War on Drugs
 

The Cato Institute says end the war on drugs.

just curious, what is the benefit to this "war on drugs"? specifically, why is marijuana a "schedule 1" drug? What is the good we gain from classifying it that way? The costs are easier to see, and they are **extensive**. I'd like to know what we're getting for our money, please.

Fear, loathing, wasted police resources, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a huge tax-free industry. And maybe slightly fewer stoners kicking back staring at the TV.

Now we just have a few more completely straight people staring back at the TV.

Won't you think of the slackers?

I will now admit to having changed my mind on this topic.

Years ago, I was 100% in favor of banning marijuana. Now, after extensive research (no product testing though), I have officially changed my mind.

I cannot support the squandering of increasingly scarce resources on this largely victimless crime. Yes, I know many addicts steal to support their habits and that this is unlikely to change if we just legalized drugs. The prices probably won't go down with government control. That hasn't happened with alcohol or tobacco and it won't happen with drugs either. Even pot. Sin taxes are just too easy a target and few truly complain other than those directly affected.

Product quality is likely to go up, resulting in far fewer deaths from the "cutting" of drugs with impurities ranging from benign to poisonous to outright deadly. Further, lives might be saved by providing an accurate dosage versus the estimating that currently goes on, resulting in far too many emergency room admissions from overdosing.

I am now going to conditionally support legalizing drugs. The only condition is that users and addicts be held to behavioral standards like everyone else. If they rob, steal or kill in furtherance of their habits, they get tossed in the slammer. If they get caught driving under the influence, they are treated just like any other DUI.

Funds currently wasted on interdiction should be diverted to education (drugs are still bad, mmmmkay?) and treatment programs for addicts who want to get clean.

Fair enough?

To keep Elliot Ness employed after the end of Prohibition.

The end of Prohibition ended the gang wars of the Roaring Twenties, and forced the mobsters to find new sources of illicit income. Illegal drugs, gambling and prostitution provided the new sources. We keep these things illegal because we have a patina of morality involved. Legalize it, tax it, regulate it, and we'll end 90% of the violence.

While some of these guys will be forced into government, I still support decriminalization. Look at the disruptions our policy causes our neighbors and trading partners Mexico and Canada. It is insane.

If it weren't for the war on drugs, 98% of adults would be strung out on heroin. They would have started with an innocent joint in their teens, and gatewayed themselves to full blown addiction to crack or heroin, or both.

The other 2% would play soccer. (snicker)

They'd pass out pot brownies in elementary school to keep kids calm. These kids would also gateway up and out of the atmosphere.

You think the zombie apocalypse will be bad? Wait until everyone smokes a hooter!

Oh, and there'd be no good books or movies or music. ;)

Thank GAWD for the War on Drugs. We Merkins have become good at fighting unwinnnable wars.

('ere...puff puff pass. You're fucking up the rotation.) :lol:

This is one of my favorites:

Oh crap I just snorted way out loud!

Could that be any funnier? I don't know, ask me about 7 O'Clock tonight...cause I'm up front all afternoon and payment is due and it's gonna be crazy and I'll really be able to use some....

Oh. :bolt:

George Carlin said that the original gateway substance is mother's milk.

It would only work if Governments worked together though.

The Netherlands blazed a trail, no-one followed. Now laws in Amsterdam are getting stricter and stricter and coffee shops are closing down.
Even the liberal denizens of the 'Dam got tired with drug tourism.

The worst offenders? Brits and Yanks.

I just read an article about that. Very interesting. Looks like over the long term the majority of people buying it were taking it across the border. Apparently they are going to issue some special card to residents only to continue to buy it. No card no sale. But it seems to me like that is going to open up the whole underground black market with inflated prices all over again. They have come full circle.

Anyone can see this will happen.
Licensed traders will sell it legally to Dutch citizens.
A small % of those will on-sell it to foreign tourists at a mark up, with all the Tarantino-type bullshit of scams and rip-offs and paybacks that will go with this.

