Peterkin

It's the only kind of opinion I have. Two. Maximum two - I swear.

Nobody can possibly tell anybody else whether their suicide is right or wrong. It's not a question of right and wrong; it's a question of being able or unable to tolerate one's life. Entirely subjective.

All I did was respond, simply, directly and succinctly, to your posts. Why make a federal case out of it?

I strongly recommend attempting both. Anthropocentric assumptions have kept us in ignorance about and indifference to everyone else - and pretty soon, there won't be anyone else. Really? The existence of a watch proves... what? God?

No.

Condemnation of all things carnal was ever dear to the religious zealot's heart. Loose women are the easiest target; female sexuality is the most dangerous thing in the bible.

In the 90's, I could get a pretty decent box of plonk for $7US in LA, compared to $21CD in Ontario, (Leave us not speak of the beer). And our income was almost double there. We must have been mad to come back.... Anyway, it's still legal and somehow even the homeless and destitute manage to get an excess of it.

This is largely true in Ontario, although recently some supermarkets and convenience stores have been licensed, fully or party (beer only or beer and wine). The down-side of restriction is inconvenience to the customer; the up-side is tight control. The Liquor Control Board outlets are very strict about age-checking and quality control. They also get some good deals on import items because of sheer size and volume, and in a position to feature local small breweries, wineries and distilleries. (and they've been very conscientious on Covid protocol) It's good, reliable tax revenue. Yes, most alcohilc beverages are more expensive than in the US, but I wouldn't say 'extremely' expensive. (Cigarettes, now... )

They don't miss a trick!

And a long-standing voter-suppression system now.

And renoted, should you deem it necessary.

OK. Your rejection is duly and solemnly noted.

It mean you lack sufficient other-awareness to put a bag over the damn mirror! Self-awareness does not require understanding of artefacts from outside one's natural environment. The natives of the Americas were conscious and self-aware, but gunpowder-unaware.

that was your word that was mine: other reliable sources can provide the historical documentation to corroborate the one I cited. You must, of course, please yourself.

And there is still the known but largely unaddressed problem of prescription drugs - legally available and harmful to the more prosperous and empowered; illegally available and harmful to the most vulnerable: the poor and the young. Another aspect of criminalizing everything in sight: once out of sight, the user still isn't safe, and neither is a previous non-user https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prison-drug-problem-jail-uk-illicit-substances-reform-a9288616.html It's not just the UK, obviously: There was an interesting article, also, on the fact that only 11% of prisoners with drug addiction are getting any treatment. But my internet connection is playing silly buggers today, so I'm giving up on that link. Criminalization is just not working.

The spike in abortions was not due to the Supreme Court decision. It was merely the legal resurfacing of a practice that goes way back. Roe v Wade in the US, as had happened a few years before in Canada, merely meant that it happens on operating tables instead of kitchen tables. Of course, a great many abortions were already being performed in doctors' offices and private clinics, without documentation. Both the documentation and the patient survival rate in the lower classes increased dramatically (I don't have time to look up infanticide and abandonment stats). Everybody had known all along, but now they could know it aloud. In the post WWII decades, western society exercised the break with its Christian foundations - a break for which the philosophical groundwork had been laid between the world wars, by Huxley, Russell et al. At the same time, the great burgeoning of women's social, economic and political emancipation - also with its roots in the early 20th century, and its collision with existing power structure in the 1960's, at the same time that the single largest cohort the western world had ever produced entered its reproductive stage. At the same time that the Civil Rights Movement - not coincidentally - made substantial progress. In the 1970's, all of these forces converged. And they all threatened the the long entrenched, self-entitled power structure, social structure, legal structure. At the same time that some white factions feared desegregation (with the concomitant challenge from Black men for the jobs and positions white men considered their domain) they were also faced with a challenge for those positions of economic and political power from women, who, hitherto had been kept out of the fray by motherhood and dependency. Whipping up a moral backlash on behalf of the 'precious little murdered babies' had a triple advantage: it turned the decent, God-fearing women against the wanton Jezebels (dividing women for easy conquest), created a politically impotent underclass of shamed, impoverished unwed mothers (useful as football and whipping post) and, besides masking the unsavoury motivations of that faction, also concealed the building of the existential threat that is the GOP of today. (Side-note: Wouldn't you think that, if the moral Protestants were seriously concerned about unborn babies and their mothers' souls, they would advocate strongly for, rather than against family planning, sex education and birth control? ) The 'abortion issue' is indeed the biggest, most effective smokescreen since the 13th century witch-hunts... with much the same designated target. No, on second thought, that's incorrect. The great open-ended commie-hunt of the 50's was another. Similar motives, different fall-guy.

irrespective of what it contains, it's hard to believe. It's also readily verifiable from any number of historical sources. Here is another opinionated article. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs# Second circle. I don't. Maybe you're right. Maybe if something didn't work the first fifteen times, the sixteenth attempt will have different results. What is your 'stance'? I thought you were in favour of legal alcohol (the most dangerous) and illegal mushrooms (the least dangerous).

