I was driving through the Hollywood Hills on Laurel Canyon yesterday, which now is bedecked in signs announcing that smoking is banned in the canyon. There's been a drought for a year and a half, so somebody tossing a smoldering butt out the window might send the small patches of indigenous forest left up in flames, and some of the increasingly seedy houses along the two-lane winding highway, too.
The most interesting sign was on the little (and extremely expensive) convenience mart in the depths of Laurel Canyon. In the spirit of Frank Zappa, the sign emphasized that the smoking ban included "spliffs," which, these days, needs restating. With marijuana legalization ongoing, dope smoking is being transformed in the (weed-addled) popular mind from a vice to something that's good for you (you couldn't buy it at a Medical Marijuana dispensary if it wasn't medicine, right?) and no doubt the environment as well. Similarly, all the cultural opposition to smoking shouldn't apply to dope smoking. It's totally different. It couldn't cause a brushfire. It's good smoking, not Bad Smoking.
As the marijuana legalization movement strengthens, you can see hints of how hard it is to hit the libertarian sweet spot where something is simultaneously legalized but remains rare and distasteful. People, especially young people, pick up messages from society about what is winning and what is losing more than they pick up nuanced messages. Smoking tobacco is losing so it seems reasonable to ban smoking it even in your own car while driving through a brushfire zone. Smoking marijuana is winning, so it doesn't seem like the ban on smoking in Laurel Canyon applies to dope.
For example, legalizing pornography leads to a situation in which participants are referred to not as "performing whores," but as "porn stars." Above a certain IQ level, the emphasis in that phrase falls ironically on the first term, but to a fair number of teenage girls with two-digit IQs, the "star" part sounds most intriguing.
the growth of the anti-smoking movement in america in the last 20 years or so has been amazing. Not much happens in america without Big Money behind it --at least not at the national level.
ReplyDeleteA little research will show you that the anti-smoking movement was not simply a grassroots movement. Yes, Big Money was the driver. To be specific, BigPharma money. To be even more specific, Johnson & Johnson money, funneled through what was at one time the most well-funded non-profit foundation in america--the Robert Wood Johnson foundation. Yep, J&J wanted to make billions on the sales of anti-smoking prescriptions such as nicotine patches etc.
So they funneled money through their foundation first to academics, and activists, who created bogus studies and propaganda. Once that money had laid a foundation of propaganda that had acheived some penetration into the public mind, they started paying the politicians.
A few years later, there were in place various anti-smoking ordinances etc that drove people to quit smoking...with the help of nicotine patches, etc. Big profits for Big Pharma!
The MJ legalization movement was however mostly grassroots at first, helped along by the highly democratic state electoral regulations in highly democratic states such as CA, CO, and WA. Democracy--in america it only happens at the local level.
But now that there is profit to be made in MJ, bought and paid for propaganda is coming into play.
Propaganda--it rules america.
"As the marijuana legalization movement strengthens, you can see hints of how hard it is to hit the libertarian sweet spot"
ReplyDeleteLibertarianism, I find, typically comes in two flavours:
1. High IQ types with good impulse control who simply cannot understand that there are stupid people/people with poor impulse control out there.
2. Randian types who simply don't care about their inferiors.
You might have heard CVS will no longer sell tobacco as of 10/1.
ReplyDeleteIf they suddenly developed a moral aversion to cigarettes, why are they still heavily invested in tobacco interests?
They're not doing it out of altruism. They're doing it because packs of cigarettes are high margin high wholesale cost items that are easy for employees to steal.
That said, there's a cultural jihad at work as well. It all goes back to your favorite subject: Who-Whom. The reason the left is waging a jihad against tobacco cigarettes because they hate the kind of people that smoke them.
Here's an example.
In 2001, Seattle’s voters considered but ultimately rejected a 10 cent per cup tax on enhanced coffee beverages like latte and espresso, but not plain ole coffee itself. The purpose of the tax would have been to fund early childhood education programs. A few weeks before the vote, I was for some reason listening to NPR. The subject was this vote, and they interviewed some woman who opposed the tax, because (and I’ll never forget this exact quote even if I live to be a thousand years old):
“I don’t see why we have to pay for our kids. Let them dirty rednecks down South in trailer parks pay more in cigarette taxes for our kids.”
This is related to why I've off and on advocated the introduction of what I call the "Big Boy License".
ReplyDeletePass an IQ test, a common sense test, and sign a waiver stating that you will not hold the government at fault (ie no recompense) or anyone you sign an uncoerced contract with, and then you're free to enter any contract for anything with anyone else so licensed and may choose to opt out in writing of any govt program or regulation that's "for your own good".
I think that Graeme Green's character in Quiet American was ahead of his time. Find yourself a size 00 18 year old Asian, stuff a pipe with Opium or Dro and just make sure the harridan back in Connecticut or Surrey files for the divorce you've been demanding.
ReplyDeleteBring me my Opium princess in a side slit silk dress so I can just dream the rest of mortal coil away.
Leftist Conservative
ReplyDeleteI think the big money behind the curtains driving force behind the anti tobacco jihad are trial and class action lawyers, both big Democrat constituencies.
I also think that's the force behind the growing leftist milieu against football.
As my wife says "Cool is the root of all evil."
ReplyDeleteThere is no libertarian "sweet spot" on this. Dope should have stayed illegal for public health reasons. The unintended consequence will be a larger group of young lives impaired or ruined by dope and the other drugs it leads to. Think alcohol+tobacco.
All because a bunch of boomer hippies wanted their vice legitimized. The price of the 60's is still being paid. I am a libertarian but I will not abandon my common sense for the purity of the cause.
Porn gets away with it because the guy is an 'actor' too. Thus, it's an 'actor' performing with an 'actress'--or another 'actor' if it's fruity stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut if a porn 'actress' put out to a non-actor who paid her money, that would be prostitution.
I think there's an easy way to get around prostitution laws. Have a whorehouse promote itself as an acting school. So, guys who come for sex are not buying sex but buying acting lessons from 'porn instructors'. Of course, they don't have to pursue a career in porn--just like acting students don't have to go into acting as a profession--, but they can say they were just getting hands-on 'porn acting' lessons from pros.
Many of us grew up in a time when families went on vacations in station wagons with kids huddling in the rear playing games and adults smoking like smokestacks.
ReplyDeleteThings have gotten safer now--and my dad smoking in the car used to drive me crazy!!--, but I still miss the good ole days. Boomers rebelled against rules in the late 60s and 70s but turned out to be the biggest fussbudgets once they got older. And kids of boomers are worse.
I want my station wagon.
Tsk, tsk, we're getting behind the times.
ReplyDeletewww.electricspliff.com
http://www.stationwagon.com/gallery/pictures/1974_Ford_Country_Squire_2.jpg
ReplyDeletememories
Seems like a good enough reason to get rid of medical marijuana, but not a good enough reason to keep marijuana illegal.
ReplyDeleteIllegal marijuana leads to more illegal immigration, more "refugee" immigration, and it keeps us Invading the World, Inviting the World. Our drug laws are hard-coded to keep us involved internationally.
Until Nixon, major opponents of drug prohibition were usually Republicans, while every major piece of anti-drug legislation was dreamed up and shoved through congress (and the courts) by progressive liberals. To a large extent, these liberals are still behind movements to put the government in between products and the people who want them, whether that's drugs, cigarettes, fast food, or private health insurance plans.
By the way, it is totally possible to have legal permissiveness coupled with cultural restrictiveness.
ReplyDeleteIt's really taboo, for example, to plop down at a stranger's table at a restaurant. Nobody does it. But it's totally legal. There aren't even signs telling you not to.
Private organizations have their own ways of policing culture if they need to. Movie theaters tell people not to text or talk on the phone, and almost nobody thinks it's cool to break this rule.
Even cigarettes are sort of exemplary: they're legal for anyone over 18, but we bully smokers enough through culture that not many people smoke anymore. We tax cigarettes just enough to discourage lots of demand but not enough to encourage smuggling (not on a massive scale anyway).
As one of your few regular pot smoking readers,I'd just like to note that pot isn't always a vice.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't usually care for psychiatric labels, I have what is pretty accurately described as Major Depressive Disorder. It's a terrible thing to live with and marijuana helps me function normally.
SSRIs don't work for me (or anyone?) and heavier drugs turn me into a zombie and usually have other severe side effects, like severe tooth decay. Luckily, I never tried the heavier stuff like Depakote for more than a week or two.
My pot really, really does help me and I don't see how its legalization on a national level would have any significant negative social consequences.
Marijuana stinks, have you ever noticed that. Here in New York City, which the urban preservationists will remind you is walkable, I have started to smell it. The stink even makes its way indoors. So I wonder how long until the inevitable backlash. I personally always thought the real reason MJ was made illegal was the smell.
ReplyDelete"1. High IQ types with good impulse control who simply cannot understand that there are stupid people/people with poor impulse control out there.
ReplyDelete2. Randian types who simply don't care about their inferiors"
There may be something to that, but I'd say it oversimplifies.
3. People who gave up trying to enforce good behaviour when it's obviously failed.
Time will tell how screwed up legal marijuana will make things. But I agree with the stoners, the old way was a joke.
"...but to a fair number of teenage girls with two-digit IQs, the "star" part sounds most intriguing."
ReplyDeleteTo the benefit of everyone else
" The reason the left is waging a jihad against tobacco cigarettes because they hate the kind of people that smoke them."
ReplyDeleteIt seems more likely to me that anti-smoking enthusiasts are motivated by hatred for the kind of people who GROW tobacco. I think a lot of it is grown in the American South. Similarly, anti-fossil fuels enthusiasm is probably motivated to a large extent by the hatred of Texans, Arabs and Russians.
I'm not saying that tobacco is harmless. It's probably pretty harmful. But so is sodomy and marijuana, and leftists are in favor of both of those.
Disclaimer, I am long on tobacco stocks and enjoy the high dividends, so take my comment with that in mind. I wish people would leave tobacco alone. If people want to smoke, let them. We let people pretty much do anything they want now regardless of the health effects. More importantly many state governments depend upon the tobacco payouts that help fund their budgets. If one could wave the proverbial magic wand and eliminate all tobacco companies overnight, that lost revenue will have to be recovered somewhere. I imagine most state legislators know this, but the aspergy type agitators don't.
ReplyDeleteSo they funneled money through their foundation first to academics, and activists, who created bogus studies and propaganda. Once that money had laid a foundation of propaganda that had acheived some penetration into the public mind, they started paying the politicians.
ReplyDeleteDo you believe smoking isn't bad for you?
I think the Montecito Tea Fire a few years ago was caused by a group of stoned teens, but it's not clear if the fire was triggered by a smoldering bonfire or a discarded doobie.
ReplyDeletethem dirty rednecks down South in trailer parks
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out that while I was looking through census data recently I noted that whites are less likely to be living in trailer parks per capita than other groups - Blacks and hispanics IIRC.
Another slur that never seems to get old.
Some time ago I worked at a design company, and we had both big pharma and big tobacco for clients. We were working on anti-smoking pharma and big cig packaging at the same time. I got a lot of free smokes -- by the carton and carton, but no free pharma drugs, unfortunately. We were scanning a lot of the original, hand-drawn cig artwork for the first time! A Lucky Strike for sure. No moral issues ;)
ReplyDeleteIllegal marijuana leads to more illegal immigration
ReplyDeleteDude, what have you been smoking?
Anonymous:"3. People who gave up trying to enforce good behaviour when it's obviously failed."
ReplyDeleteAttempts to enforce good behaviour always fail for the simple reason that stupid people will always be with us. This does not mean, however, that we should cease to try.
Anonymous:"Time will tell how screwed up legal marijuana will make things."
Quite a bit for people on the left-hand side of the Bell Curve, I fear.
