Posted on 07/06/2012 4:52:57 PM PDT by BfloGuy
From the New York Times article, "Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War the War on Peaceful Americans Who Voluntary Choose to Use Intoxicants Not Currently Approved of By U.S. Politicians and Government Officials":
"When policy makers in Washington worry about Mexico these days, they think in terms of a handful of numbers: Mexico’s 19,500 hectares devoted to poppy cultivation for heroin; its 17,500 hectares growing cannabis; the 95 percent of American cocaine imports brought by Mexican cartels through Mexico and Central America.
They are thinking about the wrong numbers. If there is one number that embodies the seemingly intractable challenge imposed by the illegal drug trade on the relationship between the United States and Mexico, it is $177.26. That is the retail price, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data, of one gram of pure cocaine from your typical local pusher. That is 74 percent cheaper than it was 30 years ago.
Prices match supply with demand. If the supply of an illicit drug were to fall, say because the Drug Enforcement Administration stopped it from reaching the nation’s shores, we should expect its price to go up.
That is not what happened with cocaine. Despite billions spent on measures from spraying coca fields high in the Andes to jailing local dealers in Miami or Washington, a gram of cocaine cost about 16 percent less last year than it did in 2001. The drop is similar for heroin and methamphetamine.
These numbers contain pretty much all you need to evaluate the Mexican and American governments’ “war” to eradicate illegal drugs from the streets of the United States. They would do well to heed its message. What it says is that the struggle on which they have spent billions of dollars and lost tens of thousands of lives over the last four decades has failed.
Most important, conceived to eradicate the illegal drug market, the war on drugs cannot be won. Once they understand this, the Mexican and American governments may consider refocusing their strategies to take aim at what really matters: the health and security of their citizens, communities and nations."
“I referred to “ending welfare” (see above) and you then addressed “personal responsibility for one’s legalized drug use” which you explained as “keeping it simple for” me. Now you’ve reversed yourself. Don’t drink and post. “
No...it’s a complex expression.
“personal responsibility” is a more complex concept than “ending welfare”.
“Personal responsibility” includes ending welfare for the consequences of ones personal lifestyle choice, but it also includes other things, like being a good citizen and not burdening normal people with, for instance, your whining.
So you no longer hold that "you cannot eliminate a single element of extra-constitutional government intervention - you have to get rid of all of them"?
Read it again. It might seem complicated to you, but it’s actually in complete congruence with your own stated position on the Constitution.
Wrong as usual - my stated position is this:
"I’d never hold one Constitutional limit hostage to another as you advocate. [...] I want all Constitutional limits obeyed - unlike you."
I was just asking you a question, it wasn’t a personal attack.
"a sign of brain damage to the reasoning center of the brain." is not a question.
You are right.
So there's your personal attack. Glad you finally own up to it.
No...it’s a complex expression.
“personal responsibility” is a more complex concept than “ending welfare”.
So when you said that you were referring to this more complex concept in order to “keep it simple," you were babbling like a cretin.
“Personal responsibility” includes ending welfare for the consequences of ones personal lifestyle choice, but it also includes other things, like being a good citizen and not burdening normal people with, for instance, your whining.
I'll cease to burden you with my posts when you get on board with removing the feds from intrastate drug policy, without holding that Constitutional limit hostage to other limits as you've been doing.
I totally agree with you.
Being opposed to Cocaine Slurpees in Seven-Eleven makes me a control freak leftist?
Yeah I guess you’re right. It is a disturbing vision. The single-minded destruction of a peaceful neighborhood by the sale of Cocaine Slurpees at Seven-Eleven.
Disturbing images tend to evoke emotional resposes, and are often used to coerce people into making knee-jerk decisions without consideration of unintended consequences. It stops working as soon as you understand you’re being manipulated.
Once again we agree. Drugs tend to evoke emotional responses, and are often used to coerce people into making knee-jerk decisions without consideration of unintended consequences. Drugs stop working as soon as you stop selling them en masse to teenagers at Seven Eleven.
This whole thread reminded me of the good old days when we debated the War on Drugs with our buddy Roscoe.
Haven’t seen Roscoe/Mojave for awhile now. Can’t say I miss him, or his buddy Robert Paulsen. There’s something about being a career federal bureaucrat that messes with your head.
Robert Paulsen was a total classic. Something there is about drugs that turns a certain class of people into hand wringing little old ladies.
RP was a control freak. He loved the war on guns as much as he did the war on drugs.
Yes, that movie has been particularly popular among drunk 20-year olds. Obama’s kind of voter.
They thought they were going to warn people about the dangers of marijuana, and they ended up turning it into a big joke. They decided they didn’t need to be objective. They were too smart, and everyone else was too stupid for that.
Most folks beleive keeping drugs illegal doesn’t stop anybody from getting them, but also believe that far more people would use them if legalized.
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They believe that nonsense because the prohibitionists tell them that.
My father was a senior in high school when alcohol prohibition ended. He and his friends were disappointed on December 5, 1933 when they could no longer buy beer or booze.
He said prior to repeal, he and his friends could buy all the alcohol they could afford, any time they wanted, because the bootleggers were going to be arrested if caught selling to them or an adult, so they sold to anyone with the money. Once it was legal no one wanted to risk his business selling to kids.
He and his friends had less money because the depression was in full bloom and the price of alcohol went up after repeal. On the rare occasion they could get some the price limited how much they could buy.
He and his friends felt like they got shafted by repeal. But so did many adults who lacked the income to pay the higher prices.
Smart? College kids are the smartest people in the world. They are cool.
Obama, the one-time cocaine user, is cool. Old fogey McCain is not. Easy Rider was cool. Reefer Madness was not cool. Hot ashes will not hurt the throat and lungs of the cool. Addiction will never happen to the cool.
The young and the cool will live forever.
The nice thing about a republic is that it doesn't require you to have "one size fits all" solutions to problems.
Looking around my community, I see people more given to thoughtful consideration of all the evidence followed by quiet deliberate action than to knee-jerk decisions and desperate histrionics. As a consequence, they seem to need considerably less government than you require.
Now having a republic means that you can have yours without inflicting it on the rest of us. Can you live with that, or are you going to be one we're going to have to fight in order to keep it?
Fight? I will fight when your libertarian friends try to sell my kids a Cocaine Slurpee. I will fight needle parks in my neighborhood. I will fight the gangs that will inevitably thrive in the quasi-legal shadows of legal drugs (see Netherlands).
I will fight any libertarian who sticks a needle in my child’s arm
Yes, I will fight. I will not live with that.
I agree with you. I really don’t care what old folks do to themselves, but it is imperative that kids be protected from this stuff. People who furnish kids with drugs (or alcohol for that matter) should be locked up for a long time.
It’s hard enough for kids to be kids these days. They don’t need people poisoning their growing brains.
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