Domestic violence, the new war on poor/minorities (like the drug war)

I know where you are headed. But let's say I go on a bender and hole up somewhere and shoot up smack for a week straight. What harm does that do to anyone else, in and of itself?

 

My opinion. ... We should criminalize behavior that infringes on others. ... not the thing that does nothing to anyone else in and of itself.

Every time you leave your home, you potentially engage in millions of behaviors that might potentially lead to something else that may or may not impact someone else (for good or bad). We don't criminalize most things on that kind of reasoning.

Practically, our drug laws make little sense to me, too. We have created a sprawling prison system on the back of these laws. I don't buy your characterization that the majority of drug users are doing things as a result of their using drugs to hurt anyone else. The reality is we have filled prisons with hundreds of thousands of people who have done nothing to harm anyone else -- the are simply incarcerated on drug charges. Then there is how much violent crime that was only a product of the fact that we criminalized the drug trade? If drug commerce was legal, and not something that has to be conducted illicitly, we would reduce that violent crime immeasurably.

The whole thing makes little sense to me. It not only is costly in terms of what it takes to pursue those offenses and warehouse people that way (in the most inefficient way possible from a cost standpoint), but the toll in terms of destroying people's lives arguably has done way more harm than drug use itself ever could.

Either way, I don't think it's my place or your place to decide what behavior someone chooses to engage in (as in their choice) is harmful or not. It's your life. Your body. Live it how you please. ... UNTIL you do something that is likely to hurt someone else. This is how we ended up with prohibition. Drug use falls pretty well short of that for me, too, because millions of people use all kinds of drugs without it leading to a murder or an armed robbery or any other kind of tangible harm to anyone else.

In my opinion, the basic social contract way of creating laws has worked best for us. It's when we have strayed from it that we have gone most wrong. You have a a right to pursue your life as you want (for example, getting stoned every day). But that right should only go only as far as you infringing on others' pursuit of whatever floats their boat. Your drug use does nothing to anyone else -- in and of itself. Which is why I posted what I did: it's not the same thing as domestic violence. The domestic violence itself harms someone else.

 

Can you elaborate? You didn't give me much to respond to.

I don't know how you read anything into what I posted about how life works, (I would never have the hubris to post about how life works because it is a subjective construct that is painted by each of our personal experiences. I am an expert on my life, for example. Not on your life) and even more so, how you are reading any comment into it about anyone suffering from any kind of addiction.