Anonymous:" But I agree with the stoners, the old way was a joke."
I have always found that jokes have a very valuable role in society.
Inhaling smoke - any smoke - is bad for you. Got to be. Just like inhaling sawdust or asbestos is. It's really too bad nicotine is so addictive. Because it is a wonder drug otherwise: increases life span, makes your smarter and increases focus/concentration.
ReplyDeleteThe big problem with argument for continued drug prohibition is that they will always cite the costs of pervasive drug use and addiction, but will never properly counter that with the costs of enforcement, which are insane. I despise both kinds of smoking and all drugs (except for whisky and beer, which are God's Nectar) but I hate the social and fiscal costs of drug enforcement so much more. If 15 year old junior wants to burn out his cortex with some nasty Jamaican red, that's his problem. Don't make it my problem or OUR problem.
ReplyDeleteThe reason drugs are illegal:
DeleteIt's easier to convict a thug for possession for a substance than it is to get said thugs homies to snitch.
Cops generally turn a blind eye if the drug user is otherwise non-criminal.
END OF STORY.
You stupid stupid Libertarians do not realize how the real world works!
I'm waiting for the upcoming Clinton campaign to explain the nuances between Bad Sexual Assault and Good.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAbsolom:"The big problem with argument for continued drug prohibition is that they will always cite the costs of pervasive drug use and addiction, but will never properly counter that with the costs of enforcement, which are insane. I despise both kinds of smoking and all drugs (except for whisky and beer, which are God's Nectar) but I hate the social and fiscal costs of drug enforcement so much more. If 15 year old junior wants to burn out his cortex with some nasty Jamaican red, that's his problem. Don't make it my problem or OUR problem."
large numbers of 15 year olds burning out their cerebral cortices is our problem...unless you somehow imagine that such a situation will have no effect on the economy.
To the Anonymous doubter:
ReplyDeleteHere's how drug prohibition creates illegal immigration:
Drug cartels get richer in proportion to the governmental efforts against their operation. Their margins are determined largely by presumed risk (and by the fact that competing drug cartels engage not in price wars, but actual wars).
So, with some of the money they make, they pay would-be illegal immigrants to cross the border, carrying drugs with them. (A lot of the time, this is not a voluntary agreement: you carry the drugs or you get shot. You get paid when the drugs get there.)
Then there is also the many illegals who claim to be refugees from cartel border wars.
This is not speculation, it has been well-documented.
>>>Supposedly, Power Child has stated:
ReplyDelete"""Even cigarettes are sort of exemplary: they're legal for anyone over 18, but we bully smokers enough through culture that not many people smoke anymore.""""
Ok, Power. Chill a moment.
You do know that cigarettes are harmful, right? Second hand inhalation isn't that far behind according to various health reports. You do know that, right?
I would suggest for an eye opening experience that some here would watch the late actor Yul Brynner's commercial on cigarettes he made just a couple months before his death.
Even cigarettes are sort of exemplary: they're legal for anyone over 18, but we bully smokers enough through culture that not many people smoke anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxgaAn6IR9E
Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteI lived in a New Jersey town from 2004-2008. There was a woman (single mother, school employee in her 50's), who lived in my complex. I became aware that she let her son and a couple other kids from Manasquan HS to hang out and smoke pot and drink beer in her condo unit all the time. There was also a rash a suicides in MHS about the same time. It turns out that most of the kids who did this were friends with the woman's son and hung out with him.
http://special.app.com/special/deadlydecisions/
It's going to be interesting to see the black market for tax-free cigarettes that arises when more states follow NYC's lead and put $10-a-pack taxes.
ReplyDeletePower child:"Here's how drug prohibition creates illegal immigration:
ReplyDeleteDrug cartels get richer in proportion to the governmental efforts against their operation. Their margins are determined largely by presumed risk (and by the fact that competing drug cartels engage not in price wars, but actual wars).
So, with some of the money they make, they pay would-be illegal immigrants to cross the border, carrying drugs with them. (A lot of the time, this is not a voluntary agreement: you carry the drugs or you get shot. You get paid when the drugs get there.)"
I'm afraid that that does not even come close to proving your thesis ("Here's how drug prohibition creates illegal immigration").Unless, of course, you are arguing that drug mules actually make up a significant percentage of illegal aliens in the USA?
power child:"Then there is also the many illegals who claim to be refugees from cartel border wars."
Again, what is the percentage? There are over 10 million illegal aliens in the USA right now. How many are "drug refugees?" 5 million? 1 million? One hundred thousand? Fifty thousand?
@Anonymous doubter:
DeleteDrug mules make up a significant portion of illegals. Drug war "refugees" also make up a smaller but not insignificant portion. I wonder how large a proportion of illegals you welcome before you turn against a package of legislation that is hard coded to embroil us in conflicts all over the globe?
Drug prohibition started out as a Progressive's game and then became a neocon's game. True conservatives have no good reason to support it. A restrictive culture can take care of the rest, as it once took care of illegitimacy and atheism.
Anonymous Anonymous quoted me:
ReplyDelete"So they funneled money through their foundation first to academics, and activists, who created bogus studies and propaganda. Once that money had laid a foundation of propaganda that had acheived some penetration into the public mind, they started paying the politicians."
and then said...
Do you believe smoking isn't bad for you?
==============
My comments above had nothing to do with my feelings on smoking. I have never been a tobacco smoker, and smoking is obviously bad for you.
But what does that have to do with what I wrote?
"It's going to be interesting to see the black market for tax-free cigarettes that arises when more states follow NYC's lead and put $10-a-pack taxes."
ReplyDeleteI roll my own.
"As the marijuana legalization movement strengthens"
ReplyDeleteThis should read:
"As the people raised on Nixon's paranoia die off"
"Anonymous countenance said...
ReplyDeleteYou might have heard CVS will no longer sell tobacco as of 10/1."
And yet CVS will continue to sell alcohol and lottery tickets.
"Attempts to enforce good behaviour always fail for the simple reason that stupid people will always be with us. This does not mean, however, that we should cease to try."
ReplyDeleteIf you always fail, what exactly would it take for you to cease trying? A 100% failure rate? How much money, time and energy do you want to waste? I've got better things to worry about myself.
I find it hard to disparage marijuana users for being dumb when this type of thing is the best their antagonists can offer.
I have no particular love of libertarians, but this issue is over. MJ won the drug war. I'm not gonna fight it.
The guy I should be married to had his first schizophrenic break when he ate pot brownies at a party...once that door was opened it didn't shut.
ReplyDeleteAfter several months in an institution he's better but not himself...and therefore I'm not married now.
So...food for thought.
You never know if you're that 1% that has that reaction that ruins your life.
>>>Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"""""As the marijuana legalization movement strengthens""""""
"""""This should read:
"As the people raised on Nixon's paranoia die off"""""""
No, we read just fine and it reads well the first time.
Just split the difference and eat the seeds instead.
Hemp seeds.
Exclusively at Whole Foods.
Winning!
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't usually care for psychiatric labels, I have what is pretty accurately described as Major Depressive Disorder. It's a terrible thing to live with and marijuana helps me function normally.
ReplyDeleteAs a tobacco addict, I feel for you. I can only take jobs where I can smoke, surreptitiously - I regret I wasn't born 30 years earlier. I would love to ban alcohol, to level the playing field. Alcohol, through drunk driving, violence, and accidents (drowning, falling, etc.) has stolen a lot more "prime" years than pot or tobacco.
Anonymous at 2/17/14, 5:09 PM:
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right on that count. It's a who-whom thing with the left on both the people that smoke them and the people that grow tobacco and especially make cigs. It's a red state industry whose money flows very heavily into the red team.
The campaign against smoking has gone from being a worthwhile public health campaign to a crusade by pushy busy-bodies. Many people smoke because they enjoy it, and do so in a way that harms nobody but themselves. Their own little vice (or pleasure) is nobody's business but their own.
ReplyDeleteIf the blue-noses who are conducting this campaign succeed in criminalizing tobacco, they will eventually come for alcohol and coffee too - or somebody will come for their alcohol and coffee.
And what about bicyclists, kayakers, sky-divers, mountain-climbers, base-jumpers - the whole membership of the Future Paraplegics of America Coalition? Is there anything more selfish than a healthy person in the prime of their life crippling themself and becoming some kind of public charge for no other reason than the thrill of it?
And let's not even talk about the homosexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals and the enormous medical costs with which they burden society because of their - inviolate - personal choices.
As gays get increasingly powerful I imagine cigarettes will make a comeback. Gays hate obesity and have the left wing bona fides to buck the left wing coalition on just about any issue they want. No guarantees but within five years look for a heavily promoted book emphasize that French women are skinny cause they smoke. I imagine circumscion ban will come first followed by a remainstreaming of cigarettes. Hollywood will be on board because smoking in movies is a great way to add a dash of cool to slow scenes.
ReplyDeleteIf it was about health, then why are the anti-tobacco jihadists now on the warpath against e-cigs?
ReplyDeleteWhich only emit water vapor.
You know, I really can't believe how the idiot libertarians have so easily taken to the "drugs illegal = drug violence" meme. It's as if not one them has been able to follow the chain of reasoning behind this and actually figure out whether it sounds right.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly does drug illegality have to do with drug violence? What, are all of these street gangs and cartels really killing each other over the fact that their products cannot be sold anywhere they want?
No, idiots. The drug violence exists because gangs and cartels are trying to maintain monopolies by killing their competition. Their drug profits come from successfully preventing anyone else from horning in on their markets.
Now, libertarian dummy, explain to me how the incentive to maintain a monopoly will somehow disappear once these drugs are legalized? How are the Crips and the Bloods or the Sinaloa Cartel less likely to use the violent infrastructure they built just because drugs are suddenly legal? Or, would they still maintain SOP in the face of this new, softer, competition?
Then we have the usual segues into the health hazards of smoking. You know what? I don't care. The primary difference between a tobacco smoker and a pothead is that a tobacco smoker can still hold down a job and operate heavy machinery. In fact, tobacco and alcohol companies are solid middle-American businesses that employ solid folks I would have no problem calling my neighbors. Can you say the same for those who work a marijuana or coca plantation or a meth lab? Which industry do you think is more likely to have upstanding employees and to create fewer problem neighbors?
So why the hell to aspy libertards want to legalize drugs so badly? To give Democrats and their constituencies a turnkey business in which to sell dope to your kids? Are you people really this stupid?
And what about bicyclists, kayakers, sky-divers, mountain-climbers, base-jumpers - the whole membership of the Future Paraplegics of America Coalition? Is there anything more selfish than a healthy person in the prime of their life crippling themself and becoming some kind of public charge for no other reason than the thrill of it?
ReplyDeleteThe wages of risky behavior.
that potheads are annoying, is one of the main reasons i'd prefer that marijuana remain mildly illegal.
ReplyDeleteMap
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I have to predicate this by saying that I'm personally unsure about what we should do re legalization or status quo or something in between or what not re currently illegal drugs.
However, the reason that violence is inevitable in the illicit drug trade as a function of the drugs' illegality is that the violence is necessary to settle business disputes and territorial disputes that the legal system cannot, obviously because the drugs are illegal.
If one different Pepsi distributor impedes on the territory of another Pepsi distributor, the latter can take the former to court. However, if one dope dealer deals on the corner claimed by another dope dealer, you can't go to court, because contracts (written or informal) relating to illegal things are automatically invalid. So the latter dope dealer has no choice but to shoot the former dope dealer.
The thought is, with legalization, people who want weed would go to the quickie mart, and the dope gangs would be out of business. I'm not so sure about that, and I'm not so sure it would be so neat and clean.
