Well since this has evolved to a legalize MJ/drugs thread.. I'll go ahead and repost this comment on I made on a previous thread.. something people usually dont think about in the drug debate:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/faqs/faq_drugpolicy.htm
Quote:
Most drug policy reform organizations take a harm reduction position against the war on drugs. They oppose the drug war because it (drug prohibition) causes more social harm than the drugs themselves. This is a consequentialist approach to the issue – one that debates the relative harms of drugs versus the relative harms of drug prohibition.
We believe that this harm debate is not only impossible to resolve (how exactly does one quantify the harm of a heroin overdose versus the harm of over-crowding prisons or corrupt police officers?), the debate structure may actually produce its own sort of harm because it encourages bad science about drugs and drug policy. Framing the debate and policy analysis in terms of harm encourages the government to exaggerate the harm associated with drug use, and to deny that some drug use may present little or no harm. (One example is, medical marijuana, which the federal government will not acknowledge has any medicinal value because such a acknowledgement would detract from its larger argument that marijuana is an inherently harmful drug that must be outlawed.) Additionally, we are concerned that a harm reduction approach to drug policy leaves open the possibility of future, more efficient (less harmful) forms of prohibition.
Most importantly, critiquing the drug war by focusing exclusively on its consequences ignores the character of drug prohibition – and its character is flawed._
We seek to add this -- otherwise unaddressed -- component to the national debate over drug policy.
How is the CCLE’s approach to drug policy different?
The CCLE’s focus is on protecting the unlimited potential of the human mind, and we maintain that criminal drug prohibition infringes on the inalienable right to freedom of thought. We maintain that the war on drugs is not a war on pills, powders, and plants, anymore than the earlier governmental efforts to ban books or to censor publications was a war on paper and ink. These are wars against thinking certain ways, and for this reason we maintain that criminal drug prohibition is unconstitutional cognitive censorship, and inconsistent with the basic values and freedoms upon with the United States was founded. So long as a person does not endanger others, the CCLE maintains that the government lacks the constitutional authority to punish the person simply for self-determining his or her own cognitive processes.
|
I have to agree 100% with their stance. It should never be a question of "what is better for society". This is about your own freedom of thought and mind. The government is overreaching its constitutional power by throwing you in jail for using certain chemicals to alter your consciousness. Its as rediculous as throwing someone in jail for drinking caffinated beverages to wake themselves up. "Whats good for society" should never be the question when personal freedoms are involved. Thats what the Bill of Rights is there to protect.