jcu27 said:
And just because it's illegal doen't make it wrong.
Reminds me of what is referred to as the "Platonic Touchstone" that is revealed in the Dialogue: "The Laws." In that case, wine, alcohol, etc., in one's cups, so to speak, and attendant items similar that many subsequent so-called religions since have placed under a ban because they have yet to acknowledge that moral quality of the Will is self acquired. Even The Church has finally acknowledged that morality is injured if dependant upon God; even after The Academy was closed down by a Justinian under the onslaught of so-called Christian propaganda way back when. Granted, The State has the right to defend itself, and along with that is the fact that 'Law' has no sovereignty over "True Knowledge." If, for no other reason, if The Church considered such an item as a Sacrament, along with their seven others, what then? Would it be that much different than the Incas utilizing cocaine leaves intelligently and religiously while the drug cartels of Cuidad Juarez are no better than those that have murdered over 100,000 indigenous Nauhua over the past forty years in meso-America? A misdirected correlation if nothing else to assume a drug-crazed city as evidence to generalize upon.
The remaining constant evidently is 'need,', as one can interpret the North America penchant about the authorities' viewpoint upon such an item; as if in the same frame of reference as food is a need to a starving belly. If not needed as a food, then but a recreational substance and all else is but a scurrilous association; as they say, .."spectral evidence is not admissible in a court of Law." But do you really think that if, for instance, over the past one hundred and fifty years or so, that if all the political States that have been since, including all of the European as well regardless, actually had an access to those that knew how to 'learn how to learn,' unto honourable soldiery and principled Statesmenship, that you would have suffered the deaths of over one hundred and fifty millions of your peoples on this Earth hence? Caught up in a quagmire in the Levant that is becoming impossible to extradite yourselves from?..even economically speaking?
Different vocations have different fields of study. As long as civil liberties are recognized, what then? What is your take on an Eighth Sacrament as long as all others' never witness the partaking by an inidivdual of such a substance, never in public I must say nor an endangerment to others; 'as if' one was alone in a darkened chamber and not let out until he related why twelve is the number of the universe? As the Delphic Oracle once stated, by Simonides' account,.."The Gods do not content against necessity."
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With that, I wouldn't legalize it, as such; but I would decriminalize it with plenty of provisional qualification. Quite evidently, there are many persons that just can't handle alcohol at any time in their lives...god knows why; no need to make it even worse by compounding the problem, at least, at present. But I'd still have to admit that there are ways of utilizing such a substance in an educated fashion wherein it is not just a victimless crime, not a crime at all, really, considering the evidence of political science during the past two thousand years or so, and the fact that 'Law' is delivered under complusion and not persuasion; and that the competency of 'The State' does not exist in the here after.