Fourth Amendment Destroyed

[Craigs]

Sodaholic said:

I think that in cases like that, the person who took the drugs should be held directly responsible for their actions, not the drugs or the action of taking them. The way I look at it is: you are assuming responsibility for whatever you do on drugs, even if you would never have done the actions when sober. You are the one making the decision to take drugs in the first place (obviously you'd be sober to make the decision in the first place, nobody's born high), so it is the individual who should take blame, not some substance.

I think in this case, you have no idea what you're talking about. With drugs like PCP or other hallucinogens, people don't exactly have a lot of control over what they're doing because half the time, they don't know what the fuck is going on. Also drugs like meth have been proven to have long term psychological problems. On top of that, a lot of these drugs can cause physical damage as well. Cocaine for example can cause seizures and heart attacks.

So yeah, drugs are bad. Use your fucking brain and avoid using them.

[Scripten]

There's a fine line crossed there, though. Alcohol, for example, can cause a boatload of problems and is more intoxicating than a lot of "lighter" drugs. You'll never be able to outlaw alcohol, or tobacco, for that matter, reasonably, so the government does what it does best, taxes the shit out of people for it.

I'll never use drugs. I also have no desire to smoke or drink. But from an economic standpoint, legalizing some drugs could do more good than harm to the general populace. Obviously, drugs like PCP, meth, cocaine, heroin, etc, need to stay illegal, since they have very direct, very fast, and very harmful effects that can hurt more than just the user.

[GreyGhost]

Shadow Dweller said:

What if I'm taking a shit and can't answer when they knock on my door?

Whatever else you do - DON'T FLUSH. ;-)

Craigs said:

I think in this case, you have no idea what you're talking about. With drugs like PCP or other hallucinogens, people don't exactly have a lot of control over what they're doing because half the time, they don't know what the fuck is going on.

Are you saying that people are not responsible for their actions while under the influence of self-administered drugs?

[Craigs]

GreyGhost said:

Are you saying that people are not responsible for their actions while under the influence of self-administered drugs?

I'm saying they don't have any control over what they do while under the influence of drugs. I'm not saying they're not responsible for taking the drugs n the first place. They're responsible for what they put in their bodies but at the same time, there's a reason these drugs are illegal. They change you, and almost always for the worst. I've met a few junkies in my life and I can tell you right now, drugs almost seem to turn them into a completely different person.

[Lila Feuer]

I agree with Craigs. I know all too well what it is like to deal with a junkie, without going into personal details.

[40oz]

I too have some friends that are meth heads, and others that shoot up and do all sorts of pills and are basically zombies as a result.

I just find it ridiculous about how oppressed everyone feels here. If you aren't doing things illegally in the first place, the police shouldn't suspect you of illegal activity. I'd be surprised if I have any police interaction more than once a month. And you're all freaking out like now all the police officers are just gonna snap and go on some wild power trip and ruin everyone's lives. Like police are knocking on your door every day and the only thing saving your ass is that they can't get a warrant. Just deal with police officers like human beings and everything will be fine.

I'm not a goody-two-shoes either. I don't necessarily agree with everything the law prohibits, In fact I disagree with the entire direction society is leaning in, but I respect myself enough to know that things like the law are insurmountable unless I pursue a political career. In my current state in addition to the state I want to be in in the future, I can't do anything about it. So breaking the law, whether I think it's right or not, serves no benefits.

To me this all just sounds like bitching that the Cyberdemon needs to be removed from Doom because it's a really difficult monster, and then proceeding to make me feel differently about it by saying that "the game is already hard enough as it is" and "I can't wait till you get hit with that rocket, then you'll know how hard they really are"

[myk]

40oz said:
It's obvious you guys spend more time on the internet than you do in the real world.

What is obvious is that someone who takes what the authorities establish for granted would make wide and wild generalizations about a bunch of people that disagree with what he's saying.

