I Know Its Poor Resolution - But We Got KantBison SLOW DANCING

I know it’s poor resolution - but we got KantBison SLOW DANCING 🫶🥹

GMMTV Live House

03/10/2024

[video by crowbabies. original caption: My stinky baby]

It is 8:30 in the goddamn morning

And this fucker is eating cake?!?

Sorry to bring this subject up again, but it came up in a conversation with a friend. Is it wrong to support the legalization of something like hard drugs, 'peak fiction' or other morally dubious things without supporting them morally?

It depends on how you view the framework of the law.

A lot of people view the law as a judgment. Something that maps a path we're all supposed to walk and punishing deviation. So making something legal is saying its okay. This is why Conservatives don't like sex ed, because it doesn't matter if proper sex ed reduces teen pregnancy. In their mind, acknowledging that teenagers have sex is giving them tacit approval to do so, which is what conservatives are actually objecting to.

Conversely, you can view the law as being in the vein of reducing harm and enabling people to live their lives freely without being hurt. In that framework, the decision to make something illegal is to say "Is this something we should empower the police to actively stop you from doing." So theft, murder, tax evasion, hate speech, etc, these are all things that would be illegal because they actively hurt people. While some whack job shooting up in his dingy apartment doesn't hurt anyone except themselves.

I view the law in the latter sense, which means there is very little people can do in their own homes that I think the police should be empowered to harass them over. I'm a police abolitionist, but I also know that's unlikely in my lifetime so I'll settle for defanging them wherever possible.

I have not met a single person who uses drugs harder than tobacco who wasn't an abusive piece of dog shit with clear dependency issues. But the punishment for that is getting punched in the stomach, not thrown in prison and fined into a permanent debt.

I look down on junkies. I have no sympathy for them and their struggles. The option to NOT use the thing that is killing you was always there. I've heard the worst stoners tell me how beneficial weed is, only to see it ruin their lives. Weed killed my uncle, it is killing my sister, and it pushed many of my classmates into destitution.

But I'm the first person who'll say the police have no business bothering them about anything, and I'm not against funding programs to help them detox. My disdain doesn't translate into policy, which is exactly the fallacy a lot of people operate under.

Years ago I used to say this about legalizing pot: "They're gonna smoke it no matter what you do, so generating tax revenue off their suicidal asses is better than wasting tax revenue trying to lock them up." Sales tax and recreational substance taxes directly fund health care and public school. The benefit is obvious.

The War on Drugs has been going on since the 70's. If it worked, it would have worked already. But it doesn't, so we should do something else.

For me the question of legalization isn't about morality, it's about whether what you're doing warrants police and state intervention and whether it's worth it to waste resources going after someone. And under that framework, you'll find that you're a lot more relaxed about what you think should be decriminalized. My personal feelings of right and wrong, or what's gross or not don't factor into how I approach the law. The law is designed to find the best way possible to benefit us all. Going after junkies doesn't benefit us, and legalizing their bs does.

Nobody's waiting for you at the Pearly Gates to judge your actions in life, so wasting your life trying to police people who aren't hurting anyone but themselves is foolish.