Then there’s the other kind of drugs like Steroids…Ever see someone with roid rage??
I have…Steroids was just getting real popular 25 years ago when I was a power-lifter…It was the MAIN reason I stopped power-lifting…Couldn’t compete with the steroid junkies. A couple of those guys I knew back then are dead now…heart-attacks at 40.
The problem with legalizing drugs in general is, you open access. Access is fine for a well intended, law abiding adult but they in tern often show poor judgement in parenting. That opens access to juveniles. No thanks. As far as surveillance is concerned, the more suspicious your behavior, the more suseptable you become to intrusion by the police. How else would you want criminal behavior to be prcecuted ? As the surveillance gets closer to private intrusion, the greater the need for a warrant to show just cause. You can argue all day about the rights of those who show suspicious behavior in drug dealing…do you want those drugs to find their way into the hands of your kids instead ?
The thing about decriminalizing drugs though is it not only removes most of the organized crime element from the picture, but it removes most of the taboo factor as well. When something becomes ordinary and accessible, it loses much of its glamour, and I think that alone will help. I don’t necessarily think that drugs like crack and methamphetamine need to be legalized, but certainly marijuana should be if nothing else, and punishment for using drugs should not be a jail-able offense. (except of course in situations where someone is driving under the influence or similar, the same as with alcohol)
Perhaps we could take a page out of Holland’s book as far as how they handle drugs. Certainly there will be some new problems, but getting rid of the mega profits made by organized crime alone would be worth it, as well as freeing the casual users and small-time dealers that are rotting in our already overcrowded prisons. People are always going to find a way to escape life and feel good. Maybe if life was always a bundle of joy they wouldn’t. The key is to keep scumbags from profiting from it and educate people so that if they want to indulge, that they do it responsibly, just the same as with alcohol.
Lets not forget NASCAR started out as bootleggers running races on the weekends to get jobs running booze around the mountains…
And speaking of which; How many people have gotten hurt as a result of alcohol? I don’t WANT to share the road with some dude so drunk they can’t remember their own name, but alcohol can be purchased by anyone over 21 years of age. I’m sure some woman doesn’t WANT to be hit by her husband, but when he drinks he beats her and the kids for no reason. I’m sure someone walking down the street doesn’t WANT to get into a fist fight with anyone, but the drunkard who just got tossed out of the bar is mad about it and decides that guy is just the thing he needs to hit in order to feel better.
replace alcohol with the drug of your liking and it’ll still read the same. So my opinion is if alcohol is legal, why not drugs?
One thing I’ve noticed about alcohol: It only brings out what’s already there. If someone’s a mean drunk, they’re not likely so great sober either.
Biscar2 and oblivion…“drugs” , the term, is a pretty big gamott. When someone says they are for legalizing drugs, it’s the same as saying, they are for legalizing firearms. Their next statement is, oh, I didn’t mean bazookas, explosive amunitions and 50 cal. machine guns. The dicision as with firearms can only be made within parameters and on a case by case basis. Maybe you can discuss alcohol as a legalized substance, which it is, but we can’t put it into the same class as of drugs which if not administered by trained professionals, can kill and or alter lives forever with the first use.
And, , like many other “drugs”, alcohol is a mind altering substance for some people. Anger may already be there, but the judgement to keep it in check is often altered by alcohol. Like other drugs, it affects people differently and pre consumption good judgement is necessary. That’s one reason for juvenile drinking laws. What people often don’t get as well is that like the electrolytes in your body, drugs and alcohol can affect you differently depending upon the amount consumed and alter your personality dramatically on that basis alone.
Beer & cigarettes are legal, but kids find it easier to buy illegal drugs than beer & cigarettes, because how many drug dealers have qualms about selling to a minor?
According to this website: [ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1209-01.htm ] “The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people.” A tremendous percentage of our prisoners are drug offenders.
Keeping all these people locked up costs taxpayers money! To say nothing of the turmoil created in society by the loss of loved ones from the bitter fruits of our drug subculture.
Ending prohibition essentially ended bootlegging & its attendant societal plague of murder & mayhem. Why can’t we adopt the same can do attitude toward drug prohibition? Maybe it’s partially due to the fact that many prisons are run by private enterprise nowadays, so there’s a profit motive for keeping prisons full.