Another factor which fuels the legalization movement is the abuse of law enforcement power in carrying out enforcement of drug laws. Such as, raiding the wrong houses and killing the residents because the residents thought the raiding cops were burglars, among many other abuses. However, what is also true that law enforcement can abuse their power in enforcing laws that everyone agrees should exist. So the solution for that isn't drug legalization, but strengthened and vigorously enforced civil rights laws.
"The primary difference between a tobacco smoker and a pothead is that a tobacco smoker can still hold down a job and operate heavy machinery. In fact, tobacco and alcohol companies are solid middle-American businesses that employ solid folks I would have no problem calling my neighbors."
ReplyDeleteOh my. Someone forgot to tell you, so I'll have to do it I guess - your Solid Middle Class American Businesses sold you out some time ago. They were long, long gone before MaryJane got legal.
Now tell me Nixon wasn't a genius? He got you guys worring about this! Oh dear oh dear.
The only book I've ever found that explains why people smoke tobacco.
ReplyDeleteIt is encouraging that it hasn't been lost forever - there is a kindle edition.
Second hand inhalation isn't that far behind according to various health reports.
ReplyDeleteThe dangers of second-hand smoke have been vastly exaggerated.
"My pot really, really does help me and I don't see how its legalization on a national level would have any significant negative social consequences."
ReplyDeletepotheads never do.
"The big problem with argument for continued drug prohibition is that they will always cite the costs of pervasive drug use and addiction, but will never properly counter that with the costs of enforcement, which are insane."
the cost of the drug war is a bargain compared to the cost of legalizing all drugs.
on a side note, one of my interests is seeing if the liberal politicians tax and fee legal marijuana to such a degree that illegal marijuana sellers can credibly undercut the legal sellers.
then you have the worst of both worlds. legal, high cost marijuana competing in the open market with illegal, low cost marijuana. you haven't eliminated the drug trade at all, while at the same time getting millions of high school kids high, drugged, and dumb. we went through that in the 70s and note the standardized testing score declines.
how marijuana will be any different than labor is beyond me. it's not legal to bring in illegal aliens to do a job for less money than an american - yet millions of people are here doing just that. so why wouldn't illegal marijuana continue to flow into the marijuana-legal states? it costs less, and that's the game.
It's really too bad nicotine is so addictive. Because it is a wonder drug otherwise: increases life span, makes your smarter and increases focus/concentration.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fabulous insecticide also.
A perfect opportunity to discuss teenage porn actresses... gone to waste!
ReplyDelete"Gays hate obesity"
ReplyDeleteSo do straight people. Gays are just more honest. Or have fewer chubby chasers.
Somarijuana, somarjuana.
ReplyDeleteWhat's beans without pot?
Inhaling smoke - any smoke - is bad for you. Got to be. Just like inhaling sawdust or asbestos is.
ReplyDeleteYeah, inhaling particulates on an ongoing basis isn't a good idea. At least tobacco smokers had the anti-inflammatory effects of nicotine on their side. Pot heads, not so much.
The jihad against tobacco was because it's grown in Red States, and because the cigarette companies had grown too large and powerful and liberals hate powerful corporations (unless they are "cool" corps. like Google or Apple).
ReplyDeleteOnce pot is legalized and Philip Morris enters the market, liberals will turn against pot in a big way. That's the way they are.
In my experience, alcohol is the source of more reckless sexual behavior, infidelity, date rapes and unplanned pregnancies than all illegal drugs combined. By the way, I think people are funnier when they are drunk, and I love the feeling, but it really is more trouble than it's worth. I don't know why, but when I started smoking my desire for, and consumption of alcohol diminished.
ReplyDelete"For example, legalizing pornography leads to a situation in which participants are referred to not as "performing whores," but as "porn stars." Above a certain IQ level, the emphasis in that phrase falls ironically on the first term, but to a fair number of teenage girls with two-digit IQs, the "star" part sounds most intriguing."
ReplyDeleteThis is what they call concern trolling. Lame enough as an internet tactic. Horrifying when people are thrown into the corrections plantation because of it.
If being a pot smoker and/or porn star is so terrible, the burden is on the user/actor, dumb as they may be. I'd rather have some dumb people smoking and making porn than have my supposed IQ masters tell me how to live.
ReplyDelete"As the marijuana legalization movement strengthens"
This should read:
"As the people raised on Nixon's paranoia die off"
Don't blame Dick. Reefer Madness was released in 1936, when Nixon was at Duke Law School.
If the blue-noses who are conducting this campaign succeed in criminalizing tobacco, they will eventually come for alcohol and coffee too - or somebody will come for their alcohol and coffee.
ReplyDeleteNo they won't. These are not the temperance movement people of a hundred years ago. These people enjoy their California wines and Starbuck's coffee. They just target tobacco because the wrong people use it.
If anything they will go after other areas that the wrong people like, such as hunting. I think they did this in the UK with the fox hunt.
This is not about promoting health. It is about rubbing the wrong peoples' noses in the dirt to show them who is in power. It is about letting everyone know which side gets to decide what is, and what is not, acceptable behavior today.
A perfect opportunity to discuss teenage porn actresses... gone to waste!
ReplyDeleteI haven't commented because because I don't think that porn stars are stupid - reckless hedonic nihilist, exhibitionists, yeah, but no less smart or stupid than average, at least judging from any interviews I've seen...all in the interest of research.
News is just in that alcohol-related traffic deaths have gone down about 15% in states that have introduced medical marijuana laws, presumably because people are substituting marijuana for alcohol and can drive better under the influence of marijuana, or else DON'T drive because they feel they would be dangerous driving under that influence.
ReplyDeleteE-cigs are the way forward. It is much, much less expensive to inhale nicotine this way, and much healthier. But, I don't believe that they'll be allowed indoors as I don't believe, as someone suggested, that all the nicotine is ingested by the inhaler.
@Map:
ReplyDeleteLibertarians make a lot of dumb arguments in favor of drug legalization--and fail to make a lot of good ones--but that doesn't mean all their arguments are wrong.
For example, trying to extrapolate probable American results from the experience of Holland or Portugal is dumb. But extrapolating from our own experience with alcohol prohibition is not dumb.
Most importantly, our drug laws are hard-coded to embroil us in international conflicts, forever. Republicans didn't turn in favor of drug prohibition until they were infiltrated by the Neocons. But that's probably just a coincidence.
Drug mules make up a significant portion of illegals.
ReplyDeleteYou must be on acid if you think that is true.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThe dangers of second-hand smoke have been vastly exaggerated."
Now they are hyping third-hand smoke.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeletelarge numbers of 15 year olds burning out their cerebral cortices is our problem.
Governments and law enforcement agencies using the war on drugs as a battering ram to smash down the Bill of Rights is also our problem.
Another good Sailer post with comments crapped up by libertarian spergs who can't understand why pot isn't legal I KNOW RIGHT?
ReplyDelete"I don't see how its legalization on a national level would have any significant negative social consequences."
I don't see how declaring your lack of familiarity with weed subculture, ignorance of the effects of smoking marijuana, and total obliviousness to the role of moral strictures in community binding makes your opinion valuable.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThe only book I've ever found that explains why people smoke tobacco."
You don't need a book to explain it. Just ask someone who has used it. They will tell you that either a.) Because it looked cool, or b.) because they like the taste and the effect, or c.) some combiation of a.) and b.).
Countenance,
ReplyDeleteYour analogies do not hold. If one Pepsi distributorship gets in the way of another Pepsi distributorship by selling in the territory, neither will go to court. Pepsi will settle the dispute by pulling licenses, if that.
A better analogy would be a Coke distributor trying to prevent a Pepsi distributor from selling Pepsi in Coke's area. Such a situation would never end up in court.
It is illegal to engage in a restraint of trade. No court is going to order Coke to stop selling in a territory owned by Pepsi.
So, the idea that legalizing drugs would bring normal trade disputes into the courts instead of settled in the streets with gunfire falls flat on its face. What the drug dealers are killing each other for is unenforceable under US law.
The maintenance of a monopoly through violence is also why your local Quickie is not going to be selling drugs anytime soon either. If drug gangs won;t allow competing drug gangs, then why would they allow some convenience store owner to sell their product? Up goes the convenience store, in a cloud of smoke.
No, it should be obvious to everyone what the outcome of drug legalization would be: massive increases in addiction; high prices; and more violence, the end result being that government has given a franchise to organized crime to, at the very least, operate a money-laundering operation.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThis is what they call concern trolling"
1.) No, it isn't. You don't know the current definition of the term, and b.) No, it's what used to be called being a responsible member of society who had some feeling of responsibility to those less fortunate, less capable, or less bright. It's what functioning societies are built upon. What they are not built upon is the college-dorm bullshit-session musings of adolescent libertarians.
"Attempts to enforce good behaviour always fail for the simple reason that stupid people will always be with us. This does not mean, however, that we should cease to try."
ReplyDeleteIf you always fail, what exactly would it take for you to cease trying?
We always fail in our attempts to prohibit violent crime. People still rob, beat, and murder one another. Clearly this is an experiment which has been tried and found wanting and it is now time to strike the foolish laws against assault and homicide from the books.
Libertarians - they exist so that the question "Is it possible to be dumber than communists? can be answered in the affirmative.
Countenance,
ReplyDeleteI will agree with you that the law enforcement aspect is a problem. I think drug users are subjected to law enforcement abuses way out of proportion to the harm they actually do. Police abuses in general should be sharply curtailed.
Military tactics should be reserved to drug-peddling foreigners and, thus, confined to the southern border region of the US.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteMany of us grew up in a time when families went on vacations in station wagons with kids huddling in the rear playing games and adults smoking like smokestacks."
They were also sucking in lead fumes from the tetra-ethyl-lead that was added to gasoline as an anti-knock agent. Didn't seem to have done all that much damage.
"Oh my. Someone forgot to tell you, so I'll have to do it I guess - your Solid Middle Class American Businesses sold you out some time ago. They were long, long gone before MaryJane got legal."
ReplyDeleteYeah, big corps suck. That does not mean everyone who works in them do. Remember, alcohol, tobacco and firearms have always been industries staffed by bedrock citizens in any community. THey were always legitimate businesses that were part of the old-stock America.
THe modern drug business was almost entirely built by criminals, or, at least, people so marginal you would never invite them for dinner.
Look very carefully at the motives of people who insist on legalizing drugs. They are not your friends.
Steve, I think your analysis of women who make pornography leaves a lot to be desired. Have you heard of Asia Carrera, who played piano in Carnegie Hall, or Bobbi Starr, a former professional oboist? My own experience with loose women and escorts is that the IQs of women in sex work is probably not much different from the general population.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, my personal experience and reading suggests that there are much higher incidences of mental pathology--at least, neurotic personalities--and history of abuse.
I think the stereotype of dumb women lured by the siren call of film stardom is probably wrong, while the stereotype of damaged women trying to find meaning and acceptance or escape pain is probably true.
No they won't. These are not the temperance movement people of a hundred years ago. These people enjoy their California wines and Starbuck's coffee. They just target tobacco because the wrong people use it.
ReplyDeleteThe temperance movement was popular among rural and middle class Protestants, not exactly oenophiles and Starbucks drinkers.
"The unintended consequence will be a larger group of young lives impaired or ruined by dope and the other drugs it leads to."
ReplyDeleteThe only people who could make this sort of statement in earnest are those who haven't been around young people, of any color or social stratum, in decades.
Weed, now illegal, is already only a trifle more difficult to obtain than cigarettes - at worst you might have to wait a few hours longer to pick it up. The idea that legalization will severely alter smoking habits is ludicrous. The only thing its continued prohibition will achieve is the imprisonment of a few hundred thousand more proles stupid enough to get caught.
Not stupid enough to get caught. Stupid enough to attract the attention of LEO's for other criminal activity.
