Posted on 01/19/2020 3:44:01 PM PST by conservative98
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is calling for the U.S. to legalize currently illicit drugs.
“If we take that step to legalize and regulate, then we're no longer treating people who are struggling with substance addiction and abuse as criminals and instead getting them the help that they need,” the 2020 presidential candidate said at a campaign stop in Merrimack, New Hampshire on Friday.
She was responding to a voter who asked whether her plan to end the war on drugs centered on more harm reduction and treatment or if it involved moving to “legalize and regulate narcotics so that you're no longer seeing tainted drugs on the street...and involvement in the black market.”
The congresswoman replied that her answer was “all of the above.”
“The costs and the consequence to this failed war on drugs is so vast and far reaching, socially and fiscally, that if we take these necessary steps, we'll be able to solve a lot of other problems that we're dealing with in this country,” she said.
Gabbard, who has sponsored several marijuana legalization bills during her time in Congress, had previously said in an interview last year that she supported “decriminalizing an individual’s choice to use whatever substances that are there while still criminalizing those who are traffickers and dealers of these drugs.”
Gabbard’s latest comments, which were first noted and recorded by journalist Michael Tracey, go beyond that by indicating she backs a legally regulated method of producing and distributing drugs.
The stance also puts her a step further than former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a rival Democratic presidential candidate, who has endorsed simply decriminalizing possession of all drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
People don't get drunk at liquor stores and drive home
Hardcore alkies ARRIVE at liquor stores drunk.
Irrelevant to my statement (above). Re-read for comprehension.
In NH, its not unusual to see 3 and 4 serial DUIs getting still another license revocation.
Also irrelevant to my statement - but I think we need to be far tougher on DUI. At a minimum, a second offense should mean 6 months of jail.
I don’t recall your defense of Trump’s wall.
Me: "BUILD THAT WALL! BUILD THAT WALL! BUILD THAT WALL! BUILD THAT WALL! BUILD THAT WALL!" - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3522482/posts?page=11#11
People don't get drunk at liquor stores and drive home
Ive seen plenty show up drunk and buy beer and liquor at stores.
Irrelevant to my statement (above). Re-read for comprehension.
I do. Marijuana criminalization has failed to keep that drug away from young people; they have been reporting since well before any state had legalized that they could get marijuana almost as easily as cigarettes or beer, although the latter two are much more widespread among adults. The available evidence indicates that the best way of keeping a drug away from young people is to legalize it for adults - which gives its sellers an economic incentive to confine their sales to adults, namely the risk of losing their legal adult market.
They will choose the path of least resistance and avoid places that fight back.
They have not avoided e.g. China or Iran.
Maybe the punishment is not that harsh and not enough deterrent.
I call BS. Link?
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2018.130202
Your link says the opposite of your claim above: "depersonalization and derealization remain POTENTIAL side effects of cannabis [...] IN GENERAL, cannabis-induced symptoms of depersonalization and derealization are time-locked to the period of intoxication, peaking approximately 30 minutes after ingestion and subsiding within 120 minutes of exposure to the drug [...] Those who experience prolonged symptoms may have cannabis-induced depersonalization-derealization DISORDER" [emphases added]
Russia is a good example. There was an enormous heroin boom between late 1980s and earlier 2000s. In mid-1990s out of a class of 30 in a high school in a low income neighborhood about half were on drugs and ten of them died before graduation. NGOs emerged targeting ethnic diasporas dealing with drugs and dirty cops covering for them and then legal reform meaning 20 years of hard labor to every dealer caught with hard drugs. There is no heroin trade in Russia anymore.
That was the first link I got and it show connection between cannabis and these disorder. Do better research. DP and DR are a sort of ‘comfortable’ condition for a person in depression. Let a person experience it quite often as an induced condition and that person at one time would fall into it forever.
You laughably claimed "almost always causes" not merely "connection." There are "connections" between a great many things.
I worked with these people and it is my impression too. Did you smoke cannabis? Haven’t you experienced DP?
Russia is a good example. [...]
It remains the case that tough-on-drugs has a mixed record of success - and that true conservatives don't want to turn this Land of the Free into a repressive regime like Singapore or Russia.
Non-sequitur. US criminal justice is among the most toughest in the world. I have no idea why it makes sense to give a pass to drug dealers. Illegal drugs are a source of great evil.
Frequently, in my youth.
Haven’t you experienced DP?
I don't think I ever experienced even transitory depersonalization or derealization - much less the prolonged disorder that you foolishly claimed cannabis "almost always causes".
Make up your mind ... just a few posts ago you said, "Maybe the punishment is not that harsh and not enough deterrent."
Illegal drugs are a source of great evil.
So is alcohol - but trying to ban it resulted in even greater evil.
Maybe you didn’t realize you had it? It isn’t called derealization and DP for nothing.
Saying about harsh punishment I meant crimes other than drug dealing.
I agree that alcohol is a great evil but many alcoholics are functional for a long time.
There are people who quit and many people who drink but not alcoholics.
It is not true for people hooked to hard drugs. They are fully disfunctional and need a lot of money to support their habit. It makes them commit particularly heinous crimes.
Cannabis is a path to hard drugs.
Only 100% guarantee is death. No one has ever escaped it no matter how rich or how powerful. It is the great equalizer.
Singapore has advantage over China and Iran, it is much smaller. I am not familiar how China & Iran deals with drug peddlers, but I am somewhat familiar with Singapore having visited there. They have bill board signs all over declaring drug pushers get AUTOMATIC death sentence.
I was riding a bus in Iran at the time and the Polish guy next to me was dragged out by the police at one point. He asked me to put some of his stuff into my bag before the trip and I knew the weight wasn’t an issue for a bus travel. It was wise to decline.
Doesn't make sense - depersonalization or derealization are about one's own subjective impressions, not externally observable symptoms.
Saying about harsh punishment I meant crimes other than drug dealing.
Irrelevant to my point about repressive regimes (or any other point) - repressive regimes closely control many more aspects of indiviudal life than does our Land of the Free.
I agree that alcohol is a great evil but many alcoholics are functional for a long time. There are people who quit and many people who drink but not alcoholics. It is not true for people hooked to hard drugs.
No, it is true for drugs other than alcohol; heroin is half again as addictive as alcohol, but it's not a whole different order. We only see the nonfunctional users of illegal drugs, because the functional ones are able and willing to be discreet (for obvious reasons).
need a lot of money to support their habit.
Because drug criminalization hyperinflates the cost of their high.
Cannabis is a path to hard drugs.
No, very few users of cannabis go on to use harder drugs. The linkage is due to both cannabis and harder drugs being pushed into the black market; legalize cannabis and you sever the linkage.
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