hmmm
i don’t have children but
if i did, i wouldn’t like them to become addicted to drugs
but i wouldn’t mind if they enjoyed drugs with no harmful side effects (jail/legality being one of those side effects)
Here here!
Keep the government out of the recreational drug market’s pocket!
Hardly a concession: I never doubted that part and I am quite sure no one will object to your position based on efficacy. The cost to society - just for the processing of every thief, fraud, tax evader, speeder, illegal uturner, burglar, swindler, assaulter, rapist, slapper, kicker, non-rent payer…and so on and on, through the whole death penalty process would be just hysterically enormous. And given how many people are armed out there, wow, cops would be being killed all the time. I mean, if I am going to the chair for shoplifting, why not kill witnesses, cops, people who look at me funny, etc. I am glad we can’t test your idea and I am glad that there is zilch chance that any remotely democratic society will ever allow such a thing, but it would also be interesting to watch that society fall apart.
It would be so easy to set up the death of anyone. Frame them for a misdemeanor - petty theft, assault, as a couple of examples - that in your system would lead to the death penalty.
Or the driver swerves and kills someone else, or slams on the brakes and gets slammed from behind.
Makes the Saudi system look very modern.
Also I don’t see how a person selling home grown pot is intending to do someone physical harm or steal or swindle someone. The only possibility is, again, tax evasion - iow swindling the government. This would mean every single person in the country would have to hire one hell of a legal accounting team to go over their taxes. Tax inspectors would have the powers of lower Greek gods.
It would be a cruel, paranoid society.
I mean the mafia runs some of their neighborhoods like this - LIttle Italy in NYC. The government would be a kind of mafia and the whispers of a neighbor could lead to one’s death.
Thank goodness this will never be accepted by any open society.
That’s the idea.
Short term it’s pretty effective beating a child with the metal end of a belt who does something wrong.
Hey, let’s fire everyone who makes a mistake.
These and other short term reforms for a better terror based society on the way down.
Idealist! 
1.) It may have been this thread, but maybe not, but I have somewhere specified that it would be a crime for which the maximum sentence is currently five or more years. That would not cover every thief, fraud, speeder, unturner, burgalr, swindler, assaulter, slapper, kicker, non-rent payer…and so on and so on.
2.) I think that if you were going to the chair for shoplifting, your reaction would be to refrain from shoplifting. Please correct me if I am wrong. However, you wouldn’t get death for shoplifting, anyway, as the maximum sentence is less than five years.
3.) Most misdemeanors would not lead to the death penalty.
4.) Framing would be difficult, any public areas other than bathrooms will be continuously video monitored. The initial cost is high, but the money that you will save on investigation and apprehending people will be tremendous.
That was not the intent of the jaywalking. Jaywalking does not carry a maximum sentence of five or more years.
Maybe.
Again! 
That has nothing to do with what I am talking about. I would refer you to the, “Social Reform,” thread, this is almost exclusively a cost thing.
Trying to get back on track, somewhat–In the 1930s Harry J. Anslinger, who had been a top dog in the government’s control over alcohol during Prohibition, was faced with a jobless future when the XXI Amendment was ratified. In order to keep his job, he invented the dangers of marijuana as being even worse than the dangers of alcohol. The XXI amendment, ratified in 1933, had met with stiff resistance among segments of the population, Anslinger was able to keep his job–only the job switched from alcohol control to drug control–specifically marijuana. While touting for a return of his job, Anslinger described marijuana as even more deadly than alcohol. That’s what the American public believes to this day, despite the medical evidence that shows otherwise.
So, if you’re only talking about marijuana, I’d say that the bulk of what people think is a bunch of bull shit. And I don’t use marijuana–it makes me vomit. And, yes, I’ve tried it–how else would I know it makes me vomit?
The only thing I can say about the harder recreational drugs is that, possibly, when people find out that marijuana isn’t all it’s been hyped as, they want to try something more and that more is often cocaine, which is truly addictive, according to the medical articles I’ve read. But that may be crack cocaine–I don’t know. I also know nothing about meth amphetamines other than there are pain killers that may include a derivative of the pain-killing properties of amphetamines that are equally addictive. Amphetamines were also frequently prescribed for weight loss, because they were supposed to ‘speed up’ one’s metabolism so that weight was lost without the need for diet and exercise.
But does marijuana use lead to the use of harder drugs any more that does alcohol? Shoot, I don’t know! I just don’t think so.
I named this thread simply as ‘drugs’ because its not simply a case of legalising or not, they are here so we have to deal with that. Equally it is not the case that saying no because they do harm etc is going to make a difference, people who want to take them will and are taking drugs.
I don’t see the point in creating criminals especially considering that if the desire was their to remove them then their use could be greatly reduced.
Legalising the drugs would bring the traffickers into the fold, dependant upon how widespread the legalisation became.
Yes it would create vast wealth for the capitalists, a part of me prefers those profits to be illegally gained.
Future drugs could give the same effect without the consequences.
The question for me is; how can we control the use of drugs intelligently and honestly without making things worse/in a way that makes the situation better.
i.e. not killing criminals who otherwise wouldn’t even be criminals. 
Drugs are for indivividuals that know that they have no control over their lives, world, and their own existential situation where they consume to forget. They seek temporarly alleviation.
I see it all the time. I am not against drugs but that is my general observation of it all.
^^ True in the main. As govt uses it as the proverbial ‘opium for the people’, then a more responsible/honest attitude to its criminality is required.
The key word is “recreational.”
A more honest/responsible attitude toward alcohol was attempted once. The results were disastrous.
In Holland, the only country that effectively legalizes marihuana, the percentage of people using it is the smallest in all of Europe.
Maybe illegality adds to the attraction.
We don’t use drugs like psychedelics or amphetamines to escape in the sense that a priest uses the idea of god to escape. We use it in the sense that people have sex or eat good food; in the sense of recreating the senses, giving them experiences that, to us, seem worth living/experiencing.
Don’t underestimate the psychedelic effect of subjecting to God and subjecting others in his name.
Yes, to the end of having a positive experience of our being.
Drugs are a way to self-value when circumstances of sobriety don’t allow it.
Even though addiction usually leads to a loss of control in the long term, in rare cases it can be used to improve these circumstance. Churchill who could not have faced the nazis if he hadn’t been constantly drunk.
As the example suggests two conditions are required to make drugs viable: crisis and will to overcome.
Drugs can either causes crises and cure them.
Another word for drug is medicin.
Thorny issue on the one hand legality or otherwise seems to make no difference to the uptake of any drug. On the other, solving societies problems might, perhaps we should focus on societies problems, the cause of drug use, and not on blaming the people for taking them up?
How to solve societies problems: I don’t know but legalising drugs or cracking down on them will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the amount of drug users.
This thread is just starting to ask the right question: what value drugs? What value do they represent? To whom are they attractive? To whom are the useful? Are these values good? Are these people desirable? Are these uses noble?
Or even when they do.