Deserves repeating. Also, to lump pot, an herb which can easily be grown at at home, with hard drugs which cannot, is pure speciousness. If pot is a “gateway drug” it is because it is illegal. If you need this explained, jebert :smack:
It isn’t “the system” that leads to any sort of heinous activity (again, how much gang activity around hard liquor?) it’s government prohibition. That’s the niggling little detail, that by deliberately ignoring history it tends to repeat itself. We’re in the second wave of Prohibition, and it’s having the same exact effects as it did the first time. And rather than placing 100% of the blame where 100% of the cause lies some people would rather blame those who are committing ‘victimless crimes.’
Yes, what brilliant logic. The government creates short sighted, ideology-based self defeating policies aiming to crush the free expression of individual neurological decisions… and it’s peoples fault for not just doing (with their own bodies and minds) whatever the government tells them, and since the government’s policies create horror, murder and suffering, then the people have an obligation to stop forcing the government to do such horrible things. :rolleyes:
Try to think about it for just a minute. Without Prohibition, there’s virtually no violence. With it, there’s lots. You can use as many drugs as you want, but without prohibition there’s no black market, no violent drug dealing industry, no gangs fighting over drug dealing turf, no cartels. With Prohibition, there’s a black market, gangs fighting over drug dealing turf, cartels. Even a cursory honest examation of the facts shows where 100% of the blame, 100% of the cause, and most importantly 100% of the solution actually lies.
A rather sloppy dodge that deliberately misses the point.
We do not generally blame people for engaging in behaviors that, themselves, have no actual significant negative effects for others. We blame those who cause those effects. Except of course where Prohibition is involved, and then its those damn druggies’ fault that the government’s policies have disastrous and easily predictable effects.
It’s also worth noting that the faux logic of your silly obfuscation would mean that if abortion was illegal that women who got abortions were still to blame for homicidal maniacs killing abortion doctors, rather than the, ya know homicidal maniacs.
“Look what you made me do!” evidently only works for abusive husbands and supporters of Prohibition.
I got it, Finn. Really I do. You can repeat yourself, engage in further hyperbole, and get even more condescending if it helps you feel better, but I got your point. You don’t like drug laws and you think the government is to blame for everything.
Then change the laws. Protest. Write your legislators. Engage in open civil disobeience. Petition. Move to a place with laxer drug laws. But here they are the laws, Constitutional laws that have been enacted by the legislature, signed by the executive, and upheld by the judiciary.
But don’t pretend your money doesn’t support a market that results in heinous activities. I’m sure the world will be peachy keen and everything would be wonderful without substances being illegal. But until then, you’re responsible for where you spend your money. And no amount of blaming the government will change that.
And drug buyers. Don’t forget them.
OTOH, Prohibition lowers unemployment. More cops, judges and prison personnel along with the boom in prison construction. And don’t forget the millions behind bars who aren’t lining up for the dole.
Grown in the good old USA, by Americans. With flags and stirring patriotic music and baseball and apple pie and stuff. It’s what’s good for America. It’s the right thing to do. Buy American! 
Don’t forget Afghanistan.
I think you’re being too broad in blaming “druggies” – seeing as the Mexican cartels are concerned with cocaine, and to a lesser extent heroin (due to, er, geography), are pot-smokers to be included? The vast majority of pot consumed in the US is grown here.
Added: Meth, too. Very American. No reason to smuggle it (since it can be produced quite easily right here). With cocaine, you need coca, and with heroin you need poppies.
It also provides lucrative career opportunites for gangsters, who might otherwise be out of work 
So true. Also forgot our Ministry of Homeland Security. Shit. What a boondoggle that is. Hmm. Maybe a new thread?
Sometimes the answer is so simple. If we can get rid of the Sun, we will rid ourselves of this pesky drug monkey on our collective back.
Drugs, schmugs.
Does anyone want to look at the hopelessly broken, kleptocratic system that is Mexico? Do you know how little the cops who are supposed to enforce the laws earn, compared to the bribes the drug barons can offer? Less than $500/month in a typical example. And no, the cost of shelter and food is not anywhere near that much lower. It is not all right. Only a more equitable society in Mexico will make a dent in this problem, not merely eliminating drug smuggling. Absent any other reform, just eliminating the drugs only means the criminals will find another illegal and violent way of making their money.
If I hear another commentator mention the “scourge of drugs” coming north or the “scourge of guns” going south, I’ll shoot the TV.
It’s interesting that when given the fact of what Prohibition does, you’d prefer to cast it as an opinion. I guess that while whining about hyperbole and how I’m not giving your stupidity the respect it deserves, you’d also somehow like to sidestep the facts without actually mentioning, let alone actually rebutting them. Good show.
Well, shit. If that wasn’t a total red herring bit of non sequitur bullshit, it might contribute something to the argument. See, spunky, nobody has denied that those are the laws. More to the point, the factual repercussions of Prohibition II are what’s at issue here.
"The law creates a criminal class, guarantees them a massive profit, and turns what would otherwise be victimless crimes into the engine of national and international horror. "
“Yeah, but… it’s the law!”