Police officers, however, have to go through years at a police academy just to go out on the streets. It's not like a "hey I feel like making people feel oppressed and insecure, im gonna go be a cop" type situation. It's moreso a job than it is exploitable authority. If you know anyone who's ever went to a police academy you'd probably think differently.

Knowing someone who went to a police academy doesn't do much. It's like knowing someone who worked somewhere, knowing there are many scams and shitty business deals but never having come upon their negative effects. Why? Because day by day, they are not significant compared to harmless behavior, even when they are significant enough to cause harm in specific situations. I've known people who consume or make drugs, have consumed some, yet never experienced any drug conflicts or issues. Should I take my experience to think the drug production and distribution business is harmless? That would be an analogy with your idea about police forces.

Craigs said:
Really? I just did a bit of research, and it looks like you missed out on a few things. In addition to having a high school diploma they must also have a fairly clean record, as in no past felonies whatsoever, so it's no, it's not like just any psychopath can join.

You really think questionable people don't obtain such things? The more authoritarian or shitty a political environment (and consider your recent history), the easier it gets for "psychos" to get into the security forces. Certain parties and sectors have a degree of demand for them, even. I would know, living in a country that had various and bloody dictatorships. Though the years, their imprints on the security forces have been hard to wash away.

So yeah, drugs are bad. Use your fucking brain and avoid using them.

I use some occasionally. Alcohol, which can drive people pretty "crazy" while in effect, more or less regularly, among them. I should avoid it? Why is that? While I would agree intoxicants need regulation, and more so the stronger they get, you can't judge how they will be used or their effects except against cases that are problematic. Pretty much as with anything. Else you might as well ban scissors, for example, because you can easily use them to poke someone's eye out.

Yes, drugs can be dangerous, but most legislation about them these days is Manichaean, demonizing intoxicants, and it treats its adult users like children, to a good degree so that it can be abused politically for authoritarian reasons in both internal and external affairs.

40oz said:
I'm not a goody-two-shoes either. I don't necessarily agree with everything the law prohibits, In fact I disagree with the entire direction society is leaning in, but I respect myself enough to know that things like the law are insurmountable unless I pursue a political career. In my current state in addition to the state I want to be in in the future, I can't do anything about it. So breaking the law, whether I think it's right or not, serves no benefits.

I would label that an opportunist conformist. Knowing that politics, especially democratic policy, is heavily about mass cultural pressure, I find that stance disagreeable as I value ant-like influences that eventually cause great effects in collective aggregation.

[dew]

Craigs said:

So yeah, drugs are bad. Use your fucking brain and avoid using them.

i think this sweeping generalization is why no war on drugs can be even remotely effective. drugs are a no-no, forbidden topic, they equal to social excommunication... yet they cover a wide range of banned substances from weed to pcp. drugs can be bad, i get that, but you immediatelly jumped to the worst case scenarios, drawing a false picture about the whole issue. with all drugs being on the same (ridiculously long) list of banned substances, people stop thinking about differences and miss key information to make their own decisions. they gotta use them in secrecy and rely on advices from pushers and other users - that's where the risk comes from.

smoking weed is less dangerous to your body than drinking alcohol, sniffing paint thinner is more dangerous to your brain than shooting up heroin. you GOTTA use your brain anyways, so why follow an arbitrary list created by a non-descript committee? they'd have to ban nearly fucking everything to protect brainless drones from hurting themselves and the list as is criminalizes perfectly reasonable people. hell, if someone wants to try pcp, make him pay an exorbitant amount of money, strap him into a one-sleeved jacket in a padded cell and let's go. you can't prevent people from obtaining it - it's cheap and easy to obtain with the cartels everywhere, so give people information and a safe, regulated opportunity. it simply can't get worse than what we already have. oh and with drugs legal & controlled by the state, the government and the police can relocate their manpower from harrassing drug owners to pursuing license violators, heh.

so yeah, drugs can be bad. how about letting me use my fucking brain and decide for myself?

