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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

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At first I like the sound of the argument that people are going to buy drugs anyway, so we should recognize the fact, and let the government exert some control over the process to minimize bad side effects, and extract some tax money from it as well, instead of letting criminals get all the profit. Sounds persuasive.

But we could make an exactly analogous proposal about contract killings:

People are going to pay hit men to rub out their enemies, and all the money will go to organized crime, and there are risks to innocent bystanders. So instead, we should legalize murder for hire. If you really want someone dead, you should be able to hire the Marines to send in a trained sniper team. Yada yada yada -- pretty much all the good things you could say about legalizing drugs seem to me to have analogues in this proposal.

Now it sounds to me as though there must be a problem with this form of argument.

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Interesting point. But drug use is inherently self-destructive; hiring a hitman is obviously intended first and foremost to destroy someone else.

And as for using the drugs to intentionally harm innocents, the same can be done with a tack hammer, and God knows we haven't done anything about that. In the case of unintentional harms, I'd be for the same kind of regulations against public use we have against, say, cigarettes, where they are applicable.

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Originally written by JadeWolf:

I live in France, and lived in Ireland until 3 years ago in Ireland.

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Originally written by Hectonkhyres:

You say they suck ass? You are correct. That is the reason I like them.

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