FuzzyLobster wrote:Did you know they've started to try using psilocybin mushroom (which I'll use instead of magic, because it just sounds so much cooler) to treat OCD? *fun fact for today*

sentynel is gay

FuzzyLobster wrote:I don't know what kind of education systems you've all got where you live but we're never told that by taking drugs you'll just drop dead over here (other than hearing about the occasional guy who thinks he's Superman, or the guy who started pulling out his intestines while on meth - sorry if you were eating). They mainly just focus on tobacco and alcohol, while explaining how illegal drugs work and about addictions and some side effects, etc. (plus never ending lists of different names for specific drugs for some reason - many of which sound made up). Also lots of "drugs + driving = evil." As they should.

(speaking of which, what's with you and driving, Sent?)

Sentynel wrote:

FuzzyLobster wrote:I don't know what kind of education systems you've all got where you live but we're never told that by taking drugs you'll just drop dead over here (other than hearing about the occasional guy who thinks he's Superman, or the guy who started pulling out his intestines while on meth - sorry if you were eating). They mainly just focus on tobacco and alcohol, while explaining how illegal drugs work and about addictions and some side effects, etc. (plus never ending lists of different names for specific drugs for some reason - many of which sound made up). Also lots of "drugs + driving = evil." As they should.

(speaking of which, what's with you and driving, Sent?)

Maybe your system is better than ours. Like I mentioned, the sum total of our education on the negative effects of ecstasy was "here's Leah Betts, she took ecstasy and died horribly, don't take it or THE SAME WILL HAPPEN TO YOU". There was never any discussion of the actual usage or risk rates for anything. It was a brief look at the intended effects of the drug, and then HERE'S SOMEONE WHO DIED HORRIBLY, LET'S GENERALISE. It made me angry. (Oh, and we got the reams of "street names" too.)

(I'm taking lessons outside term time. Need a few more before I can take the test, so it's gonna be a while.)

Sentynel wrote:

indie2 wrote:cars, playing sport and stepping outside in a thuderstorm is something thats nessary, to get to work, to keep fit and healthy or just having to get home from work and the weather just happens to be bad. Drugs have no use in this world other than to either help people with illness (and dying people with pain) which i agree with strongly, if you're dying and are in absolute agony usually illegal drugs should be available legally but other than that they are useless other than to make people high and whether they kill them or not they damage people in some way like alcohol, information on this is easily found on the internet, i don't know whether i can link a site here but the site i went on was reliable.

and yes, you could say this is also true for alcohol but alcohol is not addictive unless you let it be.

sure people can make their own minds up, but drugs can often take people's minds from them, they affect people's mentality and the decisions people make. people get addictied to it and that therefore takes their decision on whether to use it or not away from them. just because they are incontrol taking it the first time and can make that decision doesn't mean they get that chance the second or third, they might not even be down from the first high before taking it again.

and just because it happens rarely doesn't take away from the fact that it happens. and when it doesn't it still hurt's people in some way whether mentally or otherwise. all of which is for no benefit other than the feeling it gives you.

Oh, right, so we shouldn't let people do things for fun, only if it's necessary? Ban motor racing, since that sport doesn't provide exercise benefits and is dangerous? Hell, ban all sports - a gym is a much safer way to get fit? Or maybe ban video games, books, movies, TV, because after all, people only do them for fun, and while they're not actively dangerous people could be doing something necessary instead! Pubs, alcohol, clubbing, they're definitely all out. People do dangerous stuff all the time for no reason other than that it's fun. It's not the government's place to say "no, you can't do that, it's too dangerous", especially such arbitrary criteria. If they're going to set a threshold at which things are too dangerous for the population to be allowed to do, then set a consistent threshold and stick to it. At the moment? They're making it up as they go along and pretending like they're being all logical about it.
The amount of damage done by different drugs varies hugely; for example, take magic mushrooms - also Class A - which are almost entirely harmless - LSD's only real negative effects are possible bad trips, and shrooms aren't as strong an effect and much less likely to trigger them.

No drug is addictive unless you let it be. The problem is people *do* let it be, for whatever reasons, and whether it's legal or not. Some drugs may form physical dependencies more than others (tobacco compared to alcohol, for example) but at the root a "psychological" dependency is just a chemical feedback loop in the brain; it's not all that different from a physical dependency.

Again, this is why you provide honest and accurate education on the effects, and provide whatever support necessary to get off them. Again, I don't want everybody running around off their tits on drugs. I am simply observing that current education and legal methods are blatantly not working, and looking for better methods.

