Actor Phillip Seymor Hoffman Found Dead of Apparent Heroin Overdose

Hoffman was found dead with a hypodermic needle still in his arm.

Ace has a good point about the debate over drug legalization. Basically, his point is that the choices are a binary set of two choices:

1. Drugs are bad, and therefore must be illegal; or,
2. Drugs are fine, and therefore should be legal, and it's ok to do drugs.

Ace notes that you don't really see a more (dare I say) "nuanced" argument for: Drugs can be legal, yet they're pretty dangerous, so maybe you shouldn't do them.

As usual, Ace is right.

In all of the argument for legalization of marijuana in Colorado, we aren't really seeing anyone say that maybe it's ok to have legalized pot, but maybe we shouldn't be such big cheerleaders for it without the counterbalancing argument of "Maybe we shouldn't smoke pot all the time".

As events like Hoffman's death remind us, drug use has some negative consequences. Yes, this was heroin, not pot, but still, with all this marijuana legalization talk, I'm not hearing about any negative consequences. That's not good.

Remember the line Bill Clinton had about abortion? He said it should be "Safe, legal, and rare"which is a kind of third way of approaching the abortion issue. It's not the cheerleading stance of "Yay abortion", and it's not the prohibitionist stance of "never". He took the path of let's keep it legal, but let's discourage it culturally and socially.

I think that's the right path for some drug legalization. The problem is that we aren't seeing anyone of the legalization side of the argument call for restraint, or rarity in drug use.