[sentientmachine]

Lets suppose some company hired scientists at great expense to make 10w30 motor oil incredibly addictive. Maybe they put some new chemical nobody heard of into it. Anyway, people are drinking it and getting sick and dying from it left and right.

The motor oil is normally for cars, but the increased sales as a recreational drink is boosting sales. You try to prohibit people from drinking motor oil, but they do it anyway. So you go to the motor oil factory and make the motor oil significantly more poisonous.

People have been dying from this normally, but now faster than ever because the motor oil makes you gag and puke, but they force it down anyway because YOLO.

I find it hard to believe the guilty party here is the people who made the poison more poisonous. Addiction increases cognitive dissonance, making people adhere to incomplete and inaccurate models in order to justify making a villian where none exists and making a victim where none exists.

[_greim_]

Suppose you're driving a car and have a crash, and the car detects that you weren't wearing a seat belt. Instead of deploying the air bag, swords and knives shoot out of the dashboard and seat. You were breaking the law, so the car manufacturer and the government can't be blamed. Never mind that the entire point of the law was to protect you, you were breaking the damn law.

[sentientmachine]

An interesting analogy. However the victim in this case simply failed to take a precaution vs willfully went out the way to seek damage.

Punishing people with deadly force for not taking precautions is unauthorized by my calculations. The manufacturer of the air bag would be liable for all damage taken.

[fnordfnordfnord]

So do you want to spray cannabis with poison?

How about genetically engineering cannabis so that consuming it causes a pink polka dotted tumor to grow on your forehead to facilitate easy identification of cannabis users?

Poisoning people is a perversion of science.

[tekromancr]

That actually did kinda happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat#.22Paraquat_pot.22

[sentientmachine]

It should be legalized and then if you take it, it goes on your record, so next time you try to get a job the hiring company can decide based upon the reputation of potheads, whether or not to hire you.

[angersock]

Why the fuck is it any of their business what I do in my free time?

[sentientmachine]

Because your sorry butt marches into our emergency room after you screw yourself up. Taking away extra nice things that could have been. And since we can't drop you off on a deserted island to get rid of you for damaging the rest of us, the next best thing is to try to influence your behavior so you don't damage yourself now.

Its the same thing you do when you find a skunk roaming the house, you either get a broom and shoo it away, or restrict its freedom so at least it doesn't spray anything. What the fuck gives you the right to put the skunk in a box? The right of the others to remain un-sprayed by twitchy tailed skunk.

[jrockway]

Should I not bike in my free time, because I might hit a pothole, endo, and break my arm? That would march "[my] sorry butt" into "[your] emergency room" pretty darn quick.

The answer is: that's absurd. Every single thing humans do can result in injury. (Even sitting in a chair injures you!) Cycling probably sends more people to the emergency room than smoking pot does, in fact.

(I don't use marijuana BTW, but I do support its legalization. Sounds like a legitimate recreational activity. I personally prefer coffee.)

[schrodinger]

How exactly does smoking marijuana send you to the emergency room? Oh it must be one of those super common overdoses we hear about.

[couchand]

Well, there was that misleading USA today chart [0] that pointed out there are more ER visits related to marijuana than heroin.

Of course, when you adjust for the number of users the rate drops to lower than the rate for alcohol (duh).

[0]: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/2/5960307/marijuana-legalization-h...

[pstuart]

He's a troll with a superiority complex.

[wdewind]

Except that in the vast majority of people alcohol is a health benefit. Drinkers live longer than non drinkers.

[DanBC]

Please stop spreading this myth.

The group of people who don't drink includes a bunch of very ill people, so it's not surprising to find that group dies sooner than the other group. That doesn't mean that alcohol has any health benefit.

[wdewind]

Every doctor I've ever had has recommended that I have 2 drinks a day. "Heart healthy and liver neutral." Is that BS? Totally willing to hear that it is, especially if you have a source.

[sentientmachine]

Health benefit? I'll be sure to tell the kids who's mothers drank during pregnancy that their obvious and life crippling birth defects that nugget of truthiness.

Tell me again how much alcohol stimulates GDP and promotes health in our emergency rooms? To the tune of negative 120 billion annually and overloaded emergency rooms treating throngs of out of work alcoholics needing treatment for alcohol related problems?

Health benefits. Yeah right. Sure you get a dollar, but you lose 1000. Look at the big picture.

[wdewind]

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/NEDS&NIS-DRM9/NEDS&NI...

This says it's about a 10th of the cost of what you said.

While I regardless agree with you that alcoholism is a problem, your solutions are not only draconian, they are demonstrably ineffective. We've tried them before. They don't work. This isn't about morality, it's about what works.

