'Murphy Brown' Actor Robert Pastorelli Dies at 49

Foxnews ^ | 3-9-04

[Indy Pendance]

Hollywood

[Deb]

Yeah, just stop the war on drugs and everything will be sweet. We need more people addicted and dead at 49. More lives and families destroyed. Hospitals full of addicts who are penniless and on the dole. More murders, robberies and crime committed by desperate druggies. That won't cost a thing, right?

Your story has become tiresome...take it somewhere else.

[flashbunny]

"Your story has become tiresome...take it somewhere else."

The final line of someone who has no ammunition in a debate and wishes the people who are talking facts would take it elsewhere. And based on your reply, you didn't bother to read what I posted. You just knee-jerked your post right onto the board. So I don't expect you to read any further, since logic and facts apparently won't get through to you.

First: My solution is that there is no dole. No unconstitutional WOD (federal WOD - states can wage a pointless war if they want to) bound to the elimination of unconstitutional welfare state. Therefore, if you get addicted, you pay for treatment. If you can't work, you get no assistance. You make your choices and you pay the consequences. You want to steal to support your habbit? You go to jail for theft. You lay strung out on the street? You get hauled in for public intoxication - and you pay for your jail stay. Finally, if you decide to rob a good citizen, your law breaking meets up with their second amendment rights. Enable personal choices bound with personal responsibility and high consequences for harming others because of your decisions.

It's a better system than we have in place today. Despite years and years of fighting, rights of all citizens being stripped away to fight the deeds of a few, and a billions and billions of dollars spent to stop it, it still goes on. People still overdose. People still steal to support their habbits. People still ruin their lives. The war on drugs has stopped none of this. What it has done is made drug dealers richer by simple market economics (restricted supply of a high demand product = higher prices). And it has turned our police forces into paramilitary outfits funded by the never ending need to fight the WOD. But no matter how much they spend, they never win. Never.

The war on drugs is a failure. The federal government has no constitutional authority to wage it (unlike when it actually passed an amendment to wage the war on booze) and our rights get flushed down the drain just to stop people from harming themselves. Well guess what: people harm themselves every day. From suicide that kils them to fast food that kills them cigarrettes that kill them to booze that kills them. People destroying their lives is a tragedy, but it isn't government's responsibility to stop them. It's government's responsibility to prevent people who make bad choices from harming anyone else. That's why law enforcement should be concentrating on: People who do other people harm, not some loser who lights up a joint a few times a week but still manages to otherwise live his life normally.

The real question is why would you want to continue this? Do you think that if we just spend enough, or strip away enough constitutional protections, we'll eventually win? Do you think that there is a government program that can stop people from making bad decisions with their lives???

[evad]

Just saw him in Eraser a few days ago, as the mafia guy in the witness protection program..

Yeah..
What's amazing is how long ago, way before 9-11, Hollywood was making movies about islamo-psychos that wanted to destroy America.

Eraser, Executive Decision, Peacemakers and Debt of Honor with "A PLANE USED AS A WEAPON". Of course that one was a Jap so it's back to the islamo psychos trying to kill us with eboli in Executive Orders to balance it out.

[evad]

Correction...Eraser was about the proto type rail gun sales to terrorists...True Lies was the movie with the Islamo nuts with the two nukes.

So many..I get em mixed up ;-)

[rabidralph]

Yeah, how could the nitwit writer forget that? I loved him in that movie.

[evad]

Is there an example where legalizing drugs has actually worked?

Personally, I'm between the two extremes on this one. What we have doesn't work and as far as I know, what you propose doesn't work...unless you have an example to the contrary.

[flashbunny]

It worked in one of my favorite countries for over 150 years. Their citizens had a right to defend themselves against attackers, using almost any guns they wanted (heck, you could even order machine guns through the mail) and crime was low. There was no 'social safety net', so if people didn't work, they didn't survive. So they worked. And if they chose to do drugs and couldn't support themselves, they lived in squalor and felt the results of their own actions. Government wasn't there to give them a hand out. If they needed help, it was up to private citizens and organizations to help them.






It was the united states. It stopped working when people thought it was their business to keep other people from making bad choices with their life. It turned us from a nation of free, independent individuals into a nanny state, where the government has a duty to keep you from doing things that are bad for yourself but don't harm anyone else. And of course, to do that, they now have the right to do no-knock warrants on you or seize your entire farm if they find someone else has been growing pot on it without your knowledge. Plus when other people's actions became our responsiblity, it was our responsibility to take care of them financially as well.

So what system would you rather live under?

The one where you had true property rights, true constitutional protections, your money wasn't taken away from you to pay for someone else's stupidity, you could protect yourself how you wanted, and if someone somewhere else wanted to harm themselves by getting high, it wasn't the government's business as long as they didn't harm anyone?

Or the system we have now that costs billions and billions of dollars, constantly nibbles our rights away, and doesn't work at all and shows no sign of ever working?

[evad]

"It worked in one of my favorite countries for over 150 years"

Well, that would put us into the 40's and with all due respect, there wasn't much of a drug supply and usage problem then.

Now, I'm not in disagreement with anything you said but I was speaking of something a little more relevant to today's situation.

If we legalize drugs I see numerous problems there and if we continue like we are, well, we already know that doesn't work. I was asking if there is any country, state or county that has some type of a program in existence today that actually works...today.