DeleteIf you keep your activity discrete the law really pays no heed. It's when you combine your drugs with robbery rape theft etc that the law comes after you.
@Map:
ReplyDeleteGood point about drug gangs blowing up quickie marts to keep them from selling legal drugs. I could definitely see that happening.
Kinda like how all those booze smugglers started blowing up liquor stores after the end of prohibition.
Hey, who's your booze dealer these days?
OT, but why does alexa.com list 17.9% of your visitors as coming from Japan?
ReplyDeleteOn the number of illegals being drug mules:
ReplyDeleteLet's use Steve King's numbers: each smuggler carries 75 pounds of drugs.
Immigration America estimates 4 million pounds of marijuana is smuggled in per year.
4,000,000 divided by 75 = 53,333 illegal immigrants acting as drug mules each year, each one carrying 75 pounds. Is it worth it to have them entering just so we can go on playing World Police?
Now, that only pertains to marijuana. The Justice Department intercepted about 3.5 million pounds of drugs in 2009, and Breaking Defense estimates that only a third of smugglers are caught.
So, 3.5 x 3 = 10.5 million pounds of drugs.
10.5 million divided by 75 = 140,000 illegal immigrants carrying 75 pounds of drugs each. (A third of whom get stopped, let's hope.)
Is that few enough illegal immigrants to make playing World Police worthwhile?
The Neocons neither want to stop illegal immigration nor do they want to stop playing World Police. Our drug laws ensure that they get to keep doing it, because our drug laws were hard coded, since over a hundred years ago, to make narcotics control an international effort. So the Neocons make sure that Republicans fall in line and act like Progressives on drug policy.
Asia Carrera is a broke alcoholic living in Utah now. She gambled away all her savings/invested money from porn, then left porn by marrying and having a kid at the last minute, only to have the guy literally get hit by a truck while she was still pregnant.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, her fans bailed her out when she said she wouldn't go back to porn to get money.
But that's a completely typical porn star outcome (except for actually having the kid in wedlock). She's lucky to be alive right now. Same for her kid.
Jenna Jamison, who was the biggest porn star a few years ago when she quit, recently went back to porn because she's broke.
DeleteThere's an interesting parallel here: With both smoking and overt racism, the way these things were made socially unacceptable was largely to redefine them as lower class behaviors. It's really disturbing how well that has worked, and how effective and unified our media culture can be at teaching that kind of lesson, and getting it accepted. In both cases, the specific changes in the world have been pretty positive--we don't have Jim Crow laws anymore and we don't have many smoke-filled restaurants. But the power to make that kind of society-wide value change is not something I'm all that happy having in the hands of the kind of people who run our media and government.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someone made this point earlier, but regarding your immediate example--that smoking cigarettes in Laurel Canyon is prohibited but smoking joints is winked at--there's an obvious reason for the discrepancy besides the cultural attitude you cite. Many, many smokers think nothing of tossing a lit butt out of the window of a moving car. I've seen people do it right in front of cops, oblivious that they're littering. However, I live in the Bay Area, within hailing distance of Oaksterdam, and I've never seen anyone toss a roach, lit or otherwise, out of a car window. So maybe those Laurel Canyon folks are just noticing things, as we like to say around these parts.
ReplyDelete@Dan:
ReplyDeleteIt's easier to convict a thug for possession for a substance than it is to get said thugs homies to snitch.
Cops generally turn a blind eye if the drug user is otherwise non-criminal.
END OF STORY.
End of story? So, the thugs get convicted of possession, they go to jail, and then while in jail they learn to be Eagle Scouts?
Do these thugs stay in jail forever, or do they plea bargain shorter sentences in exchange for naming a few names?
Once they go back to the streets, do they go with no new knowledge about how to sell drugs, and no new enemy thug hit list?
Certainly international cartels aren't recruiting them while in jail, right?
Libertarians are almost all autistic, but it isn't an absent trait among others either.
Interesting bit of instant psychology, Steve, worthy of Madison Avenue itself.
ReplyDeleteI believe it is the notion of 'acceptance' and 'inclusion' in the 'favored gang' is behind what is considered desirable or undesirable. It wasn't so long ago that all the men one looked up to, the dads, the skilled artisans, the tough guys, the self-assured etc, were smokers, so naturally kids wanted to be smokers. Perhaps the concerted attempt to make smoking 'below the salt' has succeeded, perhaps not. The best way to rubbish a product is to associate it with losers and the undesirable. Now if smoking was most associated with the most despised of American life it would be dropped like a hot potato - but I won't be so cruel as to name the loser groups.
As for porn. A different kettle of fish, (no please!). Porn basically is everyman's evolutionary destiny made flesh - so no chance of trying to dissuade the strokers by appaels and associations with losers. Waiting for the opprobrium, it is fair to say that the female sxuality is the counterpoint of the male sexuality and the basic sex/cash or mammoth meat or whatever 5 milion year old bargain still holds sway (stop it!), so fat chance of trying to stop the young women from doing that one.
It's not so much the libertarian ideals of deciding what's right for you yourself as long as you're not hurting others that bugs me. It's a nice ideal. It's that the pot heads don't actually believe it themselves.
ReplyDeleteYou look at the pot heads, and at best they stayed silent on infringements of personal liberty when it comes to alcohol, tobacco and junk food. At worst, they actively colluded - talk to pot heads and note how long it takes for someone to start bashing alcohol.
They don't want to go against prohibition; they want their own little vice/pleasure to be exempted for upper middle class white people. And they might have a point - what's the bigger danger, the white middle classes smoking the occasional spliff, or the lower classes with, well, anything? But they lack the stones to come out and say it. So either people look at their propaganda and get completely the wrong message from it, or they see the cowardly double standard and see red.
Jeff Guinn wrote a fascinating biography of Charles Manson. The most interesting part of it, however, was just how much of the counterculture started out with well behaved white college students with strong family support who just needed to let loose. They didn't need the same strictures. It only went to hell because they felt guilty at the double standard, so they let people in who desperately needed societal control. The partying seemed kinda nice and sweet when it was a bunch of college kids taking over a street for a few days and playing at being bohemian. Then the runaways, predators, addicts, etc., came rushing in.
My point - I have one, I swear - is that the most vocal pot heads could probably survive and thrive if pot was decriminalised. But they need to admit that not everyone could, and embrace the elitism.
Power Child,
ReplyDeleteLet's look at the timeline here.
Before Prohibition, what was the alcohol business like? Huge companies like Anheuser-Busch moving millions of gallons of beer.
What happened when Prohibition began? A-B and other liquor companies went fallow, switching production to non-alcoholic beverages.
Of course, we all know the mob moved in to make and import alcohol.
What happened after Prohibition was repealed? The entire A-B infrastructure came back online and buried the mob business, which was basically a cottage industry anyway.
Again, no one here seems to appreciate how the alcohol business, being socially acceptable, attracted a broad cross-section of normal Americans to work in it. Alcohol was such an everyday mainstay of society that no one really batted an eye.
In contrast, pot and other forms of illegal drugs are built largely buy criminal gangs, at least if they get to a certain size. This criminal element will remain a mainstay of the business long after it is legalized, especially when product liability laws kick in.
I regard cigars (and probably pipes) as good smoking, and cigarettes as bad smoking. I've been a resolute non-smoker all my life but will happily smoke a good quality cigar three or four times a year at a card game, reunion of old friends etc. It's a pity that 'smoking' is virtually synonymous with the ugliest, most dangerous, least pleasant type of smoking material (i.e. the mass-produced cigarette). There could and should still be a place for the more gentlemanly types of smoking in a civilized society. And I use the word 'gentlemanly' deliberately - cigarettes were for a long time regarded as essentially a feminine thing.
ReplyDeleteMarijuana is much closer to "good smoking" than tobacco. The nicotine+MAOI combo found in the tobacco leaf is one of the most addictive drugs known to man. THC has virtually no addictive qualities, minimal tolerance and no withdrawal affects.
ReplyDeleteSecond the primary problem with tobacco is the sheer volume that's smoked. Both marijuana and tobacco contain carcinogens, as does any smoldering organic material. However an average smoker will easily put away 1 pack a day, or approximately 140 grams a week.
A heavy marijuana smoker might consume a quarter baggie of pot a week. Especially with modern high THC strains, where not that much needs to be smoked to get high. That's 7 grams a week. That's the (carcinogenic) equivalent of smoking 1 cigarette a day, which poses no statistical health risk.
"In contrast, pot and other forms of illegal drugs are built largely buy criminal gangs, at least if they get to a certain size. "
ReplyDeleteLOL, wut? There was a thriving legitimate corporate industry selling all manors of drugs before prohibition.
Cannabis cough drops. Bayer heroin.
Cocaine tooth relief
Pharmaceutical LSD
In fact, we don't even need to go back to olden times to find legitimate businesses manufacturing hard drugs. Even today there's an active pharmaceutical market for medical prescription meth
"you can see hints of how hard it is to hit the libertarian sweet spot where something is simultaneously legalized but remains rare and distasteful."
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I oppose "gay marriage".
Good grief, do any of you libertarians ever interact with the average stoner?
ReplyDeleteThey're already using EBT to buy weed in Colorado, and MJ use has a wide range of side effects, including making you eat someone's face off (ala the case in Florida).
The idea that we all exist in a bubble and nothing you do can ever affect anyone is among the biggest red flags for libertarianism being applied autism.
The idea that a 90 IQ person is going to have a different response than a 110 IQ person is so foreign to libertarians that not only will they not process the argument, but they seem unable to because the idea of putting themselves in someone else's shoes is uncomfortable and alien.
Powerchild:"On the number of illegals being drug mules:
ReplyDeleteLet's use Steve King's numbers: each smuggler carries 75 pounds of drugs."
Why? What are King's sources? How did did he arrive at this estimate?
Power child:"Immigration America estimates 4 million pounds of marijuana is smuggled in per year.
4,000,000 divided by 75 = 53,333 illegal immigrants acting as drug mules each year, each one carrying 75 pounds. Is it worth it to have them entering just so we can go on playing World Police?"
Again, since this employs King's figure, it is useless. Furthermore, even if we do accept this methodology, 53,000 is a drop in the bucket when compared to overall immigration figures. The USA, for example, receives over a million immigrants a year.
Power Child:"Now, that only pertains to marijuana. The Justice Department intercepted about 3.5 million pounds of drugs in 2009, and Breaking Defense estimates that only a third of smugglers are caught.
So, 3.5 x 3 = 10.5 million pounds of drugs.
10.5 million divided by 75 = 140,000 illegal immigrants carrying 75 pounds of drugs each. (A third of whom get stopped, let's hope.)"
Again, using King's equation, which makes it worthless. And we are still at only (maybe) 10% of legal immigration figures.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/16/gop-congressman-warn-boehner-against-very-unpopular-business-push-for-guest-workers/
ReplyDeletehttp://springtimeofnations.blogspot.com/2014/02/study-finds-silicon-valleys-6-way.html
ReplyDeletelarge numbers of 15 year olds burning out their cerebral cortices is our problem.
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:"Governments and law enforcement agencies using the war on drugs as a battering ram to smash down the Bill of Rights is also our problem."
Ah, the old libertardian "Bill of rights is being destroyed by making drugs illegal argument."
PC, massive immigration, and the War on Terror are the true threats to the Bill of Rights.
You pot smokers please do me a favor and get tested for HLA-B27. If you test positive, PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY. You have a genetic predisposition to chronic inflammation: iritis, RA, ankylosing spondylitis, Alzheimers, Parkinsons and in rare cases schiziod episodes. Particulate inhalation combined with HLA-B27 predisposition can trigger the inflammation cascade one too many times and, unlike tobacco smokers, you don't have the benefit of nicotine as a compensating anti-inflammatory.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:"If you always fail, what exactly would it take for you to cease trying? A 100% failure rate?"
