Drug Czar on Anti-Marijuana Crusade

The Week Online ^ | September 20, 2002 | Phil Smith

[robertpaulsen]

That jibes with my figures (under "Totals and Costs"), although mine are from 1998. Also, this figure is for both prisons and jails.

But with 646,000 arrests, this figure means that just a little over 2% of arrestees will serve time. This is a problem? Also, I would guess that those who do serve time in jail or prison (for simple possesson) either had multiple arrests for possession, or were carrying a whole bunch of pot. In that case, they could be considered to be arrested for stupidity.

[robertpaulsen]

You're giving me a headache with all the Jefferson quotes.

For just a second, set aside the drug issue. What would Thomas Jefferson say about our society and our government if he were alive today? Don't you think that the society/government to which he was referring doesn't exist today?

The world isn't flat, so to take quotes from the Flat Earth Society would be pointless. Ditto Jefferson.

If our society and our government today were as Jefferson described, I would understand your argument. But I'll have to go with Ann Coulter (ex-Libertarian) on this issue and work to change our society to be more like Jefferson's ideals before addressing the drug issue.

[northislander]

What sentence do you think the court should impose for posession of an hand grenade? Something on that order...

[Zon]

I asked you two question and your response/answer is that you ask a question. That's widely considered as bad form, if not intent to be evasive. I already know the answer to the questions when I ask them of myself. I want to know what your answers are.

If alcohol was outlawed, what sentence do you think the court should hand down to a person caught with a case of whiskey?

What about a person caught with an ounce of marijuana; what sentence do you think they should get?

[northislander]

About the same as they would get for possession of an hand grenade (same for both)...get it?

[headsonpikes]

I never thought I would see a poster who made Roscoe and Dane seem reasonable by comparison!(upon reflection, that's a tad harsh)

Surely, you are one of those moderns of whom it is said, "They think in slogans and speak in bullets."

Your 20th Century-style utopian socialist dreams will die aborning; that we know for sure.

The Soviets, the Nazizs, the Maoists, the Fascists...all came to grief. Your feeble dreams will come to nothing, also.

There will be trials, if you're lucky! ;^)

[Station 51]

The Drug war is necessary now because the Clinton Administration failed to prosecute the War from 1993-2001.

[tdadams]

Driver -> gas station -> oil firms -> Saudi Arabia -> Saudi Royal Family -> Osama bin Laden.

Here's an even better one for you:

U.S. Taxpayer > IRS > U.S. Treasury > Foreign Aid Bill > $500 million to the Palestinian Authority > Al Qaeda.

Now, Mr. Walters, tell me again where terrorists get their money?

[Virginia-American]

What sentence do you think the court should impose for posession of an hand grenade?

Sentence? If anything, the gov't should subsidize hand grenade purchases. It's a protected second amendment 'arm'. (US v Miller: the 2A applies to weapons used by the infantry)

[WOSG]

SPIRITUAL BENEFITS: That which enlivens is understood as the SPIRIT. In these times of secular values, when the life force is not recognized as being an expression of the holy, when in fact, the notion of a plane of existence beyond the material is not acknowledged, the search for meaning nevertheless perseveres.

New Age anti-religious claptrap that can only be believed by someone under the influence of drugs!

Every time is think the antiWOD folks might have a point, I read some of this obvious nonsense and realize how much BRAIN DAMAGE using this stuff must cause! LOL!

[WOSG]

That the "medical marijuana" ploy is being used by people who want to legalize marijuana, cynically.

This is certainly true. If it was really a medical issue, they'd take it up with the FDA, not states, and propose allowing it via prescriptions only.

BTW, I am all FOR considering how we might end the FDA stranglehold on Medical Drugs and their uses, especially for "orphan drugs". There are examples of life-saving drugs "on the shelf" unapproved, with a far more urgent need than cannabis for giving people the freedom to use them.

[WOSG]

Just for the purposes of disclosure, "Dane" is an admitted ex-druggie.So until he turns himself in for the crimes he commited and is jailed or shot (as he would have others who made the same life choices he made), pay no attention to him whatsoever. Except to slap him in the head as you walk by.

This is an Ad Hominem attack. I've seen folks who never tried drugs attacked for anti-drug views and attitudes because they dont "know" what it's really like. I guess my own non-existent to miniscule experience puts me out of bounds too, if I told you no sane person should touch the stuff.

So who exactly will you listen to? That leaves a world-view impervious to dissent. As church lady might say , how conveeeenient, hmmm.

[Roscoe]

This is an Ad Hominem attack. I've seen folks who never tried drugs attacked for anti-drug views and attitudes because they dont "know" what it's really like.

That's why they always demand to be told. They're as happy to employ the one ad hominem attack as the other.

[WOSG]

"Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." -- Edmund Burke

This is a great quote, a keeper. (irrespective of WOD positions, btw, this is what National Review believes in. Ultimately we want a parnternship that is a Lockean one, a contract among free citizens to great a Free and Civil Society. That's the ideal, anyway.) Thanks.

[WOSG]

Dude. No way. I was drinking 2-3 20 oz. bottles of diet coke a day up until Friday because on Thursday I was so jittery from the caffeine i could hardly sit still. The next day i didn't drink any. I had the most awful headache that not even Tylenol or asprin could relieve. I was lethargic. Caffeine is absolutely an intoxicant.

Then lay off it! Jeez, 60oz, forget about your brain effects, you're going to be killing your bladder at that rate!

Withdrawal is one thing but as for "intoxicant" term, I've yet to here of people getting charged for "driving under influence of caffeine". You think people should be? LOL.