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The two cannot be compared. Illegal porn (child porn, rape, etc.) is illegal because of a lack of consent and potential for assault, psychological scarring, etc
by lfuller 12y ago
The two cannot be compared. Illegal porn (child porn, rape, etc.) is illegal because of a lack of consent and potential for assault, psychological scarring, etc. of the victim. Drugs are illegal in an attempt to "protect" consenting adults from themselves and have no victim aside from the users themselves.
Here's the same hypothetical that you're proposing from another angle: "If banning whistleblowing is doomed to failure irrelevant of one's stance on its morality, then should not the same be true of war crimes?"
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago>The two cannot be compared. They can be compared for the purpose of the argument. The argument that 'prohibition doesn't work' does not place any conditions as to what it can be applied to. >"If banning whistleblowing is doomed to failure irrelevant of one's stance on its morality, then should not the same be true of war crimes?" If the properties of whistleblowing that dooms to failure the ban on it are also found in war crimes, and if war crimes does not possess properties that are lacking from whistleblowing that would counteract those properties they both share, then banning war crimes is doomed to failure. Why does banning drugs fail? Because there is a demand that will not go away and thus the potential for money to be made and there are those who are willing to do anything to make that money. Notice that the moral considerations of drugs do not factor into this. >and have no victim aside from the users themselves. Maybe for a college student smoking pot this is the case. There are plenty of third party victims to many other drugs, even some of the legal ones (take alcohol which factors into drunk driving injuries and sexual assaults). Also consider pregnant women who give birth to babies that are born addicted to drugs.