On 19 Apr 2014, at 20:48, meekerdb wrote:
On 4/19/2014 12:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Apr 2014, at 00:52, meekerdb wrote:
On 4/18/2014 7:13 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
What society thinks has nothing to do with it, because weak
correlation-based scientific evidence is used selectively to
create laws that were desired a priori by some interest group.
That implies some nefarious motive and corrupt use of data known
to be wrong. In fact there was no nefarious 'interest group' that
wanted to ban marijuana or to ban alcohol or to ban heroin.
What? For marijuana, there were a lot. Anslinger was asked to find
eveidence that cannabis was worst than alcohol. he destoyed the
results which showed that cannabis is much less dangerous than
alcohol. Nixon, Chirac (in France), adn also people in the
UK, will destroyed such records too.
It is a made up since the start. That is why some people still
speculate on dangers, for which there are no corresponding
complains, with very few exception by person who abuse, and would
probably not in case it would be legal.
All these bans were initiated by people who believed in the ill
effects of these substances for individuals and for society.
I have no clue why you say this.
Because it's true. The people may have been mistaken - particularly
about the net ill effects on society - but there is plenty of
evidence that some people become addicted to pot just as they become
addicted to alcohol or tobacco and this has bad consequences for them.
Sure. But it is the illegality which makes that into a problem. In The
Netherlands, a kid is very badly seen by his peers when stoned, and
considered as a total idiot when abusing pot. but where pot is
illegal, he is seen as a sort of hero. The numbers confirms this. The
Netherlands is the country were kids smoke pots the less, and
countries with severe repression are those where kids smoke the most.
For example, my wife's first husband became a habitual pot smoker
and lost all ambition and interest in other things.
One case is not a statistics. I might doubt if he lost all ambition
and interest because of pot, or if he became a pot abuser because he
lost all ambition and interest, for some different reason.
When I was a young teacher, being still brainwashed, I was dramatizing
when kids were "druggy", and unconsciously provided to pot the
justification of the kids problem. But then I realize that by saying
something like "smoke as much as you want but don't use that as a
pretext to not study for the exams" was much more productive. They
stopped the druggy play when I stopped to see them as druggie, but
just as lazy kids searching reason to not study.
And even aside from such effects, there has been a strong Puritan
ethic in the U.S. that thinks of any kind of sybaritic pleasure as
sinful and bad for one's character.
Yes. That is part of the problem, perhaps even more so for protestants
than catholics which have the right to take as much fun in whatever
they want as long as they confess to the local "authority" (!).
I tend to believe the contrary. It is a quasi "duty" to enjoy life
fully, as long as we don't interfere with other people ways to enjoy
themselves. Pseudo-religion uses sin as a manipulative tool. The
christian message according to which we have to love god, or to fear
him is everything but religious. It is an inconsistent psychological
constraint making impossible to develop genuine love.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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