There's a big difference between drugs and suicide. Suicide is final. Any damage drugs do are usually temporary. I think that people using drugs should talk to people as much as people thinking about killing themselves, because with drugs you can go too far, but that's not the same thing as thinking that the people using drugs are bad people. Similarly, if you're selling drugs, you should only be selling to the people who want drugs. There's nothing immoral about selling to people who want them.
My argument was that making crappy products is a harmful thing. I recently broke up with a girl who was as close to a soul mate as I've ever found because she was insistent that everybody was like Sex and the City characters, and that my personality type was incompatible with her character. People who write and produce crap damage people's minds, and I will always find that repugnant. In my mind, making bad things is just as bad as selling bad product, possibly even worse because you ought to know better. That said, I don't think it's fair to persecute people who make crappy things. The best solution is to make better things and lead by example.
I'm not a libertarian. I think that there ought to be solutions to the drug problem. I just think that such solutions should be enticing people to do something better with their lives rather than punishing them for using.
It seems that I can't respond directly to newt0311's response to you, because the post is "[dead]". But I just wanted to say that had he started with this level of analysis, he might not have gotten so many down mods or at least got his more serious points noticed. Studies on recidivism rates are very relevant to this discussion, and it is disappointing that citations to serious studies about it are now grayed out and buried deep in a comment thread. It would be useful for the debate to have some arguments in favor of keeping drugs illegal that include empirical data, and I think newt0311 could have contributed some of that, had he not led with the "kill all the drug users" opinion.
To respond to you, the idea that the solution to the drug problem is the same as the solution to crappy writing is interesting. Not sure I agree, but interesting nonetheless.
My argument was that making crappy products is a harmful thing. I recently broke up with a girl who was as close to a soul mate as I've ever found because she was insistent that everybody was like Sex and the City characters, and that my personality type was incompatible with her character. People who write and produce crap damage people's minds, and I will always find that repugnant. In my mind, making bad things is just as bad as selling bad product, possibly even worse because you ought to know better. That said, I don't think it's fair to persecute people who make crappy things. The best solution is to make better things and lead by example.
I'm not a libertarian. I think that there ought to be solutions to the drug problem. I just think that such solutions should be enticing people to do something better with their lives rather than punishing them for using.