Anti-Gnostic writes in the comments:
It’s not that the War on Drugs creates criminals (other than as a marginal phenomenon). It’s that the War on Drugs puts the trade in the hands of criminals. If drugs were the root cause, college campuses would be filled with the same kinds of violent turf battles, gun fights, beheadings, etc. When was the last time anybody had to risk their life buying marijuana in a criminal ghetto?
The War on Drugs needs to be ended in order to deprive criminals of their funding. Criminals have very few sustainable talents outside of violence and intimidation. We’ve legalized gambling, enabled payday/pawn/title loans, and nobody’s getting kneecapped anymore. We’ve decriminalized alcohol and enacted sunshine laws for municipal government. (We also started handing out municipal contracts to “minorities” instead of guys whose last names end in vowels, but that’s another thread). What are all the guidos doing now? They’re on disability and telling their higher IQ offspring to go into real estate or outside sales, which is a hell of a lot better than beating up shopowners and hijacking trucks.
My main concern would be that legalization might wind up unleashing the full power of American marketing and logistics on selling drugs. For instance, Steve Wynn and Donald Trump are a lot better at promoting gambling than Bugsy Siegel was (although they are still geographically restricted).
Walmart could sell drugs a lot cheaper than drug dealers can.
Walmart could sell drugs a lot cheaper than drug dealers can.
By way of analogy, in making loansharks more or less obsolete over the last generation, did we unleash the subprime bubble? Angelo Mozilo was a lot better at promoting high interest loans than Rocky Balboa's old boss was.
This need for a legal but semi-crippled market for dangerous drugs doesn't seem like an impossible problem to solve, just a difficult one.
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223 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 223 of 223"You are all reasoning from what seems plausible to you. Drugs and booze give pleasurable sensations without the work to achieve something, therefore users will work less."
It isn't necessary to say drugs and booze, the first term covers booze as well, saying drugs and alcohol just makes you sound like an buffoon who doesn't know what the word "drug" means, which is pitiful when you have a dictionary at your fingertips.
Libertarians approve legal drugs and prostitution because of their goofy idolatry of freedom, which puts freedom ahead of the good of the community.
Those good and decent people who just like their daily joint should have the sense to recognize that laws ought not be written to suit the individual, but the greater community. The very existence of "law" supposes a community imposing its will on all its members.
Stalin Speaks:
Freedom and rights, who needs them. The idea of individual freedom is a bourgeois illusion at best, and at worst a cancer that eats away at the collective welfare of the proletariat. The world needs to be made into a giant mental institution where workers are treated for their individualist delusions of grandeur, while contributing their honest labor to the proletarian community.
you had indicated that the liberals were the ones trying to restrict access to drugs-
Ultra-liberal Sweden has very draconian anti-drug policies.
Some admitted drug users: President Clinton, P{resident Obama
George Washington
Really? Exactly how many centuries did it take before people stopped believing that because Uncle Ebeneezer smoked a pack a day into his 90's, or some such, there was no way that cigarettes could be bad for you.
Cigarette smoking didn't take off until after World War I, rising from 3 cigarettes a week (per adult) in 1910 to 80 a week in the early 1960s. So it wouldn't till the 1950s that there was unmistakable evidence of what a lifetime's cigarette smoking could do.
People had been smoking pipes for a couple of centuries, but pipe-smokers use much less tobacco, in a less harmful way.
Cennbeorc
"you had indicated that the liberals were the ones trying to restrict access to drugs-
Ultra-liberal Sweden has very draconian anti-drug policies."
---Then they differ from the US on this point. What does that matter, other than that for this issue they have their heads on straight.
Its pretty much a no-brainer that the libs in the US have been pushing free access to drugs, and drugs as what 'cool people' do.
"The libs" are pro-legalization? The Obama administration has been harsher on drugs than Bush's administration was. The L.A. liberal Dems are very anti-legalization (the Bay Area liberal Dems less so)
Ending the drug war could be the issue that resurrects the Republican Party, if they're smart enough to embrace it...
"Wow, we need to start calling you Two-fer for how often you're off-base. Of course I included 'drugs' there- in your original comment, you had indicated that the liberals were the ones trying to restrict access to drugs- I pointed out that you were way offbase, and that actually, drugs were one of the few things they were actually 'liberal' (ie- unrestricted) about. It helps if you keep up."
Libertarians (I.E; arch conservatives) are LIBERAL (there's a hint in the spelling) about personal freedom. Jody said that he is anti-personal freedom, that makes him, like the people who want to tax to the hilt, take away your guns, and tell your kids where to go to school, a liberal (it's not that hard, Big Chief.)
It's not really even a War on Some Drugs, more like a Witch-Hunt, Crusade or Jihad, with very real religious implications.
"My main concern would be that legalization might wind up unleashing the full power of American marketing and logistics on selling drugs."
Solution is easy, give the franchise to the US Postal Service.
Uncle Sam could more effectively determine marketing and pricing as vendor instead of regulator.
After all, don't a lot of states still maintain the franchise on liquor stores? same principle.
