We would free up space, yes. A lot of space.
Do you know the percentage of prison inmates who are there on drug charges?
Posted on 03/05/2006 2:49:43 PM PST by freedom44
Cocaine, marijuana, heroin and LSD - all of these drugs are illegal to possess, produce or traffic in the United States of America. Yet, tobacco, alcohol and various other over the counter drugs are legal in the United States. Why, I ask?
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. This country currently spends tens of billions of dollars each year trying to prevent drugs from entering the country. At the same time, billions of dollars are spent on advertisements promoting the use of other controlled substances.
Does anybody else see a flaw in the current system? Who are the people who decide what is a "good" drug and what is a "bad" drug? I believe the war on drugs has failed and that we should decriminalize all drugs. I do not understand why adults, in the privacy of their own homes, cannot put whatever substance they want into their bodies.
There are many positive effects that would come about if we legalized the possession and use of narcotics and various other illegal drugs.
First off, the prison populations would decrease greatly. Prisons are currently overcrowded because of the high percentage of inmates that are incarcerated on drug-related offenses. Many of these drug law offenders are in prison because of nonviolent possession offenses. Are these offenders that dangerous to society?
Besides having less people currently in prison, there are many other economic rewards for the legalization of drugs. The federal government would be able to tax and regulate the sale of legalized drugs, increasing tax revenues.
In addition, this would allow police departments around the country to be able to focus on malicious crimes instead of drug-related offenses. This would produce more efficient policing departments, and could perhaps prevent more non-drug related crime. Although the economic advantages of legalizing drugs are important, the social advantages are even greater.
The legalization of drugs would make drug use a health problem instead of a criminal problem. Drug users would be able to freely seek help and rehabilitation, without fearing legal implications.Rehabilitation, instead of imprisonment, would not only help current drug users with their actual drug habit, but also wash some of the stigmate away from drug use. No longer would a drug user be forced to hide his habit from his friends and family. Drug users could use their social networks to help them quit their habits, instead of hiding the problem for fear of rejection.
The poor neighborhoods of the city would also be radically changed if all drugs were legalized. A serious problem with most poor inner-city neighborhoods is drug-related crime and street gangs. Most street gangs are based on the trafficking of illegal drugs. With the legalization of drugs, many street gangs would cease to exist. Without the street gangs and drug dealers littering the neighborhood, the inner-city areas would be a radically different place.
Not only has the illegal-drug trade destroyed inner city areas around the United States, entire countries have been ruined because of it. The United States is by far the biggest market in the illegal-drug trade, and for our market to be supplied, there are various producer countries around the globe.
For example, Columbia's entire economy is based on the drug trade with the United States. Because of this, Columbia has one of the lowest Gross Domestic Products in the world. Columbia is also controlled by drug cartels that we have indirectly created because of the drug laws in the United States.
All of the reasons above are examples of the damage that the criminalization of drugs creates. The problems of our drug laws far outweigh the advantages the criminalization of drugs creates.
You might as well legalize murder....
ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS
TOBACCO ........................ 400,000
ALCOHOL ........................ 100,000
ASPIRIN ........................ 500
MARIJUANA ...................... 0
Source: United States government...
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics
Marijuana does not cause serious health problems like those caused by tobacco or alcohol (e.g., strong addiction, cancer, heart problems, birth defects, emphysema, liver damage, etc.). Death from a marijuana overdose is impossible. In all of world history, there has never been a single human death attributed to a health problem caused by marijuana.
No deaths from marijuana.
Which is worse? We know, don't we?
CheyennePress:
"I might be able to see the legalization of marijuana. I'd vigorously oppose cocaine and LSD."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The author appears to be making an "all or nothing" argument. Which, if you think about it, is much more consistent than yours.
47 robertpaulsen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You act as if absolute consistency were somehow a greater virtue than common sense and applied science, which is, of course, nonsense.
52 CheyennePress
Actually, I need to apologize to you. Your statement does not imply that you value or the other.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No need to apologize to paulsen about consistancy. -- He's so consistant about prohibitions that he backs CA's 'right' to prohibit guns.
The writer is a college student who has yet to face the real world.
If the drug is so dangerous as you describe, I would expect that comparatively few would before it became obvious to everybody that such actions were suicidal. How popular would a "weight-loss" pill become if almost nobody used it successfully without very quickly ending up dead?
Not suggesting that it should be legal, mind, but I would think the dangers of such a drug aren't where you're suggesting they are. Were such a drug legal, I would think the danger to society would come not from people who accidentally killed themselves with it, but rather from murderers who decided to "suicide" overweight victims.
I agree with you. The factual truth is the best way to educate our kids about the evils of illicit drugs. That includes the harmful effects of alcohol too. Maybe by the time they become teenagers they'll have enough commonsense to just say no. But removing law enforcement from the overall equation, is a prescription for failure.
One of the problems with society is that there is often a perception that if somehting is legal it is thus acceptable. To argue that making something legal would make it acceptable helps to further this perception.
