I don’t think personally anyone who is using drugs for personal use only should be jailed. Fined yes, jailed no.
Yep, the drug war is a disaster. Gotta come up with something new.
As far as Pot being “ok” because it is “natural” I always get a kick out of statements like this. 1.) Do you really think some dude just rolled up the leaves and stuck it in your joint without tampering with it at all? 2.) “Natural” is not synonymous with “good for you”. Snake venom, arsenic, poison ivy, hemlock, bella donna…all natural too. Smoke them puppies up dude.
GabbaGabbaHey, you said;
“(ie. the 50 somethings who fail to see the hipocrisy in allowing cigarette and alcohol sales to flourish) are simply out of touch with the world today.”
I don’t know about the democraphics in Australia, but in the US I think you’d be surprised to see how many of the “Over 50” crowd support de-criminalization. I haven’t seen a poll, but from talking to my peers I’m sure that most see the folly of the “War” on drugs.
In fact, it seems that most intolerance comes from the younger, neo-christian, dot-com type of crowd. I would be interested in seeing some studies on this.
Peace,
mangeorge
What America needs is a politician with the balls to stand up and talk some straight talk about this. And some voters with the balls to re-elect him/her.
Yes I do believe it, as that “dude” who rolls up the leaves and sticks them in my joint is me. Homegrown organically, may I add. Just as mother nature intended.
Awwww, lets not be pedantic now. “Natural” is surely synonymous with “better for you than a man-made, potentially lethal chemical cocktail”, is it not? Ever heard of someone smoking bongs until they dropped dead?
Proposal:
Our only failure is a government that refuses to truly punish those who need punishment. I propose a plan:
Part 1:
We refuse to treat those who come into the ER if they’ve overdosed. If they live, they can go into rehab (see Part 2). If they die, we don’t need that many people anyway.
Part 2:
If a person is caught with any illegal drugs on them or in them, they are sent to rehab. The convict pays for rehab out of pocket. If the convict cannot pay, the government siezes all assets. If that still does not settle the debt, the convict works it off at minimum wage. After three rounds of rehab (three seperate convictions), the offender is executed.
Effects:
This will have two major consequences:
[ul]
[li]The removal of those who are so addicted and destitute they would commit a violent act to fund their habit. These people really have no place in a peaceful, functional society, as they refuse rehabilitation efforts and only use welfare/SSI funding to feed a destructive habit. Society may have failed them, but they are a harmful presence to society.[/li][li]The rehabilitation of those who can be rehabilitated. This group includes those who are: 1) New enough to drug use to be convinced of its harmfulness and cured. 2) Still gainfully employed and beneficial to society as a whole. They will wish to stop the drain on their bank accounts. Those two groups can still be worth the effort and funding this project would require. The promise of death would be an effective deterrent in these groups, as they have something to lose.[/li][/ul]
I think the beneifts of this plan would be worth the costs of implementation. The use of drugs is a drain on society, and a harmful influence on the people of the world.
All Americans accused of publicly calling for Capital Punishment are arrested. If they cannot prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were misunderstood, or jokeing, or mentally ill, or under the influence of drugs, they are found guilty.
All guilty parties must be summarily executed.
Society may have failed them, but they are a harmful presence to society.
They must go.
It depends upon what question is asked and how it is asked. In general, the majority of the US public has now come to recognize the the drug war is a failure. As a solution, the majority still support more of that failure. As far as age goes, the least support for reform issues (depends what the issues are) comes from the older crowds. There are still a lot of people around who heard and believed Harry Anslinger’s propaganda campaign in the 30s through the 50s.
Why do they need punishment any more than the person who smokes a cigar or drinks a beer?
So you have an extreme allergic reaction to something, the doctors aren’t sure what it is and think you may have taken an illegal drug and therefore, they let you die.
Others have already commented on your lack of compassion. Another thing you apparently lack is a knowledge of medical ethics. Doctors wouldn’t do it.
What if they don’t need rehab any more than a person who drinks a beer?
How are they going to do that if they are in rehab?
In other words, an excuse to loot the public.
So let’s say you took a computer programmer who was earning more than a hundred thousand a year, caught him with a joint, and now you want him to work minimum wage to pay it off. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, if you actually want to get reimbursed.
So how many millions of people do you suppose you would have to execute? Please compare that with the number of people killed by the drug problem itself.
The only drug with any real association with violence is alcohol. See "Psychoactive Substances and Violence"by the US Dept. of Justice, at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/govpub/psycviol.htm If you want to achieve that goal, then you would have to work your plan on all the alcohol drinkers.
If you had done any reading on the subject, you would know that even the DEA admits that the vast majority of illegal drug users are productive citizens who have no apparent problems with their illegal drug use.
I know lots of people who have been drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and taking illegal drugs for decades now. They are quite aware of the harmfulness of what they do, and they accept the risks for whatever pleasure it brings them.
Even the DEA admits that the majority of illegal drug users right now are gainfully employed and beneficial to society as a whole.
