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Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

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Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I'm saying: Imagine two people who regularly consume cocaine. One of them is homeless; the other is an executive somewhere. By definition , the definition of "addiction", the first one was "addicted", and the second one wasn't. There are arguments to be made for this kind of definition. But you can't use it to say "addiction is what destroys lives, not drugs". That's a tautology. Addiction is the name we…

> you can't use it to say "addiction is what destroys lives, not drugs". Sure you can. It's perfectly reasonable to say sports injuries are what hurts people, not sports themselves. Even though by definition an injury hurts someone. Especially to make the point that what we want to focus on is reducing the injuries , not reducing the sports. Everyone understands why the distinction was made, and flagging it as a taut…

> But here's an interesting experiment: rewrite my point that "it isn't the substance that destroys lives but the medical condition of addiction" - without using the offending tautology. Maybe I'll learn something.

This can't be done. Addiction isn't a medical condition. It is, according to this characterization, a description of a set of circumstances. You cannot determine whether somebody suffers from addiction by inspecting the person's behavior or reaction to whatever they're supposedly addicted to. You make a subjective judgment about whether their life would improve if they stopped doing it. Again, this is why the field of medicine gave up on using the word.

Compare https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3303 .

> It's perfectly reasonable to say sports injuries are what hurts people, not sports themselves.

"He's not hurt because a rock hit him in the head. He's hurt because his skull is broken."

This is a terrible analysis. It tells you that the solution is to not break your skull, regardless of whether you get hit with a rock / bullet / whatever. Of course, that's impossible. The solution is to avoid the trauma that leaves you with a broken skull, not to resist the breaking.

> Especially to make the point that what we want to focus on is reducing the injuries, not reducing the sports.

To the extent that you want to reduce injuries, you abandon that goal when you define the groups as "uninjured; no problems" and "already injured; nothing to be done". If that's how you see things, you're limited to fixing injuries that have occurred; you can't take any steps to prevent or avoid them. To do so would be to admit that sports might be dangerous even if you're not yet injured.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#242
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the causation reversed. Marijuana, abortion, and gay marriage were all legalized because they became socially acceptable while illegal and the laws no longer reflected the values of society.

I admitted as such, but wouldn't you say the legalization gave an additional boost to social acceptance? Social acceptance isn't a yes/no, it's a 0-100% based on the fraction of the population that accepts it. And if marijuana was at, say, 50% acceptance before legalization, I would imagine (I'm just making these numbers up) legalization boosted it to 75%.

No, I don't think you've nailed causation of social acceptance. In Switzerland after they legalized heroin and decided it was not a legal problem but a medical problem, heroin use plummeted among young people. It became socially unacceptable.

Abortion is tricky because you can be against abortion but in favor of the right to choose. I know many people, even Christians, who hold this stance. We do know abortion rates go down when abortions are made legal. So that would seem to perhaps point to the laws not having much to do with social acceptance around abortion.

As far as marijuana we could use real numbers. Only 8% of Americans think marijuana should be illegal. So no I don't expect a big jump with legalization. I would imagine the number of people who find it socially acceptable to go from let's say 92% to maybe 93%. [1]

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/14/americans-s...

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#243
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People addicted and regularly consuming alcohol, meth (smoked, snorted, or injected), street heroin, and cocaine all suffer from significantly worse side effects than people addicted to sugar. I’ll grant you that sugar has a higher total social cost, because more people are addicted to it.

Street heroin isn't comparable because that's a complication of it being illegal. You would have to compare sugar to legalized heroin and safe injection sites like they have in Switzerland. In which case you are wrong. Heroin is a very safe drug once you eliminate the possibility of overdose, extremely well tolerated by the body aside from constipation. Which is why opiates are extremely common in hospitals and are u…

I used the term “street heroin” instead of heroin because of all the complications that come along with it being illegal. This is a thread about black markets after all.

I don’t feel like my claims are controversial at all. Take cocaine. It’s use often leads to psychosis. Snorting cocaine damages the nose significantly. Injecting cocaine is probably the worse drug for the number of punctures a person will do because of the short high and incredible addictive nature of the drug. Cocaine damages the cardiovascular system. It leads to ulcers. It decreases appetite so strongly it often leads to malnutrition. Cocaine increases the risk for seizures and strokes. Cognitive impairment often occurs after long heavy use. This is completely ignoring the social costs of cocaine use, which are significantly higher than being diabetic. The cartels don’t profit from insulin.

I’d rather be diabetic than have years of heavy cocaine use behind me. I’ve been close to people with type 2 diabetes and people that went through cocaine addiction.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#244
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because many law abiding citizens who otherwise would have never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try it They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them (and that's usually not what people ask for when they talk about legalization). Consider LSD. It's illegal, heavily so. But there's 1P-LSD, it's a "research chemical" and very similar to LSD. It has been lega…

> They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them I don't know, I'm still not convinced. I think legalization is an important step on the path to social acceptance. Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage These things used to be socially unacceptable and illegal, but they are now socially acceptable and legal Some drugs might not be socially acceptable right now , bu…

> I think legalization is an important step on the path to social acceptance. Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage

Social acceptance among whom? Half of the country votes for a party that made reversing Obergefell, the Supreme Court case that made gay marriage legal in the US, part of its party platform[1] in 2016 and 2020:

> Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary

> Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.

> Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states.

[1] https://gop.com/platform/

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#245
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people put into their bodies is their own business.

No. We live in a society. If I'm expected to help pick up the pieces when you self-destruct, it's absolutely my business.

Ok. One word: Obesity. What do?

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have to watch Adam's episode, but I watched a Netflix documentary five years ago (don't recall the name) that presented the argument that it was primarily the (cotton?) industry that lobbied to classify weed as illegal, because they wanted to destroy the hemp industry (and succeeded) as they were producing clothing. So it sounds like original bad intent (destroy competition) led to it being abused for further ba…

I'm going to be honest, the argument that hemp is a generally great material has always seemed weak to me. There are plenty of countries where growing hemp is legal, and it still never seems to get much use.

It historically has had tons of use. It was pretty much the only material used for making rope for centuries in Europe, and was used widely in building construction too. Hemp cultivation was a crucial piece of colonial Virginia’s economy, heavily promoted by the British government, and it was used for clothing, sails, and even fine textiles as far back as the Viking age (eg, https://www.nature.com/articles/srep02686).

I could provide more references but I’m typing with thumbs - they are easy to find, though.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many people (myself included) are apprehensive Well yes, a lot of the discussion is around fear of what might happen. Why isn't anyone afraid of what already is happening? Illegal recreational drugs are literally a greater than $ billion dollar a year business in the US alone. I could understand this position if recreational drugs were somewhat uncommon and the fear was that legalizing them would make them more wid…

This. Whatever we are doing now definitley does not work; drugs are destroying millions of peoples lives already, and also contributing to lots of violence caused by the black market drug trade. We've been trying "that, but MORE of it" for a few decades, and the problems caused by drugs have gotten WORSE. So, how about something different?

umvi doesn't oppose something different, above, but says there the most optimal approach may be between either of the extremes (outright prohibition vs. completely unregulated, buying off the shelf at a gas station). So if you're going to argue with him, please be sure to refute something he actually advocates for.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is supported by crime statistics that show lots of drug dealers are convicted of other crimes. I would like to point out that I used the word lots and not many, not most, not all. I specifically used the word lots. So counter statements like yours couldn't be used. And if we're going to be pedantic, I guess it's my turn. > Other types of crime require crimes against people. There area many crimes where yo…

The word "lots" is what's called a weasel word [1]. 1000 is "lots". Is it a lot if there are a million drug dealers? How does it compare to other crime correlations? Or general rates in the population? Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100% correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard…

> The word "lots" is what's called a weasel word [1]. 1000 is "lots". Is it a lot if there are a million drug dealers? How does it compare to other crime correlations? Or general rates in the population?

Let's be serious, you and I both know, I meant a high percentile. This is just a bad faith argument made after using an anedote of knowing 12 drug dealers to say a statement about a high percentile of drug dealers would commit other crimes to make money if drugs were legal. Despite the fact that a high percentile of current drug dealers commit other crime. The reason I'm not using an exact number is because I don't want someone like you saying "Well the in the US 26% don't do that" when I found a stat for differnt country. We both know what is meant.

> Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100% correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard for authority exists.

My logic is: Someone who got into selling drugs to make a profit because the barrier to entry is low would move into another area of criminality to make money because the barrier to entry is low.

Your logic is: ???

Is it that they would still sell drugs? Why don't they sell something that is legal? Is it because the barrier to entry is higher? That they just wouldn't try and make money anymore?

> Also I'd say most of those crimes are not victimless...

Drugs is not a victimless crime either. Drug users are often victims of shoddy drugs being sold with dangerous chemicals in them. And I never said they weren't victimless, I just said they weren't against a person. A company is not a person.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#249

What I find the most interesting about this article is that someone was able to be identified using a picture of their fingerprints. Thus, any photos posted online could be scoured for identification information. And with computer vision technologies becoming more mature, it means that regular video footage of people could identify them the same way in seconds or less using a wide variety of different visual traits.…

What I find incredibly disturbing is that these resources and expertise are being spent on drugs rather than child abuse materials etc.

Re: Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison

#250
post #14
post #2

What a colossal waste of time. Prosecuting someone for selling online something that is illegal in a lot of states. Mindblowing how stupid the war on drugs is.

There is considerable information back from the 80s to suggest that the US war on drugs was actually a system to enable racial discrimination. Then some years later, the ear on drugs became associated with the growth of the private prison industry and it's lobbyists. Indeed I provide no references here because it is quite an involved topic and difficult to prove given the publicly available information.

I think that it is hard for younger people (especially young affluent people) to get a sense of how big of a problem drugs can be in society. Even prohibition seems crazy now - but it was popular at the time partly because public drunkenness and abusive husbands were a big deal.

I think the fact that black people are prosecuted at higher rates or the fact that crack is prosecuted harder than cocaine is a sign of racism, but it does bug me when people assign a conspiratorial level of control to the problem. It's a lose-lose, and at least in 2020 we are eon the side of prosecuting things too harshly.

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