[Shaikoten]

40oz said:

I too have some friends that are meth heads, and others that shoot up and do all sorts of pills and are basically zombies as a result.

For how much you talk shit about people who enjoy being on the internet, and how everyone must learn to enjoy REAL LIFE, your own real life seems pretty trashy if you're reduced to hanging out with meth heads.

Just sayin.

[Sharessa]

Craigs said:

I'm saying they don't have any control over what they do while under the influence of drugs. I'm not saying they're not responsible for taking the drugs n the first place. They're responsible for what they put in their bodies but at the same time, there's a reason these drugs are illegal. They change you, and almost always for the worst. I've met a few junkies in my life and I can tell you right now, drugs almost seem to turn them into a completely different person.

On the flip side, I've known a few people who have done every drug known to man and are still intelligent and productive members of society. I believe that an intelligent person who does their research can use any drug responsibly.

[Lila Feuer]

Virtually everyone I know has done something, two of them whom said "everything in the book" so to speak at one point in their life, but they got away from that shit. Minus one. A little bit of responsibility does go a long way. But either way if you stay in there for too long with the hard shit, you won't come back out. It's amazing the risks that selfish people will take out for themselves, especially when their own family and/or friends have to be involved in it. It's typical when it's an otherwise bright 15 year old who lowers himself to a level of talking smack and doesn't need "intervention" from the people that actually give a shit about him, and it's even more outrageous when it's a 45 year old with a wife and kid. Sure everyone I know just about drinks/smokes, and another does marijuana in-occasionally, but they seem to know what the fuck they're doing. You can only imagine how hard I cracked down on that last one though, considering I've lost a friend to the shit. Twice.

[lupinx-Kassman]

40oz said:

I just find it ridiculous about how oppressed everyone feels here. If you aren't doing things illegally in the first place, the police shouldn't suspect you of illegal activity.

Police are human too, and like anyone else can make mistakes.

[Sharessa]

Cyanosis said:

Virtually everyone I know has done something, two of them whom said "everything in the book" so to speak at one point in their life, but they got away from that shit. Minus one. A little bit of responsibility does go a long way. But either way if you stay in there for too long with the hard shit, you won't come back out. It's amazing the risks that selfish people will take out for themselves, especially when their own family and/or friends have to be involved in it. It's typical when it's an otherwise bright 15 year old who lowers himself to a level of talking smack and doesn't need "intervention" from the people that actually give a shit about him, and it's even more outrageous when it's a 45 year old with a wife and kid.

My parents did a ton of drugs throughout their 20s, then they eventually got tired of it and decided to have kids instead. They kept smoking pot for a while, and only my mom ever stopped drinking. But yeah. They did pretty much everything, from pot to acid, to PCP to cocaine. They didn't mess with heroin or meth, though, thankfully (though my mom was into amphetamines for a while). Even so, they turned out relatively normal people with kids and a house and everything...for a while, but the end of that is another story all together.

Sure everyone I know just about drinks/smokes, and another does marijuana in-occasionally, but they seem to know what the fuck they're doing. You can only imagine how hard I cracked down on that last one though, considering I've lost a friend to the shit. Twice.

and another does marijuana in-occasionally

You can only imagine how hard I cracked down on that last one though, considering I've lost a friend to the shit. Twice.

marijuana

lost a friend

Wat.

[Technician]

The only way marijuana can kill someone is if you choke on a meatball sub during a case of the munchies.

[Lila Feuer]

Hollowed out the inside of their head and left them an empty shell of a former person, not literal death.

[Technician]

Cyanosis said:

Hollowed out the inside of their head and left them an empty shell of a former person, not literal death.

Wat? What dope?

[Lila Feuer]

Weed, pot, Fisher Price's My First Drug, generally tends to stupefy the impressionable youth due to peer pressure from f r i e n d s and ends up leading them onto worse shit. But I'm guessing it didn't really help that the last one was also fucking around with pills, which is never the way to go. Either way he's a fucking moron and I won't miss him.

