Posted on 11/22/2006 7:35:17 AM PST by Dick Bachert
Atlanta police went to a home on Neal Street in Atlanta last evening to execute a search warrant. When they kicked the door in the only occupant of the home, a 92-year-old woman, started shooting. She hit all three police officers. One in the thigh, one in the arm and another in the shoulder. All police officers will be OK. The woman will not. She was shot and killed by the police.
I'm not blaming the cops here. Not at all. They had a valid search warrant, and they say they were at the right address. Shots were fired, three cops hit, and they returned fire. A 92-year-old woman who was so afraid of crime in her neighborhood that she had burglar bars on every door and window, is now dead.
The blame lies on this idiotic drug war we're waging. We have all the studies we need, all of the comprehensive data is in. We can do a much more effective job of reducing drug use in this country if we'll just take a portion of this money we spend for law enforcement and spend it on treatment programs. A Rand study showed that we can reduce illicit drug usage in this country a specified amount through treatment programs at about 10% of the cost of reducing drug usage by that same amount through criminalization and law enforcement.
There's just something in the American psyche that demands that drug users be punished instead of treated and rehabilitated. We think they're stupid and ignorant for getting mixed up with those drugs in the first place. And you know what? We're right? But look at the messages we send to our children every single day with cigarettes, alcohol, and an endless stream of drug ads on television and in magazines. Drug culture? You bet we have.
Foreign products are Constitutionally regulated trade...
Driftwood: Drugs are not found in the Constitution... 415
Zon: I can name a thousand things in a shopping mall that are not in the constitution. Your argument is way pathetic. Darwin nominee, for sure.419
Foreign products are Constitutionally regulated trade...
Driftwood: Drugs are not found in the Constitution... 415
Zon: I can name a thousand things in a shopping mall that are not in the constitution. Your argument is way pathetic. Darwin nominee, for sure.419
And they're subject to state regulation. If they involve interstate commerce, they're also subject to federal regulation.
Your point has no point to it.
It does... that pesky thing called the first amendment. Of course it means that you can only use as "models" those who are capable of giving informed consent to participate (which does NOT include children).
The problem you come up against is that your rationalization for proscribing the private possession and use of certain things can altogether too readily be turned against what YOU favor. You start down this slippery slope and when it comes to YOUR turn, you have turned any potential ally into your enemy by your assinine behavior. Do you like to keep firearms? I do. I own several. Most Marines I know (past and present) own them. Yet the very rationalizations that brought us the War on some Drugs are being used to gradually stifle and then outlaw ownership or possession of firearms... and that is SPECIFIED, by NAME, in the Constitution. YOUR assininity is being turned against MY freedom to own and possess the means to protect and defend my family... and I will NOT tolerate it one bit. That is why I am against ANY such war on Americans. So if you don't like that, shove it. Because you have made yourself my enemy by enabling others to attempt to disarm me and putting my family at risk.
I take it you have yet to read the Constitution and the other founding documents. Perhaps you should go to http://www.constitution.org and follow some of the links. You'd be AMAZED at what the Founders had to say... especially regarding the Commerce Clause. They had you in mind when they specifically stated that it was NOT intended for what it's being used for these days. Their SOLE intent was to ensure that, for example, Maryland could not impose a tariff on goods coming through there from Pennsylvania, headed for Virginia... or even to be sold in Maryland. In other words, that no State could impose burdens on other states, so as to protect its own industries or farms or whatever. That is ALL that was intended. In foreign trade, it was a different matter, as that could be potentially disrupted during hostilities or the importation of goods could be taxed (and was) to provide virtually all the revenues required by the Federal government. But you know all this. Yet you, like Frank Driftwood, persist in your fantasies.
Driftwood: Drugs are not found in the Constitution. 415
Zon: I can name a thousand things in a shopping mall that are not in the constitution. Your argument is way pathetic. Darwin nominee, for sure.419
"So, what's more significant? Purity, cost or actual use?"
Well, I think purity and cost relate to supply and demand, as I suggested.
The relatively low rate of users hopefully demonstrates that drug education IS working and that most people are smart enough to not fool around with heroin.
To answer your question directly, a low or zero rate of use is the desired outcome, of course. Heroin is destructive.
So the phrase "to regulate" has three different meanings, even though it's used once in a single sentence.
If the U.S. Supreme Court made a stupid statement like that you'd be shouting "judicial activism" to the rooftops. And you'd be right.
"And be it further enacted, That every person who shall attempt to trade with the Indian tribes, or to be found in the Indian country with such merchandise in his possession as are usually vended to the Indians, without a license first had and obtained, as in this act prescribed, and being thereof convicted in any court proper to try the same, shall forfeit all the merchandise so offered for sale to the Indian tribes, or so found in the Indian country, which forfeiture shall be one half to the benefit of the person prosecuting, and the other half to the benefit of the United States." --An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse With the Indian Tribes, APPROVED, July 22, 1790.Federal forfeiture for possession. First Congress.
Drugs are not found in the first amendment...
The dope advocates love to equate drug use with the right to keep and bear arms. Useful idiots for Sarah Brady.
The Act you cited looks like Congress imposed a burden to commerce.
Well, the Act was approved several months after the Constitution was ratified. Perhaps the "original intent" posited by the drug legalization advocates was forgotten by then.
Boy oh boy. No sooner does Congress ratify the U.S. Constitution and months later they're interpreting it the way they want.
Well, we weren't discussing illegitimate justice. We were discussing an imperfect justice system.
And the solution is not to free 10 guilty people, or 1,000,000 guilty people in an attempt to obtain perfection.
How weird.. The fact that the Executive & Congress prohibited booze to Indian tribes & put embargo's on foreign Nations is again being proffered as an excuse to prohibit trade among our several States.
-- Our States are not hostile tribes or nations.
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