Spoiler: Text wall inbound.

Based on the supposed logic that a government's responsibility is to protect people from themselves, which backfires almost every time it's implemented into law. The government doesn't need to be trying to regulate what we do to our bodies, that's never worked and it never will. (Also see below about the drugs funding terrorism thing)

Actually if you had bothered to look at my previous posts to find context you would have seen this.

Yea, have you considered that the government might be trying to save MY life by not allowing YOU to take a hallucinogen? For some reason, I'm ok with this. They are trying to negate the possibility of second hand smoke inhalation as well by forcing smokers to smoke in designated places. So don't start with the "it's not fair" argument.

I'm not arguing for the government to save us from ourselves. I want the government to protect me from the people who use drugs. To prove the point I am in favor of the SCOTUS decision on video games. Parents need to step up to the plate and actually parent their children. >GASP<

Source or not, it's pretty damn obvious. What you fail to understand is that the whole concept of drugs and violent crime going together stems from the fact that they're illegal. You make them legal, you remove the whole criminal element from them. Now there's virtually no connotation between your average crack user and the gang from two blocks over.

And in addition to common dealer-related crime, there's the gang aspect as well. Most gangs make the majority of their money from the fact that drugs are illegal. So do terrorist organizations. So do Latin American drug cartels (meaning it would seriously help our illegal immigration problem in the US as well, since they'd be out of power in Mexico). If a major company can produce these drugs in a field or a lab out in the open and in mass quantities, legally, those criminal groups are out of a job.

He/ She said it was a proven fact and I asked for a source, but to rebut you.....

Why don't we make rape legal as well? It would remove the whole criminal element from it. Most people get the kick from having the illegal sex so they would just stop, right? All straw men aside, selling cars is legal, but people continue to steal, fence, and/or part them. Selling DVDs is legal but there is a huge black market for those. Simply making something legal will not make the problem go away. We must weigh the pros and cons of the product to see what the best option is.

When they broke a totally arbitrary law that exists for no real reason? No, they're really not. It makes sense both morally and economically.

For all your talk of morality, you really don't understand how it works do you? You say the law is arbitrary, someone else says it is concrete. You say it exists for no real reason, someone else says it exists for excellent reasons. You say it makes sense morally and economically, someone else says it is amoral and will ruin the economy/ society. There is no one magic answer, no one uniform conclusion everyone is willing to get behind. So I stand with the law. Yes the law is not perfect and many disagree with many parts of it, but it is all we have. The law says it is illegal, and I feel those who break the law should be punished accordingly. If the law were to change I would vocally oppose it and try to get legislation passed to repeal it, but I would abide the law never the less.

Obviously the violent inmates would not be released, just the ones who hadn't actually hurt anyone else. Did he really even need to state that?

Define what you feel is "not hurting anyone else" please. Is a mom that forces her kids to live in poverty to support her habit "not hurting anyone else"? Is a man who lost his well-paying job, gets divorced, doesn't care about his kids, and is now leaching off the system "not hurting anyone else"? No matter what, the drugs will always affect those around the user in a negative way. Those who wish to legalize try to downplay this and stick to violent versus non-violent offenders. I see past the violence argument so I can understand the whole situation. Try to think about it like that for a second, you might surprise yourself. In regards to my wording in the previous post. The poster stated that drug enforcement was wrong and those convicted should be released. I pointed out a flaw in his logic.

Very backwards thinking. The whole concept of free will does not extend only to what you personally want to partake in, it extends to the point where someone should have the moral and legal right to do anything that doesn't harm or directly threaten another.

Partial agreement. Of course I don't believe I'm thinking backwards, although I guess everything is relative..... Anyway, I'm with you after that completely. I'm situational pro-choice, pro-2nd amendment, situational pro-euthanasia/suicide, and pro-prostitution. Now to explain myself. Every time I said "situational" I meant just that, decided upon in a case by case manner. I am cool with rape abortions and health/safety abortions. After that I don't know how I feel about it. I am vehemently opposed to it becoming a "morning after pill" solution, which is to say that if people were to stop using protection because the abortion is an easy out. However, if the condom was to break and the birth control was ineffective I think I would be ok because they took every precaution they could while still enjoying the benefits of being together. I am ok with terminally ill people choosing euthanasia. I would live my life up until the point I was unable to do so and then I would want to end it instead of facing the painful end.

I cannot lump illegal drugs into this because they DO "harm or directly threaten another". The family experiences emotional and financial harm. Society experiences -1 tax paying worker and +1 social loafer. That is a double whammy with the loss of one revenue stream replaced with one debt stream. One could argue that the family argument works with the euthanasia as well, but they are close to death as it is. At most they would lose six months of waiting to die while in excruciating pain. That is how I differentiate the two.

 

[StormShaun]

I think that everyon should have the ability to carry a weapon in public, but only for self defence, It would be easier to kill a evil *Insert monster or evil thing here*...it would make killing/ destorying evil things and people much more easier for us paragons.

 

[dlsevern]

SAVING YOUR LIFE!!! REALLY?

Look, the government doesn't care about you, get that into your head. The war on drugs is not about keeping YOU safe or anyone else. It is about government money, certain corporations know that marijuana has the potential to put them out of business so they pay the government large sums of money to keep the war on drugs going strong.

