So you don't know whether he was drinking, taking, or drinking and taking anything nor whether he ended up in the reservoir?

Even if he did, that was his choice he should be free to make it. I think natural selection should be encourages, we shouldn't carry on pandering to the stupidest in society.

Think of all the things we'd have missed out on if people didn't take drugs? What about all of the art and inventions? Also if people didn't take LSD then nobody on this forum would probably ever have owned anything made by Apple.

All quite true. And they all still happened regardless of the legality. So, uhm...
We're not talking about whether or not people should take drugs. We're talking about the legality of such an act. Small, but important, difference.

True but then drugs didn't become illegal until relatively recently. Opium, for example, didn't become illegal until the 1920s. Much art and inventions happened long before then.

I hear many psychopaths paint pictures, should we legalise serial killing? And before you say I'm saying taking drugs is the same as serial killing, no I'm just using a metaphor to highlight the flaw in your thinking.

I was pointing out a matter of fact.

As for the metaphor you use to suggest a flaw in my thinking, there's a flaw in your metaphor. For starters not all psychopaths kill and secondly for your metaphor to be correct in order to be used in this context you'd actually be suggesting that we should make painting illegal.

Indeed, and regardless of the legality, art and invention will carry it's relentless march forward. Neither are dependant upon drugs to exist or develop, nor is it a requirement that to be inventive or artistic one should use drugs. Look at Terry Gilliam - claims he's never taken any form of hallucinogen or narcotic.
Some artists will carry on using drugs regardless of the laws position, as they always have and always will. And quite right so.

However, it's a straw man to say that 'Well they did it, so it's fine.'

Maybe he should have, Dr Parnassus was sh!te.

I get the feeling people are trying to completely misrepresent what I'm saying. I'm not saying that all invention or art would stop if people didn't take drugs but you can't say that they would have happened at all if they didn't.

If people want not to take them, fine, if people do then that should be fine too. As it is it's a hypocritical and judgmental society.

There's actually a flaw in you metaphor-flaw-finding.

Perhaps, perhaps not. It's difficult to decide when the comment was so inane.

Pretty much everything done for our "safety/security/wellbeing", which also happens to make us easier to control began in the early 1900s. Drugs are illegal because it suits people in power.

Saying LSD helps art is like saying anything helps art, it's a tenuous link and probably just wrong. If I took LSD I wouldn't write Sgt. Pepper, the drug doesn't create the art, YOUR argument was an inane as the people who say religion created the Sistine Chapel. It's easy to take psychoactive drugs and claim enlightenment. It's much harder to become "enlightened" when you're in possession of all your wits and you're actually in a position to create a coherent, useful world-view that actually has the potential to help people. LSD doesn't create enlightened artistic people. Why I chose a mental illness? The difference being a permanent mental illness rather than a temporary, artificially-initiated one. Being out of your mind is simply that, I wouldn't trust someone tweaking on nicotine to perform brain surgery, I wouldn't trust someone on LSD to be a safe, responsible member of the public.

You've misinterpreted my point entirely and responded accordingly, and rather overdramatically if I might say.

whatevs. To put it simply when Alex said "all quite true" I thought, no it wasn't, it was a load of tripe.

Well, we're all entitled to our views, my main point wasn't really to do with drugs and art/inventions per se nor the 'enlightenment' some people claim.

It's more the help we could give to people who need it, the revenues we could gather off those already using drugs, and the safety we could provide to those, for example, who prefer to stimulate their serotonin rather than their dopamine on a weekend.

Personally I say legalise drugs

- We would be able to ensure that they were pure and not tained
- We could tax them so make money rather than gangs
- A large percentage of many gangs income comes from drugs - if that is removed it reduces the incentive to become a gang member
- Some of the "I will try it as its illegal / naughtlt" factor will be taken away so possibly reducing consumption
and
- we have tried banning them for decades now, spent billons and made not one iota of difference so lets try something new