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Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
Happy ending.

quote:

Prosecutors had been tipped off about the motel by a federal agent whose primary job was to identify properties for forfeiture. But prosecutors maintained that this wasn’t about raising money for the government, and was instead about helping local police crack down on the drug trade.

Why does a loving job like this even exist?

quote:

The government is morally bankrupt.

I'm usually not one for hating government/police but jesus christ this a hundred times. If there is really a guy in the FBI whose job is to scout out property to sell, then set the government on fire.

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Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

KingEup posted:

This is rather delightful news given the proclivity of this thread to discuss driver impairment.

Another contender for worst anti-legalisation op-ed: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/article_4b7ffc76-5cab-5569-a101-fbdba63e2c14.html

In the sense of "Once pandora's box is open, we're never going to be able to close it again", I kind of get and agree with his argument. Once a powerful lobby exists it'll be an uphill battle at best to try to keep it under control. The problem is that Marijuana is already everywhere, even in schools and prisons, and aside from "is illegal", it's completely loving unregulated right now. Even the kind of weak regulatory bodies that control cigarettes in the United States still keep the product to certain standards and make sure it's not being adulterated or sold to kids. The people who are against legalization seem to have this fingers-in-the-ears mentality, where Marijuana is only used by a small, extreme, but very loud minority of people and that as long as we keep it illegal, we keep it "off the streets". They have a mental image of a "pot head", a grungy hippy that works at a head shop if he works at all.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Apr 10, 2013

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

KingEup posted:

A powerful industry already exists. This industry has no qualms about beheading their competitors and recruiting child soldiers.

Yeah, no, I understand that. From the viewpoint of someone who seems to think that making something illegal makes it inaccessible, it's a worthwhile argument - we allowed tobacco to be legal when we didn't understand it, and now a powerful lobby stands behind it keeping legislation from regulating it any further. The problem is, making something illegal doesn't make it inaccessible, or even hard to get. Instead, we get a black market behind it that the government is powerless to stop, and they protect their investment not through lobbying, but through wholesale murder. At the end of the day, people are still getting pot. At this point, the only way we're going to get any kind of regulation is through legalization.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 11, 2013

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Paul MaudDib posted:

Breaking: Ohio Police Chief 1/40th As Bad As Lex Luthor

Seriously though why in the world would you wake up and eat your daughter's whole cake? Maybe he had a few slices the night before too?

I suspect he ate a piece for breakfast, took a shower and got dressed, and then suddenly he was taken by a sudden, and strange hunger.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Like, Friday? It's Book Barn, not here. I'm still figuring out what all the new buttons do.


I went to a similar lecture on the DSM V this past friday and was similarly surprised by some of the anti-marijuana comments made in passing during the lecture. Oh no, someone has some personality changes and is using marijuana! Clearly they are suffering from cannabis use disorder, not using cannabis to self-medicate some other issue!

I imagine that the addiction medicine specialists have a hell of a lot riding on prohibition continuing to exist for as long as possible. When hundreds of your colleagues could be out of work practically overnight, I imagine you work hard to justify their existence.

Edit: While I'm at it, let's just throw private prisons and the police, too. I think everybody knows better at this point and they're all just trying to stop progress because Jobs. Some people are going to be employed by the marijuana industry (probably a LOT of people) but I really doubt it's going to come close to making up for the number of people employed to prevent Marijuana's use. It'll be better for everybody in the long run, but short term it's going to be a big punch in the teeth. I think when federal legalization starts to come up to the plate, this is going to be a long, drawn out process designed to keep as many people in their jobs for as long as humanly possible.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 12, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

GuyDudeBroMan posted:

Holy cow, an opinion! Awesome!


1) Federal government creates law making X illegal. State passes law making X legal.
2) Federal government creates law making X legal. State passes law making X illegal.