Legalizing drugs does not necessarily mean there will be more drugs being used…It just means the source of the drugs will change…
“Their next statement is, oh, I didn’t mean bazookas, explosive amunitions and 50 cal. machine guns.”
All of those things are already legal.
“Their next statement is, oh, I didn’t mean bazookas, explosive amunitions and 50 cal. machine guns.”
All of those things are already legal.
They’re LEGAL…since when???
Legalizing drugs does not necessarily mean there will be more drugs being used…It just means the source of the drugs will change…
And you know this HOW???
Legalizing drugs means that like legalizing firearms, their possession and distribution without or with limited restriction (as alcohol is) is legal.
Littlemouse… Only those who are licensed or belong to an agency (law enforcement) and or sanctioned institution (military) that is, can have in their possession certain types of firearms and ammunition, machine guns being one…
"Legalizing drugs does not necessarily mean there will be more drugs being used…"
Caddyman…that is contrary to all the studies,discussions and material that I was exposed to during training. Is it the same as, legalizing machine guns doesn’t mean that more will become available ?
Ending prohibition, right or wrong, did a lot to contribute to alcoholism in the population…yes, IT BECAME MORE AVAILABLE as a result.
karl…this high prison population has more to do with our inadequately funded legal system. If you have enough money…you can avoid incarceration for many of these offenses. The poor don’t.
“Littlemouse… Only those who are licensed or belong to an agency (law enforcement) and or sanctioned institution (military) that is, can have in their possession certain types of firearms and ammunition, machine guns being one…”
This is a side issue, but you are completely wrong. Purchase, ownership, and possession of “machine guns” involves paperwork and paying a transfer tax of around $300. That’s at the federal level. At the state level, last time I checked, so this part may be wrong, machine guns were illegal in about 15 states. But at the federal level, no need to be in the military or law enforcement. It’s more complicated than that in practice, and I’ve entirely left out the 1986 issue, but the bottom line is that machine guns are legal.
Same goes for the others. How do you think Hollywood movies get made? You know those big scenes where they shoot bazookas and blow stuff up? Each “destructive device” involves paperwork and payment to the govt.
"They’re LEGAL…since when??? "
Since forever.
Here’s my “problem” with this case, although the driver is in public and could be observed by an officer or officers, no officer or group of officers could followed someone 24/7 for months at a time. To me that’s when it become unreasonable, it also unreasonable because they don’t know who’s driving. They could be “following” someone who had nothing to do with the case, it would be like the police following you, and when you got out of the car they decide to follow your daughter, then your son, then your wife. That’s what they are doing when the attach a GPS system on your car. With the police really following a person they are following THAT person, not someone else.
Mousse
“…But none of that matters unless you are a drug dealer/murderer/raper…”
Then you shouldn’t have any problem with the police showing up at your house and searching it just because. Nor should you have a problem with them stopping you and searching your body or your car at any time just because. After all it shouldn’t matter to you unless you’re a drug dealer/murderer/raper.
"The authorities aren’t interested in whether you went to the drugstore to buy a pint of ben n jerry’s. They are interested if you killed someone. "
Really, the authorities have never been on a power trips, or picked on an ethnic group , or planted evidence. It not hard to find evidence of the police and other authorities who have done just that. The authorities should and must be kept on a short leash, they can easily go to court and ask a judge for a warrant and show why, they need it, and what evidence they have to show the person might have committed a crime.
Unless I missed it, no one addressed the real reason for legalizing most drugs, which is the same reason celebrities get messed up on illegal drugs.
When someone buys illegal drugs, there is no quality control. Marijuana is often sold, laced with a wide variety of stuff, including hard drugs, to get people addicted on the more pricey stuff.
Harder drugs vary so widely in strength that one time a dose will do nothing, so next batch the user uses a lot more, and much stronger stuff kills him or her deader than a door nail.
Not to mention inadvertent contamination.
In the 60’s, I knew a young man who was in trouble all the time for DUI, or possession of beer as a minor. The day he turned 21, he got a liquor permit (they had them then in my state) and ran into the liquor store. He looked around, then walked out, saying, “I never did like the stuff, but no one was going to tell me what I could and could not do.” He stopped drinking.
