Posted on 03/05/2006 2:49:43 PM PST by freedom44
Some drug makers have a better lobby.
That, and the fact that attempts were made in the 1920s to ban alcohol, and failed. Prohibition.
Cocaine and heroine on the same level as alcohol and tobacco?
Tell you what, I'll drink three beers a night for the next month. We'll let the author do three lines of coke per night, and let's see who's in better shape.
Libertarians do themselves in with the pure ridiculousness of their arguments. So pure to an ideology that they let the obvious get in the way. There are some good arguments made in here, and I think, particularly with the nutritional supplement industry and the advertising of pharmaceutical drugs, that our politicians are sticking their noses where they don't belong.
That said, cocaine and heroine have no reason to be available for consumption.
Prohibition actually cut down on the consumption of alcohol. Problem is that it just created whole criminal enterprises for some dodgy, risk-taking entrepreneurs.
"I do not understand why certain drugs are illegal in America, and why other drugs that are just as dangerous and addictive are legally and socially accepted."
Huh?
Maybe your brain has been damaged by some "harmless drug".
For starters, the American people don't want substances like heroin, cocaine and marijuana made legal. And if anyone thinks alcohol is more addictive then heroin and cocaine and marijuana, I've got a bridge to sell them in Brooklyn.
"Tell you what, I'll drink three beers a night for the next month. We'll let the author do three lines of coke per night, and let's see who's in better shape." So is that the criterion by which we decide public policy? If you believedoing something will cause someone to be in poorer shape than you are? Ought we then have laws, perhaps designed by you, telling people what they may eat so they don't get fat, or otherwise out of shape? Or maybe you want to require everyone to exercise daily so they will be in the same good physical shape you undoubtedly are. Do let us know.
Plus prohibition made the Kennedy family rich. They didn't get caught and Capone did. The rest is history.
It certainly cut down the number of people who were using it harmlessly. But freedom-loving people shouldn't consider that a useful objective. There were still plenty of problems caused by alcohol consumption during prohibition; a shift from predictably-formulated drinks like beer to more variably-formulated variants of gin may have made these worse.
The fWO(s)D needs to be ended immediately. Along with the DEA and BATF. I bet you we could balance the budget really quick if those things were done.
It's only a matter of time before they repeat the failed prohibition experiment with tobacco.
Same whine, different day, from an unknown publication.
Alcohol kills, too - but take a moment and see the dreadful result of prohibition in the 1920's. Like cocaine nowadays, people could still drink alchohol if they wanted to.
The black market enriches criminals, crooked police, and corrupt politicians.
There are certain vices that people will partake in no matter how illegal it may be - the organised criminals take advantage of this.
America learned from the drive-by shootings and mafia wars of Prohibition, and repealed the 18th Amendment, realizing that it's worth it to have some people choose to overdo legal drugs, in order to take the profit away from the Mafia.
The current corruption makes the 1920's criminals look like a bunch of Girl Scouts at a picnic.
And if you think marijuana is *more* addictive than alcohol, you can keep your bridge and take it back to Oz with you.
Prior to the laws against cocaine, how many people partook of it in pure form, and how many people instead ingested it in things like beverages and such?
Outside of D.W. Griffith's For His Son, which was produced after Coca Cola had already switched to caffeine, how much evidence is there of people's lives being destroyed by cocaine when it was available in a five-cent drink?
Maybe your analogy would be more fair if instead of three beers you downed three fifths of whiskey.
More whining about the "war on drugs" from the "medicinal Marijuana" pothead crowd. They've been spewing this EXACT same rant for 40 years. Make drugs legal. Tax the drugs and then use the tax dollars to pay the increased medical costs caused by the increase in drug usage. Makes sense to me. Doctors instead of lawyers would be buying the BMWs, Ferraris and Swiss chalets.
Even at the height of Prohibition, the government would never have *dared* enact today's asset forfeiture laws.
That's progress for ya.
Alcohol prohibition was designed to fail. It had loopholes like legal possession, and medical prescriptions.
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