[dew]

Cyanosis said:

Weed ... ends up leading them onto worse shit.

did a police officer tell you this in elementary school or what? the gateway drug has to be the most ridiculous, retarded myth in the whole topic.

[Lila Feuer]

Mind my arguments, for they can be mixed, at the same time I'm trying to see the good in something, I will find something just as bad.

But no, people I know who more or less started out with the same thing eventually worked up to cocaine and worse. The naivety of these so-called intellectual mindsets associated with the lesser drugs that they think they know what they're doing always works against them in the end. It's a long trek back up once you've hit rock bottom. One of my friends, who started around 17 or so, thought it was all cool. By the time he was barely 19 he was snorting coke, popping pills and staying up for 36 hours or more just being a fucking animal. Tore his family apart and had to be forced to go to rehab, has a lot of burns and scars from half the stupid shit he did, and he's not allowed to even be around a few family members because of how crazy he got.

And everyone, everywhere always says the exact same thing about halting further exploration and it isn't worth it at all, no matter how much fun you have, no matter how many corners you cut and things you avoid, that road will always lead to the same place. He said the same thing about weed, it'll only be a few times. Friends and curiosity pressured him onto cocaine and pills, only a few times. Yeah only a few thousand dollars in hospital pills and only a few thousand lectures. I say give it up, you're going to ruin your life. Quit while you're ahead.

As for non-addicts and weed in itself, it is hardly bad. It's only a bad thing if bad things come from it. If you and your friends smoke some weed every now and then to take the pressure off, it really won't do you any harm. It's little different from consuming alcohol, caffeine, nicotine or other such stimulants, other than the fact that society hasn't placed a stigma on these yet. My longtime friend smokes weed but she is in her 20s and therefore more responsible with use. It isn't an everyday thing. More like once and a while. So as stated above, if you must do it, do it a few times and then get it out of your system. And if it's causing problems, then just drop it altogether.

But here's the thing with weed, it is the least dangerous thing you could be doing, true, but as you know quite well, the devil is in the details. He takes his sweet, sweet time to release his venom into you. And weed's favorite victim to mangle and decimate? Your ambition. Ten times out of ten.

I'd be all for supporting humanity's habits, hence the call for legalization. Legalization, slight taxing, and regulation will ensure a large amount of it will be looked after, grown properly, and the governments can profit from it as well, therefore injecting more money back into the economy. But if we can't be the least bit responsible about it than we're better off not having it at all.

[Macro11_1]

dew said:

did a police officer tell you this in elementary school or what? the gateway drug has to be the most ridiculous, retarded myth in the whole topic.

I think that its just an oversimplification of a causal chain.

your friend starts smoking weed, you start smoking weed because he said its fun and you have fun times with him while smoking it. Then you are exposed to a new circle of people who you would have had little contact with beforehand, who in turn have their own vices and such.

Really it just increases exposure... sort of like real life advertising... word of mouth if you will.

So I think that police officers say that because people don't want to take the time to think about what they are doing and just do it... which is one of the reasons why advertising is effective.

To say that smoking weed WILL get you addicted to other drugs is just a way to get the message across simply and effectively to an audience who has no tools... (frame of reference, time, experience... ect) to want to think or deal with these sort of problems.

tl;dr Your right and wrong.
Side note: this is just my own reasoning... and as such can be viewed by every one else as an opinion. If you take it further than that... well I may or may not want to argue it heh.

[hex11]

The way it works is: caffeine and nicotine help keep the capitalist machine going, so it's all good. Weed makes people want to pig out and bum around instead of work, so it's not cool. Especially these days in the new, new, new global economy, where americans get to jockey each other for low-wage jobs while their debts escalate. The hard drugs, those just function as a natural IQ test. You can try to stop nature's course for a while, but you're just wasting your energy, and it will prevail in the end. All this time, the government has really been waging a war on common sense.

This post dedicated to gggmork, he can pull this style off better than me. Anyway it's bed time for bonzo.

