All psychoactive substances should be legalized for adults to purchase, possess, and use.
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After 1 vote and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...
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I contend that all drugs, from heroin to cannabis should be legalized and sold in dispensaries like alcohol and nicotine are today.
- Fentanyl
- 4-ANPP
- Phenethyl 4-ANPP
- Who is obligated to legalize psychoactive substances?
- Why should we?
- Frankly, I am seeing a lot of bold claims made by Pro. The one thing that is missing is evidence. He uses no sources and if a person is making assertions without evidence, who are we to take said statements seriously?
These questions are of serious importance, the last 2 being the most important by far. Let’s say this person who died was being completely irresponsible and combining multiple substances at once and he didn’t know what was dangerous to mix. That is 100% an education issue. People use drugs every day without dying, in fact most drug users do not even have addiction. That has been proven by the work of a chairman on the National Institute of Health, Dr. Carl Hart from Columbia university. His work came to the conclusion that 80-90% of drug users in the US do not have addiction or use drugs irresponsibly. He himself an accomplished pharmacologist uses heroin and is open about it. He’s able to use heroin safely because he is very educated on how the drug works, how not to develop addiction, how to stay safe. All the way back in the 1890’s there were studies done with diacetylmorphine (heroin), heroin is simply a modified morphine molecule to have acetyl bonds at the top left and bottom right of the molecule. Making it more polar, which leads to higher potency. Not higher addictive potential.
So this brings me to my final point. If we legalized all substances you would be able to go into a dispensary and buy pure heroin or any other drug you like to use. It would also get rid of close to 75% of people in jail on simple possession charges. Drug use is dangerous, to say that’s not true is to lie, cannabis has risks, caffeine has risks, heroin and fentanyl have risks. But our government is actively making it more dangerous by their laws and enforcement. Danger isn’t even the point in my opinion. Adults in this country are free to do all sorts of things, shoot guns, race cars, cliff dive, sky dive, etc. we just assume adults embarking on those tasks are aware of the risks before hand and are making their own decision to do these activities. Drug use should be no different. There will still be addicts and still be idiots who kill themselves. But if we re design our drug education to not be about abstinence from drug use and actually tell young people bad adults about what makes them dangerous and how to lower the risks as much as possible a lot less of that would happen. If we treat drug education like modern sex education which is basically “we know you’re going to have sex, this is how you do it safely” it would save many lives.
- There is a risk to owning pit bulls because they kill people but they're legal to own in the state of Utah. Therefore, we should allow people to safely buy lions, zebras, and tigers as pets. As long as the animals receive proper training, it could save lives.
Drugs are not the problem, our government is the main issue because they actively make drug use more dangerous. This is my final statement. Our government not only makes them more dangerous laws but even have a history of poisoning drugs to scare people away from them. For example the government killed 10,000 people during alcohol prohibition by paying bootleggers and giving them freedom to sell alcohol as long as they left the highly toxic substance methanol in some of their products. Under Raegan the United States poisoned cannabis plots in Georgia and Mexico with a neurotoxin called Paraquat which induces Parkinson’s disease. Luckily and funnily enough they didn’t go to any chemists before doing this be wise Paraquat has low thermostability and would break down when lit on fire.
- Who is obligated to legalize psychoactive substances?
- Why should we?”
. It is the leading cause of lung cancer. If you support those drugs being legal, at least be philosophically consistent with your view and apply it to all drugs.
- Pro answered the Why of the BOP, but hasn’t proven it yet. The question still remains, how do we know less deaths would occur? Could we resolve this problem by providing drug education without legalizing it?
- Pro answered the Who.
What evidence do you have that the current system we have isn’t broken? Death rates by contaminated drugs going up yearly? Addiction rates increasing yearly? What’s your evidence that our current system isn’t broken?
Also pointing out risks doesn’t give more evidence or power to the argument of prohibition. As ive pointed out (and you have refused to engage with) we are free to do many dangerous things. Why should it stop with drugs? again you have provided 0 reasons to keep drugs illegal. You have only disagreed with my position without any reason for doing so. You are complaining about my evidence while providing none to compliment your case.
Also i have supported many lines of evidence as to why legalizing all substances would be better for society and make drug use safer. I shouldn’t have to spell them out three separate times for you to understand them. Less contamination will was to less death. Did you even read my argument? Did you see the results on drugs data? How would buying pure drugs not be safer than ingesting the results you saw on that website. Which is what everyone encounters when they buy drugs that are currently illegal.