How would your version of the 14th amendment deal with these contradictions? (jeez I'm gonna have to ctrl c this question. I keep asking it an no one wants to answer)

Because different laws affect different things and the idea that the Federal Government should be in control of ALL LAW or NO LAW is so loving absurd oh god I can't believe I'm even replying to your stupid troll posts.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
That's a bit of an odd metric to measure the success of legalization and it's rate of adoption.

e: Also to be fair that article was written right before Nixon started the war on drugs to distract us all from how badly the war in Vietnam was going.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Apr 16, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Do you think public perception matters to American politicians? I moved out of the US last year, so I don't know which senators or congressmen are making this an important issue.

Considering that politicians are still voted into office by the public, yes, I do think public opinion ultimately matters to American politicians.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

ColoradoCleric posted:

Anyone have any good research on the "cannabis use (heavy or otherwise) increases mental health problems" argument?

The DSM was written by committee, and addiction medicine specialists are on that committee. Would you admit the primary driver for your employment (state enforced rehab) is harmless?

I hate to be :tinfoil: guy but really.


Install Windows posted:

That argument tends to be a misreading of the fact that smoking weed if you already have certain mental health issues can exacerbate symptoms (or simply be really unpleasant).

This is true, I have bipolar disorder and have auditory hallucinations and paranoia when I'm manic. Weed makes that way worse. But it's not a long term effect by any measure and it certainly didn't cause my problems to coalesce into existence.

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

According to this study,"When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/G...es%203-7-14.pdf

The part you bolded is important. "Independent Influence". You and I don't do anything by writing a letter to our congressmen, we have almost no individual influence. But as a large group our influence on policy is huge, since at the end of the day it's the public that decides whether or not somebody gets elected. There's no denying that big money is the primary driver of policy in this country, largely because they spend unbelievable amounts of cash influencing the average citizen to think the same way they do.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

computer parts posted:

In fairness it also mentions "mass based interest groups" but those could just be spur of the moment groups like early forms of Occupy which don't have any sort of real organization.

e: Actually here is the list of mass based groups:

The AARP, NRA, Christian Coalition (at one time) and UAW (at one time) are or were major influences on public policy, though. I guess I don't have the political expertise to understand how they came to these conclusions, but saying the NRA isn't a major influence on public policy (or at least the policies it is directly trying to influence) is absurd.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Broken Machine posted:

I'm as pro-legalization as anyone, but their concern isn't completely misguided. Go back a mere 20 years, and the cannabis in and around Colorado and elsewhere near there (Nebraska, Oklahoma etc.) was mostly Mexican brick weed of mediocre quality and potency. You couldn't even sell that these days. If someone who hasn't had much experience with the drug smoked too much (say a fat joint of some krippy), they could easily have a bad time, or panic and ending up in a hospital. It's a more potent drug than its reputation amongst some fans. I'd like to see more dispensaries and producers work on improving other qualities of their smoke than just how potent it is, especially for medical users that don't care for the psychoactive effects.

To be honest it was hard to not see some of these complaints coming. I fully expect to see most types of edibles banned in stores, the liability issue is huge and I'm surprised anybody bothers to sell the loving things - if a little kid gets ahold of a pot brownie they aren't going to die but they are going to have a really loving terrible time. It's easy to make the "parents need to be responsible" argument but some parents aren't and never will be. (My parents weren't!) Banning "ready to eat" edibles is probably something that is going to happen.

It does not help at all that edibles are the most apparently accessible form of THC delivery, since you don't have to own a pipe or learn how to smoke it. I can see a lot of total newbies going into a pot store, throwing down for a brownie for their first high, and then going out of their loving mind because they can't handle the effects.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Apr 22, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

NurhacisUrn posted:

I think we can all shut the gently caress up about this now. The saint of healthy healthiness Chris Christie has stated that he will NEVER give the all clear to the Devil's Lettuce!

....

There should be a system in place that automatically impeaches individuals that begin making "I" statements in government. Isn't that the antithesis of "will of the people" and constituencies?