Many of you iSteve posters pride yourselves on being patriotic Americans and good Christians. Here's a phrase you should keep in mind when in comes to drugs:
"Get the log out of your own eye."
Here are some examples of the logs in the way of an unbiased discussion of drugs and their legal status:
1) Fluoride out of public water supplies! The people that want fluoride should pay extra for fluoridated bottled water.
2) Thimerosol and other mercury containing additives out of vaccines, which should never be compulosry anyway.
3) Ritalin out of the classroom, which also shouldn't be compulsory.
4) Big Pharma, the liquor and tobacco companies, the Mafia, and the Religious Right out of Washington.
Then we can talk about drugs, Mr. Establishment.
Truth:
Libertarians (I.E; arch conservatives) are LIBERAL (there's a hint in the spelling) about personal freedom. Jody said that he is anti-personal freedom, that makes him, like the people who want to tax to the hilt, take away your guns, and tell your kids where to go to school, a liberal (it's not that hard, Big Chief.)
Liberals and conservatives are birds of a feather when it comes to lifestyle fascism. They may not agree on the details, on what sins to punish, and what freedoms to take away for YOUR OWN GOOD and the GOOD OF SOSIGHETEEEEE. But they do agree on the methods to use in their inquisitions.
And I really wonder that so-called conservatives fear so much about drugs? Do they cause anarchy, violence, rioting in the streets? Are all of them so addicting? Will they clog up the gears of the Military-Industrial Complex, thus make the nation vulnerable to commie attack? Do they cause insanity? Will they corrupt youth, particularly white youth, and turn them into congo savages? Do drugs open the gateway to the spirit world and let in demons? Do they make people into ugly fashionless slobs? Will they make rivers of human excrement run through the streets, like in Heathen India?
Conservatives are selective in the ancient values, the time honoured strengths and virtues, they want to conserve. It seems they want a society that is one part Victorian England, one part Bismarckian Prussia, one part Cromwell, one part Calvin, and one part Christianized Sparta. What does this have to do with drugs? For four millennia of Western history, there was NO DRUG PROHIBITION of any kind! None! Even the abovementioned authoritarian states idolized by conservatives had no drug prohibition. It is really an irrational blinkered fear that conservatives have of drugs, similar to the one that modern liberals have of guns. Both can be harmful. Both can kill. Both need to be used with a little caution.
Anti-drug conservatives are parroting the liberal moral panics and emotional plagues of 1900-1915, the ones that led to the Harrison Act.
"Liberals and conservatives are birds of a feather when it comes to lifestyle fascism..."
I know, I just wanted to serve up a 72 mph fastball to see if anyone could hit it. Home run, good job.
People tend to see the liberal-conservative thing as a train map with both sides starting at the station, and heading in opposite directions, in fact it is more of a wedding band, with the sides starting at a meeting point, heading away, and the farther away they get the closer they are to meeting again, when at some point there really is no difference.
"Its one thing to say you have the freedom to do it, but as the saying goes, your freedoms end where mine begin. Why should I share the burden for the increased health care costs for people who do it?.."
Fine. Until it's legal you won't mind paying for the cost of hunting and jailing mj smokers. I'm not the one who made it illegal, so you guys pay for it if you want it that way.
This is only fair of course.
http://intothefaerywoods.blogspot.ca/2011/02/myth-of-mental-illness-and-war-on.html
http://www.public.worldfreemansociety.org/index.php/forum/43-general-discussion/35909-being-a-freeman-in-a-war-on-drugs-and-entheogens-world
You are all reasoning from what seems plausible to you. Drugs and booze give pleasurable sensations without the work to achieve something, therefore users will work less.
Women in the US who drink alcoholic beverages earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers and men who drink make 10 percent more than abstainers, according to an economic analysis published in the Journal of Labor Research. Men who drink in a bar at least once a month earn an additional 7 percent, for a total of 17 percent more than nondrinkers.
That's true, and but you may also be interpreting the results in ways that seem plausible to you. Correlation is not the same as causation. Having a glass of wine with dinner, a beer after work or on a hot summer afternoon isn't necessarily equivalent to drinking for the sake of intoxication, Guys who drink at bars can afford to drink--and pay more for booze--than guys who hit the liquor shops for cheap vodka. We'd need to control for a number of factors before we can really say much here. Would it really be the case that the income or savings of someone who drinks at a bar once or more a month would decline if they abstained? Maybe, but we don't know.
I think the tendency of policy to be driven by informational sound bytes like this is one of the reasons we too often make bad decisions.
"Liberals and conservatives are birds of a feather when it comes to lifestyle fascism. They may not agree on the details, on what sins to punish, and what freedoms to take away for YOUR OWN GOOD and the GOOD OF SOSIGHETEEEEE. But they do agree on the methods to use in their inquisitions."
- Not even remotely. For starters, the liberals have no end in sight for the freedoms they want to take away. Conservatives have a much stronger desire to preserve and maintain freedoms. All freedoms. In fact, if the US and the West had not been so conservative initially, and so open in terms of freedoms the elites would never have been able to do what they have done in terms of twisting the country around with AA, disparate impact, rights for other religions, privileged status for minorities, etc. The liberals use a false pretense of desire for 'freedom' as something to hide behind to champion their cause when they are weak to appeal to the freedom loving conservative masses, but reveal their true colors when they are strong, and seek to curtail freedom in practically all things. Those things like free access to drugs, etc. that they champion, are only done so to seek votes from the youth.