I listed three reasons why. Less death, less people in prison, less families ripped apart by parents and children going to prison for simple drug possession. Which accounts for about 45% of people in prison. there are other reasons as well. We allow alcohol and tobacco to be legal and purchased by adults.
Good debate, I hope you can bring some points next round.
- He mentions that legalizing psychoactive substances would reduce the amount of convictions, but less convictions would happen if more people followed the law. And there would also be less convictions for murder if we legalized murder.
- He says less people would die. I challenge him on this by asking him to provide evidence because nothing in his sources seem to prove this claim. He implies I must draw this conclusion on my own by checking his sources.
The only thing you have proven to me, and hopefully the voters are picking up on it, is that you don’t have the ability to cross reference different results and come to a logical conclusion.
If you don’t believe I have presented evidence that legalization would solve these issues then you are not reading or not comprehending what I’m saying. Which is why I spelled it out to you like I would to some one in high school in this argument.
My opponent does not seem to be able to grasp the what I am saying about legalization and reducing the number of deaths.
It is very simple and very clear. I have given many lines of evidence for it, he is either willfully ignoring them or doesn’t have ability to understand them. I will spell them out very clearly here.
I hope voters realize that and do more thinking than my opponent has for the entirety of this debate.
"All psychoactive substances should be legalized for adults to purchase, possess, and use."
That's the topic. The topic is not "All psychoactive substances MUST be legalized for adults to purchase, possess, and use." As Con himself states, there must be some moral obligation to legalize these drugs, but that moral obligation can be achieved in multiple ways. If something should happen because it achieves a certain net benefit, that is sufficient reason to say that we "should" do it. So, while Con keeps arguing throughout the debate that Pro must meet some arbitrary threshold that, as he put it, "demonstrate[s] the need for psychoactive substances," it's neither clear that the resolution demands that threshold be met, nor is it clear what the threshold is. The two issues of "who" and "why" aren't thresholds, so it remains unclear throughout the debate.
So, yes, while the burden of proof is on Pro, I think the problem for Con is that the burden doesn't set the bar high enough to functionally make it unnecessary for Con to argue his side of the debate. Sure, Pro is required to present some reason to legalize psychoactive substances, which he does: correlative data shows a reduction in overdose deaths (just saying that it's only correlative doesn't invalidate the point, it only makes the link more tenuous), which likely result from a more consistent composition and better education (admittedly the latter point is non-unique since both sides claim they can do it), as well as the benefit of having fewer people rotting in jail (not a lot of impact built off of this, but Con's response that it can also be a reason to make murder legal isn't particularly convincing - it's a point that's meant to contrast with the harms of allowing the activity, which was a point Con never made). That's something, it's a non-zero reason to believe that legalizing psychoactive substances produces a genuine benefit. There are points to be made against this, but just denying that there's a solid point here isn't enough. As such, I vote Pro. Also, sources to Pro, since he backed up his points with substantial sources (even if they didn't fully prove his case, they proved aspects of it), whereas Con's responses to those sources were highly generalized and he didn't present any himself.
I will, it is my second priority behind a debate that goes out in like 22 hours.
Guys drop a vote on this debate doesn’t have any yet
Sounds good, ty
I've been quite busy, but I should be able to get to it sometime in the next few
Would you like to vote on this?
Rat-Man has me blocked for mental health reasons and is opting to ignore me.
I have you blocked for a different purpose and it's temporary. The shit-talking between you and I will resume normally.
Beyond that, you can sulk in your misery until then.
I want you to take a look at your comment and how hypocritical you are lol. Only thing I’ll say you today. Just let it marinate and sit with you a while. I have an oil spill to go work on while you’re doing that.
Rat-Man is too big of a bitch to respond to me or you. That’s why he makes these jabs behind block.
Rational madman
I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And no in my opinion Lancelot didn’t do better than you. But you also didn’t do better than him because both of you are wrong. Also you two have a really hard time combatting the evidence I have, and have no evidence to bring forth on this topic.
So stop with your weird arrogance because you’re not as smart as you think you are.
Also you still have me blocked because you’re a sore loser and cry baby.
The forced laughs are your biggest cope ever.
hhahahaha he thought he could do so much better than me! LOL!!!!
Care to drop a vote