Sorry, drugs do fund terrorism. If you don’t believe that, what other explainations do you have for the domestic mess that Columbia faces these days? Likewise, are you trying to say that the 3/4 of the opium trade going through the Afghanistan isn’t being used to support the Taliban’s thugs? Not all drug dealers are terrorists, no. But to claim that the idea that drug money supports terrorism is false seems just as false as claiming that all drug monies go directly to terrorists.
I may be risking getting whooshed here, but that’s not the point of the tax. At all. As has been explained in most of the posts preceeding yours.
Yet another good argument for legalization.
Three letters…DEA
…we can expect Janet Jackson to find herself vacationing in Cuba?
Jeez, that one’s a bit tired. Maybe something about Pamela Anderson and porous borders?
Nah, I got nothin’.
Yes, they did, though IIRC they were mostly bought by collectors. I have no idea how they convinced the cops they were not buying them for use.
link.
Well sure, but it just becomes an uninteresting fact, and useless as an argument for the criminalisation of drugs. One might as well claim that money funds terrorism (!) and therefore we should abolish money.
There’s nothing intrinsic to drugs that makes them support terrorists, basically. It’s just the fact that they’re expensive and illegal. Both of these characteristics can be removed at the whim of the government, neatly depriving terrorists of a major source of income. Terrorists will sell whatever they can make money from, and banning it just decreases their competition and pushes up their margins.
<stars and stripes in background>
Until the government changes those characteristics you should always make sure your pot is home grown right here in the U S of A.
Patriotic pot, if you don’t buy it you’re a terrorist!!!
</stars and stripes in background>
My garden is Fighting for Freedom - is yours?
I understand your arguments, and agree with them to a degree. I don’t really feel all that comfortable with the idea of legalizing drugs, because I don’t believe that that the illicit nature of the drug trade is the only factor that makes them a problem. Of course, part of the problem for me is that the idea of giving the government an incentive to allow recreational drug use seems to me to be an invitation to repeat the government’s growing addiction to gambling as a form of revenue.
I would never deny there is some degree of use of the drug trade to fund terrorist action. I’d maintain, on the other hand, that oil money is pretty closely linked to terrorism too, but we don’t see commercials on TV telling us not to fill up our SUVs for fear of funding the next attack on America.
And as for the Taliban being funded by the opium trade, well, I thought they were pretty successful in stamping out opium dealing in Afghanistan, and it has roared back since they were ousted. Not that that justifies them in any way, of course.
So, if I buy pot from a Canadian, I’m supporting terrorism? :dubious:
Like, totally! Why do you harsh on America so much, dude?
No arguments here for your first paragraph. There are times that I’m convinced the whole ‘buy foreign oil’ thing is a Machiavellian plot to make sure that we’ll still have oil reserves after we burn up the rest of the world’s oil. The rest of the time I wish I could believe that - since, morality aside, it would imply rather more intelligence on the average than I can justify believing in.
As for the Taliban vs. opium trade, I’d been of the impression that it had been the Soviets who’d quashed the opium trade, and the Taliban allowed it to back up. If you have a cite one way or the other, I’d be glad to read it.
So, based on your earlier assertion about illicit drugs funding terrorists, would you prefer that drug revenue go to terrorists, or to the government?
I’d prefer there not be revenues from illicit drug sales.
I really don’t know which option you’re giving me is better. Do you really want the government to be in a position where it can’t survive without the sale of illicit drugs? That’s the situationt that exists, IMNSHO, with both tobacco and gambling monies.
The tobacco settlement monies have, in the large part, gone no where near dealing with the ills caused by tobacco use, or even to effective preventative measures. Here in NY the sin taxes on tobacco were raised last year simply to increase revenues, because the state needed more money, and sin taxes are easier to sell than income taxes. At this point only a very few blindered mouthpieces for various lung health advocacy groups can even say with a straight face that sin taxes will reduce the use of tobacco. I don’t have a cite at the moment, but the increase of approximately $0.50 a pack tax (only guessing, here, I’m not a smoker, and don’t really know any well enough to ask how much they pay for their smokes.) reduced use by maybe 2-3%. Certainly no one I know who smokes quit because of the latest rise in the sin tax.
The pious wording in most state lottery bills about using the monies generated for education and to fund programs to help problem gamblers have been ignored for the most part: the education monies aren’t seen by schools, since the state takes away non-lottery money to compensate for what the schools are getting from the lottery, and when lottery revenues fall, the schools are left with a shortfall; the help for problem gamblers hasn’t shown up in any effective form at all.
