Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayfarer
Alright, I will waste my time. Wearing a seatbelt shouldn't be a law. You're not infringing upon anybody else's rights by not wearing one, you're only endangering yourself.
I'm not infringing on anybody else's rights by owning a pitbull. It becomes an infringement when my pitbull attacks someone, yes, but the fact of the matter is that 99% of pitbulls don't attack people. If you make owning pitbulls illegal, what happens to all of the people who already own pitbulls? What are they supposed to do, send their dog to an animal shelter? Because some other guy's dog attacked someone? It's ridiculous. There have been several cases in the past of people choking to death on peanuts. I guess that means your right to eat peanuts should be taken away, yeah?
You're a drug user, are you not? Why do you think drugs are illegal? Well, there are many reasons, but one, of course, is because they are believed to be dangerous by many people. And to some extent, it's true. Drugs can be very dangerous, if you don't know what you're getting into. But does that mean it was right of the government to remove your right to use them, just because some other people didn't know what they were doing and hurt themselves and/or other people under the influence of those drugs? Of course not. It doesn't make sense. Similarly, it'd be illogical to ban everyone from owning pitbulls simply because a few people didn't train them properly and they became vicious.
Yes, pitbulls attacking people is a problem. Nobody's saying that it isn't. All I'm saying is that banning people from owning them is not the answer.
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I will continue to banter with you, since you seem to actually go about it in a reasonable manner.
Okay let me explain this very simply put. You cannot compare peanuts to pit bulls. I know what you’re doing and it’s very clever, it’s called shock value. You want to take something very benign and silly and say "well we might as well just ban [insert absurd object here] if we are going to ban pit bulls because they harm people too". If it was only the owner of the pit bull that was getting attacked/killed and taking the risk, it would be comparable. Unfortunately for your arguments sake eating a peanut isn’t going to make some innocent child across the street choke. Once again you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Now your comment about the seatbelts, I agree that it is a personal freedom and at first glance I would agree that it is a silly unjust law. However, the reason that law is in place isn’t because you’re not allowed to risk your own life; it is a lot more complicated than that. Consider the idea that you were in a car wreck while not wearing a seatbelt and your bleeding to death. You are taken to the hospital but you don’t have insurance. Now are they supposed to say "sorry bud" and watch you die? Obviously this isn’t going to happen. So what ends up happening is other people end up paying for some dumb ass not wearing a seatbelt. They saw an easy way to reduce the cost to hospitals and generate money for the local economy so they created a law. \
As far as the drugs go, we could start a whole new thread about this. I think most of the drugs that are illegal should stay that way, with the exception of a few. Let me explain my opinion.
One of the main problems with drug scheduling is the way in which drugs were scheduled in the first place. Many of them were put into place to target certain minorities, this alone is a crime. Once the laws are in place, no politician has the balls to question their authority; who dare go against drug laws without being ostracized (thanks Barney Frank, Ron Paul, and all you other REAL politicians who represent the PEOPLE). Even when they want to, alcohol lobbyists spend assloads of money to make sure it doesn’t happen. I know your thinking “but people who smoke weed drink too”. That may be true, but what else is true is that people who smoke weed drink in much smaller quantities and in fewer occasions.
Another big problem is our mindset about drugs. In case you didn’t know, alcohol and tobacco are drugs. So the next time you see a anti drug commercial come on and tell you about the dangers off pot, followed by a commercial for “THIS BUDS FOR YOU!” recognize the hypocrisy. In fact it is not even an arguable matter; it is widely accepted that marijuana, ecstasy, LSD-25, and magic mushrooms are ALL less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco. Don’t believe me? How about the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology (
Recreational Drugs and their level of harm), do you believe them?
So our great American “war on drugs” (and we here in America LOVE war) has resulted in 20% of the total prison inmates, just a mere half million people (50% for marijuana alone). Well done! It only cost the country billions of dollars a year to put them there, and billions of dollars more to keep them there. Instead of spending money on unjust laws, we could save ourselves billion of dollars by taxing drugs such as marijuana. Now I know that seems strange, but think of it as something like I don’t know… say alcohol or tobacco. That way instead of yearly giving money to say Mexico, Canada, and US crime syndicates, we would be MAKING money. I have done a reasonably thorough estimate on the exact number solely based on marijuana a few months ago, and came up with a $15 billion dollar flip flop with a margin of error at about 15-25% either way. That means instead of our country losing approximately $10 billion dollars, we could generate $5 billion.
Besides all that, mandatory minimum sentences do nothing other than over crowd already crowded prisons. All it achieves is taking a non violent and often otherwise law abiding citizens and turn them into criminals. Instead of dealing with the problem (drug addiction) you let them rot in jail for a while and give them a criminal record making them practically unemployable to anyone. So what do they do, take a job at McDonalds for the rest of their life and live in poverty? No they do the only option left on the table… illegal crime.
One might even go as far as to say the war on drugs “Is about as effective as solving an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum” (song reference… see even my rants contain musical connotations).
EDIT - I forgot to mention, the United States has higher drug use rates than the Netherlands where many drugs are legal (ie marijuana)
Drug Use by Country - Featured Image on BuzzFeed