Chris Christie is likely to make a run at the presidency in 2016, and he doesn't want to seem soft on vice for the republican primaries. For the next couple of years Christie is likely going to try to maximize conservative pandering as much as possible. Expect a complete about face if Republican sentiments shift towards legalization before then.

My condolances, citizens of New Jersey.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

KernelSlanders posted:

If there had been two generations of Americans who grew up being constantly exposed to subtly racist propaganda that says consuming HFCS will get you pregnant and make you kill yourself things might be different. It's always hard to change ideas that have become culturally engrained as reality.

She thought she was just having fun when she took a toke on the demon reefer. But Sue soon found out that there's no such thing as "having fun" with the hemp weed. Nine months later she gave birth to a baby... and that baby was The Devil.

Weed: Not even once.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
Soda's a lot more potent these days than it was when I was a boy, I tell you what. HFCS really made that stuff hard to handle. Now the only Soda still made with sugar's gotta come up from across the border to Mexico.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

KernelSlanders posted:

As for users I think you are right, and I should have been more careful with my terminology. As for growers and distributers, why are you so sure a new AG won't decide to resume enforcing federal laws that are still on the books?

Assume you've spent your whole life getting to the office of Attorney General. Do you throw away your entire career and commit political suicide for the sake of enforcing a federal law that there is almost no support for?

Seriously, you'd get dogpiled by the pro-Marijuana people, the small government people, the state's rights people, and likely the elderly who are increasingly more on-board with the MMJ. It's one thing to stonewall legalization, it's another to tell people who already legalized it that they're not allowed to govern their own policies on the matter. If the Obama administration had moved before these laws took effect they could have minimized the damage, but at this point, I don't think anybody has the political capital or likely ever will. Legalization is here to stay in WA and CO. That's just life.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 1, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Yup. I agree with you. But I don't think it will ever be 100% legal in the US. Ever.

Define 100% legal?

If you mean untaxed and unregulated, yeah, I agree with you, that will never happen in the USA. If you it they will never become a recreational substance regulated like Tabacco and Alcohol, I think you are probably being a little too cynical. We have made more progress in the last six years with Marijuana legalization than were made in the previous thirty. The tide is shifting towards legalization and the wider state legalization spreads, the more the federal government will be pressured to follow suit.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Yea, this will have a measurable effect, but not to the people that matter. We're always going to be electing the same kinds of politicians because that's how the system is rigged. I mean the head of the DEA has been talking trash about the white house's lack of response regarding this, and nothing's gonna happen to her. In fact, if I remember correctly, she said that she and the DEA will fight against legalization efforts even harder. Sorry dude, but the federal government marches to another song.

It's generally bad policy to fire people in the government for disagreeing with you on policy. In fact, that's sort of the kind of thing that dictators do.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

Marijuana relaxation won't put much of a long-term dent in white supremacy, the prison industrial complex, or an increasingly militarized state. It might even accelerate some of those trends.




I feel like we are now getting into Marijuana Hipster territory here. Concern trolling as an argument against Marijuana reform. :downs:

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

As it is I am expecting legalization to overwhelmingly favor white businessmen at the expense of poor minority communities where drugs brought at least some money in.

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

White supremacy. I explained why in the post you quoted.

Not concern trolling, guys, honest, I just don't want to take bread out of the mouths of poor inner city drug dealers and deliver it directly into the hands of the Aryan Nation. That's why we need to slow down on, and manage our expectations towards Marijuana Reform.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Jeffrey posted:

Legalization will certainly remove income from poor communities, no need for the hyperbole.

Legalization will also put a lot more working age adults back into their homes in poor communities. It's a stupid argument about a factor that is close to meaningless that distracts from the actual reform argument.