Sigh. Stupid world.

Oh, and what BrianR said.

And the solution is?

What BrianR said.

There will still be stoners and slackers and some people will screw themselves up in the pursuit of happiness. The world will not be perfect. It will be less bad than now.

Eventually there will be 'shock and awe'. Then we all will insist this is good, massacre another 5000 American soldiers and waste another $trillion on the crusade. Then those defined by the initials WE will declare this was good.


War! ... What is it good for? Absolutely nothing?

Manipulating the masses by inventing bogeymen.

It's cuts the unemployment rate by taking all those people out of the labor pool, plus hiring all those prison guards. :rolleyes:

True, though personal, life experience of my own and my sister:

I am a drunk. I have used a lot of community resources related to my drinking.

My sister is a bona fide stoner from waaaaay back.

She has not once used a community resource r/t her pot smoking.

In my experience, pot is so much less damaging in an obvious way to drinking as far as communities go...but there are hidden costs to all drug use. Alcohol at least appears to be much more costly than dope in many, many ways.

I should do a study...

My friend's dad is a state trooper. He told his kids he'd rather see them smoking pot than drinking.

My friend was stunned to hear this from his dad the state trooper and asked him why?

His dad said "In 25 years on the force I've never once had to answer a domestic violence call where the people were smoking pot."

Richard Branson's discussion of the decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal (short version: overhelming success).
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branso...e-war-on-drugs

Portugal has like 10 million people compared to the US which has well over 300 million.
jus sayin

Well, you'll just get 30 times the benefit then, won't you? :D

Mind you, you'll need 30 times the dope.

Oh, well, I'm safe then.

If this war on drugs keeps up, cocaine will soon be free. It's cheaper now than before the war on drugs began.

Utah knows how to fight the good fight.
It appears they're not only being dicks, they're doing it illegally.

I figured your update was going to be about the end of the war on drugs. Guess not.

good lord. that is completely fubar.
the premise for the search was presumably to seize the prescription drugs left over from the recently deceased. hm. maybe there's a legitimate line of thought there. but the implementation in this case is absolutely beyond the pale. I hope the transgressors, apparently the police and the city manager are prosecuted, found guilty, and receive the harshest possible punishment. What a wasteful misuse of our public resources.

Uncledigr X died a few months back from cancer. A week after he came home to die, the cops showed up. They wanted to "check on his medications". They came once a week til he died, and took all his meds after he died.

Goddamn cops that treat an innocent, dying man like a fucking criminal. Goddamn 'em.

And fuck cancer. And fuck the Gallatin PD.

sorry about your uncle, digr.

did the cops ask hey is he dead yet? I mean, wtf? "Can we come in and check?" how the hell does that work? And when the drugs were confiscated as you say, did they have a warrant?

I got the info just a bit ago, secondhand...Popdigr doesn't remember if paper was involved or not.

ETA: This was the fellow who was buried with his cell phone in his hand.

If "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" doesn't include the right to alter your own mind, then what the bloody hell does it cover?

That is efffing insane, gravdigr! What? Has Kentucky turned into a police state since the last time I visited? Maybe those cops just wanted a stash of their own. :eyebrow:

That particular episode went down just across the state line in Tennessee.

Oh, well - THEM! You had me worried for a minute! :D

What immediately comes to my own criminal-for-drugs mind?

somebody on that "force" wanted those meds for themselves. Or at least pinch as many as they could. This doesn't sound legal at all.

If I am lucky enough to die at home in my own bed with a bottle of whatever painkilling RX the police are so hot to get, I'm going to wait till they come to check my meds and then stuff them ALL in my mouth and swallow them. Then I'll shit the bed just to make life hard on them.

And don't think I can't do it. Motherfkkers.

They'll probably move Heaven and Earth to save your life, just so they can prosecute you.

And then they'll pass the costs on to your survivors, of course.