Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!eneevax!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!ins_atge
From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Terrorism on American soil
Message-ID: <6372@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 6 May 88 03:59:28 GMT
References: <293@aplcen.UUCP> <12393408775.18.JPLILER@SIMTEL20> <141@vor.esosun.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_atge@jhunix.UUCP (Thomas G Edwards)
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 64
Summary: Death by Alcohol

In article <141@vor.esosun.UUCP> jackson@esosun.UUCP (Jerry Jackson) writes:
>
>Yes, it's hardly unexpected that when you define a commonly practiced
>act as criminal, large numbers of crimes will be related to that
>act... Or, was this intended to refer to the "killings and robberies
>associated with drugs?"  How many killings are associated with the
>delivery of beer?  Not many?... Is this because alcohol is not a
>dangerous drug?  No, it is because it is LEGAL...

   I'll point directly to the number of americans killed on our roads by
drunk drivers.  I'll point directly to the number of assults and murders
commited by people under the influence of alcohol.  I'll also point to the
lives ruined by alcoholism.  Prohibition didn't work because the US was
addicted to alcohol.  Gangsters were our withdrawl symptoms.

>The death penalty? Surely that is somewhat extreme.. What serious
>crimes against innocent people?

   Drug dealers misrepresent their products with deadly results.

>By the way, I consider organized religion as practiced in this country
>a form of near-criminal brainwashing that does serious harm to
>society...  Does this mean that churches should be forced to close
>down and their ministers killed?  Though I dislike what they do, I
>have to acknowledge the fact that the victims *volunteer* to be fed
>mind-numbing drivel just as the drug users do.  I certainly would not
>want to live in a country where a person like me could shut down a
>church because he didn't like it and I think the analogy holds...

   The free flow of information is important in this country (see
Soviet science).  Religion very rarely kills (unlike crack).
People don't kill others driving under the influence of religion
(though I'm sure its happened once or twice).

>However, if you can show me a case where someone was *forced* by a
>dealer to buy or ingest drugs then I will admit he should be punished,
>but as long as customers come to him, I think it's hard to point a
>finger.
   
    I guess we differ on what is freedom and what is criminal.  I see no
redeming factors to addictive recreational drugs.  I feel the freedom
to fry your mind using addictive recreational drugs should not be
provided for.  (words of a man who watched 30% of his high school
buddies get hooked, fry off the college path, and now have to sell
their own daemon to inocent youngsters who don't believe that drugs
are bad for you).

>*FLAME ON*
>
>Also, it's pretty clear that Mr. Pliler belongs to that unique minority in
>America -- The Always Right Minority -- How wonderful it must be to have
>absolutely no self doubt -- to feel perfectly justified in sentencing
>someone you've never met to death and to know deep in your heart that the
>country could be made great again if people would only listen to you...

    Although I'll let Mr. Pliler defend himself, I'll state that I am
part of a majority of Americans who believe that drugs should remain
illegal.  I'm not part of a minority who believe that magazines should
be pulled off shelves or that peaceful demonstrators should be shot.
Yet I am not going to let my "liberal" vigor get ahead of me and
pass over the obvious facts--drugs kill and maim minds.  We need good
minds for the future.

-Thomas Edwards