Fascism is defined by Wikipedia as authoritarian nationalist political ideologies or mass movements that are concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence and seek to achieve a national rebirth by exalting the nation or race, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.
Because I don't believe anyone should do drugs is my prerogative as is someone's prerogative to believe that everyone should do drugs and that marijuana should be legalized. Where one crosses the line into Fascism is when one seeks to enforce this by totalitarian attempts to impose state control for example through a dictatorship and oppressive measures. Just because someone thinks it should be legal or doesn't think it should be legal does not make one Fascist. There is a difference between believing that nobody should or should not hurt themselves and then usurping power to enforce it.
Liberty functions from the bottom up (we the people), not dictated from the top down. So if the majority of the people vote in a Democracy to legalize drugs, then that is the law of the land and we believe in honoring the law, though I will never do drugs, I'd have now be more careful of its exposure to my family. So yes, something should be legal or illegal because the majority voted this way (abortion, legalizing drugs, etc), though it doesn't necessarily make it right. The voice of the people have spoken. The point of this debate is does it affect someone else? My answer is yes! I have lived through the effects of someone else doing drugs that have affected both my boys who have done it all.
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Originally Posted by Redbeard
If I were to go home, and smoke a big 'ol bowl of marijauna, how does that effect you at all? How does it effect my family at all?
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There are many people across the country who smoke marijuana in the privacy of their own home unaware that the fumes make their way into the apartment above, where an elderly man lives or perhaps mixing chemicals to make meth while the ammonia fumes seep into the next room where a child is playing. There are countless meth labs in the country where something goes wrong and in an explosion takes out the criminal along with the neighboring family, who is barbecuing next door. There are countless children, including my adopted son who was born a crack baby because his biological mother chose to do every drug in the book and in an altered state of mind decided to sleep around and have many children. There is a supplier dealing right now without any concern for the consequences of who his drugs reach when he deals with someone who just wants to smoke it by himself without hurting anyone. Meanwhile the profit that he creates for his supplier, supporting his business is used to make more drugs, which end up at the elementary school down my street and into the hands of my neighbor's children who become addicted and pass it on to my children or my nieces and nephews.
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Originally Posted by Redbeard
Should we outlaw knifes because people have been stabbed? Guns because people have been shot? Rope because people have been hung? The argument that they can be used to commit a crime is flawed. Not EVERYONE who has used recreational drugs has ruined their life, or the lives of others.
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You are right. Guns don't kill people, knives don't kill people, ropes don't kill people. People kill people, drug dealers kill people. But guns are also used for hunting for food for survival, and also for sport and other recreational activities. Knives are implements used for a vast variety of reasons such as surgical procedures, cutting up food, or carving a sculpture and creating art. Ropes also have a wide range of uses, such as tying up packages or saving a life with a life preserver attached. Ropes are used for securing things to your car when you go on long trips or for construction. The list goes on and on.
What beneficial uses does crystal meth have? Cocaine? PCP? etc? If someone wants to do drugs, they cannot intelligently believe that doing drugs does not have an effect on someone else because it does. They perpetuate the supply and demand which trickles down to the average innocent child because the hardened drug dealers do not care who ends up with drugs. Their only concern is the profit that it brings.
Many drugs are regulated. If marijuana has medicinal benefits then it should be regulated like any prescription drug that you buy at a pharmacy. If by some bizarre coincidence, crystal meth in a certain safe dose cures brain cancer, then by all means, let it be produced and regulated. The problem that I see here is that drugs have
no beneficial purpose other than to harm, destroy or kill whether it's yourself or someone else and it's the someone else, especially someone else, that concerns me because someone else
is always affected.
Regardless of what country or set of laws we live, we are all human beings living in the same world and drugs are not something that knows boundaries or borders. I will never vote to legalize something just because someone wants to do it to themselves, because that kind of irresponsible thinking does not see reason through. They simply aren't doing it to just themselves.
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Originally Posted by Redbeard
If you disagree with drug use, DON'T DO DRUGS! But telling other people they don't have the right to choose because you don't agree with it is removing agency and liberty from other people.
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This does not account for the countless children in elementary school who are being introduced to drugs in the form of candy who do not yet have a full grasp of the consequences, thereby affecting their agency. Even the most vigilant parents have very young children who are exposed to this terrible growing trend.