Anyway, there is a big difference between conservative 'restrictions'- wanting to restrict access to and punish those poisoning society with drugs and the like, which clearly have major negative consequences, and are rejected by strong, clear-minded, healthy societies, and the liberal restrictions- and wanting to restrict thought, speech, restrict how people can raise their kids, who they can hire, who they can and must associate with, etc.
Women in the US who drink alcoholic beverages earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers and men who drink make 10 percent more than abstainers
Even if the implication that alcohol consumption actually boosts income is not a classic case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (which I would bet it is), I suspect very little of that added income winds up in my pocket. The same can’t be said for the health and other costs associated with drinking that my tax dollars do have to pay for. So, even if alcohol is too ingrained in Western civilization for it to be limited, I’m not eager about expanding our list of legal vices to marijuana and elsewhere.
As the WSJ ant others continually remind us, illegal immigration is similarly a great income booster for the rich yuppies with exploitable Haitian maids, and agribusiness owners who don’t want to raise wages so that actual citizens would take their jobs, but what these august publications don't tell you is that the rest of us are the ones who pay for the free health care and other social services needed for people whose children are disproportionately likely to think that lotteries, demo tapes, or gang tattoos are their best shot for the good life.
Thousands of American died from drinking bathtub gin, etc, and countless more were blinded...
So why wasn't the more appropriate response to simply educate people on how to home-brew safely (given that home-brewing was not illegal during Prohibition)? No one deserves to die from drinking, not even the chronically stupid and dypsomaniacal (and I'm guessing the thousands of Americans who killed or blinded themselves with bathtub liquor were disproportionately drawn from those categories), but why are thousands of deaths of these predominately inept people any more tragic than the greater thousands of people (many of them innocent children) who are killed by drunk drivers or by those whom drinking renders mean and uninhibited?
The War on Drugs needs to be ended in order to deprive criminals of their funding.
Were the Al Capones and the Bugsy Malones deprived of their funding once Prohibition ended? Or did they simply double down on other illegal activity?
If marijuana is legalized, there will indeed be some connoisseurs who emerge from the shadows and become upstanding citizens (though depending on how much of their artisanal gourmet weed they’ve consumed themselves, they’re unlikely to go on to cure cancer or develop cold fusion). As for the rest of the thugs trafficking weed, who have spent their entire lives avoiding school and goofing off, they’re not going to become doctors and lawyers (though a few will undoubtedly become "community organizers"). They’ll simply turn to other forms of crime. But to the extent that other crime is not drug related, pundits like Anti-Gnostic will pat themselves on the back and say, "you see, criminal drug activity has gone down, I’m a genius". But will society as a whole benefit once weed traffickers turn to burglary and auto theft to pay for their shiny new rims? And what about all the added death, dismemberment and other social ills due to buzzed drivers and other stoners (who, judging from their comments on this site, already show a stunning lack of self-awareness)?
Cigarette smoking didn't take off until after World War I, rising from 3 cigarettes a week (per adult) in 1910 to 80 a week in the early 1960s. So it wouldn't till the 1950s that there was unmistakable evidence of what a lifetime's cigarette smoking could do.
Yeah, and as any European knows, it took a lot longer than the 1950's for people to internalize the notion that cigarette smoking is bad for you. In fact, it's a work in progress even on these shores, so my point stands. Moreover, you ignored the parallel comments that were made about alcohol - that took off exactly how many millennia ago? and yet, pregnant women were drinking regularly within living memory.
The self-described successful six-figure stoner who posted above (at least I think it was him) conveniently tossed in the word "major" in the phrase where he claimed that "major problems caused for the kids of pot smokers" would be well known by now (he also conveniently conflated regular users like himself with those who have admitted using weed, but given that he's a regular pot smoker, some cognitive lapses have to be forgiven, I guess.) Anyway, pot smoking damage doesn't have to rise to the level of Thalidomide before we determine it's in our interest to insure that it doesn't "take off" the way cigarettes did after WWI and the way that marijuana will once it's completely legalized.
Legalization of Drugs? Are you guys serious? For a liberated state like America, have you guys forgotten about what powerful nations should show 3rd world countries? Modern / advance and developed country like US should focus on the rehabilitation of addicts for a more productive nation. If drugs like marijuana will be legalized, there should be a consensus that this drug must be strictly used in as a herbal medicine rather than an illegal substance for pleasure.
There should be also be a law which educates teenagers in Florida to be socially responsible and aware of the dangers that drug abuse may bring.
One hundred million American adults cannot pass the simple reading tests given to twelve year old kids born in Utah. The state also has the lowest rate of opiate use in the nation which results in less brain damage and smarter children. The shocking amount of illiterates in America might be caused by the heavy use of opiates, instead of hiring expensive teachers, it would be cheaper and more effective to train opiate sniffing dogs that will labor 24/7 for a can of chow.
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