Fighting crime is always a failure. Last time I checked, no state has reduced crime to zero. Does that mean that we should stop enforcing laws?
"How much money, time and energy do you want to waste? I've got better things to worry about myself."
a reasonable amount of time and energy seems about right.
"For example, legalizing pornography leads to a situation in which participants are referred to not as "performing whores," but as "porn stars." Above a certain IQ level, the emphasis in that phrase falls ironically on the first term, but to a fair number of teenage girls with two-digit IQs, the "star" part sounds most intriguing."
ReplyDeleteIf being a pot smoker and/or porn star is so terrible, the burden is on the user/actor, dumb as they may be. I'd rather have some dumb people smoking and making porn than have my supposed IQ masters tell me how to live.
So, you are Libertarian flavor 2, what Anonymous at 3:59 called "Randian types who don't care about their inferiors."
"People who gave up trying to enforce good behaviour when it's obviously failed."
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't failed. It was never seriously attempted.
When the powers that be seriously want to curtail something they primarily go after demand with supply second for obvious reasons - the supplier has a bigger incentive. When they're not serious about stopping something they just go after the supply.
You can see what a serious campaign is like by looking at campaigns against smoking or drink-driving i.e. almost entirely about reducing demand and little or nothing about supply.
With illegal drugs Hollywood and the music industry did the exact opposite by going out of their way to entice kids into copying their idols.
A serious war on drugs would include exemplary sentences on film and music stars. Anything that doesn't involve that is sheer pretense.
I dispute Steve's imputation of low IQ and female 'porn stars' - to use the vernacular.
ReplyDeleteA case in point is a certain 'Joanna Angel', a nice Jewish gal, of the orthodox persuasion as it happens, who does some rather unspeakable things in her website/business of the same name. An Ivy League alumnus no less. A surprising number of the female 'porn stars' are university educated.
Methinks it is all about money.
All I know about Laurel Cnyon is that it is the site of the infamous 'John Holmes death house' in which porn's biggest ever star was suspected of participating in a massacre back in '81. ('Bludgeoned? ran a typically sick joke of the time, Holmes was running through the house naked, and rapidly turned a corner without warning anyone).
Holmes a living-breathing morality tale (tail?) as well an adult Disney character was one of a crop of AIDS deaths back in the late '80s before effective treatment cmae on stream (stop it).
'Jokes' mourning or celebrating the demise of Holmes include qupis about the 'big C' dying from the 'big C', the world's first duplex coffin and inevitable gags about the design of the tombstone.
Such is the sad life of the pre-internet Hustler raised stroker.
http://theden.tv/2014/02/17/the-white-winter-olympics/#sthash.FkVx2g9r.dpbs
ReplyDeleteAlso, compare smoking tobacco with promiscuous homosexual activity. Nobody dare condemn the latter, or suggest that people who got AIDS that way are criminally reckless and irresponsible.
ReplyDeletepower child:"End of story? So, the thugs get convicted of possession, they go to jail, and then while in jail they learn to be Eagle Scouts?"
ReplyDeleteAssuming that you are serious, this means that the USA should work at reforming our penal system, not legalize drugs.
power child:"Do these thugs stay in jail forever, or do they plea bargain shorter sentences in exchange for naming a few names?"
Do you wish to end the plea bargain system? Arguments can be made pro and con.
power child:"Once they go back to the streets, do they go with no new knowledge about how to sell drugs, and no new enemy thug hit list?"
Again, this seems rather more pertinent to a discussion on prison reform and recidivism.
power child:"Certainly international cartels aren't recruiting them while in jail, right?"
Probably not if they, as you suggested, ratted out on their pals in exchange for a reduced sentence. Furthermore, the recruitment of criminals in prison involves the question of prison reform, not drug legalization.
Power Child, "
ReplyDeleteEnd of story? So, the thugs get convicted of possession, they go to jail, and then while in jail they learn to be Eagle Scouts?"
There is a merit badge for prison time, I'm sure of it.
Having taught Health Ed in high school, whatever happened to MJ is a gateway drug?
Though anecdotal, I find it enlightening when I assign a mock legislative bill assignment in US History that the students who take up proposals to legalize pot or lower the drinking age are usually the least intelligent and articulate. Remember who the stoners were in Jr high and HS? Not merit scholars. I am curious what % of East Asians are pot smokers. America this won't end well.
Somewhat O/T, but my wife and I were in the Los Feliz area of L.A. the other day, and I remarked to her that with the severe drought this year, the brush on all these hillsides is bone dry. If a fire were to break out in Griffith Park, a lot of well-to-do homeowners, hundreds - maybe thousands, would be trapped on the narrow, winding streets in the canyons they live in. All it would take is a carelessly thrown cigarette butt or doobie. What are the chances that somebody who's a little high might not remember where they left their joint?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteNOTA said...
There's an interesting parallel here: With both smoking and overt racism, the way these things were made socially unacceptable was largely to redefine them as lower class behaviors. It's really disturbing how well that has worked, and how effective and unified our media culture can be at teaching that kind of lesson, and getting it accepted. In both cases, the specific changes in the world have been pretty positive--we don't have Jim Crow laws anymore and we don't have many smoke-filled restaurants.
Jim Crow was better for both blacks and whites than the current system. Apartheid was better for blacks, whites, and coloreds than the current system and especially better than what the current system is evolving towards. Neither is a close call.
There is a pretty significant difference between harnessing humans' unfortunate tendency towards status competition to get them to self-improve through smoking cessation, chastity, education, industriousness, sobriety, and etc and harnessing that tendency in the service of loopy utopian schemes like anti-racism or communism.
Map
ReplyDelete1. The Pepsi distributorship analogy is a good one. Even if Pepsi resolves the dispute before one could take the other to court, that doesn't mean my analogy is any less valid. It just means there's a pre-trial quasi-legal means of conflict resolution.
The only kind of conflict resolution available in the illicit drug trade is illicit itself: Shooting and killing.
2. If drugs are legalized tomorrow, the drug gangs don't go anywhere, even after the drug business goes above ground and above board. They'll just find something else to latch onto.
3. After the end of prohibition, the mafia didn't go away, it found other businesses. What drove the mafia out of business is, (HBD Chick, here's your cue), when Sicilians finally started developing a propensity to outbreed.
4. I also don't think the alcohol-marijuana comparison is valid, because they're not the same substances. Though I know you made the same argument.
5. An off the top of my head idea for drug policy reform: Very harsh punishment for dope traffickers and chronic dealers, but only summary confiscation without criminal sanction of the dope from users.
Anonymous 2/18/14, 5:52 AM
ReplyDeleteThe current drug policy has created lots of abuses of power. However, legalizing drugs in one big fell swoop wouldn't by itself or maybe at all solve those problems. That which has caused government abuse re drug policy also exists with a lot of other policies.
So I take it Steve does not partake? More's the pity.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing.
ReplyDeleteAn argument I entertained until fairly recently is that, since forbidden fruit is tempting to the young, if we legalized drugs and stopped saying it was bad, then young people wouldn't do it anymore. Or, to put it another way, declare a war on broccoli and require the smoking of weed.
However, the problem with that reasoning is that it is dependent on the old saw that young people are naturally rebellious. The truth of the matter is this: What appears to the naked untrained eye as youth rebellion is really youth conformity. They're either conforming to the social norms of other youths, or to other adult forces. The '60s kids weren't rebelling against their parents and the system, they were conforming to their teachers and professors.
If youths are naturally rebellious, and did not have a natural tendency to conform, then why did the military once draft 18 year olds and not 40 year olds?
Why? What are King's sources? How did did he arrive at this estimate?
ReplyDeleteAccording to King, he arrived at them by working closely with Border Patrol and even spending a few nights on the border himself. Libs and immigration traitors were up in arms about his comments, but one by one his claims were verified. Didn't John Derbyshire or somebody do a big write-up about it at the time over on VDare?
Still, I think 75 lbs per smuggler is probably an exaggeration. Many of these fence-jumpers weigh maybe twice that. But that means there are more illegals doing this, not fewer.
And we are still at only (maybe) 10% of legal immigration figures.
But we're at a much larger percentage of illegal immigration figures, which is what we were talking about.
I was driving through the Hollywood Hills on Laurel Canyon yesterday, which now is bedecked in signs announcing that smoking is banned in the canyon.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm sure all the Mexicans in California, known as they are for their heightened environmental awareness, are dutifully stubbing out their Winstons the moment they see those signs.
this means that the USA should work at reforming our penal system, not legalize drugs.
ReplyDeleteAh, prison reform. The similarities to education reform are remarkable, though I'm surprised to hear an iSteve commenter calling for it.
I think some of Steve Sailer's proposals (like segregating prisons by weight class) seem reasonable, but that wouldn't have much effect on what I'm talking about.
I was being rhetorical about cartels recruiting inmates. That is actually happening. A lot. And then the inmates get released. Unless "prison reform" = life imprisonment or capital punishment for all crimes, this will always be the case.
RE: IQ and porn performers,
ReplyDelete1.Citing individual high IQ types like Asia Carrera (a half-German, half Japanese Hapa) doesn't really help us get a feel for the porn mean IQ. For one thing, the mere fact that her high IQ is constantly mentioned is a sign that she is well outside the norm of the field.
2. Two-digit IQs: another factor to bear in mind is that people with an IQ of 95 are not drooling idiots. A casual conversation with someone with a 95 IQ would not reveal anything odd (remember, the White IQ Bell Curve is centered around the 85-115 range). Hence, watching interviews with porn performers is probably not the best way to get a feel for their IQ scores.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:"Governments and law enforcement agencies using the war on drugs as a battering ram to smash down the Bill of Rights is also our problem."
Ah, the old libertardian "Bill of rights is being destroyed by making drugs illegal argument."
Sure immigration and terrorism contribute, but what do you think is driving forfeiture laws and no-knock warrants in flyover land? Terrorism? You are deluded. The war on drugs IS a war on our civil liberties.
Just about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago. We got by okay. People are probably worse today, but they will be worse whether they are sober or not. What are we going to do - we're a nation in decline, and we have the people we have.
BTW I love the assumption that anyone who opposes drug prohibition is a libertarian.
ReplyDeleteBefore neocons infiltrated the GOP in roughly the late 1960s most people who opposed drug prohibition were conservatives. All the USSC rulings that a given piece of anti-drug legislation was unconstitutional up until then were led by conservative-appointed judges, and if the rulings found the other way it was usually conservative-appointed judges writing the dissent.
I keep a list of living conservatives, of one stripe or another, who have at least made comments in support of some form of drug legalization. Steve Sailer's on that list. So is John Derbyshire, Brenda Walker, Tom Tancredo, Pat Robertson...
It's not some big exciting surprise. Unlike nanny-state liberals and Invade the World/Invite the World Neocons, conservatives have no interest in supporting our drug laws.
Power Child
ReplyDeleteThere's another side to that coin. Not everyone that wants the current drug policy to stay the way it is and wants to loosened somewhat is for total legalization.
I hardly think our only choices are the Hobson's Choices of either total legalization or the status quo. We have a lot of options.
There is a good case that the war on drugs is a war on blacks first and foremost. However, this is a GOOD WAR, IMHO, without the possibility of drug conviction in US cities I think that most black crooks would be unreachable for the law. It is no coincidence that prohibition of all sorts has a negative correlation to decreasing legal sanctions against blacks as blacks.
ReplyDeleteI see this particular jackboot stomping on the face of the "oppressed" as a good thing. Im also in favour of a racially selective second amendment too. LIbertarinas sissified by Mommy Professor Rand don't get it.
