Unfortunately I am fairly skeptical about the drug problem
Maybe because it has failed continuously and consistently since it was begun?
The whole WOD from the Volstead Act on has been a cruel and expensive boondogle.
It has accomplished nothing useful.
SO9
I noticed that as a good quote too. Do you think that can be positively accomplished by heavy punitive actions?
Like most supporters of the drug war, this useless, incompetent dunce has it exactly backwards. He is a tool of the drug cartels. Their success depends on criminalization of drugs to limit the supply and raise the price. They don't want legalization; it would kill their profits overnight!
Drug warriors, you are fools! You have been manipulated by the media frenzy that began in the 80's and continues to the present day. Why do you people distrust the media and government on every other issue of the day, yet blindly follow the party line on drug criminalization like gullible sheep? Do you know why those in government and the media have been beating the drum against drugs so loudly?
Think back to the other big news of the day when the drug war started under Reagan: Countries in Latin America and Asia owed billions of dollars to the big New York banks, money they had no hope of ever repaying.
By cracking down on drugs, the bankers' accomplices in government and the media ensured that 1) the concentration (and hence the addictiveness) of drugs would go up, the better to facilitate smuggling, 2) the price would go WAY up, and 3) many billions of dollars would flow from the pockets of drug-addicted American losers into the economies of the countries that produced and smuggled the drugs, and thence back into the coffers of David Rockefeller and his ilk.
This is just the economic argument against the drug war. I submit that the toll in human lives has been greater. More people have died fighting the drug war than ever were killed by drugs, more people have had their lives ruined by falling afoul of the law than would have suffered ill effects of drug use, and every year more of our ancient liberties are surrendered to Big Government by patriotic Americans who ought to know better, all in the name of a futile waste of time and money and lives that cannot possibly succeed.
If you support the War on Drugs, you're no conservative. You are a statist fool, and a gullible tool of Big Government, Big Media and Big Banking. You ought to be ashamed of your pig-headed, bloody-minded ignorance.
-ccm
I've been smoking pot since I was 15 (30+ years), and in all that time I have NEVER advocated legalizing it. Right now, we have the big two drugs in our society (tobacco and alcohol). If marijuana were legalized, the big two would immediately become the big three. Don't try to tell me that the overall cost to society, in terms of lost productivity and auto accidents, wouldn't be greater than whatever we spend on the WOD. "But we'll never win the war on drugs". Well, we'll never keep people from robbing banks or going to hookers, so what's your solution, legalize them both? If anyone wants to give me a real solution to this, let me know. If you're just going to flame me, please don't bother.
What "business" has the largest number of unpaid lobbyists? Yes, the "war on drugs" is a business which distributes billions of taxpayer dollars to its supporters. Of course, as we know, some of those supporters also get paid directly by the drug business.
Simple: the War On Drugs has driven the drug business underground, whereas any legal business is conducted openly and thus subject to effective regulation (and sometimes overregulation).
I don't know which is the kinder assumption: that Will and Walters are too dumb to realize this, or that they're peddling arguments they know to be false.
Walters [...] thinks indifference to drug abuse, which debilitates the individual's capacity to flourish in freedom, mocks the nation's premises.
So Will and Walters think the only alternative to indifference is government involvement. That's what liberals always argue.