[gregrata]

While I get what you are saying.... this was done knowing what the results were going to be - done specifically to get the results (dangerously poisoning people who's behaviour was determined to not be moral)

So yeah - I do believe the guilty party are those that knowly made something that was going to poison and kill people.

On the "alcohol" is poison argument (WTF?) Fine - it turned from a known poison with known, acceptable results to something that that wasn't known and killed people.

[sentientmachine]

If I was there when they decided to poison the factory alcohol. I would have advised against it. You'll never hear the end of it. All the victims will blame you for the damage taken, because it was more than they expected.

I'd say ratchet up the poison in 1 percent increments once every two months. Then the people seeking damage would receive the expected amount of damage, and everyone gets exactly what they want.

1.Damage for the damage seeker, no big surprises.

2. Prohibition for the prohibition seeker, just takes a bit longer

[anigbrowl]

Lets suppose some company hired scientists at great expense to make 10w30 motor oil incredibly addictive.

The logical approach in this case would be the make the firm halt their motor-oil enhancing activity, not to let them keep doing it and adding your own poison. This is a silly analogy.

[pstuart]

That's lame analogy. Alcohol can kill when consumed to excess, but you find no fault in killing people because they consume a drug that you disapprove of?

[Natsu]

Alcohol is still denatured, you know. I think they just made it taste bad instead of making it poisonous. The intent was not for people to drink it but for people to avoid diversion (using industrial alcohol as drinking alcohol).

[mnw21cam]

No, it's still poisonous, because it contains the head of distillation, which contains methanol which would be discarded in alcohol made for human consumption. Yes, they add other denaturants to make it taste foul as well. However there are still a few cases of serious alcoholics who try to drink methylated spirit.

Amusingly, the treatment for methanol poisoning is to get the patient drunk with the good stuff, although this is usually done under medically-induced coma with a purified ethanol drip. The ethanol competes with the methanol for the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme, reducing the rate at which methanol is broken down in the body into really poisonous formic acid. There was a case in 2007 where a hospital ran out of medical ethanol, and substituted vodka in a drip while treating poisoning with ethylene glycol, which has the same treatment. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7037443.stm

[tekromancr]

There was a really cool speaker at HopeX that talked about it. I can't find the link to the video right now.

[sentientmachine]

I don't disapprove of drinking poison. Its the people drinking poison who are disapproving of the decision to make poison poisonous. The phenomenon to explain is why the blame is quickly shifted from people drinking poison and getting hurt, to intelligent people who allowed it to continue.

Its part of the "shift blame onto the non idiots" agenda in america. Someone get hurt by being stupid? Then find the nearest responsible person and make him pay up to remedy everything.

I've got a better idea. How about we laugh at the idiots being idiots and try to encourage the poisoners to at least ratchet up their poisoning poison more slowly. As to make the dying idiots once again the responsible party by choosing to get hurt by drinking poison.

[pstuart]

Per the article, the people drinking it were more often than not poor (as the rich could afford "the good stuff").

But they weren't purchasing denatured alcohol knowingly, they were buying booze from people who were selling them "alcohol".

Your compassion is awe inspiring.

Edit: your username is very appropriate.

[sentientmachine]

My compassion is earned by the victim at hand, not given away by individuals who like to appropriate other men's resources such as yourself.

[nitrogen]

Where did pstuart say anything about "appropriat[ing] other[s'] resources"? What really motivates your obvious visceral disdain for alcohol?

[sentientmachine]

The fact that its addictive and damages people. That should be the illegal thing: using a factory to make things that people get addicted to and it harms them.

People 1000 years from now are going to look at us in the way we look at witch trials. Likt wtf bro? Why don't you go making bombs that get set off on a hair trigger and just lay them around? They only hurt once in a while if you get them close to your face.

Wtf really? Well you see, it was addictive! And... We really liked it! mmm hmmm. I can think of better defenses for the witch trials.

[mikeash]

"I find it hard to believe the guilty party here is the people who made the poison more poisonous."

Please tell me you're being sarcastic here. Because otherwise I have no idea how to begin a coherent reply. It's as if I'm suddenly confronted with someone adamantly arguing that the sun is pink, or that cars grow on trees.

[sentientmachine]

You know an argument is good when the opposing party resorts to ad hominem. First you must explain where I have made a mistake, you pea brain.

[seanflyon]

>ad hominem

I think the term you are looking for is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

[schrodinger]

I don't think that's what ad hominem means.

[sentientmachine]

Cross between ad hominum and straw man. He compared my argument to cars growing on trees the said ha! Look how silly you are. Cars don't grow on trees!

Hmmm you don't say. Can we get back to the argument now?

[mikeash]

The person adding poison with the intent of killing people is responsible for the people he kills.