I'm of two minds about marijuana legalization and similar "freedom" issues.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, the fact that a few people are totally incompetent can't be an excuse to hold the rest of society hostage to their limitations. Once in while someone does something foolish with a chainsaw, but we don't ban chainsaws.
On the other hand, I think some people are capable of exercising self-control, but have forgotten how, because society has long insulated them from the consequences of their actions. If welfare and SSI were eliminated, you can bet the rate of unwed pregnancies would plummet.
The libertarian argument hinges on the latter group greatly outnumbering the former, so that fully exposing people to the consequences of their actions serves the same purpose as blue laws. The question is, if we changed the laws along libertarian lines, would most of today's dysfunctional underclass quickly shape up, or would most of them go even wilder, dragging the rest of society down with them?
Anonymous Mr. Anon said...
ReplyDeleteJust about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago. We got by okay. People are probably worse today, but they will be worse whether they are sober or not. What are we going to do - we're a nation in decline, and we have the people we have.
2/18/14, 6:50 AM
====================
You're making an interesting point, although I'd say that most people are "doing okay" right now. Not ideally, obviously, but decently especially when you take demographics into consideration.
The past might be a different country, but the people there weren't drooling idiots. They had to have had reasons for banning narcotics. *Were* we doing okay when you could buy heroin or morphine from your friendly neighbourhood chemist? Would we be doing okay considering the demographic changes.
This is a serious question, and it also links to one of the causes of my virulent hostility to immigration. These new populations seem to need more, uh, taking care of - in terms of both government services and enforcement of social norms - than me and mine. Less capable white Euros are annoying enough, but they at least have a claim on my loyalty. If we have to toughen up the drug laws, increase the observation etc., because certain newcomers don't really get - and often can't get - the Proddy work ethic, then I'm going to spit razor blades.
News is just in that alcohol-related traffic deaths have gone down about 15% in states that have introduced medical marijuana laws, presumably because people are substituting marijuana for alcohol and can drive better under the influence of marijuana, or else DON'T drive because they feel they would be dangerous driving under that influence.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see some skeptical, statistically savvy fact-checking on that. Sounds way to good to be true.
@Map:
ReplyDeleteWe already do what you're proposing, for the most part: our law enforcement chases higher-ups in the distribution channels, but only pesters low-level dealers, and most users get off with a relative slap on the wrist.
If we're going to wave the white flag and give the Progressives and Neocons their victory by maintaining some form of anti-drug laws, I'd prefer they be aimed squarely at users. Users don't shoot each other over street corners.
In fact, while drugs occasionally can be tied to some rowdy behavior, people for the most part get high and stay inside. (Alcohol's another story, but I don't want to make alcohol look bad.)
By the way, that guy who allegedly ate the hobo's face in Florida (actually, no human flesh was found in the suspect's stomach), he had a severe mental disorder and a long history of crazed violence. He wasn't on any "bath salts" at the time of the incident. But the liberal media sure wanted to make certain you thought he was!
What type of libertarians were all those politicians who didn't make these dastardly drugs illegal before the early twentieth century?
ReplyDeleteI'm going for #2.
somebody tossing a smoldering butt out the window might send the small patches of indigenous forest left up in flames
ReplyDeleteI've never seen anyone answer my challenge to actually set fire to something, other than matches but including gasoline, with a cigarette - try it!
Anonymous said..
1974_Ford_Country_Squire_2
I had one of these:
http://www.stationwagon.com/gallery/pictures/1964_Ford_Country_Squire.jpg
It'd go an indicated 120mph. And you could sleep in it. Not at the same time.
Power Child said...
To a large extent, these liberals are still behind movements to put the government in between products and the people who want them...
Quite so - see M. Friedman's "The Drug War as Socialist Enterprise".
Anonymous said...
By the way, folks, Hitler was major a pioneer of the anti-smoking movement.
See "The Nazi War on Cancer" by Robert N. Proctor. Plenty of probably-shouldn't-be surprising parallels to current times. One of their main anti-smoking guys was also in charge of killing 'tards.
Anonymous said...
The dangers of second-hand smoke have been vastly exaggerated.
The dangers are essentially zero, which doesn't stop the Puritan socialists from getting even more ridiculous: Study: Third-Hand Smoke Exposure As Deadly As Smoking.
Also, if anyone is interested in 20th century conservatism before leftist Trotskyites invaded, this is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Right_(United_States)
ReplyDeleteSteve, my understanding is that when a cigarette smoker switches to e cigarettes, the negative effects on his health are reduced by around 90 percent. Seems to me that making e cigarettes widely available and inexpensive is the way to go, with society eventually banning normal cigarettes. This gives nicotine addicts the hit they need without hurting their health
ReplyDelete"Before neocons infiltrated the GOP in roughly the late 1960s most people who opposed drug prohibition were conservatives."
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that.
"I keep a list of living conservatives, of one stripe or another, who have at least made comments in support of some form of drug legalization. Steve Sailer's on that list.
I started reading iSteve in 2007. I don't remember Steve ever expressing any sympathy for drug legalization. And since I've never tried any illegal drugs, my memory is likely to be much better than yours.
"The war on drugs IS a war on our civil liberties."
Not our liberties, yours. I don't appreciate being rhetorically roped into that degenerate lifestyle. Criminals shouldn't have any liberties. All civilized societies since the dawn of history have built and maintained prisons.
"Just about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago."
A hundred years ago the temperance movement was gathering steam. It culminated in the Prohibition in 1920. Other, stronger addictive poisons have become popular since then, so the law concentrates on them now.
"We got by okay."
Have you seen Hogarth's Gin Lane? The Wiki article on prohibition begins with 3rd millenium BC China, basically the dawn of history.
New legislation will soon ban smoking in cars in the UK.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile pregnant women are allowed to smoke - their freedom to damage their children must not be impeded in any way.
Our friends at the Daily Caller reporting that a Duke University undergrad (unnamed, sadly) is paying for school via her career in pr0n. The DC helpfully informs its readers what the market rate is for each scene, ranging from girl/girl to the DP.
ReplyDeleteBTW, she describes herself as a "Republican-leaning libertarian".
Re: porn
ReplyDeleteYou say these girls have double-digit IQs. What are their employment prospects outside of adult film?
To me it seems unlikely that visions of stardom attracts girls to porn nearly as much as the fact that it pays much better than any other job they could hope to get where they don't get naked, and with a significantly less than 40 hour a week commitment to boot.
Blogger DCThrowback said...
ReplyDeleteOur friends at the Daily Caller reporting that a Duke University undergrad (unnamed, sadly) is paying for school via her career in pr0n. The DC helpfully informs its readers what the market rate is for each scene, ranging from girl/girl to the DP.
BTW, she describes herself as a "Republican-leaning libertarian".
==================
Well, thank heavens for The Daily Caller, amirite?
See, this is my problem with pornography. It's public. It evinces a stunning lack of forward thinking. She'd be better of just being a hooker, or finding a sugar daddy. You can get away with a lot if you use the right terminology and are discreet and otherwise law abiding. And you don't run the risk of your boss finding you on some dirty site.
Steve Sailer has written of the "need for a legal but semi-crippled market" in drugs. Emphasis mine.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, conservatives who have made statements supporting drug legalization in one form or another. (Guess you should be reading iSteve more closely.)
Map sez: "I don't believe that" conservatives largely opposed drug prohibition before the Neocon infiltration.
You don't have to believe it, the history is already there, independent of your beliefs.
Look at how the votes were divided on the Opium Exclusion Act, or the Harrison Act, and the Marihuana Tax Act. Or the Volstead Act for that matter.
Look at who were the major players in the Brent Commission, the Shangai and Hague Conventions of 1909 and 1911 respectively. Look at who spoke out in criticism of them.
Read about Republican Howard Taft's efforts to continue the Spanish-established Chinese monopoly in opium selling in the Philippines before Progressive Bishop Charles Brent tugged on Teddy Roosevelt's sleeve and made him shut it down.
Look at the USSC challenges and how the rulings were divided.
Read about Joseph Holt Gaines.
And on and on and on...
Dan
ReplyDeleteWe did have a racially selective Second Amendment from about 1791 to about 1965.
We had a lot of racially selective public policy during that time span, too.
Once we resurrect healthy responsible racial awareness and racial consciousness, a lot of very good things will fall into place.
You're also right that a whole lot of blacks that seem to be doing long bids for "drugs" (on paper) really did commit a lot of other violent crimes, behaviors which are virtually universally accepted as criminal acts. It's just that the drug charges are easy to prove and easy plea bargain fodder. Anyone (ahem, Rand Paul) trying to make you think that Federal prisons are filled to the brim with people doing 20-year bits for merely possessing a doobie are lying to you or lying to themselves or both.
"News is just in that alcohol-related traffic deaths have gone down about 15% in states that have introduced medical marijuana laws"
ReplyDeleteand car crashes where the driver was high on marijuana...have gone way up. exactly as i predicted. i read the same article, except i didn't forget the part where marijuana car crashes are expected to surpass alcohol car crashes by 2020.
the drooling internet brigades of 'legalize all drugs!' just can't imagine that dumb people generally can't handle drugs. and africans REALLY can't handle marijuana. colorado is perhaps the LEAST representative state in the entire country to extrapolate from. it's the fittest, healthiest state in america. although, not for long.
"So, the idea that legalizing drugs would bring normal trade disputes into the courts instead of settled in the streets with gunfire falls flat on its face. "
indeed. what it means it that law enforcement....will have to INCREASE. because the state will have to make sure that you're only selling OUR marijuana. no outside marijuana! hey...is that OUR marijuana....or foreign marijuana? let the officer here check to see if you have the correct documents and, ahem, papers, to prove you are smoking government approved marijuana, and not that other stuff.
once a drug is legal, the manufacturers outside the US are free to try to compete on a cost basis...and i'm guessing, they can make the drug for cheaper than the americans can. just like any other good. which means, MORE, not LESS, law enforcement activity at the border, and inside the border. in what industry does the US have the lowest cost of manufacture?
again, the worst of both worlds. and that's before we get to what legal marijuana does to a population with the demographics of the US.
"The idea that legalization will severely alter smoking habits is ludicrous."
ReplyDeletenot familiar with africans, are we. not to mention, yes it will, among europeans.
"Is that few enough illegal immigrants to make playing World Police worthwhile?"
how will the US government regulate drugs once they are legal in the US. specifically, how will they make sure you can only buy THEIR drugs, but not THE OTHER GUYS drugs?
will that require....law enforcement?
once drugs are legal, in the US welfare state, how do you stop a permanent underclass from forming - people who are just paid by the government every month to sit at home, watch television, and do drugs?
you know with 100% certainty that democrats will fight violently to make sure those people are able to maintain that lifestyle permanently. you want to see democrats resist something violently, watch them resist any republican law that proposes people receiving government money have to pass a drug test to keep getting the money. democrats resist that as fiercely as they resist voter ID.
will be humorous in the future when the legions of permament druggy welfare junkies, who need that ID to get their government money so they can then show their ID to purchase their government provided drugs, are still being protected by the democrats from the big bad republicans who want to make them show an ID to vote.
"No, it should be obvious to everyone what the outcome of drug legalization would be: massive increases in addiction; high prices; and more violence, the end result being that government has given a franchise to organized crime to, at the very least, operate a money-laundering operation."
this guy gets it. although, there may be less violence. but there will be MORE government intervention and law enforcement, not less. the entire industry is now regulated - when does that EVER result in less law enforcement? that there will be more addiction goes without saying.
the only scenario where legal drugs eliminate illegal drugs almost completely is the walmart scenario i've talked about in the past. where some US lab makes the drugs for 2 dollars a dose and sells it in every retailer in the US for 5 dollars a dose, to drive the cost down so low, that no foreign competitor is interested in competing. go down to the local gas station and buy your meth and marijuana for 5 dollars a dose? really? that's the way forward for america?