What businesses would suffer from the legalization of marijuana, or any other currently illegal drug?

YES, that is correct, it is mostly about marijuana. That is how the war on drugs got started that is what it is about now.

You could have fooled me..... I thought it was to protect the citizens from the drugs, those who take them, and those who use the profits to fund terrorism attacks on the US.

Do you realize that if the war on drugs ended today that drug related violence would be a thing of the past, it's been proven.

Source please.

The government would stop spending the millions of dollars it uses to prosecute, an imprison people who don't deserve it.

People who break the law are not deserving of prosecution?

Half of prison inmates housed in our jails are non-violent drug related conviction.

What about the other half? Or would talking about the violent drug related convictions completely destroy the validity of your argument?

I gotta go now but I could go on forever about this. I'm not intending to offend you or your beliefs, I just know that you aren't informed of the entirety of this matter.

I do not use drugs, so I couldn't give less of a shit about the feelings of those who do want to. Approaching the issue with that view, knowing the factual information about the drug trade funding terrorism, and seeing the effects of drugs on people I know makes me informed enough.

Good day.

Companies that would suffer economic downfall if cannabis were legal: pharmaceutical companies, the timber industry, and oil companies to name a few.

The war on drugs started because William Randolf Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers, had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain and didn?t want to see the development of hemp paper in competition. He was supported by Harry Anslinger, who had just been named the director of a new division in the Treasury Department called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger knew that opiates and cocaine wouldn't be enough to help build his agency, so he latched on to marijuana and started to work on making it illegal at the federal level. Anslinger immediately drew upon the themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. He also promoted and frequently read from "Gore Files" -wild reefer-madness-style exploitation tales of ax murderers on marijuana and sex and... Negroes. Dupont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies also got involved in the effort to outlaw cannabis. Dupont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies. All of this set the stage for The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. After two years of secret planning, Anslinger brought his plan to Congress complete with a scrapbook full of sensational Hearst editorials, stories of ax murderers who had supposedly smoked marijuana, and racial slurs and on the basis of lies, on August 2, 1937, marijuana became illegal at the federal level.

Marijuana?s criminalization is filled with:

Racism
Fear
Protection of Corporate Profits
Yellow Journalism
Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
Personal Career Advancement and Greed

So I'm having a hard time finding the articles I read about drug decriminalization significantly reducing drug-related violence but I did find this:
http://news.yahoo.com/portugal-drug-law-show-results-ten-years-experts-180013798.html

Everyone is entitled to a fair trial, you're a moron to think otherwise. Everyone has broken a law at some point in their life, small or large, and imagine what it would be like if you were told that because you broke the speed limit or you jaywalked, that you were going straight to jail, no warning, no ticket, no trial or chance to defend yourself, just jailtime. That's the kind of world you want to live in?

No, talking about the violent drug related convictions would not destroy the validity of my argument. From 1980-1997 the number of people entering prison for violent offenses doubled, while non-violent offenses tripled and drug offenses increased 11-fold. Every year since 1989 the number of people sent to State prison for drug offenses has exceeded the number of people sent to State prison for violent offenses.
?The Supreme Court upheld HUD's "one-strike and you're out" law, by which entire families may be evicted from public housing when one member is caught abusing drugs, even when other members either knew nothing about the drug abuse or did everything possible to prevent it, and the abuse did not occur on public housing authority property.
?Since 1990, the number of male prisoners grew by 77%, while the number of female prisoners increased by 108%.
?In 2000, 91,612 women were in State or Federal prison.
?Women are the fastest growing and least violent segment of prison and jail populations; 85.1% of female inmates are behind bars for non-violent offenses.
?From 1986 (the year mandatory sentencing was enacted) to 1996, the number of women sentenced to State prison for drug crimes increased 10-fold (from around 2,370 to 23,700) and has been the main factor in the increase in the imprisonment of women.
?In 1999, the US spent over $146.5 billion on the Federal, State, and Local justice systems.
?States spent $32.5 billion on Corrections alone in 1997. To compare, states spent only $22.2 billion on cash assistance to the poor.
?It costs approximately $8.6 billion a year to keep drug offenders behind bars.
?A Rand Corporation study found that additional law enforcement efforts cost 15 times as much as treatment to achieve the same reduction in societal costs, while every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves $7.46 in societal costs (societal costs include crime, violence, loss of productivity, etc.).
?In 1997, treatment costs ranged from a low of $1,800 per client to a high of $6,800 per client. To compare, the average cost of incarceration in 1999 was $26,134 per inmate.
?A recent study by researchers at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Has indicated that 48% of the need for drug treatment, not including alcohol abuse, is unmet in the United States, resulting in long waiting lists for the available treatment programs.
?Treatment decreased welfare use by 10.7% and increased employment by 18.7% after one year, according to the 1996 National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study by the Center for Substance and Treatment.

So we are spending way more money than need be imprisoning people for non-violent drug-related crimes. We are destroying families over this nonsense. Instead of helping these people kick serious drug habits, we incarcerate them. They are not hurting anyone but themselves.

Talking about drug funded terrorism, if people could grow their own, what would they need drug cartels for, thus eliminating the funding for terrorism from drugs.

Because people like you who think they know everything their is to know about this issue and that their opinion is the only one that matters, this is the reason we still have these issues.

Good day to you.