In case you didn't realize, your body doesn't give two shits if the dopamine was stimulated through a chemical intake or through playing a video game. The chemistry of addiction in the two is exactly the same.
p.s. You are taking in outside chemicals every time you breath. You need outside chemicals to live. Check out dihydrogen monoxide. A potent solvent that will actually kill you in high dosages. 
Right... because when you go and buy liquor, you'd much rather buy from bubba who you don't know how safe it is for a little bit less than that liquor store that is inspected, huh?
I like how out of all the statistics and examples I provided that you only chose to respond to my post script message to you... I just gave you some hard evidence. READ.
Finally, just take a look at the prohibition of alcohol in the United States and what that caused. Alcohol was still widely consumed despite the legality, but now otherwise productive and law abiding citizens had to fear the wrath of the government for something that they consumed. Alcohol wasn't less available because gangs (mobsters) took over the control of most of the alcohol trade in the united states. You had high crime rates, high rates of violence, and ended up forcing people from society and into jail for partaking in an alcoholic beverage. It was seen fairly clearly that prohibition was a failure and that the government had simply outsourced all of the business into the hands of shady and violent criminals. Prohibition ended and this black market was largely destroyed and consumers were now afforded the comfort of knowing their booze wasn't tainted, knowing what strength it was, and knowing that they didn't have to worry about the police breaking down their door and dragging them to prison. WAKE UP! It's the same old song and the same old dance... prohibition of drugs is no different than the prohibition of alcohol was... and if it's end is any indicator of a future after drug legalization, I think that we should pass legislation immediately.
<br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> Ok so i read the whole thing, and while i am still skeptical on the effects of legalization, the example of prohibition seems to tie closely enough with drugs to convince me of your argument for the most part. I am aware that drugs are often cut with other substances, and yea sure you would probably make the whole thing safer should drugs be legalized for people who already do drugs.
I remain on my point that keeping drugs illegal will still protect a few who would not have access to drugs, but honestly i don't have numbers of just how much of the population this makes up. Maybe it isnt a significant enough number to make it so that it balances out the benefits of legalizing drugs? If we are looking it from a purely numerical perspective and not from the matter of principle (which as you say is probably pretty worthless) then yea i could be completely wrong.
As far as the percentages of decriminalized drug use in Netherlands, vs the United states
im sure there are various factors as to why the numbers look the way they do aside from simply because drugs are decriminalized. Culture/ total population could play a huge role. As well as just who took part in the survey.
If drugs are actually legal in the netherlands, then id probably say that their statistic is probably accurateish, but the United States % may probably be higher because less people would admit it.
But again, id look at the survey with a grain of salt if we are gona use it as proof that legalization would result in decreased usage because of factors i mentioned above.
Yes legalization may decrease the percentage of people who do it for purposes of rebeling, but the percentage may also increase for the population of people that i am arguing to protect through keeping drugs illegal. But again, i have no numbers of that population so i cannot actually argue against the statistics you provide.
Edited by frostz, 20 May 2011 - 01:42 PM.