I'm seeing lots of good points both for and against drug legalization, and I'm not certain myself of what should be done. However, one mistake I am noticing on all sides of this debate is that so many people want to accomplish X indirectly by prohibiting or permitting Y, when it would be better to address X directly. There are too many examples on this thread alone to enumerate.
ReplyDeleteLook at how the votes were divided on the… the Volstead Act for that matter. --Power Child
ReplyDeleteVolstead himself refused to help local prohibitionists after he retired to his hometown. Like Faubus and Wallace with segregation, he was just carrying water for those who were truer believers than he.
"We did have a racially selective Second Amendment from about 1791 to about 1965."
ReplyDeleteUnder the auspices of the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Acts, Blacks owned guns after slavery and used them to defend themselves against the Klan and other racists. Clarence Thomas, in Heller, wrote about the long history of blacks using guns for this purpose.
The right to defend yourself and your family is God-given.
Let's use Steve King's numbers: each smuggler carries 75 pounds of drugs.
ReplyDeleteImmigration America estimates 4 million pounds of marijuana is smuggled in per year.
4,000,000 divided by 75 = 53,333 illegal immigrants acting as drug mules each year
Ha, ha, ha. The vast majority of drugs smuggled into America are not smuggled in via "mules" with a condom of marijuana in their stomach. They bring it in by the boat-load, the car-load, the truck-load, the plane-load. Get a clue, child.
Jody:
ReplyDeleteYour WalMart theory doesn't hold up:
Familiarize yourself with the globalizing tenets of our anti-drug legislation. You will discover that we are artificially keeping much of the rest of the world's anti-drug policies in place.
Your WalMart theory fails for the same reason I can buy Sam Adams or Blue Moon at about $12 per six-pack. I notice the stores keep stocking it, even though Tecate is way cheaper.
But surely some booze gangs from dry countries like UAE are smuggling in cheaper stuff?
Someone already suggested they should be blowing up liquor stores to eliminate the competition.
Who's your booze dealer?
It's just way to get at very dangerous, otherwise untouchable criminals. Stop being a drama queen.
Delete3. After the end of prohibition, the mafia didn't go away, it found other businesses.
ReplyDeleteProhibition gave such huge profits to organized crime that it allowed them to invest in legit businesses when prohibition ended. Assuming today's drug cartels have saved their profits, they too should be in a position to invest in legitimated businesses too.
Anonymous said:
ReplyDelete"However, one mistake I am noticing on all sides of this debate is that so many people want to accomplish X indirectly by prohibiting or permitting Y, when it would be better to address X directly."
I generally agree, except that our drug laws are hard-coded to keep us embroiled in conflicts all over the globe. (That's why the Neocons and Globalist Progressives are so enthusiastic supporters of our drug laws, and why conservatives were originally skeptical of them.)
I've also noticed that the more we Invade the World, the more we end up Inviting the World.
power child:
ReplyDelete"Ah, prison reform. The similarities to education reform are remarkable, though I'm surprised to hear an iSteve commenter calling for it."
Prison reform/education reform takes many, ahem, forms. Restoring tracking in schools is school reform. Locking people up for the rest of their natural lives for drug offenses is prison reform.
power child:"I think some of Steve Sailer's proposals (like segregating prisons by weight class) seem reasonable, but that wouldn't have much effect on what I'm talking about."
Locking people up for life/execution would.
power child:"I was being rhetorical about cartels recruiting inmates. That is actually happening. A lot."
So you were not being rhetorical?
power child:" And then the inmates get released. Unless "prison reform" = life imprisonment or capital punishment for all crimes, this will always be the case."
How about just drug crimes?
You say these girls have double-digit IQs. What are their employment prospects outside of adult film?
ReplyDeleteBack in the days when we had a functioning society, their prospects would have involved getting married and having children. But that was before we were all "liberated" by the "libertarians".
the issue is not whether or not MJ should be legalized, but whether the people and not bought and paid for politicians should be allowed to vote for it.
ReplyDeleteDo the people get what they want in america? Not generally.
Here I will say it--I think all states should have popular referenda involving mj legalization and other important issues such as immigration levels.
But I seem to be the only person saying such things.
mr anon:"Sure immigration and terrorism contribute, but what do you think is driving forfeiture laws and no-knock warrants in flyover land? Terrorism? You are deluded. The war on drugs IS a war on our civil liberties."
ReplyDeleteNone of my friends/family have had
to deal with a no-knock warrant. None of my friends/family have had their property seized.
Mr Anon:"Just about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago. We got by okay. People are probably worse today, but they will be worse whether they are sober or not. What are we going to do - we're a nation in decline, and we have the people we have."
That being the case, why make it worse?
Countenance:"Once we resurrect healthy responsible racial awareness and racial consciousness, a lot of very good things will fall into place."
ReplyDeleteNever going to happen.
Not true.
DeleteHowever, it's something that ought to be discussed.
By the way, I want to go back and highlight one form of "legal but semi-crippled market" in drugs that worked well in the Philippines before the progressive Bishop Brent mucked things up:
ReplyDeleteA government-granted monopoly.
The monopoly had an incentive to keep their prices high, but not so high that smugglers undercut them. They also had an incentive to keep tabs on how well this was working. (No extra government spending necessary.)
ReplyDeletepower child:"According to King, he arrived at them by working closely with Border Patrol and even spending a few nights on the border himself."
which means that we just have his word on it.
power child:" Libs and immigration traitors were up in arms about his comments, but one by one his claims were verified."
By whom? Let's bring in some hard data on this.
power child:" Didn't John Derbyshire or somebody do a big write-up about it at the time over on VDare?"
Feel free to find it for us.
power child:"Still, I think 75 lbs per smuggler is probably an exaggeration. Many of these fence-jumpers weigh maybe twice that. But that means there are more illegals doing this, not fewer."
Again, since we are relying on one guy's estimate, it's meaningless.
power child:"But we're at a much larger percentage of illegal immigration figures, which is what we were talking about."
Really?
"The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that, in the 1980s, the net advance of the U.S. undocumented population was at 130,000 per year, increasing to 450,000 per year from 1990–1994, further increasing to 750,000 per year from 1995–1999, and staying at 700,000–850,000+ per year since about 2000." (WIKIPEDIA)
Seems like a pretty small piece of the illegal alien pie to me.
"Prohibition gave such huge profits to organized crime that it allowed them to invest in legit businesses when prohibition ended."
ReplyDeleteWhere they are still tommy-gunning and knee-capping people to this day, obviously.
"Assuming today's drug cartels have saved their profits, they too should be in a position to invest in legitimated businesses too."
The cartels are already buying up coal mines. I suppose we should keep increasing their profits, though. They could always use MORE coal mines.
"Locking people up for the rest of their natural lives for drug offenses is prison reform."
ReplyDeleteAnd the Bryan Caplan Realism Award goes to...
On the other hand, I think some people are capable of exercising self-control, but have forgotten how, because society has long insulated them from the consequences of their actions. If welfare and SSI were eliminated, you can bet the rate of unwed pregnancies would plummet.
ReplyDeleteThe libertarian argument hinges on the latter group greatly outnumbering the former, so that fully exposing people to the consequences of their actions serves the same purpose as blue laws
The trouble with the "libertarian argument" is that it is preposterous. We are not going to eliminate welfare and SSI, in large part because the sort of people libertarianism creates are the sort of people who want those programs and more like them. You can't build an entire ideology around selfish individualism and then act shocked when you encounter people whose attitude is "I want what I want and I want it now!"
In certain respects modern America is a far more libertarian country than it used to be. It's not a paradox that this change has been accompanied by a vast and unprecedented growth in government, the two things are different sides of the same coin. Selfish individualism is to the state what anabolic steroids are to a biological organism.
"That being the case, why make it worse? "
ReplyDeleteWhat's what I want to know!
Why invite all the endless military engagement, the smuggling, the border violence, the inner city violence, the mission creep and bureaucratic bloat? Just so you can look in the mirror and see a Good Neocon?
Sorry, off topic, but are the usual suspects in search of another hate crime here, and don't they know how the quest for the Great White Defendant invariably ends?
ReplyDeletePower Child, the iSteve post you quoted is, on balance, skeptical about the effects of a hypothetical legalization. Steve listed some potential problems, then concluded that legalization would be difficult, but not impossible to get right. Other things that would be difficult, but not impossible to get right: cold fusion, Martian colonies and immortality. If you think that's an endorsement, then I DON'T want to try whatever it is you're smoking.
ReplyDeleteIt seems silly to me that pot is illegal (mostly) while mind altering pharmaceuticals can be legally given to eight year old boys, at enormous cost both financially and socially.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to advocate giving weed to eight year old boys, but our drug problem is far more extensive than just illegal drugs. Millions of people are on Xanax et al at a cost of billions of dollars annually. How many of those people could get the "anxiety" relief they need -- or succor for whatever other form of bullshit ails 'em -- from a few tokes on a dooby instead?
I don't know, I do neither of these things so I can't compare effects. But scrip drugs are poisoning the nation far more than pot, if you ask me.
"Just about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago"
ReplyDeleteBull. A lot of illegal drugs of today simply did not exist a hundred years ago. There was no LSD or PCP or Ecstasy. Other drugs which did exist back then were much, much less powerful than the modern variants. The cocaine and marijuana of a hundred years ago had the same relationship to their modern counterparts that a bottle of Bud Light has to a bottle of Bacardi 151.
DR,
ReplyDelete"LOL, wut? There was a thriving legitimate corporate industry selling all manors of drugs before prohibition."
Yes, and once they found out how dangerous LSD, cocaine, opium and cannabis were, they made them illegal. Just goes to show how much smarter people were in the past.
Countenance,
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why you don't get this. Drug gangs are "in conflict" over territory. There is no legal means by which a court can resolve this conflict because it is illegal to engage in actions that restrain trade.
What you are expecting the court to do is end drug violence by assigning monopolies. That will never happen.
Even if that could happen, it still does not mean a gang or cartel could not use its violence infrastructure to drive out the competitor.
What put the mafia out of the alcohol business was the distilleries coming back online: the legitimate businesses were allowed to function again.
Technical quibble: a lit joint is far less likely to start a fire--pot burns less intensely than commercial tobacco.
ReplyDeleteYears ago a Vegas casino employee. torched his hotel. Once caught he passed it off as an accident, with a story he probably figured would work because it was so embarrassing: he was servicing a male john when the joint in his mouth set the drapes on fire.
But the prosecution then demonstrated how a lit joint isn't hot enough to set the drapes in question on fire.
Oh snap. But I'm sure that story's gonna play well in the joint...
@Power Child,
ReplyDelete"If we're going to wave the white flag and give the Progressives and Neocons their victory by maintaining some form of anti-drug laws, I'd prefer they be aimed squarely at users. Users don't shoot each other over street corners."
That is monstrous. Users are victims. They don't deserve to be treated like criminals. And I believe mass producers need to be dealt with through military means, not police methods. Its a problem that needs to be handled with a Hellfire missile from high orbit. I could not care less if drug dealers shoot each.
OT, the Tonight Show is now based out of New York.
ReplyDeleteJody,
ReplyDelete"the only scenario where legal drugs eliminate illegal drugs almost completely is the walmart scenario i've talked about in the past. where some US lab makes the drugs for 2 dollars a dose and sells it in every retailer in the US for 5 dollars a dose, to drive the cost down so low, that no foreign competitor is interested in competing. go down to the local gas station and buy your meth and marijuana for 5 dollars a dose? really? that's the way forward for america?"
You won't even see that happening. Walmart is not going to risk the wrath of product-liability law to sell meth and other drugs with no medicinal value.
