LOL. I checked Australia's censored sites list. They censored REDTUBE. God forbid people masturbate. It might promote terrorism. Or something.
I assure you, were the founding fathers alive today, they would have an ad for that on the back of the Constitution. Which was written on hemp. Which should also be legalized.
New Zealand's supposed to be nice, right?

Hemp? I raise you to pot. There is no logical reason to have pot illegal, and I am not speaking solely from my libertarian-tendancies. Victimless activites should not be crimes. Anything that people are going to do anyway should never be illegal. It is not the law's duty to impose morality, it is the law's duty to simply allow people to live together.

We get about a shooting or two every week or so here in my city, that last two were over pot. I wouldn't call that victimless. I understand & respect the suburbanite argument for drug legalisation, but I worry that many don't realise (or in some cases don't want to know) how much blood it takes to get that eighth to the outer tier suburbs and municipalities.

The victims are from the shooting not the drug. If it was legal people wouldn't be taking dangerous measures to get it to where it's wanted. You don't see a bunch of shootings over cigarettes and alcohol (shootings *because* of alcohol perhaps).

Legalizin drugs by definition means cracking down on drug dealers.

History Class!
"The effects of Prohibition were largely unanticipated. Production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages — once the province of legitimate business — were taken over by criminal gangs, which fought each other for market control in violent confrontations, including mass murder."

I would argue the shooting and the drug are directly related and if it were legal, the legal method of procurement would certianly be different than the current method, meaning you'd now have gov't induced competition with drug dealers who are known to be hyper-violent towards competitiors. I'd love to dabate further, but perhaps we ought to do it in a different thread. I'd feel guilty hijacking this one more than we already have.

If it was legal then there would be no need for drug dealers. It wouldn't be hard to get. That's why drug dealers make so much money, because people can't just go to a local convenience store and buy it.

Sort of like if you were researching terrorism, and then got arrested?
We have some serious problems in this country, and and I worry for the future.

Shalgroth -
Agreed. I'm sure many people come to power with good intentions, but that lure of power is intoxicating.
You raise a good point about blacklisting concerning its vagueness. I can understand some vagueness in law as it allows for flexibility in it application -otherwise you end up making a law for everything and its variant which would be utterly insane.
What concerns me is that the laws instead of outlining what to do, seem to defer that authority to make those decisions to another entity; a board, office, or panel, granting it a vague legislative, judicial, executive power all in one. I don't like that and I think it has very bad long term implications.
"Ignorance is no excuse. Take the time, learn the technology, otherwise just do NOT have it in your house. Would you buy a gun, keep it in your home with your children if you did not know how to operate it safely?"
(Sorry haven't figured out how to quote snippets yet)
-I don't think you can compare a computer and a gun. My firearms have less than 50 parts each and have operated essentially the same way for 100 years. I was required to be trained in all aspects of its use prior to ownership. The home PC is different. Its been constantly evolving over the last 20 years. I think in some cases the parents at the time learned about the PC at work; as an office appliance, and bought it with the same intent. Kids on the other hand grew up with the elvolving technology and it is much more embedded into their lives. I can't blame parents if they fell behind in keeping up with current technology.
However that said, its the job of the parent to teach their kids responsibility, morality, and proper decision making, etc for these exact situations where a parent's guiding hand isn't always available. The failure isn't in the parent being unable to find /var/log, but ending up in that situation with their children in the first place.
Or to use the gun analogy (I'm actually liking it more as I write this), It doesn't matter as a parent how safe I am with it or how well it's locked up if my children don't know how to make safe decisions when/if they come in contact with one while I'm not around.