Posted on 11/06/2017 9:11:50 AM PST by Brian Griffin
I know this proposal will be met with strong opposition, but it is my firm belief that the 108-year old 'War on Drugs' needs to come to an end. It has turned into a decades-long war on millions of our young people.
It would be replaced with FDA-supervised quality control systems for supplies of comparatively safe recreational drug forms, probably reducing the number of overdose deaths by over 98% (~50,000/year -> ~1,000/year).
Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers would have to get DEA licenses.
There would be three forms of customer DEA licenses: casual user, habitual cocaine user and habitual opiate user costing $100, $200 and $300 respectively and good for one year after issue.
The requirement for licenses, their cost and their annual form would greatly restrict the customer base.
The habitual user licenses would only be available to those with paid-up recreational drug medical (ER treatment and methadone taper) and burial/cremation expense coverage provided by DEA-licensed entities.
The customer DEA licenses would be only available to legal residents and citizens at least 21 years of age.
Application would be as for passports but the picture of the person must be three times the size.
The licenses would be similar to a passport. Each one would have an electronic chip enabling dispensers to pull up the licensee's picture and dispensing information quickly.
The habitual cocaine user license would only be good for cocaine beverages.
The habitual opiate user license would only be good for methadone or codeine beverages. These beverages would come in three colors:
a. yellow for concentrations unlikely to kill novice users
b. orange for concentrations that might kill novice users
c. red for concentrations that would likely kill novice users
The DEA would also manage a laboratory and prescribing system that habitual opiate users would have to use to buy concentrations other than yellow. Prescriber/laboratory pricing might be reasonably controlled by state law.
The beverages would come in two-liter bottles. There would be a $3/liter federal tax. The purchase of 365 two-liter bottles would mean federal tax revenue of $2,160 per year per habitual user. Retail pricing might be reasonably controlled by state law.
The DEA would run a system to ensure that within any thirty-day period no more than sixty liters of product could be bought by a habitual user license holder.
The DEA would run a system to ensure that within any five-day period no more than one liter of cocaine soda product and/or one ounce of marijuana could be bought by a casual user license holder.
There would be no additional replacement allowed for lost or stolen bottles or marijuana.
People might try to make crack from their cocaine soda by boiling or evaporation, but they might burn up their 30-day ration within about one week.
Retailers would have to print and attach a label with your picture (and the customer's maximum authorized concentration by color & shade) to each bottle sold.
Possession of a bottle without a label with the possessor's picture except by a retailer, distributor or manufacturer would be punishable with a $100 fine per bottle.
Customer license holders would be forbidden to sell or transfer any recreational drug product. Unlawful transfer would be punishable by license revocation. Any sale or any transfer to a person not properly licensed would be punishable by up to two years imprisonment and a five-year licensure bar.
A state may revoke, according to its law(s), any DEA license of any person found in possession of or driving a motor vehicle in the state, subject to judicial review and reinstatement for just cause.
A habitual opiate user with a revoked/suspended/cancelled license would have to seek out and get on buprenorphine/naloxone maintenance or a traditional methadone taper.
An employer in an industrial zone, possessing equipment required to emit backup noise or in the business of passenger transport may block/suspend employee and contract employee DEA licenses for a $100/employee annual fee. A person would have to pay $10 via a DEA website to send a reconfirmation letter to their (former) employer. Failure to reconfirm within 30 days of mailing would result in license reinstatement.
A person with a pilot's license or commercial or motorcycle driving license in effect shall be barred from getting a DEA license.
A person getting a pilot's license, commercial or motorcycle driving license shall have their DEA licenses cancelled.
> So you want to starve them to death? <
Nope. They’d have a food allowance (as was mentioned). The garden would be part of a work program. Having a neat and productive garden would be one requirement for being released.
Not exactly breakin’ rocks in the hot sun...but something to keep them busy, and focused.
> That works if druggies would pay the bill for their choices. Unfortunately, it’s everyone else that gets stuck with the bill - family and taxpayers. <
Good point. In my next of the woods the ambulance services are being strained to the breaking point because of all of the overdoses. And that’s increasing the wait time for folks who have”traditional” injuries.
Why bother with any action that delays the inevitable? After, the government's responsibility should end with giving the next of kin a phone call or e-mail.
Otherwise, take the body to the city dump. Gulls and starlings should have a chance to eat...
I read the food allowance. It would be wasted and they would likely starve if left on their own.
