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I do think the horseriding comparison was a bit silly, perhaps a "let's make undergraduates think" rather than a serious contribution to the debate. I know he was basically only comparing the danger aspect, but there's also the point about what you get in return from the danger. Horse riding is, I presume, good exercise if you don't fall off. Can you make any argument for ecstasy taking providing an objectively positive thing to most people who take it?
I've got some good memories of lights looking cool and once I thought a black DJ was Brian Blessed, but I don't know if that counts.
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La la la. We can't hear you!
Can you make any argument for ecstasy taking providing an objectively positive thing to most people who take it?
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I was being a bit like a professor provoking his students myself on reflection. As a way of understanding the "ecstasy can kill you in one go" argument, it's a fair comparison, and that must be what he had in his sights there.
We don't indeed ask for things to be objectively beneficial to be allowed, and I'm a legalizer, as you know, because I think things have to be very bad indeed to be illegal (worse than public schools). But you'd expect law to weigh up the positives as well as the negatives, wouldn't you? It's like this argument's predecessor, the "no worse than aspirin" one. Aspirin makes headaches better, so you're going to cut that more slack in law than ecstasy. We tolerate conditions on the tube at rush hour that we wouldn't anywhere else because of the public good of getting people to work.
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La la la. We can't hear you!
As a way of understanding the "ecstasy can kill you in one go" argument, it's a fair comparison, and that must be what he had in his sights there.
The larger point is that nobody at all is arguing for banning horse riding or rugby or mountain climbing or base jumping or sword swallowing or any number of dangerous activities - and it would never happen. Similarly, alcohol causes far more harm day in, day out than ecstasy and is legal. We don't ban things simply because they are risky, regardless of whether they have benefits. There's always a moralistic and/or pragmatic aspect, which is downplayed by some in the debate. Psychoactive drugs are in a world of their own, legally and politically speaking. On a purely risk based analysis, that's absurd.
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La la la. We can't hear you!
But do you think the law should consider positives? That doesn't seem absurd, even if it doesn't happen.
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