Do either of you guys have any numbers to back up the implication that drug sales are a significant source of income in poor communities? I mean, most of the people buying are poor, too. Where's the money coming from? It sounds to me more like it's a small group of people passing the same money between themselves, and the total money in those communities would be identical (or close to identical) either way. It's not like the wealthy are going to downtown Detroit or whatever to buy drugs, because there's plenty of sellers outside of the inner city?

Beyond that, what kind of economic harm does the drug economy in the inner city do? How many people are currently employed as pushers, enforcers, distributors, couriers, etc? How many of those people could find more meaningful, legal work that would have a more positive outcome on their community? How much impact does the presence of drugs have on preventing economic growth within poor communities?

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 18:35 on May 2, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

rscott posted:

You know what excludes you from getting loans for a college degree? A criminal drug record!

Also, not being able to start a lucrative career as a drug pusher when you're 14 is probably going to do a better job of keeping kids in high school. So will more two-parent households.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

Why exactly do you guys think people deal drugs? Because they're bored? Or are told its glamorous?

Because drug dealers make lots of money out of being a horrible drain on their community?

Where do you think drug money comes from? Who do you think is buying crack and weed from inner city dealers? If you guessed wealthy white people, hey, there's plenty of drug dealers in wealthy communities too! Why would I ever drive to a poor area when I can buy weed (or meth, or heroin, or cocaine) from a local dealer?

Take drug sales out of poor communities and it's not going to reduce the amount of money in the local economy. The money is coming in from people who live in those communities. A poor area with a very wealthy drug economy is poor because of the drug economy. Why do you think the CIA worked so hard to get crack started in black communities?

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

goodness posted:

White or black, if you don't involve yourself with crime or criminals, you won't get in trouble.

Obviously there are exceptions, it's a generalization.

Yeah, you're right, black people do get treated completely fairly by our criminal justice system.

There is literally hundreds of examples of completely innocent black people getting thrown in jail for basically a goddamn eternity who didn't involve themselves with crime or criminals and just made the mistake of being black in the wrong place at the wrong time.

White people are treated wildly different by the criminal justice system, especially when it comes to drug convictions. I even have an (anecdotal) example for this! My Uncle just got convicted and sentenced for a grow op he got busted on. He had pounds of Marijuana, dozens of plants, and the police had proof he was acting as a distributor. He's serving 1 year in jail. They hit him with the wimpiest charge and gave him the minimum sentence. Do you think that would have ended the same way if he was black? He'd be doing 20 years, dude. If he has first offender laws in his state (btw most states don't) what difference does it loving make? Your life's over by the time you get out anyway, whether you get the conviction waived from your record or not. (You won't!)

quote:

What do you call being homeless because there is no legal work where you live?

Well obviously they just need to get into their car and drive out of the ghetto. If I can do it, why can't they? :smug:

Alternatively

It's not that hard to take a bus :colbert: Oh, me? When I was in elementary school, yeah. The school bus got me to school in 20 minutes, so the city bus should get people to work in 20 minutes too, right?

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 21:49 on May 2, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Stormfang1502 posted:

I can see your points to an extent. It just seems that with free access you're exchanging the existing precipitating factors (such as criminal activity) for new ones (like increased medical treatment). I could be wrong, I'll admit that. I've just never personally known anyone who has said "you know, meth and opiates have had a positive impact on my life and I'm a better person because of it." Besides legalization will not make the dangerous people go away, they'll simply become bootleggers by selling their unregulated untaxed product for less to the poorest. It would still cost less than the current state of affairs so I gotta give you that too.


Without opiates (and about a half dozen other narcotic painkillers, but mostly opiates) my father in law would probably put a bullet in his head. It's the only way he can manage the incredible pain he is in, constantly, all the time. A car accident he was in as a child gives him chronic migraines about 14-16 days a month, which range in intensity from "turn all the lights off in the house and don't get up from the couch" to "I'm puking on the floor because it hurts too bad to make it to the bathroom".

He also has multiple spinal injuries from both that accident and another one he was in as an adult that give him pain in an entirely different area. He has had two back surgeries and will probably not get another, because both of them made the pain substantially worse.