It isn’t that much of a drain, for the majority of them.
So how many millions do you propose to kill? Compare that with the number actually killed by illegal drugs, if you know such basic facts.
Really? I think you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Let’s start with something simple. Can you answer some basic factual questions:
When and why were these drugs outlawed in the first place?
How many people use illegal drugs?
How many people are killed by drugs each year? Remember to include the totals for alcohol and tobacco.
Communism fell for the same reason that the drug war will fall. Because both are based on ignorance and they require ignorance to survive. People who recommend them, as you do above, invariably know nothing at all about the subject and cannot answer basic factual questions.
If currently illegal recreational drugs were freely, cheaply and legally available so that users did not get involved in crime then would someone explain to me what the great moral problem is.
We know that tobacco kills over time and booze destroys lives and can kill, directly or by the risks created when a drunk undertakes certain activities.
Is there something in the bible ?
Does a secular state need to worry about the religion or should it leave things like this to the citizen.
You may say that it is to protect your children but looking at the way smoking has been targeted I would think that kids today are pretty hip to that, smoking in the Western world is on the decline.
Just adding to the Australian drug laws bit: we do not have particularly lenient drug laws, althought here is a serious debate about reform going on at present. A couple of states have decriminalised ganja and there is talk of legalised injecting rooms for heroin. The laws are nonetheless pretty stern.
My take is simple enough: the majority of the problems of currently illegal drugs are due to illegality.
I see there are some homegrowers in the house. Good for you. I will readily agree there is a subculture group for whom marijuana causes only good stuff (well relatively speaking).
However, I should point out:
1.) Most folk ain’t smoking THAT pot. Most folks, particularly kids on the street are getting crap, in which could be mixed all kinds or wierdness.
2.) As far as the natural=good for you, although it may be shining your headlamps pretty well, it should be noted that heavy use is associated with lung cancer, oral cancer, as well as general decreased motivation and performance. I am sincerely glad pot is causing you no problems, but if you want to see the detrimental side of pot smoking, council some delinquent kids for awhile. You will see some GREAT kids who started smoking it, and now don’t go to school, engage in petty crime, and now their lives are circling the bowl. I was sought of leaning toward the “pot is ok” angel until I started working with such kids. Now I understand their is no definitive causal link (perhaps they have personality disorders that cause them to smoke pot AND do poorly in school). But then again, their is no causal link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer either. Sometimes you just gotta see where the bulk of anecdotal evidence lies. As most doctors if smoking pot is good for you because it is “all natural” and they will laugh laugh laugh.
3.) Although I have never seen anyone “drop dead” from smoking a bong, I have seen cases of people wrapping their cars around trees, losing fingers in heavy machinery, etc. Their have been cases of train conductors under the influence who have piled up their trains. A lot of people (erroneously) think pot doesn’t have similar effects on judgement and reaction time as alcohol.
4.) Yep I would put a fine on tobacco smoking as well. If only I could!!!
5.) In general, I really have no problem with someone sitting at home and smoking a joint here and there in a “responsible” manner,and I am sure most people on this board fall into that category. But there are a lot of people who do abuse pot and their lives suffer for it, and should banning the substance prevent even a few of those kids from smoking, then so be it. I doubt it will really effect the “responsible” smokers anyway.
The drug war didn’t start in 1914; it started in the 19th century, when chewing opium was made illegal. Chinese immigrants chewed it; Americans smoked it. The criminalization of chewed opium was a racist law designed to further stigmatize immigrants in California.
Re: overdoses…the vast majority of the people who overdose do so because they have no way of telling how pure the substance is with which they are dealing. That cocaine you’re snorting…has it been cut? If so, with what? Powdered sugar? Powdered milk? Fiberglass? Arsenic? You don’t know, you CAN’T know, but you’ve liked the energy boost you’ve gotten before and you don’t have a personal REASON why it should be cut with a deadly poison, so you do it anyway. Also, when you got it from the same guy before you had to do two lines to really get off…how are YOU supposed to know that this time he accidentally hit upon some pure cocaine, and that it’s going to send your heart rate to Pluto and your brain to Hell? You can’t.
Decriminalization and regulation would:
Cut down on overdoses, as the purity of the substances would be on the label, and each person could determine how much they need to get the high they want.
Make rehabilitation easier…if I had a drug addiction (I do, but I am still unable to quit smoking these damned cigarettes) several thing would work against me: “It’s illegal anyhow, so the people trying to get me to stop are only worried about me breaking the law.” “If I admit I have a drug problem, the cops will come in and seize my house and take away my kids because I have been doing illegal things.” Those are two, off the top of my head. If they were LEGAL, and it was brought to my attention that I had a problem, there would be no more stigma attached to my going into rehab than there is now for joining AA.
Mad Government Funding: Marijuana is CHEAP and EASY to grow. Anyone I know who smokes it would be more than willing to pay $20 for a pack of neatly rolled joints…and an insane amount of that money would be nothing but clover for the government.
