Oh no I just made that cliche comparison, I can almost see this forming into another 'why cannabis prohibition is ironic' post. With that aside, this isn't anywhere near the scope of what really pisses me off at the moment.
A few minutes ago I was reading up on the US War on Drugs, when I found this gem by the ONDCP:
drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated... making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe.To which I immediately thought 'no, fuck you.'
Seriously. Fuck you. That is one of the weakest arguments for anything I've ever seen. Let's just cut a country's food supply, that way we'll have less fat people! Let's cut a country's electricity supply, that way we'll have less need for machinery! Let's cut a country's [x], that way we'll have less [y which is caused by x]. It's fucking ridiculous to say the least. I hate this argument, and I hate this absolutist bullshit thought process that follows it.
You know what REALLY stops people from being drug addicts? Education. It's a simple idea which has been around for about four thousand years. If you TEACH the masses that doing x is bad for you and then give valid reasons, then maybe it'll stick. You can't stop everyone from everything. There will always be people who want to do drugs, period. There will always be idiots who either can't help themselves or just don't give enough of a shit. Here's the kicker; that should be their right. A heroin addict, by rights, isn't directly harming anyone but himself when he shoots up his poison. His actions might affect those around him, but the act itself is in no way harming another person other than himself. Should he be told 'you can't do that because you're gonna hurt yourself'? Is he a fucking six year old? The last time I checked, if I shot someone in the face I would have to take full responsibility of that and face the consequences. But when it comes to things which induce an altered consciousness, suddenly we just don't have a mind of our own and, by the government's standards, cannot take responsibility for our actions and so our choices should be decided for us? What sort of stupid fucking authoritarian society do we live in where this is not only happening, but totally okay?
What's more is I don't see where my opinion is wrong in anything. One of the things about becoming an adult in most western societies is that you, not your parents, assume total responsibility for your actions, meaning you can make your own decisions because legally you have come of age where the state recognises you as being able to make informed choices. It stems from the logic of brain development, and somewhere along our history people decided that between 18 and 21 years of age was when you were finally fully capable of evaluating information and situations. Why is it that this holds true in some respects, but then when you talk about illicit drugs suddenly people are just completely unable to make informed decisions?
I'm not an economist, so I'm not even going to touch on the argument on what good could be done from, if nothing else, loosening up this stupid 'war on drugs' that has ravaged the average tax payer for the last thirty or so years. I'm not even a behaviourist, so I'm talking exclusively on a 'freedom of choice' level. Why does the government need to make these decision for me? Why do they think that I should not be allowed full control over my body considering the fact that it's mine? Why do they assume that even the thought of trying drugs will turn me into a raging meth addict? Essentially, the secularist governments of the world (or at least the western world), by having a total ban on 'illicit drugs', are just broadcasting to their people that not only do they not trust (or believe in) the education system they developed and endorse, but that they don't trust the people whom they are supposed to be governing to live their lives however they want and so must nurture and mother them instead of doing their actual job.
