Recreational Drug Use Legalization

[Undertoad]

The costs of police, courts, jails, prisons is higher than the costs of health care.

Putting people in jail is worse for them than the drugs we seek to protect them from.

[TheMercenary]

I don't consider prison or jail a place to protect people. It is punishment for breaking the law as it is written. Lord knows you aren't going to rehab hanging out with other loser criminals for a few years end on end.

Health care costs are only one of many elements where the cost of drug use is counted.

[regular.joe]

Well, legalize any substance that puts the person into the state of psychosis. Nice, and then ask them to make some decisions about life like, don't drive or do anything stupid or irrational that just might put some one else's life in danger.

I don't see the logic, or adult decision making about the society I live in there at all.

No they should not be legalized. Period.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

it's not legal because it's too hard to regulate production and tax it. moneymoneymoneymoney

Originally Posted by Dingleschmutz

Ding ding ding... It's kinda hard to tax someone who picks the seeds out of what they're smoking and throws them in a planter somewhere... No, beer is much easier to tax.

I don't believe it for a second. Nobody grows their own tobacco. It's much easier to buy a carton of cigarettes than to grow your own, dry the leaves and roll them. Probably cheaper too, even with the taxes on tobacco.

You legalize pot, and it will be dirt cheap. The only cost will be the taxes. Nobody will grow their own. Too much trouble.

[lumberjim]

glatt,

have you ever seen a tobacco plant? you smoke the leaves. you'd need a half acre under constant rotation to support one habit.

you can grow 6 plants in buckets in your basement and keep yourself high and sell some to your buddies, too.

[binky]

Okay field trip to LJ's basement

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Quality variations are never as much a problem with legal drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies.

It doesn't matter how harmful the effects are. People need to be invested in their own choices. We can put up a guardrail but we simply can't hand-hold every single person's brain through their experience with altering their consciousness. Life is full of dangers and in some ways we are thankful for that, because if it weren't we would become complacent and fat and stupid.

I'm completely cool with that reasoning as I think people should take responsibility for their own choices but what happens when the more tender hearted among us feel that with let these poor people down? Create a new program to support them? Afterall, if we hadn't legalized it and basically forced the chemicals into their bodies they would certainly have continued upon their cherubic lives.

[Cicero]

Sometimes I'm more worried about the people that are on prescribed medication.

[Undertoad]

All this talk of "how'r we gonna pay for this..." is entirely irrelevant because the people are doing the drugs anyway, today, and getting paid for as it is, today.

Nowhere legalization has been tried, has there been a spike in new addicts.

[Cloud]

you can get paid for doing drugs?

[Griff]

Something we almost never talk about in this is how our drug laws create an easy source of funds for terrorist groups and help destabilize countries like Colombia and Afghanistan.

Like a lot of issues there are decent arguments for and against decriminalization. I happen to think the best arguments are for, but even if you think that it's fifty/fifty choosing liberty over state violence should make it an easy choice. I suspect there are a lot of conservatives out there who are not comfortable with this much government action and the casual application of force against citizens. We really need to think about this stuff in nanny state terms. Do we trust people or not?

I'm glad that folks are mostly on board with keeping pot heads out of prison. If you took the pot out of international drug smuggling, you would at least reduce the total number of people engaged in these violence creating activities. Poorly conceived drug laws are just another way that we reduce respect for the rule of law and in governing authority generally.

[richlevy]

What's coming to the forefront now is the fact that our drug laws have turned the US into a prison society. Incarcerating non-violent drug users is insanely expensive. The only two reasons to incarcerate a person are to protect the person or society. Prison is not safe, and most of these individuals are not a threat to society.

If any administration created 2.3 million government jobs, the average taxpayer would be outraged. Each prisoner is the equivalent of a $30,000-per-year bureaucrat. If the government hired one file clerk for every 100 citizens, we would be complaining about waste in government. For some reason, no one has considered the crushing expense and human waste.

1 in 100 adults now in prison

2,319,258 Americans behind bars in 2008, most of any nation

[Aliantha]

When marijuana is decriminalized and becomes regulated ie. registered growers, wholesalers and retailers, there will still be bootleg operators just as people make their own booze in home stils. I don't think arguing that people will be able to grown their own is a good enough argument to be against it on it's own.

LSD is not a soft drug. Nor are shrooms. Have you ever seen some of the crazy shit people can do on that stuff PH? Anyway, I don't think any of the 'created' drugs should be freely available personally.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by richlevy

If any administration created 2.3 million government jobs, the average taxpayer would be outraged. Each prisoner is the equivalent of a $30,000-per-year bureaucrat. If the government hired one file clerk for every 100 citizens, we would be complaining about waste in government. For some reason, no one has considered the crushing expense and human waste.

Absolutely brilliant.

[monster]

From what I see, I think pot sgould be legalised and contolled inthe same vein as tobaco and booze.

regarding penalties for the rest? instead of prison, why not an automatic ticket to the frontline. That would certainly bloody well deter me!