Crime would drop. So much urban (and rural, for that matter) drug-related crime has to do with who is on whose turf, and who sold whom a lot of bad drugs…if it was sold in stores, there’d be no street value and crime would drop like a stone. When was the last time some dumbass shot some other dumbass over the bottle of booze he’d been sold?
Decriminalization would also turn the entire US into one big Amersterdam, which is a mecca of petty crime, addiction, illness, prostitution, and depravity (otherwise it is a pretty city). Again, people view decriminalization as if it would bring all good stuff. Any money it would bring to the US govt would be spent on treating the huge upsurge in addictions (again use Amsterdam as an example). Overdoses will not drop, because people under the influence do not stop to read labels (for that we need only look at the US and alcohol and the number of alcohol poisonings in the US each year). Driving under the influence will soar, drug violence will drop, but the psychopaths will only find something else to fight over (do you honestly think it is the drugs that causes psychopaths to kill each other?) As more people use higher amounts, productivity will drop somewhat (although the Netherlands is doing ok, no one looks at them as an industrial giant…even relative to their size).
Again, I think people sometimes assume that everyone who uses drugs will use them responsibly. What we should be doing is finding some ways to reduce the demand for drugs…why do people use, and how can we prevent them. And I don’t mean another “just say no” campaign, but rather examining the risk factors/underlying psychological factors that lead to drug use and treating those.
Let’s just say that it doesn’t cause them any measurable harm.
This is fantasy. Marijuana is rarely mixed with anything. The major reason is that any seller who did it wouldn’t keep his customers very long.
You seem to be the only person making this argument to any extent. You are pretty much arguing with yourself.
No, it isn’t. I take it you haven’t read any of the references already cited here. You can find a pretty complete collection of the major studies of marijuana at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer Please let me know if you know of any I missed.
Delinquency may cause pot smoking but pot smoking doesn’t cause delinquency.
There are always kids who have those problems. There is no credible evidence that marijuana is the cause. It is far more likely that those problems cause the marijuana use.
I take it you really haven’t read anything on the subject.
Yes.
No, you would be wrong on that point, as well.
You would do better to actually read some of the research on the subject. See my website, above.
They would probably also wonder why someone argues with himself about such things.
If you had looked at the references already cited, you would have found roughly 100 scientific articles on the effects of marijuana on driving and accidents. In short, alcohol accounts for about half of all such accidents, and marijuana accounts for the tiniest percentage, if any.
And since tobacco smokers are often addicted, they obviously wouldn’t stop because of a fine, and their would be a big black market, probably violent, to boot. What would that accomplish? And why wouldn’t you do the same thing for beer drinkers?
That applies to most of the people who use it nationwide, according to the DEA.
There are far more people who suffer far more serious problems from alcohol. That doesn’t mean that it was a good idea to ban alcohol. We tried it once, and it was a major disaster.
Now go do some reading so you don’t make so many obvious factual mistakes.
No, you have it backwards. Opium smoking in opium dens was a Chinese custom. Americans usually used it in the form of patent medicines, usually liquids, such as laudunum. Opium smoking was first outlawed in San Francisco and Virginia
City in the 1870s. You can read all about it in the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm See the chapter titled “Opium Smoking is Outlawed”.
You are a garden of misinformation, aren’t you? If you would have read any of the material already cited, or followed the links to the information direct from the Dutch Government, you would have found that they are doing better on all those measures than the US is.
What I see is that you seem unable to answer questions put to you, and you lack knowledge of the most basic facts on the issue.
Wrong again. If you want to see the financial effects, you can find the Federal Financial Analysis of the Legalization of Drugs on my web site. It shows a 37 Billion dollar annual savings.
And you missed it about Amsterdam again. The average age addicts in Amsterdam is getting steadily older, indicating very few new addicts coming into the group. On the other hand, in the US, the greatest growth in heroin use is among eighth graders, according to our own Drug Czar.
Then why have overdoses virtually disappeared in Switzerland where heroin is prescribed to addicts routinely?
You obviously don’t know much about alcohol prohibition, either, when those kinds of poisonings were far more common than they are today.
No, there is no evidence at all to support that. Besides, we don’t try to prohibit alcohol to solve the drunk driving problem. We tried it once and found out it didn’t solve those kinds of problems, but created a lot more.
Violence associated with illegal drugs is the result of the prohibition laws, so you got this one right. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.
If they are psychopaths then they are pretty well bent with or without drugs, right? And, no, it isn’t the drugs (except for alcohol) – it is the prohibition laws.
You don’t have any evidence for that, either.
Who, besides you, ever said that?
Every society in the history of the world has used intoxicating drugs, with the exception of perhaps one. The only thing that changes is that some drugs are in favor, and others are out of favor. The one thing that is true of all cases is that prohibition of these drugs has never worked, and always wound up causing more problems than it solves.
But, you are obviously more than a little light on your facts. Try reading something before you post again. See http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer - Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy.
