What to do with the Hill? (Pittsburgh: house, neighborhoods, live)

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

I read your posts several times. I repeat: staggering ignorance. On this subject at least.

What is your background on this issue?

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

My vast library of drug literature was stolen from my car along with most of my other books during a cross-country move. The basic paraphrase of the statistics is something like 10% of people who experiment with ANY given drug, "hard" or "soft", develop a problem with it. Don't believe the government DARE hype. There's a HUGE difference between use and abuse of anything.

You had a vast library of drug literature that you made a point of dragging across the country and that's the extent of your statistics?

[creepsinc]

I would like to add that putting ANYTHING into one's own body is a basic individual right. Murder and rape are not. I used the word "pacified" to neutralize the argument that "drugs cause violence". If you're worried about behavior control, you should worry more about the government controlling my (and your) behavior.

[creepsinc]

Originally Posted by ExPit

You had a vast library of drug literature that you made a point of dragging across the country and that's the extent of your statistics?

By "drug literature", I mean just about every book written on the subject in the past 40 years. Should I be consulting FDA statistics, or perhaps the DEA? Or should I stick with controlled studies conducted by respected scientists who actually know what they're talking about. Forgive me for wanting to take my book collection with me when I moved across the country.

[Katarina Witt]

You're getting carried away with my example. I frankly stand by what I said. I was not equating drug use with rape and murder. I was questioning the logic. "If people are going to do (fill in the blank) anyway, why not legalize it?" Regardless of what "it" is. That is simply not logical, because it can be applied to anything.

[creepsinc]

Originally Posted by Katiana

What is your background on this issue?

Years spent studying the problem from all angles and personal experience. What's yours?

[creepsinc]

Originally Posted by Katiana

You're getting carried away with my example. I frankly stand by what I said. I was not equating drug use with rape and murder. I was questioning the logic. "If people are going to do (fill in the blank) anyway, why not legalize it?" Regardless of what "it" is. That is simply not logical, because it can be applied to anything.

Call me an unrepentant libertarian, but it SHOULD be applied to anything that doesn't directly cause physical harm to someone else. Obviously driving under the influence of anything psychoactive should remain illegal.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

By "drug literature", I mean just about every book written on the subject in the past 40 years. Should I be consulting FDA statistics, or perhaps the DEA? Or should I stick with controlled studies conducted by respected scientists who actually know what they're talking about. Forgive me for wanting to take my book collection with me when I moved across the country.

Controlled studies of course. See, I tend to agree with you on this, but for others on this forum and elsewhere that don't, if you could talk about other countries that have legalized or decriminalized drugs, talk about what they have seen, as far as addiction rates, crime rates, overall social effect over a span of five, ten, fifteen years, that kind of thing. Speaking for myself, I just don't know. That's why I asked.

[creepsinc]

Originally Posted by ExPit

Controlled studies of course. See, I tend to agree with you on this, but for others on this forum and elsewhere that don't, if you could talk about other countries that have legalized or decriminalized drugs, talk about what they have seen, as far as addiction rates, crime rates, overall social effect over a span of five, ten, fifteen years, that kind of thing. Speaking for myself, I just don't know. That's why I asked.

Well, as far as I know, there still isn't a country on earth that has legalized hard drugs. Technically, even pot is still illegal in the Netherlands. I'm more concerned with the history of drug use and the physiological aspects of it. I do know that marijuana has been used medicinally for thousands of years and we're still waiting on a fatality. Compare that to alcohol. Heroin wouldn't kill nearly as many people as it does if it was regulated. People die from drug overdoses because of purity issues.

[Katarina Witt]

You know, I studied alcoholism in grad school at the University of Colorado. I don't remember any such statistic about 10% of users developing a problem. Even if that is correct, which it may be, if you understood epidemiology you would know that 10% of a given populaton is a HUGE number.