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I don't think that the substances "cause" them to act in dangerous ways. I think that people act in irrational and dangerous ways, and then blame the substances for their behavior.
Do you believe that all people who act irrational and dangerous on a bad trip are equally as irrational and dangerous when they are not tripping? I certainly don’t think so.

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This is akin to "blaming the gun". Well, to quote an old cliche, I think it is absolutely true that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Our society blames the gun, or the drug, or whatever. In doing so, we fail to hold people accountable as responsible moral agents. It isn't the person's fault, it's the drug's fault. I think this is hogwash, because the decison to use the drug is voluntary.
I think this is a good analogy- problem is my view is the same. I think that to own a gun, people should demonstrate they understand how to use one and can be responsible with it. Guns make people more dangerous to others, as do drugs. It makes sense to me in both cases that we put protections in place to ensure that they are both used properly by responsible people who can handle them without hurting others.

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Your post has a built-in contradiction
Sorry- I don’t see a contradiction. I said that taking the drug irresponisbly was the cause and I believe it is. Since this is an issue that affects other people, this is an area in which the government should do as much as possible to ensure responsible actions.

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That is also way you can't prevent it from happening, because people can make those decisions that are harmful to others in millions of ways: driving recklessly, locking fire escape doors, misusing constuction equipment, dumping chemicals, whatever. It is *impossible* to remove the *opportunity* to harm other people.
I think all of these, or most at least, are violations of the law- and for good reason.

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Sitting at home alone and getting high is a GOOD THING, as far as many people are concerned (funny I have such strong opinions because I don't even do this personally).
Unless your altered state then helps you decide to get in a car or do something else even worse. What do you think about people going on bad trips with infants in the house?

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Correct. I believe that man is inherintly flawed, meaning my view of man's nature is quite low.

This is the fundamental justification for tyranny.
I think that’s quite a leap- some may use it that way. I don’t believe my views are tyrannical.

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You see, I think you believe more than that. I think that you believe that man's nature is quite low, and therefore they can not be entrusted to determine what is best for themselves. You seem to believe that you must do that, using the force of police and the mechanism of politics.
On what basis do you think this? It seems to me my opinions in this thread have been fairly moderate. I have stated that I think unregulated use of drugs creates a danger to other people and therefore it probably needs some regulation from the government. I am not advocating creating laws so that other people live by my moral viewpoint, but I do want a safer world for my family and myself.

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In a free society, people are left to determine for themselves what is a GOOD THING, and act on it however they choose -- with only a single limitation: they must not endager or harm others while doing so.
Do you miss the point that I agree with this completely, only that I think the unregulated use of drugs is endangering to other people whereas you do not? That is our real point of contention.

I think most of our actions affect other people- there is very little we can do in total isolation. Even at that, we have to tolerate a great deal of negative effects from others in order to have even a semi-free society. The question is where we draw the line and what constitutes something dangerous enough that the government needs to step in.

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Even if you are right, and man is inherently immoral, in a free society that is nobody's business but his own. And if that is true, by the way, where do these laws come from? They are developed by men. How can an "inherintly flawed" man come up with these moral rules?
Immoral, not amoral. Often we know what is right; we just do something different.

As to where our moral rules came from, there are two answers to this question- either they were put in our nature by God (C.S. Lewis uses this as one of his arguments for faith in his book “Mere Christianity”) or they were the result of evolution- those with the morals that have endured tend to live longer and procreate more. I subscribe to the first answer, obviously.

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There are plenty of things that I think should be legal even though I personally hold them to be wrong and immoral.

Can we agree, idealogically, that sitting at home alone and getting drunk is one of these things? If we can, how about getting high with other substances? How are these two things ANY different, from a moral and idealogical point of view?
Well most of the time you aren’t going to be busted for abusing drugs sitting at home. If you are truly in an isolated environment where you aren’t going to hurt anything, then you can do whatever you like to yourself- and it seems this is the way it all works out practically anyway. Getting high with an infant in the house is a different story, though. There are also different degrees of controlled substances. Alcohol and Marijuana are both probably pretty innocuous in these situations (unless you then decide you are fit to drive). LSD and other, more powerful drugs can lead to more dangerous results.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.