Daniel1611
New member
Way to avoid my point. Why are you encouraging people to reject Christ by not supporting the legal enforcement if Christianity as the state religion?
If pot should be banned.. so should alcohol.
- Thread starter WichitaJohn
- Start date
Way to avoid my point. Why are you encouraging people to reject Christ by not supporting the legal enforcement if Christianity as the state religion?
Because there is a huge difference between behaviors and ideology.
While our nation should encourage the promotion of Christianity (like our Founding Fathers did), you can't force repentance and eternal salvation on anyone. A nation that loves God should legislate and enforce laws that prohibit unrighteous/ungodly behavior.
Daniel1611
New member
And the drug war cant force people to stop doing drugs. I am a former addict who was never arrested and has no criminal record, praise God. I wasn't forced to quit drugs and didn't quit because it was illegal. I quit because I wanted to stop the horrid lifestyle of an addict. The laws have not decreased drug use.
No, but if they're caught they would pay the penalty (which in reality is helping them) doled out by the civil magistrate.
If you're willing to open up, this could be helpful to others who think that it's ok to use drugs and for civil government to legalize them.
1). What were you addicted to?
2). What was the daily cost of your habit? (the cost of the narcotic that you used).
3). What toll did it take on your health mentally/emotionally, physically and spiritually?
4). Did it effect your family's life?
5). Did it effect your employment?
6). Did you have to lie, cheat and steal to support your habit?
7). Did you lie to others and yourself about your habit, saying that you weren't addicted and that you could quit anytime that you wanted to? (you just didn't want to).
I have dozens more, but if you would be honest and answer those questions, it very well could help others.
Daniel1611
New member
I was addicted to opiates, usually in the form if pain killers like oxycodonr and morohine but sometimes heroin. They are all opiates and can be used interchangeably with nearly identical effects. A common misconception is that heroin is stronger than pain pills. It can be, but there are plenty of pain pills that are much stronger than heroin.
It did negatively impact my family's life. It did cause immoral behavior. It did not really affect my employment. I was told that I was considered a "functioning addict". I.e. I held down a job and lived a somewhat normal life, as opposed to unemployed junkies that lay on the couch all day, I guess. The cost of my habit wasn't much for reasons I won't get into. The cost could've been hundreds of dollars a day under normal circumstances . The drug laws didn't stop me from using drugs whatsoever.
In other words, you, like many, were a blue collar/white collar drug addict who kept his addiction under the radar of civil government.
One more question: Had you been caught and forced into rehab early into your addiction, would that have caused you and your family a lot less grief?
Daniel1611
New member
I was never arrested for anything, so I suppose the government didn't know about my use.
I was basically forced into rehab once and relapsed within a week. Later I sought treatment in my own and have been off drugs for a few years. Praise God. People have to want to quit. The law doesn't stop drug use. It simply lines the pockets of the prison industrial complex and the drug dealers.
Hence my comment about you being under the radar of the criminal justice system.
Who forced you? Would it had been any different if your family forced you or if a court order in criminal court forced you? (i.e. they both had your best interest in mind).
How about those that don't want to quit? Should we as a society allow them to destroy themselves and their families or continue to keep trying to help them?
The law wasn't designed to stop any kind of immoral behavior, just curtail it.
Save your one-liners from High Times for someone else.
Daniel1611
New member
So you want big brother to baby sit you. That's what it comes down to. You need government to make sure you don't do drugs. I dont need a babysitter, and if another will not listen to anyone who wants to help them, it is their own choice. However, I am convinced that more people would quit drugs if treatment was not so expensive and more easily accessible.
God ordained civil government as one of three institutions for the governance of men (the family and Church being the other two).
Legislating and enforcing righteous laws is a bit more complicated than babysitting little Bobby on Saturday night while mom and dad go out on a date.
All three of the above institutions work together to help society with lost souls who need to find their way back down the path of righteous living.
It sure sounds like you did (and thank you for your honesty when it came to telling us about your past).
Again, that's why we have laws: to help people who refuse to help themselves when it comes to immoral behavior.
So you want to legalize recreational drugs with the idea that eventually lives will be destroyed and like you they will have to seek treatment?
Daniel1611
New member
I want to legalize drugs to end their black market sale and to end putting people in jail for ingesting dangerous chemicals that are not on the government's list of legal dangerous chemicals. The government allows many deadly chemicals to be bought and sold. You're picking and choosing which ones you want to outlaw. This isn't really even a debate I'm interested in having. Some issues gave two equal but opposing positions that can be debated. This is not one of them. You have yet to list even ONE way the drug war is beneficial besides the fact that drugs are illegal.
Yes, they're illegal. I've listed multiple cons to the drug war and you have failed to provide even ONE benefit. It is because there are none and you know it. Your ideology is more important to you than actual results.
Yes, they're illegal. I've listed multiple cons to the drug war and you have failed to provide even ONE benefit. It is because there are none and you know it. Your ideology is more important to you than actual results.
As I'd mentioned in an earlier post: by giving into evil behavior, you're going against God and what role He designed for civil government (to punish evil doers and hence promote goodness).
I'll leave you with these wise words which I like to use somewhat frequently in various posts:
All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State.
Robert Winthrop
to the Annual Meeting of the
Massachusetts Bible Society
Boston, Mass; May 28, 1849
You want to promote evil and hence use government not only in an unrighteous role as drug pusher, but to later use their physical force against those who while high on drugs do things that go against common decency.
Daniel1611
New member
Yet you're not for banning alcohol which the Bible specifically condemns.
If there's no law against it, aCW assumes that's an endorsement.
Pay attention. I covered this with the marijuana addict known as shagster01.
God condemns abuse of alcohol (drunkenness), not the responsible consumption of it.
If there is no threat of punishment against certain behaviors by civil government (fines, incarceration), what would you call it?
Daniel1611
New member
The Bible says not to look at alcohol. Proverbs 23.
Proverbs 23:20
New International Version
Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat,
New Living Translation
Do not carouse with drunkards or feast with gluttons,
New American Standard Bible
Do not be with heavy drinkers of wine, Or with gluttonous eaters of meat;
Like I said...
Daniel1611
New member
Keep reading.
"...For the heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty, And drowsiness will clothe one with rags.…"