Draug, my understanding is that virtually all of the life-threatening danger associated with MDMA has to do with uncertainty about its contents (being illegal). But I am not 100% sure about it. Either way, Eden is right (as are you) about the bigger picture. Whatever the dangers of drug use, more grenades and assault weapons for militarized police does not constitute a solution.
Putin, I think you misunderstand me. America gets by fine with legal alcohol and prescription narcotics. I don't think legalizing marijuana or opium tea is going to bring down the republic.
"Fine, but why do you only seem concerned about how the police behave and not how private citizens are shooting anything and everything? I can't take the libertarian concern about violence seriously when they seem so glib about gun violence committed by anybody who isn't police. "
There is a fundamental difference between violence by agents of the state, which in a representative government are supposed to be responding to and indeed acting in the name of the citizenry, and actions by and among private citizens. In other words, I am responsible for the actions of the state, if in only a small way, and therefore have a greater concern for them. It is the same reason that I don't think it should be illegal to, for example, for a bigoted person to refuse to consider marriage someone of a different race, but the government should recognize interracial marriage. It's way I wouldn't mind a legal lottery system, but I oppose a state running the lotto. (If I am remembering correctly from previous discussions, you are smart enough to understand this difference but will pretend not to, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.)
"I can assure you that support for gun regulations is far higher in urban centers, but has been repeatedly been overturned thanks to a rural based gun lobby that has absolutely no stake in the effects of their pernicious advocacy of free-for-all gun laws. "
I'm not talking about gun regulations (or abortion, which for whatever reason you bring up), I'm talking about police militarization and the associated civil liberties abuses. I suppose it's possible that police forces mistakenly believe that more available firepower for alleged criminals means that they need to ramp up their forces, but police deaths and assaults against police have been dropping for years, part of the general decline in crime in America. We non-police have far more to fear from the police than they do from the general public.