The Drug War....

S

stmadeveloper

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Aug 30, 2007
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For most of my life we've been told to just say "NO" and we've spent god knows how much money on the "WAR ON DRUGS". I'm a father of 4, and I can say with a straight face that I haven't done drugs in well over a decade.

I have however watched gangs ruin the cities that surround me (philly, baltimore, d.c., wilmington, etc...). I see kids in my kids schools that are little gangsters at 11 (or younger).

I don't like in any of those big cities - in fact I live in a small town. But there are drug dealers (with guns) here. Hell little farm towns have had gang/drug related turf shootings around here.

I'm libertarian enough to say legalize everything. Want to drink battery acid? Help yourself :)

Rambling a bit - but I guess what I'm getting at is other than some short term issues (like drug dealers turning to robbery/murder until they are caught) (and we will have room for them in the prisons with out users being in jail) I can't find many negatives about it. Plus positives if the FDA for example is making sure the crack and meth are 'clean'..... and using the proceeds from taxes to fund real help for junkies. Seems like a win/win to me.

But there isn't a huge movement to stop all the bullshit with the WOD.... so what do YOU think would happen if everything was legalized?
 


There are more people killed in gang fights and drug wars than people dying from using drugs. If we at least started with pot, for example, we would probably shut down the Mexican drug cartels since we can just grow it here and shut down their business.

I dont know anyone who has a problem buying it now, so I dont see what the difference would be as far as usage.
 
There are a few key reasons why there hasn't been a big movement to stop this yet.

1. People are stupid and resist change of any sort for the most part.

2. Private prisons - in plenty of states companies make money from people being in prison. Do you think those companies might have an interest in making sure we have laws that insure more people go to jail than less? This is a HUGE industry.

3. Police/Law Enforcement/Prison Guards - The largest union in California is the prison guard one. These are other huge groups with lots of money and a very keen interest in making sure drug laws stay in place so we have jobs.

When you see police against relaxing drug laws and saying all sorts of things about how they "know" how bad it would be... well do you really want to listen to a source that is also counting on a salary to enforce those laws?

The short term consequences of a massive change in drug laws would be huge job losses in those sectors. The long term jobs and prosperity that would rise from the new industries would of course off set this but that's long term.

It's very hard for politicians to get something done that is going to hurt in the short term but make things better in the long term. Plenty more example then just the "war on drugs" of this happening.
 
miketpowell said:
There are a few key reasons why there hasn't been a big movement to stop this yet.

1. People are stupid and resist change of any sort for the most part.

2. Private prisons - in plenty of states companies make money from people being in prison. Do you think those companies might have an interest in making sure we have laws that insure more people go to jail then less? This is a HUGE industry.

3. Police/Law Enforcement/Prison Guards - The largest union in California is the prison guard one. These are other huge groups with lots of money and a very keen interest in making sure drug laws stay in place so we have jobs.

When you see police against relaxing drug laws and saying all sorts of things about how they "know" how bad it would be... well do you really want to listen to a source that is also counting on a salary to enforce those laws?

The short term consequences of a massive change in drug laws would be huge job losses in those sectors. The long term jobs that prosperity that would rise from the new industries would of course off set this but that's long term.

It's very hard for politicians to get something done that is going to hurt in the short term but make things better in the long term. Plenty more example then just the "war on drugs" of this happening.
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Give the responsibility to the states, it would be a gradual change over time and states can tweak drug laws to fit them better.
 
I think people should be free to fuck up their bodies any way they want, as long as they don't force it onto others. Legalizing/taxing would only help.
 
Yuckystuff said:
I've been for 100% legalization for a long time but I have a theory about this that may sound a little conspiratorial but whatever. I think the powers that be want to keep drugs illegal, because they know it provides the only means for "employment" that a lot of minority youths will ever get, and so it may actually be keeping the violent crime rates down. If none of the drug dealers could make money selling drugs, they sure as hell wouldn't put down the guns and go wash cars for a living and I think some people in government probably know that. Rather have them selling drugs and killing each other than committing violent crimes against the average law abiding citizen.
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There are quite a few "conspiracies" behind the drug wars, in the 80's the CIA was actually caught buy/selling. We were also paying Noriega for quite awhile while also letting him traffic drugs...the head of the CIA at that time was Bush Sr. Netflix has a good documentarie, I think its call "The Panama Deception" pretty good one to check out. This is all public info of shit that actually went down, I cant imagine what has and is going on that we dont know about.
 
miketpowell said:
There are a few key reasons why there hasn't been a big movement to stop this yet.