This can’t possibly be what FreeRepublic has become . . .
Logic fail
“How about banning all [recreational] drug users from any government aid or assistance?”
If Dave Doper can waste $2,400 to $3,000 per year he certainly has no moral right to welfare.
> It would be wasted and they would likely starve if left on their own. <
Oh, I see your point now. Yeah, there’s truth in what you say. I guess it boils down to personal responsibility. Food would be delivered to the exile’s doorstep every day. It’s up to them to open the package, or not.
“there is no such thing as ‘legalizing’ something that has such a deleterious potential”
Recreational drugs were federally legal until 1909.
“Sentence drug users to internal exile”
That’s another possibility.
End medical welfare benefits.
No hospital or doctor ever has to treat anyone they have not agreed to treat.
No money, no care.
The deadbeat addicts wear out their welcome, and die far younger and having caused far less pain then what we see now. And lets publish every death so young people know the danger.
I graduated at the height of the PCP fad. A lot of my classmates didn't make it until graduation, or died in the next couple of years. The lethality convinced a lot of the heads I went to school with to work at rehab until it worked. The high initial mortality rate saved lives over the long haul.
Just plug them into The Matrix.
Many, in fact, I’d say almost everyone in Hollywood takes legal prescription drugs—drugs to wake up and drugs to go to sleep. I know this for a FACT. The difference in these people and drug addicts lying in the gutter are they get theirs legally from prescriptions their doctors write for them. They have people who look out for them, make sure they eat, etc. They live to be ripe old ages.
Sure, there are a few that go off the rails, but for the most part, this works well for them.
The picture of Weinstein’s drugs in his carry-on is exactly how these people live.
I think you’re on to something.
>
Do I, as a taxpayer, have to pay for the various medical conditions and treatments with which habitual drug-users routinely deal?
Do I have to pay for their lifestyle by supporting them on the public dole?
>
You mean in the Republic of our founding or the Democracy coup we’ve allowed?
Are we not to be beholden per our 4th/5th & 13th Amendments to that which you call ‘welfare’ (legalized theft)?
Why the stigma associated re: ‘illegal’ drugs? Why not the outcry on those POOR poor peoples ‘on the dole’ re: smokes, alcohol and the myriad of other vices we’re supporting? As PP doesn’t pay for abortions, welfare doesn’t pay for the vices *WINK WINK nudge nudge*
“You’d still be enforcing the drug laws against people without the license”
As I wrote:
Possession of a bottle without a label with the possessor’s picture except by a retailer, distributor or manufacturer would be punishable with a $100 fine per bottle.
“which might be most people”
There would always be some people who don’t follow the rules, but I’ve tried to set the fees and taxes at affordable levels, but high enough to discourage far broader usage.
The biggest problem would be non-users who buy and resell.
For opiates, these non-users would get yellow solutions which wouldn’t be of much interest to people on red levels.
For cocaine, sellers might try to evaporate or boil and make crack. There might be a technical solution to this, such as putting sugar in the manufactured beverage.
And then they were made illegal. They also weren't "recreational" in the modern usage of the term. They were sold as cures for various ailments. None of them were marketed as "Let's get high!" entertainment.
I’ll know the government is serious about drugs when it doesn’t supply Sinaloa with rifles.
I’ll know the government is serious about drugs when the banks that launder and invest the billions of cartel dollars are seized and the bankers who knowingly did it are arrested.
I’ll know the government is serious about drugs when the CIA doesn’t use cartels as a tool in their trade and the military isn’t forbidden from harming Afghan poppy fields.
When the illicit money is attacked, they i will know it’s real.
“Otherwise, take the body to the city dump.”
I’d prefer the local junior or senior high school for educational purposes.
I find no authority for the DEA nor FDA, let alone the ‘war on XYZ’. Nor do I find the right of travel to be within the purview of govt (in any way, matter, shape nor fashion as one shall wish to do so) and even less so the right to work (IMO, contracts between 2+ willing entities).
Local doesn’t detain/arrest nor revoke the DWI\illegal in many cases. Local doesn’t revoke those of AGE (no further tests of the 90yr old after they ‘passed the *test*’ @ 16).
GOVT is N-E-V-E-R the solution.
Ref your three part plan, i notice no action against the banks who handle the cartel cash? Without support of the banks, the trade would be dealt a HUGE blow.
For example, HSBC literally started as a drug smuggling bank to support the opium trade the Brits raped China with.
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