"There is no drug known to man which becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals."
Repeat After Me
In
4 responses
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Logical fallacy alert!
Incoming – from ‘The Guardian’!
WHOOP! WHOOP!
“There is no drug known to man which becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals.”
Show me the drug which becomes safer when the government controls it.
They’re all unsafe. That’s why they’re banned… -
That’s the only place you can get them over here. They have the game sewn up.
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I hate to point this out, because I enjoyed the style with which he introduced it, but Martin’s response contains, er… a logical fallacy – confusing “safer” (a comparative) with “safe” (an absolute).
Alcohol is, I grudgingly admit, intrinsically unsafe (correct, Martin). Alcohol consumption was significantly more dangerous when the supply was controlled by gangsters during the Prohibition era in the USA (correct, Graun). Ditto illegal drugs today.
Drugs aren’t illegal because they’re unsafe; the reasons are complicated (lobbying against hemp when nylon was invented, puritanism, inertia) but none of them are very good. -
Peter,
Sorry, but I disagree.
The fallacy is contained in the posted quotation – all I was doing was pointing out that government contol of drugs in no way makes drugs ‘safer’.
With all due respect, drugs are illegal because they’re unsafe – as five dead heroin addicted prostitutes in Ipswich might have been able to tell you, had they not become hooked on heroin.
I suffer from a well-known but misunderstood medical condition. According to a study I read yesterday, 85% of its sufferers experience an improvement in symptoms after using cannabis. Does that mean dope should be legalised? Not at all – although the likelihood of physical symptoms being alleviated might increase, its psychological effects might also render one more susceptible to cannabis induced psychosis and schizophrenia.
What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.
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