Hey everyone!
First post here, so bare with me!
Just wondering if there is any good material on debating the legalisation of drugs (naturally, being against it for recreational use, I do believe in certain circumstances like severe autism may benefit from cannabis oil to calm the person down)?
Open to literally any opinion here as I haven’t really considered this before.
Also, any material that relates to Australian politics would be nice!
Cheers
Would your debate be stemming from a theological point of view? Or are you looking for statistics and arguments as for the moral and political reasoning?
I would say both, so the debate is more of a discussion on a radio station that’s happening next week. I thought I would propose both the theological and non theological positions (as it’s a secular radio station). Thoughts?
Well here is my opinion on a few observsations I’ve had as my country has recently legalized marijuana and now people are asking for full decriminalization.
When in reality this does nothing to benefit us, of course reallocation of tax dollars will always benefit the people as every single nation has wasted tax dollars, but the fact is these crimes are not “victimless” is imprisonment for marijuana consumption the answer? No. But neither is allowing George to hit a fentanyl pipe then have paramedics and the healthcare system deal with the reprecussions. Perhaps the government should also legalize and regulate sex trafficking so we can have brothels everywhere and give women a legitimage avenue into selling themselves, that will help…
All of society is the victim to a drug addict and these “recreational drugs” are a lot harder than marijuana, many are made in a bathroom. These people are users because 95% of the time they are selfish and don’t even wish to attempt to stop. I say this from experience of loved ones.
And as other members have said “A nations laws shoukd reflect its morality” its quite obvious where we are trending in the western world, especially states like Australia.
As for the theological side, there is lots of passages about sobriety and seeing Gods beauty with a clear mind
And another thing, i have had some crazy mushroom trip and let me say, life is better sober. Experiences God’s earth in its full beauty.
Thanks brother!
Those are good points for me to research and expand on for the debate!
I think good arguments can be found on both sides, depending on the drug and culture in question. In speaking with non-believers, the focus would first be on what we can agree on, asking questions to clarify their position and bring out nuance, and then respectful disagreements - “what about…?” In other words you might get more done by not taking a hard stance and going in guns blazing.
Everyone can agree that there is a problem, but there is no easy solution. Politicians often just make laws to say they “did something” but rarely does this solve anything.
Drug addiction is a symptom of greater, deeper problems with human society. If you have to make a law about it you’ve sort of already lost. Like gay marriage - it’s a silly fight because once a culture gets to the point of arguing that law, it’s already lost and not worth fighting the battle (I mean in the political sense).
You could do some research on the US Prohibition era, there’s a fairly good Ken Burns documentary on it. Interesting time of law, corruption in enforcement, civil disobedience, feminism, and addictions, with Christians on both sides. Ultimately it was a huge failure.
Anyway I’m sort of rambling now but that’s kind of how this topic goes… no right answer, a depressing societal problem you can’t solve by legislation. And on the other hand, letting people do whatever they want isn’t a solution either, as Arditi already mentioned.
Edit: This was filmed in Philadelphia a couple days ago. What is the easy, political solution here?
update my friend, how did it go?
Friend!
Apologies for the late reply, I completely forgot to check this!
Went well, but they cut the entire discussion from the recording HAHAH
I did go sicko mode about aboriginal communities (I’m from Australia btw) and that scared them into cutting a good 1.5 hours off the entire podcast.
So, the entire 3 hours was trimmed down to 1.5 hours with all the boring discussions about life and Warhammer lmao
All the information here was actually so helpful, he was caught off guard many times!
Cheers my homies 
Thats kinda based. Sperging out so hard they shut down the discussion at all.
Late to the party, but I think the most useful thing to look at is alcohol abuse. Prohibition was a mess, but ending prohibition didnt magically solve problems. The crime syndicates built around rum running didn’t lose power or go away, they just branched out, because any business that can be done in a shady and illegal manner is more profitable to do in the shady and illegal manner, and these people have all the necessary channels and experience for doing so. If anything it allowed them more freedom because they weren’t wasting as much time and effort on concealing the booze production, so they could get into positions of power and influence.
Likewise, the reason why alcohol was prohibited didn’t go away. High rates of divorce, domestic abuse, DUI car crashes, workplace accidents, etc etc, didnt go away. Prohibition actually reduced those numbers, I encourage you to look into specifics.
I think there was a debunking of Portugal’s complete decriminalization. Likewise, Netherlands is turning into a narco state due to decriminalization of weed
