Drugs

[VermontLeft]

i know this is the second thread i started called "drugs" :o, but this ones a much more serious one.

my question/issue here is about peoples opinions of drug use and drug production both in this society and in a possible communist society.

i know that a lot of people are against drug use at all (although I have no idea why), but surely this doesnt extend to a free society!?!

i mean does anyone here actually have a good reason why people shouldn't be able to drink/eat/smoke/snort/whatever anything they want to? Can anyone seriously say that, as leftists, they want the government to decide what's "good" or whatever??? :unsure:

[CCCPneubauten]

Like many thingfs in my life, I don't do them, but I don't mind if others do. Of course we also need to know that people CAN get hooked on the 'hard' stuff, so we also need to have rehab, free, for all who desire it.

"i mean does anyone here actually have a good reason why people shouldn't be able to drink/eat/smoke/snort/whatever anything they want to? "
Also, this arguement seems close to something a capitalist would say about people 'buying and selling or bartering' how ever they want.


I didn't put much thought into this post, but the answer is simple, let people do what they will with their bodies, as long as it isn't harming another (i.e. a guy 'high' on coke killing some one)

[VermontLeft]

Also, this arguement seems close to something a capitalist would say about people 'buying and selling or bartering' how ever they want

except when you "buy" or "sell" or whatever theres another person involved. so if you make money someone else has to lose it, if you "buy labour" someone else has to "work for you".

but with drugs (using, not buying/selling), theres just the one person involved ...you. so while there can be exploitation in seeming "consentual" relationships, when it comes to just you and a substance, how could there be?


I didn't put much thought into this post, but the answer is simple, let people do what they will with their bodies, as long as it isn't harming another (i.e. a guy 'high' on coke killing some one)

:) exactly my thoughs!

[drain.you]

I'm all for freedom to use drugs and such.
I suppose the only reason I can come up with for the against side would be that many people use these drugs to retreat from society, which is understandable in a capitalist society but under communism I would want people to be grouping together and working for a common goal - not sitting alone in a bedroom with needles on the floor in the vommit.

[Dyst]

People become addicted, therefore loose/need a lot of money, therefore could get involved into shady businesses.

Much of the problems are associated with capitalism.

[Janus]

I wouldn't mind what people did as long as long as their actions don't detrimentally affect that of others. Their's no reason why people can't have a little fun sometimes.

[wet blanket]

I imagine that in an environment in which drugs are legal and the means of production are in the hands of the masses, there would be nothing stopping recreational drug enthusiasts from using lab equipment to synthesize whatever chemicals they wanted.

'drugs' is also a pretty broad term. Different chemicals do different things to your body and the position of allowing certain chemicals, but not others, is rather indefensible when you take into consideration just how many drugs there are. A better means of taking on the 'problem' of recreational drug use in a free society is to A) make them safer B) educate the masses properly, without demonization. C) provide free help for those with drug problems.

[Anarchist Freedom]

Originally posted by wet [email protected] 19 2006, 07:11 PM
I imagine that in an environment in which drugs are legal and the means of production are in the hands of the masses, there would be nothing stopping recreational drug enthusiasts from using lab equipment to synthesize whatever chemicals they wanted.

'drugs' is also a pretty broad term. Different chemicals do different things to your body and the position of allowing certain chemicals, but not others, is rather indefensible when you take into consideration just how many drugs there are. A better means of taking on the 'problem' of recreational drug use in a free society is to A) make them safer B) educate the masses properly, without demonization. C) provide free help for those with drug problems.
Doing Something like that surley would kill many people if you allowed people to produce the drugs like that. When drug operations make drugs they know what theyre doing normal people dont really know. I think that if drug became legal that we would have to make them all made in labs and tested every day for purity. This would rule out bad drugs it would also get people clean accurate doses with correct information on smart drug use.

[LSD]

Revolutionary leftism is about the liberation of the worker from oppressive and exploitative hierarchy; and that means all oppressive hierarchy whether it be economic or political in nature.

Robbing the worker of his right to this labour is no more "wrong" than robbing him of his sovereign right to his own body. No one has the right to control another's individual motility and no state has legitimate jurisdiction to the inside of his mind.

And in terms of a communist society, this shouldn't even be an issue. "Drug control" would not only be ideologically antithetical to fundamental communist principles, it would also be wholly unworkably in any truly classless society.

If a postrevolutionary society is to be governed by the workers themselves, then it must be governed by the workers themselves; and that means no coercive mechanisms to "protect us from ourselves".

[wet blanket]

Originally posted by Anarchist [email protected] 20 2006, 12:34 AM

Doing Something like that surley would kill many people if you allowed people to produce the drugs like that.
How so? People already make drugs in clandestine labs with a lot of success.

[Pow R. Toc H.]

This is probably going to come out wrong but while i was reading Brave New World it made sense to give people mini vacations with drugs. Although that was a Capitalist society it would still make sense to let people escape for a while as long as it didnt destroy the general population.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by wet [email protected] 20 2006, 01:42 AM
How so? People already make drugs in clandestine labs with a lot of success.
Precisely, much better than allowing sub-par drugs to be cut with handy agents by totally incompetant, and profit driven dealers. I recently saw the deterioration of a friend's stash as he cut it more and more...eventually it was shit and could possibly trigger allergies.

I would love to engineer research chemicals, or specially bread various cannabis crops if this was a viable past-time to be taken seeriously.

VermontLeft, drug use isn't always just personal. I have just got back from a festival (we had no way of getting any weed at all :() and several of my friends were heavily coked up as well as drunk. I am used to dealing with them, but at the same time they were assholes and the drugs were an important factor in this.

The attitaude that should be adopted is one that judges an action for what it is, and no worse or better because of a "state" that you may have been in. The responsibility remains with the user, and if they can't keep it kind of together, and insist on causing trouble then it is the trouble and not the drug use taht should be targetted.

The Crying Orc, in BNW Huxley used soma to show the necessary escapism from an inhuman society as a necessity component of its sustainability. The opium of the masses if you will. In Doors of Perception he demonstrates how drug use can be far more benificial to the development of oneself by increasing awareness, and removing the imposed barriers and concepts that we take as pure reality, to actually see things as they are.