The state makes him drug test every quarter before he can pick up his prescriptions, and he failed one recently. Thankfully, his clinic was willing to buck the rules for him and give him a month to clean up and retake it. This was trace amounts of pot - like, one puff on a pipe six weeks before taking the drug test. If he'd failed the followup test, he would have killed himself, I'm certain of it. They would have taken away all of his pain management medication and he would have been stuck.

You are an idiot if you think opiates don't help anybody. Lack of availability of opiates is where people run into problems in the first place. Heroin addicts shooting themselves up in alleyways with dirty needles and going in and out of withdrawal is how their problems become problems in the first place. The drug war fails opiate addicts more than anybody else because opiate addicts could be functional people if they had regular access to their drug.


ColoradoCleric posted:

Go smoke some meth and have a cardiactic arrest over it.

Most of your posts in this thread are lovely sarcastic one-liners and those are probably best saved for GBS, dude.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 19:12 on May 4, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

EXTREME INSERTION posted:

No, if we swapped someone's adderall with meth they would get more negative side effects for a less generally effective drug. Are you trying to say that there is a safe dose of certain drugs like heroin? I don't see too many "light" heroin users, it's pretty easy to get addicted to it regardless of brain chemistry...

Edit: I probably won't be able to argue about this forever because I have finals coming up, but there are certain drugs that are probably not safe for public consumption. It doesn't mean they're evil, it just means that they're dangerous compounds, generally where it's too hard to titrate a safe dose



Personally, I agree completely that some drugs are too hard to be used by the general public. Heroin is a loving awful drug, so is Meth, and there's no rational argument to support their use and wide distribution. Having said that, I don't think criminal drug laws are ever the answer to drug problems and the abuse of dangerous drugs. It doesn't help solve the problem - it's not killing demand, that's for sure. It doesn't matter how steep the penalties are - people will always sell drugs, make drugs, and buy drugs as long as there's a demand and a profit to be made. We're playing whack-a-mole on a board with like 80,000 moles. It's an impossible task. What's the big success story of the war on drugs? LSD? A designer party drug mostly being used by rich white kids, having close to 0 negative impact on society?

I would like to think, however, that once legal, safer highs are more readily available, the more dangerous drugs that are being used today will be traded out in favor of safer substances. Black tar heroin, crack, meth, etc, all became popular street drugs because they were cheap. There's always going to be a hard drug problem in America, even if we reach some far flung future where you can buy all the alternatives for pennies on the dollar. But putting people in jail for selling any drugs or wanting any drugs is stupid, it's not going to solve the problem and it's not worth ours or anyone's time, except for the people who are routinely making money off it. It's either we let scum prey on the poor, or we lock the poor in jail as well as some small percentage of the scum because there's so much loving scum to go around.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Ok. Please enlighten me.

I'm with this guy. How do you restrict drug sales without enforcement? If you rely on criminal enforcement to get rid of drug producers and sellers you're back in the same position we're in now, where you're fighting a war you can never win against an enemy that is impossible to find and infinite in number. You can't get rid of the means of Heroin production, since opiates are used for so many things. So what do you do?

I hate Heroin. I mean that, I mean I really hate that this drug exists. Heroin destroyed my childhood and killed my dad. I blame him a lot for the choices he made, but mostly I blame that stupid loving drug. I don't believe there is any such thing as responsible Heroin use. But I would rather see Heroin addicts get their drugs from a reputable source then see them get poo poo from a scumbag dealer that could kill them. Ideally, we could make the drug freely available but require it be administered by a professional, or at least require that it be used under the care of professionals. If we had some legitimacy in this business fewer people would be dying, even if the addiction rates went up at the end of the day.


