I haven't followed it, but he seems to be trying to open up the debate.

Prohibition didn't work out too well, but anti-smoking campaigns in many countries seem to be somewhat effective. So a gentler approach just may work, if you're willing to accept that it probably takes a century before you can ban the substance.

Gentler approach? Anti-smoking is reaching prohibition like levels in most countries. You're banned from smoking everywhere to the point you're banned from smoking in your own vehicle if someone else is present regardless of whether or not the passengers smoke themselves.

IIRC here in Canada it's illegal to smoke in a work vehicle, it's illegal to smoke in your own vehicle if you have a passenger under 18. You can't smoke within X-feet of a building entrance. They're trying to make it illegal to smoke in your own home if you have anyone under 18 living there.

I really don't see this as a gentle approach. I'm a non-smoker, I don't give a crap where people smoke and I see this illegalization of smoking to be severely harmful to our society. Given the link between certain genes and smoking, why not make autism illegal? I mean it's harmful to the users and is harmful to society by costing us billions in unearned wages and medical costs.

I'm sick of this nanny state bullshit. At the rate governments are regressing, we will be at full prohibition before we ever see marijuana or LSD legalized.

Yes, it's a lot gentler. The anti-smoking movement has been going on for a long time, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-smoking_movement. If my "one century" estimate is correct, smoking will be more-or-less banned in progressive countries between 2040 and 2075; the high end of that range does not seem totally unreasonable, although I'm not an expert by any means.

Contrast prohibition in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_State...): the first thing most people noticed was probably a complete ban (1920), although there were already quite a few local bans in place by that point (equally abruptly introduced). Very little effort seems to have been spent on gradual introduction of the law, and it was introduced despite a lack of broad acceptance (contrast the "conditional bans" you complain about.)

It may well be the case that the anti-smokers will, like the "dry" people, eventually achieve a ban on the good in question. However, the anti-tobacco campaign is a lot more gentle than the anti-alcohol campaign, and denying that is just rhetoric.

Two notes: yes, I think an eventual tobacco ban is a good thing; and you may be amused to learn that the nazis were fiercely anti-smoking as well.

> I'm sick of this nanny state bullshit.

People have been sick of smoke for years. It was never sustainable that a minority should be allowed pollute the environment of everyone else. Any politician who campaigned to bring back smoking in these places would fail spectacularly. Get used to it.

OTOH you have to keep in mind these movements are organized by a few people, and not the entire society suddenly rising against the evils of passive smoking.

At least in the Netherlands, in my social circle, anti-smoking laws are very welcome. Like any issue, it's championed by a few people; and yes, there are people who oppose it. But as far as I can see, there's quite a bit of acceptance, both by non-smokers and smokers.

Everyone else, you mean like me a non-smoker? Who do you mean 'everyone' what does your vast catch-all claim really mean... you?

I would argue that smoke is, by definition, a pollution of the environment, even for smokers. So I should have omitted the 'else' and just left it at 'everyone'. If people knowingly volunteer to expose themselves to it then it should be their right but they do not have the right to impose it on anyone else.

  Given the link between certain genes and smoking, why not
  make autism illegal?

All that you listed is to protect others from your smoke — which I very welcome. I don't see how the analogy with autism holds there. And even if you have genes which just force you to smoke, please do so that others who don't posses these genes are not forced to breath your medicine.

Right people have the right to be free from smoke and smokers have the right to smoke. Each group need to respect the right of the other, the problem in this case is neither do. The anti-smokers want smoking eliminated all together and to deny smokers their pleasures while the smokers feel they should be able to foist the by-product of their pleasure on others.

The one that I differ with the anti-smokers on is bars. These are institutions with the explicit purpose of pleasure. I think owner of the establishment should be allowed to decide if his establishment is designated smoking or non. The anti-smokers don't like this because the vote would be a resounding we are a smoking establishment. Because for a good deal of the population, they don't care, they would go to a smoking bar. The non-smokers activist hate this because no one want's to hang out at their non-smoking bar. So they ruin it for the rest. In my state Bars where the last public establishments to fall and they fought hard to resist it because patrons had already voted with their feet and smoking bars where more popular than non.

Can you read? Or do you see one piece of a larger argument and go completely blind?

As I said I am a _non-smoker_. I have been for my entire life. Again as I already said I do not care that people smoke around me and I find it a huge inconvenience on myself that I have to go out of my way to be with my friends when the laws are getting restrictive to the point that you cannot smoke anywhere legally in downtown areas except in the middle of a boulevard.

Yet I can't go downtown on a Saturday night without running into drunks and druggies who get into fights and destroy property. I've seen chairs thrown into oncoming traffic by people refused alcohol, I don't see this from any smokers anywhere?

Please cut the fucking naivety here. Alcohol is more destructive to the users health and to our societal health than tobacco, marijuana or LSD, but we're happy with the former being legal while the latter society wants illegal.

He's a scientist, he's trying to give us facts. What, if anything, we do about it, is up to us.

"Members of the group, joined by two other experts, scored each drug for harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities."

In my opinion with this dataset you can only have conclusions about the experts opinion/experiences.

If you're measuring harm to the communities, shouldn't you be taking polls at the communities?

Truth is not democratic. Highly-politicized issues like this should not be decided by polling.

And you'll need a better argument than "well, that's just their opinion" to sway me.

I'm questioning the fact that these experts (doctors? sociologists?) just scored which drugs they found more dangerous. For starters, effects in the individual and in the community belongs to two completely different areas of expertise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt: "David J. Nutt is a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs which affect the brain and conditions such as addiction, anxiety and sleep."

Dr. Les King is a well-respected chemist; I'll let you dig up your own references. Dr. Phillips is specialized in decision procedures and policy-making.

Yes, it would make sense to have others look over their conclusions, and yes, at least Nutt and Les King are not sociologists. But both have a long service on various boards on the topic of substance abuse - do you really believe they have no idea what they are talking about, medically or sociologically? Do you really think the Lancet wants to get caught publishing highly controversial rubbish ("link bait")?

And all of this is still just a smokescreen - you don't like their conclusions, fine, but then you'll have to point out that they're actually wrong. Calling their authority into question is disingenuous (especially since they have plenty of authority). Their facts may be incorrect, and there is definitely some subjectivity here (how do weigh damage to self in an individualistic welfare state?), but you'll have to offer better arguments than this.

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. The fact that they are well-credentialed does not excuse the fact that the study in question just flat-out isn't science. It's not reproducible without getting the same group back in a room together, it's based on subjective opinion or subjective interpretation of objective data, and it compares legal substances to illegal substances without offering a principled way to control for the effects of that regulation.

Do you really think the Lancet wants to get caught publishing highly controversial rubbish ("link bait")?

Um, The Lancet frequently publishes controversial articles. They published (and later retracted) a paper that claimed a link between vaccines and autism, they put out one of the highest death-toll estimates of the Iraq War, and they've called for a complete ban on tobacco products in the UK, to name a few.

> Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy

Yes, but the comment I replied to was questioning their credentials, which is at equally invalid - more so, in this case, since they actually do have quite impressive credentials.

With respect to The Lancet: controversy sells, but you still want to have a credible argument.

You are right, though, that this isn't exactly objective and independent of current policy. Then again, it may be hard to get such data...

Neither - he just says that the way society deals with drugs should be proportionate to the harm that they do

... to society