[ExI] Dope was Re: state of conflict technology

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

snip

> I am AGIN it, I tells ya!  All of it, all forms of dope, everything, AGIN
it!  Bad medicine it is.  Poison.  Toxic to mind, body and spirit.

[Keith]

>> That's rather inconsistent with libertarianism.

> On the contrary sir.  I didn't say anything about law, or prohibiting anyone
from these things.  I unapologetically state my suggestion to leave it all
alone.

I think your attitude is still not a libertarian one.  To a large
extent, I agree about "toxic."  But drugs (such as alcohol) have been
with us for 10,000 years or more.  Alcohol may even have been a major
element motivating people to farm.

We have made various genetic accommodations to alcohol, which you can
see in how badly alcohol affects the population.  The places on the
edge of the agricultural expansion (which have had the least time for
genetic selection) have the most serious problems with alcohol, and
unexposed peoples (such as Greenland natives) have almost no
resistance.  Native Americans were massively affected.  The French are
almost immune to the effects despite consuming a frightening amount of
wine.

I can't find it now, but at one point someone did an analysis of
countries with drug problems.  Turkey, which has been growing opium
for 5,000 years or more, did not have much of a problem.  Why?  The
genes that contribute to addiction had been weeded out over thousands
of years.

> I know there are those who have success with various things, but I also have
lived long enough to know plenty who do not, plenty who have wrecked lives.

Evolution in action.  A few thousand years of selection (or one
generation of designer babies) and the wrecked lives from drugs
problem goes away.

>From experience, I am close to immune to addiction to opiates.  It's
just luck of the genetic draw, not virtue or will power.  Only
something like 5-10% of the population have the metabolism to become
addicts.

Libertarianism (or libertarianism) in the context of evolution is a
harsh political stand to take.

snip

> Living near San Francisco, I also recognize that removing all restrictions
on dope is also a failure.

I was not aware that SF had removed restrictions.

Keith