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Do you think those advertisers will be more effective than the current generation of street pushers that try to get your high school kids addicted? As a high s

Do you think those advertisers will be more effective than the current generation of street pushers that try to get your high school kids addicted? As a high school kid (a decade ago), it was FAR easier to get marijuana, opiate pills, shrooms, and other drugs than it was to get alcohol, because alcohol required that we go through someone we knew personally not invested in the criminal market for their income, and was vaguely watched by the government (since they could regulate the caution the stores took). > There's a plethora of disallowed personal choices that the vast majority of people would agree are net positives for society, if only because "doesn't harm anyone else" is a very gray area. And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS. The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public that we don't allow already for other substances, drugs are already being used by almost everyone who wants them, and our prohibition has cost us being able to effectively deal with the reckless uses of drugs because people are hiding all uses of drugs. That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social health issue - seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons they're dangerous. Edit: I made a several off-topic replies in my posts, including this one, to the person above me. For a more complete discussion of it, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789

bronbron 12y ago
I'm not really talking about kids getting addicted. Not sure why you thought I was. I think we've done a pretty good job of regulating legal substances for minors. > And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS. Wow! That's incredibly homophobic. Unprotected sex spreads AIDS. Being gay has nothing to do with it. If you didn't get the memo, in the 21st century we don't fear 'the gays spreading evil diseases' anymore. > That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social health issue - I wasn't arguing for prohibition. Where did I argue for prohibition? Did I say the word 'prohibition' anywhere? In fact, you touched on exactly my point: > The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public that we don't allow already for other substances, We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of it, then that's what we should do. We don't know where that maximum utility is though, because it's taboo to talk about. People immediately see the word 'drugs' and froth at the mouth and go off on tangents either about personal choice and cartels or conversely they go off about 'think of the children!'. > seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons they're dangerous. Actually, you're the one who did that in this conversation :).
- aurelian 12y ago
  You misunderstood the poster above re: gays.
  - bronbron 12y ago
    No, I understood their point. It was a dumb hyperbolic analogy and it received a dumb loaded argument in retort.
    - ObviousScience 12y ago
      I raised a clearly wrong hypothetical (which necessarily must be hyperbolic) to contrast the features of your argument (I think both have a couple of the same fallacies in their structure) with something we can clearly see where it lands, and not because I thought the two were identical in nature, equally defensible, etc. It's unfortunate that you decided to write a post which failed to address the point of that argument (the weakness in your own argument), and instead pretended that I had somehow meant what was clearly a rhetorical flourish.
      - bronbron 12y ago
        > (which necessarily must be hyperbolic) Why? > to contrast the features of your argument (I think both have a couple of the same fallacies in their structure) You were assuming I was arguing about something completely different (something about kids getting their hands on drugs or some such nonsense). It’s like you didn’t even take the time to read what I had written, and instead had some canned response ready to go. > It's unfortunate that you decided to write a post which failed to address the point of that argument (the weakness in your own argument), and instead pretended that I had somehow meant what was clearly a rhetorical flourish. I took what you had written and used it as a podium to argue something completely different. Sound familiar :)?
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it. However, there was one part that I feel I should respond to: > We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of it, then that's what we should do. Three points on this: 1. When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense that your actions were medically necessary in some way. 2. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco) are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the debate about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's certainly not the most important question for if we legalize wider recreational drug use or not. 3. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is. Taking my hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to prohibit gay marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more kids? Well, that's incredibly hard to assess, even once you pin down several of the subjective aspects. Instead, courts have been deciding the merits based on the impact this has to freedom and how consistently that reasoning is applied across similar cases. I greatly approve of this method of decision making. It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the action is happening to, or never. It's similarly reasonable to look at how people raising objections apply those same objections to similar cases - if they're consistent, then perhaps they have a real objection; if they're not, they need to explain this either by differences between the two cases or concede that's not their true objection.

bronbron 12y ago

I'm not really talking about kids getting addicted. Not sure why you thought I was. I think we've done a pretty good job of regulating legal substances for minors. > And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS. Wow! That's incredibly homophobic. Unprotected sex spreads AIDS. Being gay has nothing to do with it. If you didn't get the memo, in the 21st century we don't fear 'the gays spreading evil diseases' anymore. > That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social health issue - I wasn't arguing for prohibition. Where did I argue for prohibition? Did I say the word 'prohibition' anywhere? In fact, you touched on exactly my point: > The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public that we don't allow already for other substances, We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of it, then that's what we should do. We don't know where that maximum utility is though, because it's taboo to talk about. People immediately see the word 'drugs' and froth at the mouth and go off on tangents either about personal choice and cartels or conversely they go off about 'think of the children!'. > seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons they're dangerous. Actually, you're the one who did that in this conversation :).

aurelian 12y ago
You misunderstood the poster above re: gays.
- bronbron 12y ago
  No, I understood their point. It was a dumb hyperbolic analogy and it received a dumb loaded argument in retort.
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    I raised a clearly wrong hypothetical (which necessarily must be hyperbolic) to contrast the features of your argument (I think both have a couple of the same fallacies in their structure) with something we can clearly see where it lands, and not because I thought the two were identical in nature, equally defensible, etc. It's unfortunate that you decided to write a post which failed to address the point of that argument (the weakness in your own argument), and instead pretended that I had somehow meant what was clearly a rhetorical flourish.
    - bronbron 12y ago
      > (which necessarily must be hyperbolic) Why? > to contrast the features of your argument (I think both have a couple of the same fallacies in their structure) You were assuming I was arguing about something completely different (something about kids getting their hands on drugs or some such nonsense). It’s like you didn’t even take the time to read what I had written, and instead had some canned response ready to go. > It's unfortunate that you decided to write a post which failed to address the point of that argument (the weakness in your own argument), and instead pretended that I had somehow meant what was clearly a rhetorical flourish. I took what you had written and used it as a podium to argue something completely different. Sound familiar :)?
ObviousScience 12y ago
The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it. However, there was one part that I feel I should respond to: > We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of it, then that's what we should do. Three points on this: 1. When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense that your actions were medically necessary in some way. 2. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco) are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the debate about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's certainly not the most important question for if we legalize wider recreational drug use or not. 3. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is. Taking my hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to prohibit gay marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more kids? Well, that's incredibly hard to assess, even once you pin down several of the subjective aspects. Instead, courts have been deciding the merits based on the impact this has to freedom and how consistently that reasoning is applied across similar cases. I greatly approve of this method of decision making. It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the action is happening to, or never. It's similarly reasonable to look at how people raising objections apply those same objections to similar cases - if they're consistent, then perhaps they have a real objection; if they're not, they need to explain this either by differences between the two cases or concede that's not their true objection.