1. People are stupid and resist change of any sort for the most part.

2. Private prisons - in plenty of states companies make money from people being in prison. Do you think those companies might have an interest in making sure we have laws that insure more people go to jail than less? This is a HUGE industry.

3. Police/Law Enforcement/Prison Guards - The largest union in California is the prison guard one. These are other huge groups with lots of money and a very keen interest in making sure drug laws stay in place so we have jobs.

When you see police against relaxing drug laws and saying all sorts of things about how they "know" how bad it would be... well do you really want to listen to a source that is also counting on a salary to enforce those laws?

The short term consequences of a massive change in drug laws would be huge job losses in those sectors. The long term jobs and prosperity that would rise from the new industries would of course off set this but that's long term.

It's very hard for politicians to get something done that is going to hurt in the short term but make things better in the long term. Plenty more example then just the "war on drugs" of this happening.
Click to expand...

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There's too much money being made to change the status quo.
 
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This is worth watching, it's divided up into 6 parts :

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CGlD50mdbs]The War on Drugs with John Stossel 1of6 Introduction and Police Baiting - YouTube[/ame]
 
Make it legal, make it cheap. We need to thin out the overly addictive types to clean up the gene-pool.

Make it easy for them. I prefer they overdose than break into my car because they need another fix.
 
y'all realize that legalizing this stuff increases the pool of the peeps that are beating/robbing/stealing/swerving down the road, right?

WF is pretty pro-legalization & pro-drugs, so I'll take the other side of the equation for argument's sake. First, the disclaimer that I truly don't give a damn what you do to yourself in the privacy of your own home. If you want to drink cat urine from the privacy of your own apartment, that's cool by me. But if cat urine is a powerful hallucinogenic, and then you decide it'd be cool to go drive on the same roads that my sober ass is coming home from the office on, we now have a problem. I'm not a believer in protecting people from their own stupidity, but I do believe in protecting everyone else from the consequences. It's more like fast-food to me, keep putting this crap in your body, but don't expect me to pay for socialist health care, or widen the doorway to my public biz cuz your big ass doesn't fit through it now.

I've been in the legal field a long time, seen lots of (often) non-violent peeps get nailed by drug charges. But I can't think of a single occurence where the person facing drug charges was minding their own biz when they got caught with them. Seems that they were always getting in a fight with the neighbors, stealing a car radio with a joint intheir pocket, throwing punches at a bar, or swerving through a school zone in a haze at 80, when police first contact them and, Surprise, they have drugs on them.

So, are there quiet pot-heads out there minding their own biz and doing whatever they freely want to their own bodies? Sure. But those guys aren't getting arrested or facing drug charges anyways, so I don't think as a general rule, their rights are getting too infringed on anyways.

Fact, the stuff isn't good for you. You can ramble all you want about "its all-natural, it just calms me, not like booze/cigarettes, blah blah blah". Bullshit, rattlesnake venom is natural, so is arsenic, that doesn't make it healthy. I have seen a lot of peeps harmed by other's drug use, through no fault of their own. The WOD has huge failures and problems, but so do most large-scale government operations IMO. Straight legalization under the guise of "people need their freedoms" isn't the answer. The peeps who are doing it "responsibly" aren't the ones getting arrested and serving time anyways for the most part.
 
Vadym said:
I think people should be free to fuck up their bodies any way they want, as long as they don't force it onto others. Legalizing/taxing would only help.
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People is actually free and regularly fuck up their bodies, just by walking any US city and wondering why millions of whales are now walking instead of swimming.
 
mont7071 said:
y'all realize that legalizing this stuff increases the pool of the peeps that are beating/robbing/stealing/swerving down the road, right?

WF is pretty pro-legalization & pro-drugs, so I'll take the other side of the equation for argument's sake. First, the disclaimer that I truly don't give a damn what you do to yourself in the privacy of your own home. If you want to drink cat urine from the privacy of your own apartment, that's cool by me. But if cat urine is a powerful hallucinogenic, and then you decide it'd be cool to go drive on the same roads that my sober ass is coming home from the office on, we now have a problem. I'm not a believer in protecting people from their own stupidity, but I do believe in protecting everyone else from the consequences. It's more like fast-food to me, keep putting this crap in your body, but don't expect me to pay for socialist health care, or widen the doorway to my public biz cuz your big ass doesn't fit through it now.

I've been in the legal field a long time, seen lots of (often) non-violent peeps get nailed by drug charges. But I can't think of a single occurence where the person facing drug charges was minding their own biz when they got caught with them. Seems that they were always getting in a fight with the neighbors, stealing a car radio with a joint intheir pocket, throwing punches at a bar, or swerving through a school zone in a haze at 80, when police first contact them and, Surprise, they have drugs on them.

