You Want to Be Taken Seriously? Come On Then...

 I'm on the other side, say half the readers of this headline*...

The Argument

The World’s View on Drugs Is Changing. Which Side Are You On?

Should we decriminalize drugs, or legalize?

If you want to be known as a place for serious debate, argumentation or thought, you have to be honest.  Here, legalization and decriminalization are one one end of the spectrum, with many societies in the world seriously punishing drug use and possession.  (see Return to Paradise or Brokedown Palace, movies both.)

Plus, on the legal drugs side, you have a lot of people now watching drugs being administered and recommended as both treatment and preventative medicine.  You can be pro-deregulation regarding getting drugs to the market via legalization of the legally prescribing community (traditionally licensed doctors; new drugs / vaccines), and be very much anti-drug-abuse where the kids are encouraged to take everything they find in an over-prescribed elder's medicine cabinet just for kicks and ... stimulation.  

You have to balance the crimes of those abusing vs. those legally medicating (and I don't mean a sham-pad diagnosis) who are trying to meet real people's real physical and pain needs without inadvertently kicking off a crisis, as the opioid situation in America -- like rural cousin Meth taught us:   If you have American affluence, attitude and desire, you'll have your drugged up kids and communities, and broken family structures too with absentee and rotating kin substituting for the natural family formation.  Booze suffices, for some.  Wine clinkey, drinkey-drinkey.  Others like soft drugs as stimulants more often;  some appreciate a harder trip, more relaxing but less frequent.  

Choice?

I think, that's what this episode of The Argument wants to be:  an honest, intellectual questioning of American attitudes.  You'd never get there from this headline though.  

There's no place for the other side of the argument, which would argue against increased drug consumption. -- especially that deemed recreational and unnecessary to preserving life.

See, that's why there is such a big national controversy going down right now about what drugs people are legally mandated to put into their bodies to preserve their own livelihoods and lives, in some special not-medically-able-to-be-vaccinated cases.  Plus, naturally, you have people wondering if Colin Powell might be alive today if he had isolated much more in limiting contact with the outside world, and refused the CoVid vaccination, trying to steer clear altogether as surely many in his elite political circles are doing, if sick, elderly and vulnerable themselves.  Make sure others around you are vaccinated and non-carriers without assuming the risk of how the vaccine will affect an already battered immune system when CoVid exposure comes. 

The black community has not forgotten that both Hank Aaron and Colin Powell died after vaccination and exposure to CoVid.  Maybe the vaccine hastened those deaths, maybe it didn't.  But others surely are watching and calculating their own decisions.

That's the more interesting argument to read about today regarding people's personal drug choices and society's respect for those choices than  "Legal or Decriminalize" recreational drug use.  If that's the debate, surely they discussed the Parkland School killer's admissions that he shot up his ex-school after his mother died, and he was left to his own devices with his mental illness, which unfortunately included a legally purchased AR-47 and illegally purchased marijuana.  (He lived in Florida, where it is neither legalized nor decriminalized not on track to be either, as far as I know.)

Be honest in framing your hypothetical debates.  Set your scenes in reality at least, not hard to do if you keep up and read the papers.

The Argument

The World’s View on Drugs Is Changing. Which Side Are You On?

Should we decriminalize drugs, or legalize?

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* Many more, in more conservative and healthy-body places...