How many people must be offended before we make it a crime?

[wynn]

More broadly...why should something someone does in their own home, hurting no one except possibly themselves, be a crime?

I have two arguments against this

How is hurting oneself a "victimless crime"??!

 

[S.A.M.]

I think you meant to say "stoned." To be "stoked" means to be exhilirated and enthusiastic.

Dunno how I missed this sentence

stoked    [stohkt]
adjective Slang .
1.exhilarated; excited.
2.intoxicated or stupefied with a drug; high.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stoked

 

[GeoffP]

I was arguing her/his specific position there, not the general issue i.e.

More broadly...why should something someone does in their own home, hurting no one except possibly themselves, be a crime?

That is, it can be, because...etc

Do you not understand the idea of a general position? If not hurting anyone has been stipulated already, then your objections are already moot. You seem to be taking whatever position is the most contrary.

 

[cosmictraveler]

chimpkin

More broadly...why should something someone does in their own home, hurting no one except possibly themselves, be a crime? My own view is that in a free society, it should not be.

The problem with that statement is that MOST people do not stay in their homes to take drugs or drink alcoholic beverages as you can see that many businesses sell alcohol for profit everywhere. Most people would rather have a jolly good time with other people at clubs where they are all partying with each other but then drive their cars home while intoxicated most of the time. While it is never easy for you to understand that people do not follow what the "correct" thing to do when intoxicated or high they just so what they want and thereby endanger others with their bad driving.

Millions of lives have been lost due to intoxicated drivers, many families have broken up because of drug addiction problems and many have committed suicide because of their allowing drugs to control them. So you suggest that allowing these drugs to be allowed moreso into the society as a good way to reduce problems, I'd think your high yourself.

 

[chimpkin]

So you suggest that allowing these drugs to be allowed moreso into the society as a good way to reduce problems, I'd think your high yourself.

I linked this article the last time this came up.

five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

Then there's this one:
http://www.economist.com/node/14309861

Officials believe that, by lifting fears of prosecution, the policy has encouraged addicts to seek treatment. This bears out their view that criminal sanctions are not the best answer. “Before decriminalisation, addicts were afraid to seek treatment because they feared they would be denounced to the police and arrested,” says Manuel Cardoso, deputy director of the Institute for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Portugal’s main drugs-prevention and drugs-policy agency. “Now they know they will be treated as patients with a problem and not stigmatised as criminals.”

Apparently, though, drug possession still is illegal, but apparently what they do is seize the drugs and send the user before a commission:

The aim of the dissuasion commissions, which are made up of panels of two or three psychiatrists, social workers and legal advisers, is to encourage addicts to undergo treatment and to stop recreational users falling into addiction. They have the power to impose community work and even fines, but punishment is not their main aim.

What I have advocated in the past and still argue for is that is that the sale of drugs be taxed and the taxes used to pay for treatment facilities. Gang violence is basically caused by keeping their product illegal. Too, people dying from using street drugs often do so because the street drugs are either tainted or unexpectedly pure (a hotshot).

Here in the USA we seem to have no problem locking people up, but plenty of problems providing help for them to peaceably quit their addictions if they want to do that.
If you consider also that a lot of people are self-medicating with drugs to treat depression, bipolar, or PTSD, you begin to really wonder why we spend so much to lock them up and so little to treat them.

Honestly? I think that's because we judge them as having a moral failure rather than a medical problem...when they do, in fact, have a medical problem.