Don't give a shit if families are saddled with their kids drug habits. Maybe they should have raised them better. As long as the general public is not saddled with the consequences of some dumb fucks decisions.Turquoise wrote:
To a degree, the taxes on alcohol go toward rehabilitation efforts. There is unfortunately not much transparency in where the funds actually go, and so funding rehabilitation through taxing substances that cause addiction would need to be much more transparent in a society where all drugs are legal.lowing wrote:
You may be right butI will stand on principal on this one. I will not send a message that it is ok to fuck yourself, without the clear message that you do so on your own accord and you will be solely responsible for the outcome of your decisions. The only other way I could concede is by heavily taxing the ever loving shit out of drug sales, and that money AND ONLY that money be used for rehab. If rehab goes in the red, tax even heavier for the drugs. No way no how does normal taxes get used for drug rehabTurquoise wrote:
I agree that this scenario does make getting their fix much easier, but if the crime angle isn't persuasive, consider this: in an environment where drugs are legal and easily available, how do you think general drug use would be affected?
If we use Portugal as an example of this, their drug-related crime went down, but their rehab rates went considerably up. This seems to imply that drug usage increased.
So, in a society where more people are getting hooked, don't you think that it's collectively more expensive for families to shoulder the burden of rehabbing a relative than it is to have a functional rehab system? Societal costs can manifest in several ways -- not just through taxation.
Addict rehabilitation is a burden on society that affects more than just the addicts themselves, regardless of whether you have a comprehensive rehab system or not. The costs it incurs are generally going to be more expensive to society overall if they are handled on a family basis than if they were handled by a government-provided system.
I understand where you are coming from, but the only part I take issue with is the statement that addicts should be "solely responsible for the outcome of their decisions." In reality, that only happens part of the time. A lot of the time, families have to take that responsibility.
The more you dig into sociological issues, the more you realize that the lines between individual responsibility and societal responsibility are blurred and murky. Families often shoulder many burdens that, in principle, should be individual responsibilities.
This is why I don't take an idealistic approach to responsibility. Life is far too complicated to boil down to individual responsibilities.
I disagree, it is personal responsibility for ones self, coupled with others tending to their own responsibilities, that make up a civil society. It is those that are irresponsible that fuck it up for the rest of us. This is where people like you want to feel sorry for them, and victimize them or people like me who say fuck them, they knew the rules going in and chose not to follow them leave them behind. I feel this way because you are right, life is hard enough for those that choose a path of personal discipline and responsibility, WITHOUT having to shoulders someone else's dead weight. Energy and resource that I work for to provide to my kids should not be tapped into for some some drug addicted that made the conscience decision to do drugs and get hooked.
