Should alcohol be banned?

Clearly you all attend public schools. Alcohol was already banned once in your country. See how that worked out for you guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition

Using guns to solve social problems *never* works. You will make the problem worse. And when you ask "should we ban X?" you are actually asking "should we use guns to stop people doing X?" You have no moral or political right to tell people what substances they may and may not consume. 'Banning' alcohol is no more legitimate or moral than if you were to walk into your neighbour's house with a shotgun and demand they stop buttering their toast 'or else'. It doesn't matter if you think the butter will make them unhealthy or that it's a bad life choice. It's not your decision!

 

Your statement is a contradiction. You first assert subjective morality then you assert objective morality (i.e. the opposite), then, as it pleases you, you label anyone not accepting subjective morality as [objectively] immoral. How ridiculous.

I suggest you read my other posts concerning ethics and morality (and logic) and educate yourself before you attempt further debate on the topic.

But, for now it suffices to say that the science of ethics is no more subjective than the science of nutrition. Just because everyone has a different diet does not mean that nutrition is arbitrary. Just because it is not a 'perfect world' does not mean there is no difference between being healthy and unhealthy. And just because you can choose not to follow your diet does not mean the diet is something made up and of no consequence. The science of ethics will give you a code of morality by which to live. This is the code that you ought to follow if you want to be happy and productive, exactly as you ought to follow your diet if you want to be slim and fit. You can choose not to follow it, but you cannot choose the consequences of not following it. If you lead an unhealthy life (nutrition-wise) then you will be physically unhealthy. Likewise if you lead an unhealthy life in your moral standards (or lack of adherence to them) then you will be mentally unhealthy; depressed, unhappy and unproductive. Your choice to acknowledge or ignore objective facts (like nutrition and ethics) has consequences, and these are just as real as your choice to ignore the fact of a car speeding down the road right at you. Once you have made your choice you have to live (or die) with its consequences.

To add insult to injury, having started your argument by asserting subjective morality, you now say that there is an objective moral code which you (and presumably only you) define and have the objective moral right to enforce on others using guns.

Incidentally the phrase 'we as a society' is one of the worst and most sophistic anti-concepts imaginable. Do you mean 'you and people who agree with you, using guns against people who do not agree with you'? Is this what you mean by 'we, as a society'?

 

This is not an argument. Making an assertion is the opposite of making a case. For example: saying "god exists" neither proves nor disproves anything.

You are advocating the use of force against people for disagreeing with you. That's precisely what it means to ban something.

Allowing people to own and drive cars is correlated with a greater number of hit and runs. Allowing people to live in a city is correlated with higher levels of gang membership and homicide. Therefore are you justified in pointing a GUN at anyone who drives a car, or who lives and works in a city? Of course not! This is absurd. The man who drives a car has done nothing wrong, the man who lives in a city has done nothing wrong, and likewise the man who takes a drug has done nothing wrong. None of these actions has hurt a single other human being. You, on the other hand, are hurting people. You are using violence and the threat of violence against people for their perfectly voluntary behaviour which is their own personal private business. You are declaring them guilty on the basis of what you think they *might* do in the future. Incidentally, this is a basic violation of human rights; Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

To put this in concretes for you, consider this scenario. Someone is about to pour a glass of brandy and sit by the fire in the house that they own, on the land that they own, in the city that they live in. You, in your infinite wisdom, have read that statistically people who drink brandy are five times more likely to beat their wives. Thus, you feel 100% justified in picking up a firearm, bashing down this man's door and putting the gun to his temple, with your finger on the trigger -- literally threatening his life, his very existence, because you are FUCKING CONCERNED that he might beat his wife in the future on the basis of a STATISTICAL CORRELATION, when he hasn't even done anything wrong. This is exactly the same moral scenario for any other substance.

You deliberately miss the point. How are you going to stop it? Clearly the 'society' you speak of excludes the people who break your ban on drugs (or whatever else you want to ban.) So clearly your definition of 'society' is not 'everyone'. What you actually mean by society is 'people who agree with you'. Watch how your sentence improves in clarity when your contextual definition is dropped in:

To answer your question, again: because it's immoral to point guns at people when they haven't caused damage or injury to anyone else.

Again, you deliberately misunderstand the point. You wouldn't defend a law that said all jews have to be gassed, or that all black people should be slaves. I assume at least that you are only defending these drug laws because you agree with them on moral basis, thus this is a moral debate. If you are defending them only on the basis that they are 'the law' and have given no further consideration to them, then you are the most detestably evil person in existence. You would advocate the slaughter of innocent people just because some greasy politician wrote it on a scrap of paper 40 years ago?

Finally, you debate like a total sophist. You are unwilling and unable to set strict definitions and you use equivocation all over the place. Your sentences are quagmires designed to baffle and confuse the reader, rather than to educate and inform. And thus, unless or until you are willing to learn how to write in a straight clear manner I suggest you find somewhere else to debate.