[slg]

I think the judge addressed that issue.

>"No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court. It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did."

You can argue that our drug laws are wrong or the punishments are too extreme, but singling out Ulbrich for the specifics ways in which he clearly and repeatedly violated those laws is showing favoritism. If his crimes didn't involve the Internet, there would be nothing newsworthy about his arrest and sentencing.

[superkuh]

Except he didn't sell drugs at all. He ran a marketplace.

[mikeyouse]

Untrue.. The first several pounds of shrooms on the Silk Road were grown and sold by Ulbricht. He claims credit for "Several Kilograms" in his diary.. Several kilos is well into the tens of thousands of dollars range..

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-fbi-found-on-r...

[emmab]

I can understand the harm of opiates and stimulants, but are psychedelics really that damaging to society? And if he grew them himself it wasn't contributing to harmful suppliers...

[breakingcups]

I personally know of two people in my social circles who committed suicides on psychedelics. You can definitely argue that such a thing might have happened even without the psychedelics but I'm convinced that being in that altered state of mind pushed these people over the edge (literally in one case).

I'm personally pro-legalization of a lot of drugs. I do not want to close myself off to the clear negative effects of said drugs though. I think we should all remain honest and proportionate about them.

[emmab]

I did a quick search on google scholar. Don't see any articles linking psychedelic use to suicide and there is a study of 130,000 people failing to find a link:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=psychedelics+suic... http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/02/25/026988111456...

A study failing to find a link between psychedelic use and suicide doesn't mean that psychedelics never cause suicide, it means that on average they don't seem to.

Banning psychedelics will lead to at least some deaths. Not banning psychedelics will lead to at least some deaths. This is true of many many policies.

Ultimately the question is a cost-benefit analysis.

[dsfyu404ed]

>You can argue that our drug laws are wrong or the punishments are too extreme, but singling out Ulbrich for the specifics ways in which he clearly and repeatedly violated those laws is showing favoritism. If his crimes didn't involve the Internet, there would be nothing newsworthy about his arrest and sentencing.

Seriously?

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE SPECIFICS. Accidentally beat someone to death in a fight you started and you might serve a decade or two. Beat them to death for fun, eat their heart, feed the rest to a dog and light their house on fire while you're at it and you'll likely serve life. Both are 1st degree murder but that's about where the similarity ends.

[adrusi]

The first example is not first degree murder, it's second degree. First degree has to be premeditated and deliberate. You're right, context is important, it's why we have judges determine sentences and not the law, but that's a poor example.