At least he's in the open about it, finally

[Bravus]

I have to disagree again: no drug law, no drug lord. No alcohol barons are going around shooting people. If it's sin, then deal with it as sin, through salvation and santification.

[Dr. Shane]

You are wrong, Brother Bravus. We do have alcohol barrons running around and shooting people. You see the alcohol-industry lied to the American people. They said if we legalized alcohol we would do away with organized crime. The idea was that if we do way with crime we will do away with criminals.

That was faulty logic. Do you know that alcohol was illegal in the US from 1919 to 1933? It took about 40 years after alcohol was legalized again for Americans to consume the same amount of alcohol in one year as they did in 1918, the last year it had been legal. That means prohibition worked and worked good. A lot of people quit drinking or never started due to prohibition. What didn't work was legalizing alcohol again. We still have organized crime.

We can't get rid of criminals by legalizing crime because the law isn't the problem, the criminal is. If we legalize drugs criminals will just sell illegal arms, stolen art, smuggle immergrants, or find someother crime. Criminals are the problem not the law.

Mexico is very currupt and many reformers are trying to change that. The new chief of police was brought in to clean up the corruption in the Reynosa police department. He started on January 1 and was murdered by the Mexican mofia before a week had passed. He wasn't a victem of the law, he was a victem of criminals - modern-day alcohol barrons.

[Bravus]

Agreed that legalising things in general won't get rid of criminals - like the poor, they are always with us. What you missed was Nico's original point: using drugs is a crime that (without prohibition) harms only the user. My supplementary point was that prohibition turns it into a crime that attracts criminals.

The dividing line we're talking about here is the one between areas of human behaviour that are legitimately matters for the law and those that are matters for education and choice. You claim that there is no such line - the law should control everything you count as sin. I agree with Nico - there is such a line, and it is the line where the crime injures (physically or in his/her property) someone other than the perpetrator.

Under that line, you could maintain your opposition to abortion, since you believe it harms the unborn person. You could legislate against drink driving, or drug driving, but not against the alcohol or drugs. And you would stay out of people's bedrooms unless they were involved in behaviour that harmed those in no position to give informed consent - children, animals, the dead...

It's a logical place to draw the line, and you should at least understand that for people who complain about 'legislating morality', this is what they really mean: the law's business is to protect us from each other, not to protect us from ourselves.

Of course, you're free to argue that that's not the place to draw the line, but arguing that the line doesn't exist seems disingenuous: should we legislate against farting in public or picking one's nose on the grounds that it's offensive? And eating beef on the ground that it's sin - for Hindus? 'Cos it's unfair to legislate against only *your* definitions of sin.

[Dr. Shane]

Drug use would create victems even if it were legal. We need to look no further than the home of an alcoholic to see that. God is right. Sin has its consequences and they are not good.

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You claim that there is no such line - the law should control everything you count as sin.

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I make no such claim. I used the example of a man lying to his wife as a sin that is not and should not be illegal. Pornography and strip clubs are other examples of a sin I do not believe should be illegal - although I believe they should be more regulated than they are.

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Under that line, you could maintain your opposition to abortion, since you believe it harms the unborn person

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"harms" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Yes, I think murder qualifies as harm. Does that somehow make me extreame?

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You could legislate against drink driving, or drug driving, but not against the alcohol or drugs. And you would stay out of people's bedrooms

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You know in the world of lala land that might be true. However, as I have already shown, during prohibition alcohol abuse dramatically dropped. Not slightly -dramatically. That resulted in less crimes committed under the influence and less crimes committed in order to purchase alcohol. Domestic violence signifficantly decreased. When something is legal be it gambling, prostitution, alcohol, drugs, public nudity, etc, more people will do it. Over 10,000 lives are lost each year due to drunk driving and if alcohol was illegal that number would be signifficantly less.

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the law's business is to protect us from each other, not to protect us from ourselves.

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And that is where they don't grasp reality. No one lives in a vaccuum. There is no private sin that only hurts oneself. We, as society, just have to decide if the victems are hurt to the degree that they should be protected. Is the victem that must smell a fart hurt to the point that the law should protect him/her?

As Christians we do not have to appoligize for God. When God says something is sin we don't need to appoligize for that. As a society we examine the consequences of specific sins and decide if the victems of those sins should be protected by the law. It is as simple as that.

[Nicodema]

But are we talking about protecting them from themselves and their sins? Or are we talking about policing and persecuting/prosecuting them?

