[blackhole]

And yet, the exact same argument applies to alcohol and alcoholics. So, why take the risk of drinking and becoming an alcoholic? For some people who are genetically predisposed to alcoholism, this is exactly what prevents them from drinking, even though it's still legal. Yet, this small chance of being an alcoholic doesn't prevent anyone else from drinking alcohol, so why should it prevent people from doing drugs? It seems as though we run under the foolish assumption that being an alcoholic "isn't as bad", without realizing just how bad alcoholism can get. Double-standards like this are the entire point of the article.

[slurgfest]

Of course everyone knows that alcoholism is garden variety addiction, and cigarettes are addictive as hell.

Nobody is actually saying that being an alcoholic is any good at all; that's a straw man. But we do have some level of cultural accommodation to and regulation of alcohol. By now we have nearly the same level of facility in dealing with marijuana, which is also a drug of abuse which is not that hard to use safely.

But every compound is unique. Taken in the ways they are almost always taken, alcohol and marijuana are pretty mellow and easy to dose and don't have wild side effects like immediately blinding you or shutting down your lungs if you screw up slightly. But they are not the same as each other and neither is the same as datura or belladonna. Many psychoactives are blow-your-head-off powerful tools that should never be used in the casual, vacuous party-time way that our culture likes to do for the last 60 years or so. And many, it's just prudent never to use at all.

Heroin is (or was) legal for UK hospitals to use in killing pain and I believe in its usefulness for that reason. But I am not going to defend high-dose, party-time heroin use as a reasonable and prudent practice any more than I am going to defend promiscuous, unprotected sex with many HIV+ individuals (which also has a very surprisingly low per-instance probability of doing anything - yet that is exactly how it continues to spread and ruin people's lives).

In any case, saying 'alcoholism is also bad' is certainly not a reason to suppose that heroin addiction is not bad.

[ZoFreX]

> Of course everyone knows that alcoholism is garden variety addiction

Really? Try doing a straw poll of everyone over the age of 50 in a British pub at the weekend, see how many of them think alcohol is addictive. Then ask how many of them drink every day.

I think you are repeating the party line boogey man mantra regarding "hard drugs", alcohol does far more harm than any other drug, so how do you draw the line for "hard"? Not based on harm, clearly, not based on lethality, but instead based on... what?