So, are there quiet pot-heads out there minding their own biz and doing whatever they freely want to their own bodies? Sure. But those guys aren't getting arrested or facing drug charges anyways, so I don't think as a general rule, their rights are getting too infringed on anyways.

Fact, the stuff isn't good for you. You can ramble all you want about "its all-natural, it just calms me, not like booze/cigarettes, blah blah blah". Bullshit, rattlesnake venom is natural, so is arsenic, that doesn't make it healthy. I have seen a lot of peeps harmed by other's drug use, through no fault of their own. The WOD has huge failures and problems, but so do most large-scale government operations IMO. Straight legalization under the guise of "people need their freedoms" isn't the answer. The peeps who are doing it "responsibly" aren't the ones getting arrested and serving time anyways for the most part.
Click to expand...

So taking your logic, why is there no police shoot outs, gang wars, ect over alcohol?

Oh wait there was, in the 20's when it was ILLEGAL

"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before." - John D Rockefeller Jr
 
mont7071 said:
y'all realize that legalizing this stuff increases the pool of the peeps that are beating/robbing/stealing/swerving down the road, right?

WF is pretty pro-legalization & pro-drugs, so I'll take the other side of the equation for argument's sake. First, the disclaimer that I truly don't give a damn what you do to yourself in the privacy of your own home. If you want to drink cat urine from the privacy of your own apartment, that's cool by me. But if cat urine is a powerful hallucinogenic, and then you decide it'd be cool to go drive on the same roads that my sober ass is coming home from the office on, we now have a problem. I'm not a believer in protecting people from their own stupidity, but I do believe in protecting everyone else from the consequences. It's more like fast-food to me, keep putting this crap in your body, but don't expect me to pay for socialist health care, or widen the doorway to my public biz cuz your big ass doesn't fit through it now.

I've been in the legal field a long time, seen lots of (often) non-violent peeps get nailed by drug charges. But I can't think of a single occurence where the person facing drug charges was minding their own biz when they got caught with them. Seems that they were always getting in a fight with the neighbors, stealing a car radio with a joint intheir pocket, throwing punches at a bar, or swerving through a school zone in a haze at 80, when police first contact them and, Surprise, they have drugs on them.

So, are there quiet pot-heads out there minding their own biz and doing whatever they freely want to their own bodies? Sure. But those guys aren't getting arrested or facing drug charges anyways, so I don't think as a general rule, their rights are getting too infringed on anyways.

Fact, the stuff isn't good for you. You can ramble all you want about "its all-natural, it just calms me, not like booze/cigarettes, blah blah blah". Bullshit, rattlesnake venom is natural, so is arsenic, that doesn't make it healthy. I have seen a lot of peeps harmed by other's drug use, through no fault of their own. The WOD has huge failures and problems, but so do most large-scale government operations IMO. Straight legalization under the guise of "people need their freedoms" isn't the answer. The peeps who are doing it "responsibly" aren't the ones getting arrested and serving time anyways for the most part.
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Legalize heroin and there will still be way more impaired drivers and violence due to alcohol, so are you arguing that we should ban alcohol?

Certain foods aren't healthy and neither is glue if you sniff it, so should we ban those also?
 
mont7071 said:
Hmm.. So your argument is that we should legalize all drugs simply to avoid shoot-outs?
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isnt that what you were talking about? Stopping the violence? Your whole post was talking about violence.

We could obviously tax the shit out of it too.
 
OP, write that exact same post to your local congressman or whoever gets shit done for you in the USA.

That is a very level headed, straight forward approach to looking at things and the more times they hear it, the more "real" a possibility it will become.

I have always said... if 100,000 people believe something wrong to be right. It is right. Take cat-burning for example. Human nature is messed.
 
@mont7071 You need to read this:

Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report - TIME

Based on the only country to have gone through with total decriminisation - Portugal - drug use actually fell when they did it.

I agree that drug driving, drug related violence needs to be dealt with as a serious criminal matter, but drug use is a public health problem, not a criminal problem.

Anyone with any sense can see how inconsistent the laws are. If you're going to take a stand that intoxicants should be banned, then alcohol needs banning too.

It makes no logical sense at all to arbitrarily ban one group of molecules, whilst leaving another group with very similar effects untouched.


I agree with what MikeTPowell says - there's too much money and political capital at stake. It has nothing to do with the merits of the argument.
 
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