Posted on 09/03/2002 7:41:56 AM PDT by JediGirl
Well - those bullies! Gosh - I guess they just risk their lives for the fun of it huh? Each time they go in on a raid, they have the chance of being shot dead. Then the police get to pay death benefits to the family.
Guess you would expect the police to turn that over to the maligned good citizen drug dealers wouldn't you?
Just maybe those funds are used to pay salaries, supplies, weapons, bullets, equipment to pay for these men to try and control the illegal sale of drugs in our society. Or, are they supposed to just let the drug dealers have free reign and do what they want?
I'm sure people enjoy the crack houses where the dealin' is done around their homes. Don't expect the police to do anything about it huh?
You might want to ask yourself why you think drug dealers should have free reign to cripple our adults, to abuse any in their way.
I use to be for legalization merely to get the crime and the big bucks out of the drug trade. However, I finally decided I did not want to pay taxes to support all those drug addicted maligners who won't or can't work because they have to do drugs. I don't want to pay for raising their children or for agencies to come in and be sure the children are fed or are not murdered in a drug induced state by their loving mother and father.
I finally decided that since we can't depend on people to be smart enough to know that drugs are slave masters that will rule the lives of those opening the gate from then on, how would it help to make the slave master's product cheaper so more people could use their deep intellect to CHOOSE to willfully live their lives looking for the next fix?
This society needs productive healthy people - not dopeheads draining society.
They should be responsible - yes. But, with an addictive drug, their lives are owned by the need for the drug. They then can no longer hold a job. I wonder why? Could it be because they are a danger to other people depending on them at work? Why does a corporation have to spend millions of dollars a year to have a drug control program to prevent these dope heads from killing other employees or customers?
Wonder where that money comes from? Maybe it is added to the cost of products like gasoline. Maybe we - the working population that manages to control our desire for a life altering addiction - get to pay these extra charges so that bums can have the freedom to suck on some chemical for a high.
Maybe we - the working crowd - get to pay for the nation wide services to pick up the care for children left behind in their parents quest for euphoria. Maybe we even get to kick in and pay for welfare so they can continue their descent of non-responsibility.
The only way I would be agreeable for them to partake of the joy of drugs is if they deposit the funds for their medical care, their children's upkeep and education into a fund for future use SHOULD they be one of the very few that got addicted to something so tame as a chemical constructed by unregulated people in their kitchens for sale to those wanting future horror in their lives.
I cannot believe the sheer stupidity of their quest for such a chemical. The only possible reason for this quest is that they have already been fed a starter addictive dose through some tame form of entertainment. Otherwise, they would not touch that stuff ever. Nobody could even pay me to take a substance that is concocted in someone's dirty garage by dirty hands, with bug ridden ingredients.
Yet - these same people see nothing wrong with suing a drug company for a reaction to a FDA approved medication put together under the highest controls.
OK, what about people that actually do work for a living, raise a family, pay taxes, etc. and go home after work and smoke a little herb. You think they're a 'drain on society'? Sorry, I have to disagree.
I do agree with you that crack, coke, heroin, etc. are very dangerous, and they should be outlawed, but marijuana? Come on! If marijuana were so dangerous and addictive that it should be illegal, the same should go for alcohol and cigarettes, which, IMHO, are far more dangerous than marijuana.
In the top paragraph, I described myself, by the way.
In your following words:
How about a list of all that have been killed by bad drugs on the street? How about a list of all the children abused by parents who enjoy the freedom of spending food money on drugs? How about a list of rehab charges submitted to insurance companies for payment?Substitute alcohol or tobacco for the word drugs and you have similar sentiments, similar problems and similar issues.Drugs are destructive to society. To ignore this fact and set you and your family up for the horrors of drug addiction is idiotic. Any one with any sense would stay as far away from drugs and the gateway to the drug culture as they could. It is interesting to note that once they have partaken of drugs - the realization of all the danger subsides and they walk in sprouting that drugs won't hurt me.
Someone would have to pay me big bucks to take any of that junk. Life is hard enough without that downtime.
Are we to outlaw those too? Some folks are pushing for it for sure. We tried one of them once, and it didn't work. Too many people were turned into criminals. It's happening again. (And let me add here that I also believe that those substances of alcohol and tobacco are bad and should be avoided at almost all costs too ... bit not at the cost of all of our liberties and constitutional rights). Are we to create laws that allow for abject constitutional violation in order to uphold the outlawing of those substances? You can't legislate or "buy" moral security anymore than you can phyiscal security. when you try, you tend to lose both.
