Opinions - Refute This: Yes alcohol is harmful, but legalizing more drugs adds fuel to the fire.

[dyingtomorrow]

Most extreme conservatives are against drugs for such illogical or uninformed reasons that it is impossible to have a rational argument with them (e.g. it's a "sin" according to Holy Book X [despite not being mentioned anyways], it causes mental illness [according to false government propaganda], it is physically harmful [ignoring the fact that alcohol is more harmful], and so on). As society progresses and people become more educated, their "reasons" and justifications for their faith or ignorance based "beliefs" become non-issues in erudite national discourse on social policy.

More disturbing to me, however, is a recent argument that I've heard from liberals against the legalization of drugs, which goes something like this:

Yes alcohol is admittedly both extremely physically and socially harmful, but it is so ingrained in our society that it is not realistic to illegalize. Legalizing other drugs however will just cause more problems in addition to alcohol, which can only cause more harm, unnecessarily.

In other words, alcohol already "fills up," in a way, our society's capacity to handle the various problems arising from drug use (naming/admitting alcohol is a drug in this case); legalizing more drugs will just result in more social and individual harm akin to the problems we already face with alcohol, and will be overall bad for our society.

There is a kernal of logic to the argument; the incomplete kind that politicians love to shine up, plaster a liberal coat of rhetoric on, and cling to religiously. This makes it more dangerous than the myriad of simp-minded propaganda out there that actually fosters drug use rather than preventing it.

Anyone want to take a crack at it?

Reputation Comments on this post:

	giving you lots of rep for this topic has this is a great debate!
	Definitely an interesting thread.