This is exactly the kind of common sense approach I would like to see taken to hard drugs. People are going to use this stuff anyway. Minimize harm as much as possible.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 19:11 on May 5, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Powercrazy posted:

If you are worried about testing positive for weed you either work for the government in which case suck it up or do the morally correct thing and quit, or your skills aren't in demand.

Not to say I support drug testing in any capacity, let alone as a condition for employment, but that's the reality we live in today, right now.

Nearly everything that isn't a McJob in OK requires drug testing including a Marijuana panel. I've been under the impression that this was the case in nearly every fully illegal state?

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

AYC posted:

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/30/house-votes-halt-federal-meddling-medical-marijuan/

House votes to end Medical Marijuana prosecutions by the federal government.

I kept saying "Which house?" over and over again in my head trying to figure out what state this was about and then I realized it was federal. That's a pretty big step in the right direction, right?

And the house of all places. Don't these things usually languish and die in committee?

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Prosopagnosiac posted:

Yeah it has the potential to make a difference. But assuming, charitably, that it does pass and get signed into law, wouldn't the DEA be able to take it to court on federal supremacy grounds? Any of our legal eagles know about precedent with regard to a law demanding non enforcement?

I think it would be pretty dumb for a federal agency to take the federal government to federal court over a federal agency overstepping or understepping it's bounds of enforcement.

I also think that it would be pretty visibly dumb to everyone involved if that happened. Like, career-ending stupid. I don't see it happening.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 30, 2014

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

WhoAmI0 posted:

[citation needed]

Oklahoma's had ditch weed growing across it's remote expanses for the last sixty years. The state can't cut it down as fast it grows back. Do you think hemp would be useful if it was tricky to grow?

Potent weed is difficult to grow. But like most plants, it'll sprout from a seed if you put it in the ground whether you're carefully tending it or not.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

It's like he knows he's not going to win the nomination.

Who writes off Colorado a year before the election? That's insane. It might not make a difference in a solid red state like Alaska but taking a hardline stance against an extremely popular policy in an important swing state seems like a really, really bad idea.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Apr 15, 2015

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Guavanaut posted:

Russia hit the addiction clinics so much worse than even America did though. And hit the opiate traffickers harder, who I will shed no tears for but in the absence of alternatives you get people injecting phosphorus directly into their veins with shared needles and unsurprisingly getting sick.

If you want to hit the heroin traffickers in the right way, it would be this, but there's no political will and the DEA hated it enough to lay on international pressure.

Of course, because the DEA doesn't want heroin traffickers put out of business in the first place

objects in mirror posted:

I'm going to directly state what I've been hinting at:

LGBTQ issues suck up a lot of political capital that, from a utilitarian perspective, could be better spent on other issues.

i get what you're saying but you could have picked a better time to share this opinion with the world

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

fishmech posted:

It actually did help the people we told that to. Barring people from driving drunk helps the drunk driver and their potential victims. Barring mass sales of raw milk has save literally millions of lives in total.

:cripes:

Come on, dude, raw milk wasn't killing that many people.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
There is an argument to be made that civil liberties groups were overfocused on LGBT issues at the expense of criminal justice issues in the last 13 years. The argument to be made is the gigantic prison population and the number of black men over 30 who can't vote. You're really understating this issue a lot fishmech, it's kind of bizarre. I get the feeling you just have a "gently caress people who are in jail for drug crimes" attitude and if that's not what you're trying to relay you're doing a pretty poor job of it

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

fishmech posted:

Once again dude, LGBT rights aren't why you can't smoke weed in whatever state you're in, and continuing to support rights for a group that until 2003 could still be jailed just for having sex, and still today can be fired, kicked out of homes, etc just for existing while gay? That's also not preventing legal weed.


Uh yes, it would have killed that many people over the hundred plus years since widespread pasteurization came in.


Yeah we understood that your point is you don't believe in public health and safety hours ago. People should care about other people's safety. We live in a society.

You are constantly changing the goalposts, you started when you said "you should be able to consume anything you want" and then quickly said "but not antibiotics all you want".