Society needs to return to the days when many things that were not illegal were nonetheless sufficiently unacceptable that people who did them would be ostracized. To be sure, sometimes such social pressures were sometimes imployed inappropriately (e.g. to people who would deign to serve blacks) or unjustly (against people who didn't actually act as accused) but the distinction between what was legal and what was acceptable was nonetheless a good and important one.
At this point all I can say is, put down the bong and step away from the from the PC.
Of course that's all you can say -- stupid ad hominem -- for you know too well that you're arguments fail according to your own logic. For example:
Zon: Following along with your logic, when a majority of the people say that Regan Man must live the rest of his life in excruciating pain by whatever means achieves that you'd agree with that because majority rules. And when the majority rules the same for your wife, son and daughter you'd again agree with majority rule. So you're the fool that thought you were actually buying the Brooklyn Bridge.48 |
Way too many people on these and similar threads think that their version or the government's version of social engineering is better than that of the free market. How many times must they be proved wrong before they're rendered obsolete. It can't happen to quick for me. Let them fend for themselves along with the violent criminals. In prison with violent criminals whom they -- the do-gooder social engineers -- threw innocent victimless-crime persons in with. Let's see how they -- the do-gooder social engineers -- get along with Bubba the rapist for a cell mate.
And...
How have you been harmed by a person's act of ingesting drugs? You haven't. Otherwise you would take the person to court, before an impartial jury and try to convince the jury that Joe Defendant harmed you by putting drugs into his body. Doing that so that you may gain restitution for your pain and suffering. Ninety-nine out of one-hundred impartial juries would decide in favor of the defendant. Probably even frown at your attempt to shakedown Joe Defendant for minding his own business.
I would argue that the laws against canabis make it difficult or impossible to really ascertain the factual truth about it, beyond the fact that it didn't seem to be a problem until Heart's Reefer Madness came on the scene.
In order to judge the safety of a drug, one has to know not only how many people get into trouble with it, but how many people use it without incident. If a drug has 25 adverse reactions in a year among 30 people using it, that tells a much different story from if it has the same 25 reactions among 25,000,000 users. The laws against canabis make it difficult or impossible to accurately determine how many people use it without incident.
Further, even if such determination were possible, it wouldn't tell the whole story: drug laws almost certainly do more to discourage drug use among those people who could use them without problems than among those who could not.
Canabis was grown and harvested in the U.S. for well over a century without incident prior to the publication of Reefer Madness. Somehow the country survived. If pot is so dangerous, how did this country survive all those years while it was legal?
Last month I caught two tweakers that jumped from a wall next to my house up onto my roof. They had big enough huevos to do that, but when it came time to jump from the roof back to the wall their huevos shrunk, and I caught them. It was easy enough to figure out that they came from next door, where my neighbor's (35 year old) daughter was selling drugs. If those drugs had been legal, I wouldn't have had a reason to protest what was going on next door. But since those drugs are illegal, that daughter is no longer living next door, and my wife and I no longer have to live in fear of their crap. There is no way that meth should ever be legalized. The bizarre behavior of meth users endangers others, and can not be allowed. My restitution was seeing the whole circus pack up and leave.
Under the circumstances, the comment about putting down the bong and stepping away from the PC, was an honest remark. In was in response to you saying that alcohol was more addictive then cocaine. A ridiculous claim for any informed person to make. Everyone knows cocaine is an extremely addictive drug. I thought maybe you were under the influence. My mistake. You're just naturally delusional.
Maybe something in between. Problem is with any type of decriminalization, the pipeline is already in place to go around it. This would at least take the profit out of it and in turn, the killing.
Are there not public nuisance laws that could be applied in such a case, if the legalization of drugs didn't cause the purchasers to go elsewhere in the first place?
Given that I don't think someone could get away with selling commercial quantities of cookies in the middle of a residential neighborhood (even though cookies are legal), why would drugs be different?
If pot is so dangerous, how did this country survive all those years while it was legal?
How did people and society continue to increase prosperity last year without this years 3,000 new federal laws and regulations. On average we get about 3,00 new laws each year. That was the average for eight years while Clinton was president. According to politicians and the mainstream media, each of those laws are "must have" laws. That without them people would run themselves and society headlong to destruction. As though people and society are always precariously teetering on the brink of self-destruction.
How did people and society increase prosperity through the 1980's without the new laws to come in the 1990's? How do people manage to increase prosperity this year without the new "must-have" laws to come in 2007, 2008, and all the new laws to come after that? hHow did people in the 19th century continually increase prosperity without the hundreds of thousands of new laws that would come in the 20th century?
Answer: dynamic free market. Created by value producers.
What, if anything has caused people and society to inch ever closer to precariously teetering on the brink of plummeting over the cliff-edge to self-destruction? What has been dragging down and hindering ever greater prosperity and progress?
Answer: do-gooder social engineers in and out of government. But mostly it's parasitical elites in government and the media. Caused by value destroyers.
A War of Two Worlds:
Value Producers
versus
Value Destroyers
"It is a war of rational honesties versus irrational dishonesties."
Unlike truth that has many gray areas, honesty has none.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.