[GreyGhost]

Craigs said:

I'm saying they don't have any control over what they do while under the influence of drugs.

How does that absolve them of responsibility for the consequences of their actions? If they take the stuff, knowing it's illegal and can have nasty side-effects then wake up covered in someone else's blood - who's to blame? Do we put their drug-induced Mr Hyde on trial?

They change you, and almost always for the worst. I've met a few junkies in my life and I can tell you right now, drugs almost seem to turn them into a completely different person.

I've seen the same happen with prescribed medication - mostly anti-depressants - and it's often not a pretty sight, the only mitigating circumstance being that someone else decided they were better that way.

[Lila Feuer]

If they're aware of what they're doing and the risks they are taking, doesn't that make them responsible? As for anything that happens outside of their control, it is a byproduct of the drug's properties. And what about the dealer(s), for delivering this shit to begin with in the first place? Never hear anyone ripping on the suppliers.

And as for medicine, ever so true, I have a violent grudge against the pharmaceutical companies. I've been through one truly lousy psychiatrist at a young age, who didn't even want to help me. And when I had one of my breakdowns I got slapped on Paxal, which only served to dumb me down instead of making my problems go away. Never again.

[40oz]

Shaikoten said:

Just sayin.

They were friends before they became zombies. They aren't very interesting to hang out with when they're tripping and too paranoid to go outside once in a while, stay home and listen to music, watch movies, and play video games all the time.

dew said:

did a police officer tell you this in elementary school or what? the gateway drug has to be the most ridiculous, retarded myth in the whole topic.

Everyone I've ever met who does these things has smoked weed before doing them. Weed is just really light and if you like it enough you want something that's stronger and more effective at getting you a better crazier high. I don't think it's a gateway drug in everyone's case, I know plenty people who smoke weed and only weed and would never dream of doing anything else, but everyone I know who has dropped acid or takes percasets, or snorts cocaine has smoked weed before. So I wouldn't dismiss it right away if I were you.

[D_GARG]

hah I have a friend who totaly jumped himself with such shit, he regret it since our society is a double moralic piece of shit; drugs is wrong, they do anyway drugs, get druck/stoned wake up next morning not knowing they just fucked 2dudes/chics last night kkeping pretending themselves innicent like romeo fucking julia (haha games with words).

oh how I can rage and laugh at their stupidness AT THE SAME TIME

[myk]

hex11 said:
The way it works is: caffeine and nicotine help keep the capitalist machine going, so it's all good. Weed makes people want to pig out and bum around instead of work, so it's not cool. Especially these days in the new, new, new global economy, where americans get to jockey each other for low-wage jobs while their debts escalate.

If I'm not mistaken, marijuana got targeted because it's associated to hemp, and the drug was more or less used as an excuse to ban a resource that could bring one industry to compete with others. The same policy became useful for the "gateway drug" idea to have a greater number of people to harass about drugs, and to place military bases in developing countries.

40oz said:
I don't think it's a gateway drug in everyone's case, I know plenty people who smoke weed and only weed and would never dream of doing anything else, but everyone I know who has dropped acid or takes percasets, or snorts cocaine has smoked weed before. So I wouldn't dismiss it right away if I were you.

Reading in context I can tell dew isn't saying that it isn't used to introduce people to other drugs. Check out Cyanosis' posts and how he generalizes and says things like "always works against them in the end". The point is that the law bans the drug because some people get dragged into addiction with more serious drugs after trying it, and punishes users in general with that reason. It's like meeting a group of people of a race that are assholes and concluding the whole race is evil, insisting upon the fact when there is contradicting evidence elsewhere. What is being dismissed is making a general case out of a particular case. The "gateway drug" idea becomes even more retarded when it's clear that pot appears around or with more potent intoxicants because they are all banned, so similar types of dealers or establishments end up distributing them. The place that sells marijuana, that is illegal, may also sell cocaine, which is likewise clandestine.