I don't know about all of the substances, but cannabis has been in use - legally, medically, recreationally - in quite large populations for about 10,000 years. I have not seen any studies from pre-colonial India and China suggesting a higher rate of physical illness, addiction or criminality from cannabis than in post-colonial cultures where it's illegal. I have not seen any clinical comparison between the use of peyote, morning glory seeds, and mushrooms by North American natives and alcohol use in the same population - we only about the devastating effects of the latter. The whole banning drugs craze in the west is a 20th century phenomenon - and, guess what? Its history is closely entwined with racism https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illegal As for the new street drugs, how does illegality affect their medical risk assessment? By making it, user identification and treatment, more difficult. It's not my chart. How do you know it has? We do have some statistics about man-hours, equipment, etc that goes into policing; we do have statistics on the cost, both economic and social, of apprehension, trial and incarceration. We do have statistics that by far the majority of the prison population of the US is there for drug-related offenses. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp We have no US statistics for what hasn't been tried in the US, but the ones we do have attest poorly for criminalizing. Not the same as what you think will happen, evidently. But there really is only one way to find out who's right.

Adding? I think they have been around for some time - the ones I mentioned, thousands of years. And new ones are being made all the time, sold illegally, unregulated and sometimes, at least until it's too late, undetected. Because according to the charts (it's a cactus, American https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/tripping-on-peyote-in-navajo-nation/) they're among the least harmful. If something less harmful satisfies the same craving in more people, the overall harm is reduced. Much more to the point, if a less harmful substance, in small quantities, fills a need that alcohol fails to, goading the needy to drink more and more, it would reduce harm considerably. I don't. Prohibiting them hasn't done any good: the largely ineffective enforcement measures are obscenely expensive, divisive, disruptive and ruin as many lives and families as addiction itself. What's out in the open has at a chance of being controlled. What's hidden in the sewers has none.

Indeed. Also, I wonder about the reporting - how reliable the numbers are. Much remains unknown. I don't question that alcohol is both the most abused and most accepted of those substances. But I don't see the remedy - not even a partial one - in prohibition. Outlawing things that people want simply drives commerce in those things underground; it feeds crime, secrecy and desperation - not to mention misappropriation and corruption in law enforcement. It might, however be possible to legislate a better distribution of substance use. Legalizing marijuana legal is a start, but as long as it costs vastly more than wine and spirits, nothing will change. Legalizing magic mushrooms and peyote will not divert a noticeable population from alcohol, unless there is sufficient, affordable supply, and even then, it would take time. I think we're stuck with alcohol, and the vast tax revenues from its overconsumption, because we just can't offer the users a viable alternative.

Then I guess a lot of Americans - or rather, even more Americans - are just plain screwed. Partition?

Those charts represent total harms, yes? Not per capita? So this just means, the more people use something, the more harm it can do. Are any prescription drugs included?

Every government has its own attitude to each kind of drug. These attitudes are influenced by culture, religion, history, sometimes by pressure from bigger countries and trading partners. They have different reasons for the laws they pass and the laws they enforce (not necessarily the same) and how strict and harsh the enforcement is. Some judge a substance more harmful than it is, simply because it's alien to their culture. Sometimes they pass a law - or reinstate an old one that had been neglected by mutual consent - in order to assert their authority, to demonstrate moral rectitude, to signal a reform, to mollify or intimidate an identifiable political faction. There is no universal or general situation: peoples, their governments and their challenges are all different. Yes, toxins are bad for human physiology. But then so are a lot of other things we are expected to survive. Governments have various degrees of control over the people's actions, and vice versa.

Now, there you have a whole pitch of sticky wickets. Jurisdictional disputes between states, and state and federal agencies. I can't see these issues resolved any time soon: what's needed is nothing less than a full sweep of reforms.

I'm not sure. But SCOTUS is not a single mind; even the Republican appointees don't have the exact same response to every constitutional issue. It's a difficult document to interpret in the face of contemporary social reality. And they're not - mostly - stupid people or dishonest judges. They may reach a majority decision on one issue and a different conclusion on another. You know laws are passed by legislatures, right? And changed by legislatures? And guided, limited or knocked down by the constitutional principles that gave them the authority to legislate.