Raw milk has been banned in the united states for less than a century. Do not make me go on a quest to prove to you that raw milk was not killing tens of thousands of people a year.

it is not good for you and it is a good thing that it is not sold in grocery stores but I can still go to the loving farm and buy it and if I have a healthy immune system it's unlikely to make me sick. I feel like this is a perfectly good balance. Buy direct from a manufacturer or make it yourself. If you lack the expertise, you don't get to have it. People with the expertise are capable of understanding the risks. That is my feeling on drugs in general, with the exception of weed, which should be sold in every grocery store in the loving country, it's not like they aren't all already selling rolling papers.

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jun 14, 2016

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

fishmech posted:

There are tons of ways to consume things that don't involve eating. Are you really this dumb?

When you have something that was developed as drug, is not effective as a drug, and is actively dangerous when used - for instance - why are you so adamant that it should be able to be purchased, exactly?


Absolutely 0 of those people are in jail because other people dared to also support LGBT rights, dude.

Rights aren't a zero sum game.

Err.. We were talking about resources which are, by nature, limited. I hate to be exceedingly reductive but breast cancer awareness charities suck all the air out of the room when it comes to cancer research. As far as civil rights issues go, gay rights has been the pink ribbon. It's high profile, it makes people feel good, and it brings in the donations that fund the fight. I don't want to sound like I'm against this or anything, it's just... not an entirely invalid point

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Small Frozen Thing posted:

You'd not only be reductive, you'd be wrong as gently caress, since there has been actual progress w/r/t LGBTQ rights whereas the Susan G Komen poo poo is a money sink that enriches the owners and spends almost nothing on research. What a profoundly insulting comparison to make.

You're really missing the point.

I said breast cancer research, first of all - not the Susan G Komen foundation. There are hundreds of legitimate breast cancer research charities that spend a great deal of money on breast cancer research. The problem is that for every 1 dollar that other types of cancer get research for, 9 other dollars go to breast cancer research. Because breast cancer research has been marketed, it makes people feel good, and it gets people to open their wallets. This is not an indictment of breast cancer research, but it is fair to say that the focus on it has drawn attention away from other things. Gay rights aren't the only civil rights issues, and criminal justice reform has been simmering for a while without much attention until the last couple of years.

Again: I am not trying to make a statement against gay rights activism.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Small Frozen Thing posted:

You may not be trying, but you sure as gently caress are ending up doing so.

Look, your issues are obviously more important than the stoner who just wants to get high legally or kid who is mad because he has to buy MDMA illegally and can't get quality control on it, but they're honestly not more important than people doing 99 to life in prison right now because they ran afoul of a series of laws specifically designed to imprison blacks, immigrants and minorities. I am not suggesting that civil rights for LGBT people should have taken a back seat to anyone or been forced to slow down, but there has probably been more than a few fundraisers and petition drives that would have been better spent trying to get people out of prison.

Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost

Small Frozen Thing posted:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those people wouldn't have contributed money to things like that even if there wasn't LGBTQ rights fundraisers going on. It's not just a matter of limited space, a disgusting amount people legitimately don't give a poo poo about our awful prison situation. What you are effectively doing is blaming LGBTQ advocates for people being lovely and uncaring, which is ridiculous.

I'm really not blaming them for anything. I am simply saying resources spent on one were not spent on the other*. I was only playing devil's advocate and I thought this was clear.

edit: By this I mean, that could have been better spent on the other, because there really is a point of diminishing returns, which is what i was trying to get at with the breast cancer thing

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 14, 2016

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Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
Who defines what harmful is, though?

Should we also legalize magic mushrooms? (yes) What about psychedelics in general, since most of them can only cause harm through long term abuse. How about opiates, are we banning all opiates, or just the heavy ones like heroin? Where do you draw the line? Who sets the standard? Who decides what's acceptable and what isn't?

Mirthless fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jun 14, 2016

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