Life is full of pain. The world is big and cruel and painful. You can't fix that, and even if you could, do you think banning fun things on the grounds they might be dangerous is a good way to go about it? We're straying into philosophy here, but what ultimately is the point of life if you don't enjoy it? You can sit down and minimise every risk you take, live your life never doing anything fun because it's too risky, and in the end you'll die just like everybody else. It's your personal choice where you draw the risk line, but is it right to extrapolate your choice to the rest of the population? I don't think it is.

indie2 wrote:whoa, what happened to the harmless debate? don't get angry at me just cause i have a difference of opinion, come on. I fully respect your opinion even though it's different to mine. :-/

ok say you have a point say all what you are saying is true and people should be free to take drugs, cause its their own life and they can do what they like with it and thats living life. say they don't effect you that much, don't kill that many people. say theres a lower death rate for drugs than car crashes and they should be legal . They're fun and its their life to live.

but what happens when they do stupid things while high; get hit by a car, think their invinsible and jump off a building, rape a woman because their so stoned off their head? who looks after them then? probably the doctors that have to scrape them off the blood soaked floor or the police that have to question and broken and distraught woman about something she can't even bring herself to think about while having to hunt down and wrestle a violent, off his head yob to the ground because he won't co-operate before he can be arrested. how is that a person's own problem then.

(it's the sames with binge drinking, which can't be banned because levels can't be regulated, but people are still able to chuck people out of pubs when they think they've had enough.)

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:

indie2 wrote:whoa, what happened to the harmless debate? don't get angry at me just cause i have a difference of opinion, come on. I fully respect your opinion even though it's different to mine. :-/

ok say you have a point say all what you are saying is true and people should be free to take drugs, cause its their own life and they can do what they like with it and thats living life. say they don't effect you that much, don't kill that many people. say theres a lower death rate for drugs than car crashes and they should be legal . They're fun and its their life to live.

but what happens when they do stupid things while high; get hit by a car, think their invinsible and jump off a building, rape a woman because their so stoned off their head? who looks after them then? probably the doctors that have to scrape them off the blood soaked floor or the police that have to question and broken and distraught woman about something she can't even bring herself to think about while having to hunt down and wrestle a violent, off his head yob to the ground because he won't co-operate before he can be arrested. how is that a person's own problem then.

(it's the sames with binge drinking, which can't be banned because levels can't be regulated, but people are still able to chuck people out of pubs when they think they've had enough.)

No, I don't think Sent is angry. =p He is just being a bit sarcastic on the "people must do things only if they are necessary" point.

Well, about what people do while under the influence of drug is not pardoned off. I mean, if they hit someone while driving a car under the influence of alcohol, they get punished not only for hitting a person but for also driving under the influence of a drug (and rightly so). And yeah, I agree people are more likely to do violent things when on some drugs. And they get punished for it and nobody lets them off because they are stoned off their head . Which should make them realize even more how stupid it is to take drugs. But, like already mentioned, making them illegal won't stop people from taking it and they still go about hitting and raping people. So new ways must be thought of to make people realize taking drugs isn't cool. Nobody says that taking drugs *only* affects that person. Obviously it affects their families, it affects society. But many things affect society. Broken families are known to affect young children, and hence society. So should we ban divorce? Views affect society. Some people think it is okay to support certain extreme parties, so do we ban them and curtail people's freedom to vote for a certain type of party? Or perhaps, ban such people from voting because their votes could spoil a society? Women who suffer from certain heritable diseases or problems risk passing it on to their would-be children. So, do we prevent them from having children? Society is complex and many, many things can affect it. It definitely wouldn't be possible to solve the problems by just banning it. If you do that, people would end up with very limited freedoms and virtually no choice.

---

Damn my internet connection. The connection went off and I didn't realize it. And I clicked "post reply". And my whole post disappeared. I had to type the whole thing again. Not to mention to get my internet to work.

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Only amphetamine has effects similar to alcohol, amongst the drugs which are less harmful than alcohol? Cool, I thought other slightly less-dangerous drugs could have that effect too. But addiction sometimes can be a bit dangerous too. I mean, people who are addicted to some drugs show violent/unreasonable behaviour if denied their regular dose (but hey, kids addicted to computers and video games are known to show that too =p) or known to steal to get their hands on it.

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:(but hey, kids addicted to computers and video games are known to show [violent/unreasonable behaviour if denied their regular dose] too =p)

sentynel is gay

David Cat wrote:

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:(but hey, kids addicted to computers and video games are known to show [violent/unreasonable behaviour if denied their regular dose] too =p)

NO THEY flooping 'eckIN' AREN'T *punches Ni in the face*
<.<
>.>

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hehe. Has that ever happened to you Da? With you being denied computer access?

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David Cat wrote:

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hehe. Has that ever happened to you Da? With you being denied computer access?

No tbh, last time I was without computer access for any substantial length of time, I just read books and watched TV and stuff.

Re: Death penalty: No, I don't think it's ever okay to practise it. There's always the chance that innocents could be executed by mistake, and that's just not acceptable. Also, by executing someone, you're pretty much becoming the same as them (assuming it's a murderer getting executed)

wrote:*waits for Sent's wall of text to crush me like an insect*

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hey, absolutely no death penalty unless you are 100% convinced of a person's guilt. In fact, no punishment of any sort whatsoever unless you are 100% convinced of someone's guilt. Ever heard of that phrase ( I think it could be a Tamil one, I don't remember it exactly)...went something like this: You could let off a 100 guilty persons but you can't punish a single innocent one.

sentynel is gay

Sentynel wrote:On the death penalty:
What David said.

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:But when it comes to awarding someone a death penalty, there must be no doubts

sentynel is gay