Democrats in CA pushing:
ReplyDelete1. New regulations for the Local Control Funding Formula
2. The implementation of Common Core
3. Efforts to expand Transitional Kindergarten, and more
More big government ... more waste.
Good hate(left) and bad hate(right).
ReplyDeleteGood nationalism(Zionism) and bad nationalism(European/white).
ReplyDeleteGood violation of nuke laws(Israel) and bad violation of nuke laws(Iran)--even though Iran complied with all the international laws.
ReplyDeleteBig Tobacco was behind GOP. That makes it bad.
ReplyDeleteThe legalized marijuana trade will not be dominated by street gangs any more than they run the Jim Beam distillery or operate Safeway supermarkets. To think otherwise is fantasy.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to chime in to say that to claim that support for limited government is “autistic” is quite stupid; doing so redefines the founding fathers as a group of Aspergers. And yes, federal drug laws are both unconstitutional and an ongoing threat to civil rights.
Our current situation of decriminalization (such as in California) without legalization is very bad. Demand for pot is increased as well as profit for the criminal gangs. The huge profits have meant that the police and border patrol are deeply involved in the drug trade.
"Have you heard of Asia Carrera, who played piano in Carnegie Hall, or Bobbi Starr, a former professional oboist?"
ReplyDeleteExceptions that prove the rule.
To be sure, as porn becomes more mainstream, it will attract less dumb people. But most porn people are dumb. I recall a TV show about Hugh Hefner back in the late 70s, and some Bunnies said the dumbest things. And this was just softcore stuff. Imagine the idiocy of the hardcore people.
And look at the acting ability of the bunnies in Apocalypse Now Redux. Wow.
Pornies are like boxers. Yes, there have been smart boxers, but most aren't. Most are like Larry Holmes or Mike Tyson.
ReplyDelete"Once we resurrect healthy responsible racial awareness and racial consciousness, a lot of very good things will fall into place."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but you gotta have money, lawyers, politicians, academics, and etc on your side to do this.
As Tony Montana said, 'first you make the money, then you get the power, then you get the girl.'
Consider the consequences of releasing most drug criminals from prison (or never even arresting them in the first place).
ReplyDeleteWe would see a rapid rise in the crime rate. Most drug criminals are also guilty of other crimes; drug offenses are relatively easier to prosecute, so drug laws are an effective expedient for wiping scum off the streets without having to go through a massive legal kampf every time.
In addition, drug laws were good for maintaining order. Anti-loitering ordinances aren't going to stop a Trayvon from casing your house. Berating him has bad outcomes sometimes, as we've seen. But nabbing him on a narcotics charge is a sure thing (or close to 100 % certainty). That puts him in the system and keeps him from mischief, at least as far as your house is concerned. Preventing a break-in also contibutes to the general peace and stability of a society.
Arresting somebody because of his race would be a true violation of civil liberties. But arresting him on a drug charge is legitimate, if society has decided, through its laws, that possession of illegal drugs is a crime. Any disparate impact of these laws does not necessarily mean that the laws are being selectively applied; the responsibility of the criminals for possessing the narcotics in the first place should always be kept in mind. They can avoid prosecution by the simple resort of not carrying spliffs or guzzling that drank.
Bringing out the latent 'Beavis and Butthead' in me ie the naughty inner child who never really grew up or went away and still obsesses over his 1970s neatly ordered Hustler collection, a brief 'potted history' of the LA porn industry (or 'jizz bizz' as the industry is affectionately and vuglarily known) is in order.
ReplyDeleteBasically it was the mafia financed nasty little stag film 'Deep Throat' that got the ball (or balls) rolling back in '72. For some reason his unremarkable 'feast of carrion and degradation' as one judge uncharitably called it somehow became a 'cult (with an 'l')hit that all of trendies got, literallly, orgasmic about. Top level psychologists argued in court about its 'therapeutic' benefits. The great and the good of America ostenatiously queued up to see it, Hollywood royalty, Mailer, Sinatra, you name 'em, they saw it. In landmark judgments all obscenity charges against Throat were thrown out much to the clebration of trendies all over the USA. A precedent was set - and thus we have the Valley's biggest industry, fertile, nubile young corn-fed Amero flesh being poked, prodded and plowed by the million for the world's delectation via the electronic revolution - and mega profits being made on the side. Reliable estimates tell us a good proportion of Valley tax revenues and thus schools, libraries and other seats of augustness are funded by revenue from the unspeakable nad unmentionable. Now, where did I put my Brazzers subscription?
Anyhow, the story that most amuses me about Throat is this. Way back in '72, when the Jowlhound was away - no, he didn't watch it and thes tren father figure would have reviled it - senior Whitehouse 'Nixon men', as I love to call them, organized a Throat viewing in the whitehouse basement cinema. Apparently, as the story goes, the Nixon men couldn't resist the opportunity to crack dirty jokes and shout crude remarks through out the running of the film. The mind boggles at the thought.
I remember reading a good while ago where a "performing whore" said something like this: 'If you think it's easy, and requires no acting, to have at least quasi-erotic-looking sex in front of a dozen or more people, several of whom are filming it from all kinds of different angles, with a male you don't particularly like or find attractive, then go ahead and try it some time'.
ReplyDeleteSince then I'm willing to accept that it isn't easy. And I'll let them be called "porn stars" if they want. But it still is what it is.
I'm noticing a new epidemic of littering among the young. It can't be just a Mexican thing, since they haven't overrun my area. Probably sounds crazy, but I wonder if the combination of cigarette restriction and drug legalizAtion is causing it.
ReplyDeleteTotally off-topic: What's with commentary here spiking suddenly?
ReplyDeleteTobacco and marijuana are not serious problems. They have some bad consequences but they would be easy enough to deal with if we could just manage to invoke 'half measures'.
ReplyDeleteOur difficulties lie in our national taste for 'unconditional surrender'.
The only place I ever see anyone smoking these days is Turner Classic Movies. In real life real smokers are rare and unsympathetic victims. If there is a smoker about they have to periodically scurry outside. They are thoroughly cowed. They are accustomed to being publically humiliated. Just a few decades ago they would argue or make speeches about freedom. But not now.
So it's time to slow down on the War Against Tobacco. I'm sure there are some who want to make smoker wear a funny hat when they smoke or a sign that warns off others. But it's time to pull back and just let tobacco smoking fade away like drinking absinthe or foot binding.
In fact Obamacare argues for more smokers not less. If we are all to be closely regulated because we all have to pay for the bad health choices of others, smokers die early and cost less than non-smokers. Most medical expenses come in our last years. Smokers simply don't have as many last years. More smokers are one way to bring Obamacare expenses under control. It's a sort of automatic Death Panel.
For the government to promote smoking as a way to trim medical costs seems unlikely to me. But I never would have believed that the government would exploit the poor with lotteries either.
Marijuana is unquestionably an effective medicine against a few human maladies. Alas most of the licensed MM recipients don't have those ailments. They just want to get high.
It is also unquestionably true that some people are disabled and can't work. But no one is surprised to learn that a large proportion of recipients of government disability aid are hoaxers. They just want the cash.
Medical marijuana and disability benefits are abused. So we should fix that problem. But we should not outlaw disability assistance altogether. We need a half measure - only disability payments and a medical marijuana license for the truly needy.
Why doesn't anyone promote such a simple idea?
Bill O'Reilly keeps having experts on who will testify how very dangerous that marijuana is. By overstating the case he promotes contempt for authority. Marijuana isn't harmless as the doper advocates claim. But it also isn't as deadly as O'Reilly claims. It is somewhere in the middle.
The Controlled Substances Act puts marijuana in with Heroin as a Schedule I drug. That makes grass more dangerous than Methamphetamine and Morphine which are only Schedule II. In fact even low ranking Schedule IV drugs are still pretty dangerous including Xanax and phenobarbital. Marijuana looks to me to be more appropriately classified as a Schedule V drug. Let the experts argue, but no sane person these days should argue that it belongs in the most dangerous category.
Reclassifying marijuana is a half measure. It won't change anything drastically but it should incrementally move us in the direction of reason.
Albertosurua
I think people are funnier when they are drunk...
ReplyDeleteThere certainly is a perverse amusement to be had in watching people voluntarily turn themselves into blithering idiots lacking the smallest shred of human dignity. But I doubt that's what you mean.
It's not some big exciting surprise. Unlike nanny-state liberals and Invade the World/Invite the World Neocons, conservatives have no interest in supporting our drug laws.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the most powerful interest in maintaining prohibition seems to be the big gov't lobby. Ending prohibition would mean the loss of thousands of gov't jobs, and cost the lobby billions in annual tax revenue.
The issue is not significant to those of us who put ending the ongoing demographic murder of America at the top of the list.
"Once we resurrect healthy responsible racial awareness and racial consciousness, a lot of very good things will fall into place."
Never going to happen.
It's inevitable. Eventually the only white people left will be the racially conscious ones.
"Mr Anon:"Just about every kind of drug was sold legally, over the counter, a hundred years ago. We got by okay. People are probably worse today, but they will be worse whether they are sober or not. What are we going to do - we're a nation in decline, and we have the people we have."
ReplyDeleteThat being the case, why make it worse? "
It's time for soma to keep the proles happier on their new bean-centered standard of living.
Blue Moon at $12 a six pack? Yikes. Might want to find an alcohol dealer.
ReplyDeleteHere's a side comment. Try to start a fire with a cigarette in a pine forest using the fallen needles. I tried and tried and could not do it. Admittedly, I was up at 8000-9000 feet, so maybe that's a factor, but I'd be curious to know if it can even be done.
ReplyDeleteNone of my friends/family have had
ReplyDeleteto deal with a no-knock warrant. None of my friends/family have had their property seized.
No one I know voted for Nixon.
"Steve, I think your analysis of women who make pornography leaves a lot to be desired."
ReplyDeleteSteve has a weird prudish streak which gives him a blind spot in this area. Like when he couldn't believe that Diablo Cody wrote Juno because she worked for a while as a stripper.
That said, his point that pornography is filmed prostitution is well-taken. That's no reason to denigrate the women that participate in it, however. And since porn is legal, prostitution should be too.
I lived for a long time in a major European city where prostitution is legal, safe and inexpensive and I took full advantage of that fact. My experience is that - gasp! - prostitutes are human beings who run the gamut of personality types and intelligence levels. Some are quite personable and smart. They do tend to come from working class backgrounds. And, as another commenter noted, most probably do have a history of sexual abuse.
"We would see a rapid rise in the crime rate. Most drug criminals are also guilty of other crimes; drug offenses are relatively easier to prosecute, so drug laws are an effective expedient for wiping scum off the streets without having to go through a massive legal kampf every time."
ReplyDeleteDrug laws are only necessary because the Warren Court eviscerated police power. Overturn Miranda, Brady and other decisions that make it virtually impossible to convict a well-lawyered criminal of a violent crime.
Police in American and England circa 1900 had no problem maintaining an essentially zero crime society without the need for gun or drug laws. That's because society didn't mollycoddle criminals, or think police were all jackbooted thugs.
D R,
ReplyDeletedear dear me. Miranda rights are probably one of the things keeping racial quota obsessed cops and prosecutors from hauling your white arse into a cell with Deshawn.
You don't get what is actually happening.
Most of the porn stars I follow on twitter smoke pot. A lot of pot. As in they tweet pics of giant bags of the stuff on a near daily basis.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of porn, there's a huge WWG/WWT fight going on. Some producers have started allowing gay-for-pay guys, homosexuals, and girls that bang trannies to cross-over to straight porn.
The industries' split on this because of the STD risk. The LBGT lobby says it's ok because everyone gets tested.
Anyone who questions gays in straight porn gets labelled a "bigot" by the LBGTs, despite the fact almost all the recent STD shut-downs have been because a gay man has spread the STD.