Idiot.
The facts, of course, that you’re deliberately avoiding is the Prohibition creates a black market, ensures that all its members are criminals, ensures no means of legal redress of grievances for those who traffic in contraband, ensures that the most ruthless and violent members will always have an edge over peaceful ones, ensures that prices will remain hugely inflated thus giving a massive incentive to criminal syndicates to move in and muscle out competition, etc, etc, etc.
So great, it’s the law.
It’s also the sole cause of all the misery and suffering, because yet again, people could snort all the cocaine they wanted and it’d cause no more inherent violence than guzzling liters of coca cola because… wait for it… it’s not the drug use that causes problems it’s Prohibition, you idiot.
But I guess if it’s* the law* and all…
I don’t use drugs, fool.
Not that there’s anything wrong, at all, with using drugs as long as you use them responsibly.
Are you trying to make each claim dumber than the last?
Again, drug buying, in and of itself, leads to nothing other than stoned people (its associated personal health risks) and economic activity.
It’s Prohibition that causes violence on a vast, international scale.
But of course, like any petty fetishist of improper authority, your only defense is to cry “look what you made me do!” when the policies you support end up not working.
Why, those who are engaging in pretty much harmless activity sure have to take their responsibility for making the government do such horrible things. I mean, it’s not like the government wants to enact policies that directly cause misery and suffering, it’s just all those people with the nerve to eat/smoke/inject substances that the government doesn’t like. And really, it’s their fault. If they’d just let the government define how they should act in the privacy of their own homes, they wouldn’t make the government do such horrible things.
You’d be a great advocate for wife beaters. “Honey, he’s only hitting you because he loves you. And besides, if you just wouldn’t have any male friends he wouldn’t feel insecure and you wouldn’t make him hit you. So, really, you bear a lot of the responsibility here. And you can argue with him or try to get him to change, but as long as that’s the rule in his house you just have to accept that you bear some responsibility when he beats the shit out you for talking with the boy bagging your groceries.”
I don’t recall ever dealing with you before, Finn, but are you always such a raging asshole? Not that it changes a thing about the discussion and youf simply repeating “it’s all the government’s fault” over and over and over again and simply adding more inane insults. I’m not wasting my time with your crap.
Go back to bed.
Ah, so you’re still totally unable to defend your position, address mine honesty, and now you’d like to withdraw like a whiny bitch while somehow claiming “victory”. Nice.
Do you know why people use strawmen so obviously as you’re doing?
It’s because they’re unable to come up with an actual response to a real argument and they’re too stupid to realize how transparent they’re being.
Which, of course, is why you have steadfastly resisted addressing what the consequences of Prohibition are, how they differ from simple drug use, how we have historical data to back this up, etc, etc, etc… Instead, you’re just being as relentlessly stupid as possible while avoiding the actual issues. In point of fact, in not one post in this thread have you actually addressed how it is Prohibition, and Prohibition alone that creates the violent black markets of the drug trade, and have instead ignored, distorted, and strawmanned your way to drooling idiocy. I was particularly fond of your ‘so you claim that without Prohibition there will be no problems and we will enter utopia, ROFL’ strawman.
However, I must note that being called an asshole by a dishonest idiot like you is actually a rather nice compliment. You might have well as written “Hey you big meanie, stop pointing out how stupid I’m being and how little integrity I have!”
Yeah, he pretty much is. He used to be a pretty cool guy. I used to talk to him a little with regard to Hunter S. Thomson, once suggesting a cooling off period when he went off the deep end after Thompson’s death and even notifying him on another occasion of an article about Thompson I thought he’d enjoy.
But somehow over the last few years he’s turned into this TLDR asshole that seems to think the best route to victory in argument is to bury his opponents in verbiage and insults.
I rarely read anything he says anymore.
A lot. That’s why it’s good to be informed prior to taking a stand on any issue as opposed to making shit up. A novel idea I know.
That’s all well and good, but the subject of my post was the proposed legalization of “drugs,” not just marijuana.
Hamlet. Dude. I don’t know you at all, but you’ve got Starving Asshole on your side, so a piece of friendly advice: Recant now, make a sacrifice to Anewbies, and move on.
You know you’re on the wrong side of the debate when the first thing you have to do is make up a derogatory nickname for those with a different point of view. “Druggies”. Good FSM Almighty on an ice-cream sandwich… you bootlicking jackasses would pitch a bitch-fit if we re-enacted the first prohibition and tried to lay the responsibility for the next Al Capone at the feet of a guy who just wants a martini every once in a while.
“Druggies.” Ha. Right up there with “Democrat-Socialist Party”. Don’t you busybodies have anything better to do?
Yeah, like all those cites which show how very much you like to lie when you get going about how nasty hippies ruined civility.
Of course, while you’ve gotten ever so upset at me for not having the patience to deal with idiots and liars (hey, like you!) you’ve also gotten even more dishonest and discarded any pretense of personal integrity, to the point where you gleefully throw away all personal integrity and are actually proud of the fact that you’re a useless, partisan shit on this message board… because those damn Liberals made you do it.