Ending the War on Drugs Discriminates Against the Sensitive

This is a reverse debate.

Let us agree that the War on Drugs should end.

My argument is that sensitive personalities get relegated to the status of second class citizens. Unlike insensitive personalities, they are vulnerable to becoming addicted. Therefore, the rule of law, social programs, and tax policy will necessarily become prejudiced against them.

One, the rule of law will have relaxed standards of duress. Drug users and insensitive personalities will be able to influence standards of duress because drugs can be used to compensate.

Two, sensitive personalities will have to pay taxes for the policing of drug usage which they can’t personally indulge in without becoming addicted.

Three, social programs will be influenced by insensitive and drug using lifestyles such that sensitive personalities will not be prioritized.

If you wish to challenge this, please take the role of a sensitive person in society and prove that you retain equal class as a citizen.

Sensitive people are already discriminated against, in many, many facets of society. There sensitives, of course, are not in this case to drug addiction. (I would call that a vulnerability, rather than a sensitivity). If you are sensitive to power jockeying and pretense - iow it bothers you a lot - much of the business world discriminates against you.

But here’s the main problem with your actually interesting take…

Discrimination has to do with using not relevent criteria based on group membership or category to keep someone from what other people can get or treat the people of that group poorly.

You could say that legalizing drugs will make it easier for the easily addicted to have problems. They will be more at risk. But it is not discrimination. What makes them different causes the problem directly. No prejudice is needed. No, one says that guy is an X, so don’t let him do Y.

Selling hammers does not discriminate against that tiny group that will hit themselves on the head with a hammer when they are sad.

First, let me say your last line cracked me up. That was pretty funny.

I agree, but that’s mutually exclusive. Whether someone can inflict self-harm with a screwdriver has nothing to do with inflicting self-harm with a hammer. It only adds insult to injury to have multiple forms of discrimination.

Another way of thinking about it is discrimination against women doesn’t justify discrimination against blacks.

I agree. Someone’s vulnerability to drugs shouldn’t interfere with someone’s membership as a law-abiding, taxpaying, citizen. Legalizing drugs interferes as previously described.

It’s not about not letting X do Y. It’s about the side-effects of coexisting among those who do Y.

Another way of thinking about it is pollution. Imagine that someone is dumping sludge into a river, and society typically filters the water before using it. For most (or even some) people, the sludge doesn’t kill them because it’s almost entirely biodegradable, so they decide to remove the filter since it’s a nuisance.

For others, however, who have weak immune systems, the sludge is dangerous and possibly even fatal. If the filter is removed, how are they still equal class citizens?

This thread is a great argumentum ad absurdum against worrying too much about discrimination.

Glad to hear it!

I suppose my point was that no one could do anything.

No, of course, but I suppose I was pointing out that society has rarely given a shit about sensitive people.

But it wouldn’t. Having the drugs be illegal, if anything, discriminates.

But you missed my point. There is no discrimination. The word is not correct. It should be something like Legalization does not protect the addictive enough. Having a lake, rather than filling it in, is not discrimination against self-drowners. Self-drowners have a problem.

Oh, sure, there is abritrariness. Cellphones fuck with my head. I feel the damn things. They cause cancer, etc. Most people cannot feel them or the wireless tech. Society says, Fuck you Moreno.

So what is the actual issue. I assume you are actually talking about something else and using this issue to mock the thinking on the other one. Let me in on it and let’s see if it holds.

Moreno, can you address points one, two, and three made in the OP?

The “problem” of self-drowners only exists as long as they are assembled with. In the case of legalizing drugs, this compels self-drowners to assemble with others who can swim and become influenced by their say on public policy. There’s a difference between a private versus a public lake.

As a sensitive person, you would only have a problem if you had to assemble insensitively.

I agree with you that society doesn’t care. That’s why sensitive people are relegated to the status of second class citizens.

OK; but later.

I’m not sure what you mean by assemble themselves.

Again, not quite sure what assemble means, but this is the task of every sensitive person who does not fall out into homelesseness, and then even then, since they are likely to be sensitive to that.

Well, I agree with you. But there is a paradox here. Everyone can label themselves sensitive. One is sensitive to seeing women’s legs. Another is a woman who is sensitive to not following fashion or to having a longer skirt rub her knees.

If there is a specific issue, I think it would be useful to get to it.
But then, I am starting to simply enjoy the mystery of your posts and their left field approach. I take them as exploratory, rather than see-it-must-be-the-case.