imaxwell comments on The uniquely awful example of theism - Less Wrong

36 Post author: gjm 10 April 2009 12:30AM

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Comment author: imaxwell 12 April 2009 04:29:51PM 1 point [-]

Isn't that pretty much what CronoDAS said, though? The stated premise of banning certain drugs is that they are harmful (either individually or socially). So, again, drug prohibition fails on its own terms, because they are not even choosing the most harmful substances to ban.

A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would start with things like rat poison and cocaine, and work its way down as far as things like tobacco and alcohol and cheesecake, but probably leave out things like psilocybin and THC.

But of course I'm presuming there is a serious attempt to ban harmful substances. In reality there is a serious attempt to ban getting high, which is not the same thing at all.

Comment author: Jiro 06 May 2014 02:33:22PM 2 points [-]

(Responding to old post.)

A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would not necessarily start with rat poison because while rat poison is more harmful than other substances, it's less harmful relative to how people use it. The fact that eating rat poison causes more damage to you than smoking weed is irrelevant; eating rat poison is an unusual use case for rat poison, but smoking is a typical use case for marijuana.