A lot of the folks who would become involved with drugs are like that. They view themselves as major rebels, trying to make a point.
It doesn’t matter anyway. All the innocent folks killed in drug raids. Cops in places like Tenaha, using the drug laws to steal from people. Cops making false stops without probable cause,but pretending to have it. I have been stopped twice that way, once in Mississippi, and once in KY. My son has been stopped twice without probable cause, once in Texas, once in Arkansas. They see those out of state plates and away they go.
The damage done by putting hundreds of thousands of people in prison causes much more damage than the drugs do, if they are USP.
If drugs are legalized, you will buy them, USP, standard doses, at your local pharmacy. No contamination, no varying in strength. No sickos trying to get school kids hooked, because there will be no profit in it.
“Littlemouse” …reading comp. needs to be exercised here. I guess you did not read my entire statement and chose only to pick out that which supported your Mistaken point. Did you not read that an individual must be licensed for ownership for each automatic weapon. That includes the paperwork that you “skipped” over, the fee and the waiting period. Then and only then can you own one. This paperwork must be retained and made available on request as well. And, it is extremely extensive and hard to obtain. Any other gun ownership not under these restrictions does not require this licensing procedure; just a background check and then not in many states with gun show purchases.
So, unless you are licensed, or belong to an organization or institution sanctioned to own one…it is . Licensed , by the way, means given permission to do so…
As of 1934 it is unlawful to own a machine gun without permission ( license ). Case closed !
All beside the point. NO DRUG legalization proponent has either stipulated which drugs or made the statement …ALL DRUGS. With out these stipulations, this debate is absolutely meaningless.
Irandes…what drugs are we talking about? What some debaters don’t seem to get is that as soon as a license or restriction is placed upon an activity, it essentially becomes illegal for the average unlicensed citizen, just like it’s illegal for persons to drive without a valid driver’s license. And, a prescription is a legitimate drug use license.
@the same mountainbike: “…The dangers they pose go way beyond just the dangers to the user, they pose a danger to innocent people as well…”
You are correct, of course - but I think missing the forest for the trees. Allowing idiots like me and everybody else to operate high-speed vehicles with minimal training and oversight (e.g. cars) kills far more people than drug-driven psychopathy ever will.
We already have laws against doing things that cause yourself to lose control and harm others. Maybe the laws aren’t strict enough, or enforced well-enough, or something… but that’s really a different issue.
On the other hand, there is definitely a reason we (as a society) try very hard to keep Plutonium from just “floating around on the street”, and the same logic may very well apply to some of these “recreational” drugs - just too dangerous to even exist. I suspect, however, that most of our societal “problem” with drugs comes down to a Puritan-derived bias against anybody doing anything “fun” in public (or private) that isn’t already being done by the vast majority.
Note: I do not take, and never have taken, recreational drugs - including alcohol (I have had some of that, but never been drunk or even “buzzed”; not enough in a communion cup, I suspect). I am not a proponent of recreational disabling of rationality and commonly-expected social inhibitions. On the other hand, I am a proponent of the general ethic that: “If it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s nobody’s business if I do.”
As far as I can tell, the “real reason” for the “war on drugs” is a taxation issue. It is currently possible to transport more value in a small physical space with drugs than you could with any commonly-used currency (except electronically, which is easily traceable and reversible). Historically, Government and Money/Currency are intimately linked - you can’t really have one without the other. Any concentrated, portable value-store must be made illegal, or the government risks losing control. Witness the laws restricting gold ownership before Nixon took us off the gold-standard.
The corrupting influence of highly-concentrated portable wealth has infested our entire civic structure, now. Politicians win and lose elections based on “crusades” against drugs. Many police departments have a vested interest in keeping the drug trade illegal, but viable - the “drug-related seizure” laws now provide significant income to some. The fact that some drug cartels make more money than the GNP of several small nations is, IMHO, enough reason to try some other approach to making the business unprofitable. The way we have been doing it my entire adult life just clearly is not working.
Legalization of (most) “recreational” drugs probably would address this problem well. Large pharmaceutical companies have fixed, easily-located addresses, and do file tax-returns (whether they pay “enough” or not is a separate issue). Also, they are easy and obvious targets for large lawsuits if their product proves to be too dangerous to use, store, or whatever.