To me the issue is not whether or not one should or should not partake of these substances. Clearly, one should not. But can we force the issue and say that one cannot. I believe that what an adult does in the privacy of thier own abode, that does not have an immediate harmful impact on another, should be left alone. Even if it is sinful. The "does not immediately harm another" is the key. As soon as those individuals, as a result of their addiction or stupor, go out and do something to hurt another, lower the boom on them for that specifc crime. And lower it hard.
Let the states pass their own laws accordingly (ie. don't go after consumption and regulate dissimination just like was done with alcohol), and then the Feds only role is the regulation of the interstate trade.
Hopefully then, we can keep the truly violent in jail, get the unconstitutinal laws for search and seizure, no-knock warrants, warrantless searches, assett forfeiture, annonymous witnesses and informants off the books and use our Christian principles of persuasion and teaching to help educate others away from such a lifestyle.
I know this does not sound like a good solution in the current environment, but it would not have sounded good during the prohibition days either ... but it is essentially what we ultimately came to. And it is far better IMHO, than the increasingly rapid erosion of our rights in a mistaken (and I believe in many ways contrived) attempt to "secure" us all by increasingly intrusive laws that violate us all.
I do not believe you can enforce morality of such choices that do not infringe on the rights of, or harm, others and still call it moral. Punish those who commit crimes of infringement and harm to others. In a free society as envisioned by the founders, people had to be free to make their own choices as long as they did not harm others. Vices are like that ... as much as I believe them to be morally and even individually repugnant ... we either allow people to choose, knowing that there are some who will not change ... or we create a police state trying to enforce every jot and tittle of what the majority feels is "right" at any particualr moment. Ultimately that gives the power to create a tyranny by democracy which ultimatlely leads to true tyranny and totalitariansm IMHO.
This does not mean we call it right. It isn't. It just means we try and persuade and teach people of the wrong so they can make their own choices about their own personal choices. In so doing, we should plainly call it what it is ... a vice and wrong and then try and get people to recognize this and choose the correct path. Then we lock up the ones who can't handle their choices and go out and commit crimes as a result ... and we lock them up for a long time (Note: This should also be applied to drunken drivers and the like).
Just my two cents.
So you agree with a system that allows people who are never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime to have property seized from them and redistributed to police forces, because the police have a hard, dangerous job? Of course they have a difficult job. Do you also think they should be able to steal evidence? After all, look at everything their poor wives go through - don't they deserve a shiny new diamond ring taken from a murder victim's hand?
You apparently believe that everyone who has ever been accused of a crime is in fact guilty of said crime. That deep belief in the Almighty Good of The State is apparent in the rest of your post, wherein you freely acknowledge that your support of the WOsD is based on your feeling that the government's job is to protext people from themselves.
If the JBT's are breaking into a house, wearing black suits and wearing black hoods, they deserve to get their asses shot! Most no knock raids aren't commited because of fear of the occupant, but because the cops want to play Rambo and show how tough they are so they can justify their existance.
My Daddy always told me "Boy, only a thief needs a mask." And that's what most LEO's are today, except it's legal theivery. Who are you going to call when the police are robbing you?
But I know many smokers who are good men and women, better than me in some other areas far more important (at least IMHO) than the vice they have given into. A vice that is very liable ultimately to kill them.
In such instances, I do not castigate ... but I do try and directly witness to them and influence them through persuasion and long suffering away from it, while extolling their other very good traits.
... they also know that while in my house they cannot engage in their habit and they respect that.
Yes.
You might want to ask yourself why you think drug dealers should have free reign to cripple our adults, to abuse any in their way.
I'm not yours.
This society needs productive healthy people - not dopeheads draining society.
Reading that makes me want to start a serious hard drug habit so that I can do my part to destroy this pagan "Society" arch-demon that communists are always invoking.
It's not being left up to the states! If a state passes a law permitting the medical dispaensing of any scheduled drug, as several have, the federosaurus will pull any prescribing doctor's license to practice.
Bingo, you hit the nail on the head with the above italicized comment.
Many drugs are not addictive. Many.
Many abused drugs are legally prescribed. Many.
Your perception of drug abusers being incapable of holding jobs is ludicrous and naive. The Betty Ford clinic wasn't established for welfare recipients. A great many drug abusers are extremely high functioning individuals who knock down major bucks and hold positions of responsibility in the community. Face it, these are the guys who can afford coke and the 'best' drugs.
If it weren't for the increased costs of law enforcement, most street drugs would be much more affordable and wouldn't require theft to support a drug habit.
Alcohol prohibition spawned organized crime. Drug prohibition made it a career path.
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