[quote]vroom wrote:
Zeb,
I don’t think you have much basis in fact when you adhere to the belief that illegal substances are less available to children or others.
Drugs, major drugs, have been illegal for eons now, but they have always been available. These things, including prohibition, have never been effectively restricted.
Anyway, to get back a ways, things aren’t made illegal purely because people prefer it that way. They are usually made illegal because people believe there is a harm to society if they are available for use.
When society misunderstands the issues involved and makes something illegal, such as ephedra, it does a disservice to itself. It limits consumer choice and freedoms.
What happens when the government makes things illegal, that society greatly desires, is that it creates a black market. Things are done in secret, without supervision, without anyone knowing. This is the most dangerous way to be involved with a substance.
It also creates an opportunity for criminal profit, which has a large negative effect on society!
So, as we have had, there still is, and will remain to be, a black market in contraband steriods. It isn’t going to go away, ever, no matter how illegal they are.
My point, is that if people are going to make the choice to use steroids, at least let them have access to medical supervision so they can do so safetly. Why should they not be able to make decisions concering their own bodies (outside of sporting regulations).
I would suggest that most children eventually get to an age where they will try illegal things. If you have raised them with some semblance of a brain they will make it through that period without serious issues – as has happened with most of the adults in the world today.
You place too much import on the word “illegal” as if it infers some type of illicitness all on its own. There are plenty of legal things that are very bad, and illegal things that really aren’t very bad at all.
When you ask the government to look after us in this way, thinking you and the government know better than the rest of us, you again show your hidden liberal colors. This is happening more and more often Zeb.[/quote]
This has nothing to do with being liberal.
Conservatives want to tell us what to do with our bodies just as much as liberals do and more, and always have, and probably always will. From temperance in the prohibition days to drugs to birth control to abortion to who you can have sex with and in what position, conservatives have always played a central part, and general taking a resounding lead, in promoting government intervention in what a private citizen does with his body.
If we’re going to drag some liberal/conservative dichotomy into this, which isn’t all that appropriate or productive here, we should at least be straight up about it.