I already gave you an example in another thread of how it serves a purpose for gay people. There are many legal advantages to having your relationship legally recognized. E.g., immigration, hospital visitation rights, ...
> So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here?
Who is making it hard to believe you're arguing in good faith here? You've consistently harped on a reductionist definition of marriage in this thread.
>If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too?
Personally, I truly do not care what you call it. If they're able to give consent and you can find a place to have wedding, good for you. If the law wants to respect it, congratulations.
Of course the man/woman/kids abstraction leaks - many cultures use marriage to describe the legal union of old people, infertile people, and people who just plain don't want to have kids.
> many cultures use marriage to describe the legal union of old people, infertile people
And in fact some cultures has "weird" forms of marriage that deviates from the man + woman norm explicitly over things like fertility.
E.g. in some parts of Africa, two women marrying (but not, at least in principle, lesbian marriages, though I'm sure this institution have been conveniently used to obscure lesbian relationships) have centuries of history as a means for infertile women to gain heirs by taking a fertile wife who will find a man to get her pregnant, who will have no rights to any children. In these cultures, one of the women will generally be considered a husband, and take on many traditionally male roles (to the extent that in some places such a "female husband" gain access to e.g. take political offices not available to women etc.) [1]
African cultures are full of still extant examples where marriage is treated as a pragmatic means to secure economy, social stability and inheritance to the point where bending gender norms too is seen as a perfectly sensible hack if it furthers those goals.
Given the long history of such varied forms of marriage (including e.g. polygamy too), it would be much more reasonable to claim that marriage historically is about securing a family units financial situation and inheritance, and furthering social stability than having anything to do with "a man and a woman procreating"...
Morphine, from which heroin is derived, codeine and thebaine come directly from a plant. Many prescription pain killers like hydrocodone are derivatives of the latter compound.
But it's not the same thing. Like cocaine compared to coca leaves, the effect and chemical structure is completely different (haven't tried cocaine though, but chewed the leafs, very nice and calm effect, compared to maybe coffee/green tea with some added feeling of refreshment and oxygen in the blood, but without the overdrive factor).
Chewing coca leafs is healthy and I guess close to impossible to overdose, but if you take a condensed and highly extracted version of that, cocaine, you can very easily overdose.
I heard rumors that in russian prisons people make this condensed coffee drink that acts as a sort of meta-amphetamine replacement. They basically make coffee out of coffee until it's this sticky black thing that gets you really driven, I don't remember what they call it, but I remember many people die from this substance also.
Same thing with natural plant vs chemical extracts. Much easier to overdose and get lethal dosage.
>I heard rumors that in russian prisons people make this condensed coffee drink that acts as a sort of meta-amphetamine replacement.
Probably, you are referring to the "chifir": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifir'
It is prepared by boiling tea leaves, rather than coffee beans.
Chifir is indeed a stimulant, although totally unrelated to methamphetamine (which, by itself, is not popular or easily obtained in Russia at all).
>Same thing with natural plant vs chemical extracts. Much easier to overdose and get lethal dosage.
One point of contention I'll raise is that with self-grown anything one can control what adulterants are added.
A particular problem with opioid overdose is the tendency for opioid pain killers to have paracetamol/acetaminophen/APAP/Tylenol added, which when taken in large doses will cause permanent liver damage.
Because heroin sale and use was mostly confined to poor and minority communities. Now a different population is consuming them that happens to be white and suburbanite.
You're drawing a line that doesn't exist. By all means, alcohol is an addictive hard drug with withdrawals that can actually kill or cause long-term brain damage. The only other class of drugs that have the same dangerous withdrawal are benzodiazepines, which target the GABA system. Alcohol is dirty in comparison, touching your GABAergic, serotonergic, dopaminergic, opioid and glutamate systems in your brain. You can overdose and die from consuming too much alcohol, which is not the case if you consumed too much marijuana or benzodiazepines (by themselves).
Of course, if we define moderate use of a substance as the level of consumption where health effects are little to none, you can consume something without jeopardizing your health.
You seem to be implying that either heroin or cocaine cannot be consumed in moderation (which is false[0][1]), or that their moderate consumption is tremendously bad for your health. If it's the latter, prescription opioids and stimulants like methylphenidate can be taken in moderation with limited health effects.
Many prescription opioids are very chemically similar to heroin. All prescription opioids work primarily via the same mechanism as heroin. Heroin is used in a medical context under the name diamorphine.
A small subset complained, but the majority voted for politicians who were vocal about their intentions to implement harsh laws that would impact the poor and racial minorities. They also voted for judges and DAs who voiced their intention to uphold a zero tolerance policy.