Big difference. Shane you are fond of the phrase "la la land" but here I see you living in it as well. In order for what you propose to be even remotely worth considering as a viable alternative, as a point of view which could really WORK, we would have to overhaul NOT just the ENTIRE justice system itself but the entire CONCEPT upon which the judicial system is based, including how criminals of various types are treated. For starters, we'd have to have a nationwide swap-out of the criminal model for the medical model. Deviant and sinful behavior would have to start being seen as symptomatic of sickness (the model Jesus used -- why else do you think He continually linked healing with forgiveness of sin?) rather than misdeeds needing punishment. Punishment has never worked in terms of changing the heart nor even most of the time in changing the deeds, since hardened criminals pass on their skills to others while doing time.

The infrastructure just isn't there to start REALLY "protecting" people from either themselves OR the consequences of their own sins. All we can do is punish, punish, punish, and that does NOT protect. In fact, history and statistics show all it does is diminish the individual's personhood to so dire a degree that nothing remains inside themselves to hold themselves back from further degradation and descent.

In this respect, if you think what you propose above stands a snowball's chance in hell under our current punition-based system, it is you who are living in la-la land this time, friend.

[Dr. Shane]

Sister Nico, you obviously are not following my arguement as I am defending the current system - not proposing a new one. Our curent system is based on morality as it should be.

[Nicodema]

Then Shane, I think you are missing a crucial point here about what you think our current system is established to cover. It is not established to properly address the matter of "protecting someone from harm they might inflict upon themselves."

While punishing someone for something they have done to harm another (e.g. locking them away in jail) may indeed protect that other, at least for a time, punishing someone for what others perceive as harm inflicted upon themselves does NOT, in any sense, protect them from harm inflicted upon themselves.

[Dr. Shane]

I have yet to discover a victemless crime.

Some say prostitution is a victemless crime. However if your husband comes home and gives you an STD he got from a prostiture you will quickly change your mind about that.

Some say drug abuse is a victemless crime but if you have ever had to live in the same house as a drug addict you would quickly change your mind.

Some say pornography would be a victemless crime if it were a crime. Yet if it destroys your marriage I doubt you would agree.

Some agrue that smoking tabacco only harms the one doing it. Well, putting aside the second-hand smoke issues, smoking lays a great burdon on the public health system so much that courts have awarded great sums of money to many states because of it.

Again, I have yet to hear of a victemless crime. We don't live in a bubble and when we sin it affects those around us. As society we decide which sins have such a profound affect on those around us that they are to be illegal.

[Nicodema]

Shane I've heard your point on that. I don't completely agree -- mainly because I am acquainted with the concept of responsible self-government in regard to the indulgence of "vices" so as to indeed render them victimless -- but I'm not trying to argue you over that right now. We can assume for purposes of this discussion that the point you make above is valid as it stands.

What I'm trying to point out to you in this regard, is that our present judicial system is not tailored to appropriately address such matters of these kinds of vices within society. Currently they are more appropriately -- and more effectively, in my opinion -- handled by the fields of medical health care, mental health care and treatment, addictions counseling and recovery, support groups like AA and NA (there are also such groups for sex addicts, gambling addicts, etc.), social work, human services, etc. And of course, through various forms of ministry -- pastoral counseling and the like -- for those who avail themselves of such resources.

The judicial system is concerned with obtaining criminal conviction and sentencing the guilty party to punishment, generally consisting of forced confinement in a place for an extended period of time where his companions will likely be those far worse than himself who will train him in ways far worse than those that landed him there. That's if he survives at all. This punishment hardly fits the crimes for any but the most hardened of criminals, and certainly is inappropriate for those who would, under the Handmaid's Tale-esque, neo-theocratic world you propose, be convicted of, say, tobacco indulgence, gazing at too much porn on the internet, or abusing a prescription like your friend Mr. Limbaugh was caught doing.

Does that make sense now?

[Dr. Shane]

Our justice system is currently filled with people due to drugs, alcohol and sex. Often times the courts sentence them to drug rehab, AA and the like. I have no idea how many court slips I have signed to verify someone had attended an AA meeting.

There is a big difference between one becoming addicted to street drugs like cocaine or LSD and one becoming addicted to prescription drugs like Elvis, Limbaugh and my mother. A street drug addict breaks the law from the first time he uses the drug. That means he or she starts out as a criminal doing what they know is wrong. The presciption drug addict starts using drugs because of a medical condition under the treament of a medical doctor. The prescription addict later becomes addicted and starts acting like his or her street-addict peer. As a result many prescription addicts are never prosecuted if they agree to seek treatment.

[Nicodema]

The same internal inclinations and biochemical dynamics that lead a person to abuse street drugs can also lead a person to abuse prescription drugs -- and vice versa. There is no difference in terms of what is going on with the person making them a candidate for addiction and/or substance abuse.

The distinction you are drawing in your mind in the above post is a complete illusion. A comforting one to you perhaps, but an illusion just the same.