I just thought of another good illustration: “Marijuana is a drug!”
This fits perfectly under Yvain’s description (it associates Marijuana with the worse kinds of hard drugs that turn you into a skinny toothless zombie willing to sell his grandmother for his next fix), and a concern of some opponents to legalization is that making one form of recreational drug will lower the taboo on drugs as a whole. And that is a legitimate concern, considering the damage hard drugs can cause! (though of course it’s to weigh against the damage caused by marijuana trafficking, which would be significantly reduced if it was legal—and if it was legal it would cluster less naturally with the hard drugs).
I like this version; it also applies to modafinil (“modafinil is a drug!”) and you can swap out ‘drug’ for more convincing versions (since ‘drug’ seems to me to be losing its negative connotations), like “nicotine is a toxin!”
I just thought of another good illustration: “Marijuana is a drug!”
This fits perfectly under Yvain’s description (it associates Marijuana with the worse kinds of hard drugs that turn you into a skinny toothless zombie willing to sell his grandmother for his next fix), and a concern of some opponents to legalization is that making one form of recreational drug will lower the taboo on drugs as a whole. And that is a legitimate concern, considering the damage hard drugs can cause! (though of course it’s to weigh against the damage caused by marijuana trafficking, which would be significantly reduced if it was legal—and if it was legal it would cluster less naturally with the hard drugs).
I like this version; it also applies to modafinil (“modafinil is a drug!”) and you can swap out ‘drug’ for more convincing versions (since ‘drug’ seems to me to be losing its negative connotations), like “nicotine is a toxin!”
“Alcohol and tobacco are drugs!”
The ‘drug’ aspect isn’t an argument, it’s a distraction from the real reasons.