Given that there are a number of studies pointing to the harmful effects of illicit drug use, do you really want to see the government pushing drugs the way that Pfizer was pushing Celebrex[sup]tm[/sup]?
If you want to debate legalizing marajuana, that’s one thing. I’m not thrilled with the idea, but I’ll accept that marajuana use is no worse than tobacco or alcohol use. But legalizing all drugs, which is what I’m assuming you’re supporting, really doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I don’t think that legalizing crack, ecstacy, or anything else is going to solve all, or even many, of the problems associated with drug use.
Nah. You’re helping our economy! 
Maybe not, but the problems it does solve will be primarily those that affect innocent bystanders.
Legalization will change the whole structure of the drug industry. It will not only deprive a whole bunch of bad guys of one potential source of income (because, make no mistake, while i support legalizing drugs, i realize that plenty of drug dealers are dangerous, violent people), but making drugs legal should reduce prices. At the very least, this might reduce the instances of burglaries, home invasions and stick-ups that many hard-drug addicts commit to fuel their very expensive habits.
Legalization (or decriminalization) would also reduce the tremendous financial and demographic burden on the US prison system, where literally hundreds of thousands of people are spending time for non-violent drug offences. Not having to spend so much money locking up its citizens might lead to a reduced government need for funds. Legalization might also allow us to treat drug addiction as the disease that it is, rather than criminalizing and stigmatizing the people who need our help. Furthermore, people who know they have a drug habit, and who really want to get clean, will be more likely to come forward for treatment if they know that there’s no chance of them being locked up. And some of the billions of dollars that are annually directed towards the (rather ineffective) drug war could be diverted to prevention and education programs.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an advocate of drug use. I don’t use illegal drugs myself—not even marijuana—and i’m well aware of the damage that hard drugs can do to a person’s life. But it seems to me that the effects of criminalizing drugs have generally failed to counter the harmful effects of drug use. We’ll never get rid of all the harmful effects. There will always be addicts who commit assaults, who steal from their families, who use needles unsafely and get infected with Hepatitis or HIV, who end up dead. But criminalization hasn’t stopped any of this, and it has added a whole layer of its own problems.
Of course, some people argue that decriminalization will actually lead to increased drug use, and at the “soft” drug level (e.g., dope) this is quite plausible. But i really don’t believe that it would be the case with most drugs. Ask yourself honestly: do you refrain from smoking crack or shooting up with heroin because it’s illegal? Or do you refrain because you know it’s stupid and dangerous? I’m willing to bet the latter. And i think most people who don’t use hard drugs feel the same way.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n904/a07.html
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/
Nasty people generally, seems they used pretty unpleasant methods, but they did what the US wanted in this case.
You raise some good points.
I’d love to hear from some Dopers from Holland or The Netherlands offering their insights about how well decriminalization has worked there.
Unfortunately, I don’t trust any government’s ability to actually moderate its need for income. Part of that comes from my experience living in two states that built interstate highways before the Feds got into the program: Originally both the NYS Thruway, and the Mass Turnpike were supposed to be paid off, and become free roads, well before the turn of the millenium. Instead, both states found (Or made.) reasons to keep the revenues from the tolls coming in. In fact, in NY, at least, these tolls, which were to pay for the original bond act, are being raised again this year. While you’re certainly correct that prisons are one of the bigger growth sectors of public funding in the US, they’re still dwarfed by the rising healthcare costs between Medicaid, and Medicare. With that growing exponentially, as the baby boomers are approaching retirement age, I am extremely reluctant to give the government an incentive to create more drug addicts.
One of the other scenarios that bothers me, as a specific concern, is that if ecstacy, in particular, becomes decriminalized, I am afraid that incidents of date rape will go up drastically. :dubious:
On the other hand, let’s face it, how many metropolitan areas are being parasitized by having suburban residents come into the city to buy their drugs, leaving most of the drug trade problems behind in the city? I don’t have any hard and firm numbers, but the local Sheriff and City PD both complain about this with great regularity.
Like I said, I don’t have any great answers - I’m just very concerned that the set of problems you’re trading for may be worse than what we have.
villa, thanks for the links. And I agree with your comments about the Taliban - 100%. Even if they managed to keep the ban on poppies going (which your links don’t say one way or the other.) I’m still far from sorry to have seen them removed from power in Kabul.