You said: "I am talking about illegal recreational drugs. Don't be deliberately obtuse."

Actually, however, that is not what you said when you asked someone to comment upon their early drug use. I countered with the comment that you need to define drugs. Now you have defined it. Until you did define your terms -- which is a requirement of logical argument -- no one could really offer you a realistic response, since alcohol is also part of the LW's drug consumption.

By your reasoning, the LW with his pot habit is doing something illegal, but if his girlfriend can score a hefty prescription of Adderall, it's okay.

Am I reading you correctly now?

I will assume so. My response to your analogy is that if my adult child robbed a bank in today's environment, I would say something along the lines of "You really shouldn't be doing that. Send that money back right now!"

However, if my adult child robbed a bank to support a revolution to overthrow a dictator who had taken over our nation and instituted laws which stripped our citizens of all their constitutional rights, I would ask: "How do I join up?"

The person who argued that the LW should not be using pot if his girlfriend has a green card is talking practical good sense, but the fact that marijuana is still illegal when there are legal drugs much more harmful, such as nicotine, does not make such a discrepancy moral or right. The fact that our government will not allow people who are seriously ill use marijuana for medical reasons is an improper interference with a person's right to control his/her own body and medical care. The fact that our government restricts the growth of a useful crop planet like hemp (barely discernable THC) is just plain silly.

Winston Churchhill said something along the lines that restricting a free market creates a black market. Making most drugs illegal does not eliminate drugs. It does not eliminate drug use. It does not eliminate most of the problems that drugs produce. In fact, drug laws have allowed our nation to create a whipping boy underclass of mostly poor, mentally ill people who are self-medicating their serious problems. At least when they are sent off to prison, they can get dental care.

(Rich people can generally afford to take risks of drug use that poor people cannot, just as they can afford to get their legal prescriptions filled when poor people cannot.)

The LW and his girlfriend are just people. His pot smoking does not make him a bad person. While her wanting to try various dangerous recreational drugs at twenty-eight makes me wonder about her maturity, she is still just a human being about to make a mistake that many other ordinary human beings make. What they do about their little impass is the significant subject of this thread.

If you want to argue larger issues of morality, you may first have to get past the idea that illegality equals morality. Or would you rat out the Jews hiding in the attic?

By the way, I don't do illegal drugs of any kind, I tried cigarettes when I was a teen and quit because I couldn't figure out how to inhale and everyone made fun of me. I tried pot twice in my early twenties. The first time I still couldn't figure out how to inhale and the second time I decided that I didn't need anything that made me so lazy.