Drugs

Orava and Ville write about the impossibility of serious discussion of drugs due to the extremism and ill-informedness of the participants. Hmm, does not pretty much every controversial subject have this problem?

One of the problems of discussion on drugs in particular is that it is often considered socially unacceptable and sometimes illegal to admit having had any personal experience with the subject. If I had ever tried any illegal drugs I would naturally not mention it here.

Cannabis are mostly OK, I think, except for two things: I disapprove of cannabis in smoking form much in the same way and for the same reasons I disapprove of tobacco, and have no wish to see (or rather smell) people smoking it in enclosed public places, and the other thing is that cannabis tend to impair people's ability to drive much more than alcohol (that's an empirical observation), so if cannabis were to be legalized some serious safeguards to prevent people from driving stoned will be needed. But in the end I don't care much either way.

What is really stupid is that because of the fact that cannabis are recreational drugs people (at least in the US) are prevented from using it for legitimate medical reasons, such as countering some effects of chemotherapy and reducing eye pressure in glaucoma patients.

I must admit that I might have also had some kind of a knee-jerk reaction at the thought of a "zero tolerance" event. That's because in my mind it associates quite strongly with the "zero tolerance" programs in American schools where they finally went after the kids who bring over-the-counter medicine like ibuprofen to school. Even though I do in fact realize that the organizers of Ropecon are highly unlikely to chase all the evil ibuprofen users around.