Quote Originally Posted by Viking
Firstly, all smoking can kill, logic should tell you that. Secondly, when someone sells (I`m talking about heavy drugs like heroin, wich I assume Van Ngyen was trafficking) drugs, the seller is leading the buyer closer to death and is fully aware of it. The buyer might die of an OD of what he bought. This is what one might call attempted murderer.
Again that's all you've assumptions. It's wrong to kill a man under any circumstances, it's even worse for the state to do it and it's even worse if you only have assumptions. That's an attempted murder if the seller represented the possibility of the buyer dying because of the product. However that's not the case here, and not even death justifies another death.
Ever heard about common sense?
I agree with you common sense is valuable, but it must be corrected in order to understand things. Specially things that have so terrible concecuences as an authoritarian law and capital punishment.
Argumenting about individual freedom.... I don`t see why people should be able to ruin themselves if they want to, that`s just silly. They might be able to drag others with them into selfdestruction too. So much for individual freedom.
I've explained this many times. Have you seen the movie 1984 (the one based on Orwell's book, I think it was "1984" but correct me if I'm wrong). The question that you've to ask yourself is that if you'll like to live in that world. The constitution however already protects the contrary values. The state provides for your freedom, and only that, the happiness of you or any other is unimportant princiapally because it's subjective. State doesn't have to look at morals it has to look at the free exercise of our RIGHTS, not obligations. And again assumptions and hipotesis "they might this, they might that..." I might be a terrorist, however I'm still free.
Whoa; rape isn`t much else than "ruining a life". Imagine a society where as long as you don`t murder someone or doesn`t steal something, you can do whatever you want.
So for you any crime deserves capital punishment or jail? However rape isn't punished because you "ruined a life" it's punished so you and others will not repeat that conduct again. Ruining a life is a vague concept at best.