But your response to my statement about decriminalization leads me to believe that you are suggesting that there is a correlation between these conditions and the state of decriminalization of marijuana. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Please tell me, is that what you are suggesting?
Honestly I was being suggestive and had not thought it through completely, but in stopping to do so now, yes, that is roughly what I'm saying.
The government is part of society. Schools, laws about public behavior, etc., are all part of society. When laws are put into place proscribing things, it has a rippling effect throughout the rest of society. If there is enough demand, there will be those who willingly, and knowingly break the law, thus the "costly war on drugs" to which Muk referred. A war which I agree, can never be "won" strictly through jurisprudential, and legal-enforcement or interdictionary forms of social intervention. My key point is: one should not assume therefore that legalization, and normalization are the only options. Instead, focus on the changing the social processes that make it normal to use self-harming substances, and be patient enough for these slow but steady forces to work. Eventually the law will be largely irrelevant: rates of use will drop, and when they drop below some economic threshold many of the secondary problems of crime, violence, excess incarceration, etc. will also decline. In the long run, it should be possible to engineer a society in which self-harming behaviors (use of pot, use of coke, excessive use of caffeine, or alcohol, or WoW) are primarily regulated by social forces of normalization instead of by legal enforcement.
But the same is true for the reverse: UN-proscribing things will also have a rippling effect throughout the rest of society.
If the government, the schools, and the larger "authority" within a society are not proscribing pot as illegal/bad/uncivil, then that puts parents, teachers, etc. into a very different position vis a vis socializing their young charges than if it were illegal.
I suspect I do not need to explore the multi-step social processes by which a society such as Canada, which I characterized as "indulgent" because it is pervaded with UN-proscriptions of various behaviors that ARE proscribed south of the boarder might suffer higher rates of "anomic youth," by virtue of its pervasion with UN-proscribed behaviors? If you remain skeptical, let me know and I'll outline it a bit more.
I'm all for having a good debate, but I don't much appreciate it when folks twist the facts to suit their arguments. Humanity would probably be much better off if God took all these chemical psychoactive intoxicants and wiped them clean off the slate, but actually, I don't know about that, because you'd have thousands, if not millions of drug addicts running around in withdrawl. As you say abnormalization is a much better way to go, but as jerm says, government imposition is not the best way for that to happen.
No arguments here. I do not see jurisprudential proscription of such substances, or legal enforcement as viable and sustainable long-term solutions. Abnormalizing would represent a long-term, slow and steady process, not one which would abruptly deprive any particular individual suffering a dependency on any given substance.
Racism is a similar social ill which can (at this stage in World history) be dealt with through similar mediums.
We do not need Draconian Laws proscribing racist attitudes and behaviors. What we need are for "US" for people to speak up and confront other people whenever they exhibit such attitudes and behaviors, no matter what their skin color, religion, creed, etc.
