Posted on 07/05/2005 9:30:27 AM PDT by Sensei Ern
For many years, I have been a strong opponent of legalizing drugs. As you read this, remember that I am still against drug legalization, but I have more sympathy for the opposing argument.
The reason I have been opposed to drug legalization is to protect children. I grew up in a home that was one step up from a crack house..at least we had heat and food. I know first hand what can happen when a child lives in those conditions.
As a counter, I have always felt that use of tobacco and alcohol should be legal for those of a responsible age.
The reason I am considering a change is because of the pain I went through this last month. Four weeks ago, I had a root canal done on a tooth...it was Friday. Once the Novocain wore off, I was in serious pain because the doctor was inexperienced and left a partial root. I experienced pain worse than listening to Rosanne Barr sing the National Anthem. He forgot to write a prescription.
I called the emergency number only to be told I could see the doctor on Monday. TWO WHOLE DAYS IN EXTREME PAIN! I had some 800mg Ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet. That only took away enough pain to convince myself to not commit suicide to stop the pain.
On Monday, I was given a prescription of Tylenol 3 with Codeine and an antibiotic. That took away the pain. Until it ran out. Again, extreme pain. Another dentist did another root canal...and again did not get the whole root. I made sure he gave me a prescription for the pain, before I left the office.
Finally, when that ran out, and another dentist completed the root canal, the pain has subsided.
To be in the kind of debilitating pain I was in, cannot be described. Bill Cosby once talked about taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head...that comes close.
I have always been an advocate of personal responsibility. That conflicted with knowing that some of the drugs offered today are so dangerous that they needed to be regulated. Then, I thought back about how things were a hundred years ago. The doctor prescribed a treatment, and you either made it yourself, or went to the pharmacist, who mixed up the more potential drugs.
Back then, the only regulation was, could you afford the cost? Drugs were available, and the pharmacist would determine whether you were abusing. If you OD'd on a drug from abuse, you died and life went on for others. But, you could get drugs if they were needed, and you did not have to wait until Monday. You didn't need to wait for approval from anyone to use a drug.
That is enough about that for the moment.
If drugs were to be legalized, they should be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes...have a legal purchasing age. Also, if you do harm to another while under the influence of anything, you should be held personally responsible...to the fullest extent, especially capital punishment for causing a death. If you are taking drugs to get high, strap yourself into a chair and sleep it off.
If drugs were immediately legalized, we could expect some immediate effects. For one, the drug addicts would run out and by everything, and we would have a rash of overdosing for about a month. The rest of us could then go on with our lives, only mourning the loss of a relative, instead of daily living with the horror of a drug addict in our lives.
Currently, I believe law enforcement should be stronger. But, I could be moved to undecided if I heard good arguments for the opposite.
--Pray for our troops --Pray they have wisdom to do the right thing --Pray they remain courageous --Pray they know we love and support them --Pray they get the equipment they need to do the job --Pray for their safe return home to a hero’s welcome
I'll tell you what, the next time a fence robs my house, I won't call the cops. Drug suppliers market and sell the drugs to smaller 'distributors'. Get rid of suppliers, the smaller sellers won't have a product to sell. I never said to ignore the small sellers, you inferred it. I said, the way we were going about it isn't working and we need an effective and permanent different approach or we'll just continue pouring millions of dollars down a black hole. The current practice of arresting small dealers is not detering the sale of street drugs.
I support comparative negligence laws where a person is responsible for their actions.
If someone does not wear a seat belt, or a helmet if on a motorcycle, they should not be able to collect damages from an accident beyond fixing their dents, and at most a couple of days in a hospital.
If someone gets AIDS or has an addiction that screws them up, they should not be able to put the costs onto those who have no control over what they do.
If someone eats fatty foods, they should not be able to have the public pay for any treatment for the result.
I had to cancel the medical insurance plan for our employees because we were put into a group for rating, that included SanFrancisco. The rate made it almost as much as I was paying the employees.
Making someone in the middle of Wyoming pay the unbelievable costs of treating AIDS for people who were irresponsible is not "fair" in any case.
I don't follow.
Sounds just like the WODs. When the government interferes, no good will follow. What's really funny about all this, is I used to think the WODs was a good thing, at first. Since 9-11, and the fact that terrorists have a big foothold in it, I've been following it more closely and realizing, we are just enabling them. It's not going to be an easy solution, I've thrown out a couple ideas, none perfect. But, imo, better than the current practice.
Uh... you do realize that nobody ever, in all of history, through millenia of recorded use, has ever, ever died of an overdose of marijuana, right? It's just not toxic enough.
Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from an overdose of alcohol. A handful die each year from an overdose of caffeine, and a few others die each year from an overdose of Vitamin A. Nobody, American or otherwise, has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.
So no, 3% wasn't way too low. 3% was utterly absurd. About 2.4 million Americans die each year. That's not from drugs, that's not from accidents, that's not from cancer or heart failure or other diseases, that's from all causes. You seriously want to claim that deaths from illegal drugs would be three times higher than all deaths? You seriously want to claim that legalized drugs would result in 375 times more overdose fatalities?
Take your "wild ass guess" and shove it back where you got it.
"And a particularly bad one. A ludicrously, hilariously bad one. You estimated that three times more people would die of overdose than die in the entire United States of all causes in a year."
I factored in that most drug abusers, given the chance to have a free-for-all drug fest, the numbers of ODs would rise dramatically. Then, once those are gone, more sensible people would see the dramatic results of drugs and avoid them and the whole drug scene would be an anathema.
"Do you realize that this only bolsters the anti-prohibition case?"
Yes, I do realize this, which is why I am faultering from my "absolutely no tolerance" stance. For the record, even if drugs are legalized, if an adult abuses drugs in my house, the only evidence of their existance will be the residual smell of chlorine.
All true
I appreciate your research.
You continue to make the mistake of assuming that going after the street end is the only thing we are doing. Of course the cops are ALSO trying to catch the distributors and suppliers. That does not preclude them from stopping the street dealers as well. Had you considered, for example, that maybe the way to catch the distributors was to arrest the street dealers and find out who their distributors are? Then use the distributors to get to the suppliers? Then call in Shaft to get Mr. Big.
"Based on those numbers, 3% was way too low."
"I don't follow."
One of the numbers was for pot use in the US...5.4% That is nearly double my 3% original guesstimate.
Well, I was going say the Kennedy's (Joe Kennedy made his fortune running bootleg liquor), but that wouldn't prove my point, would it?
I see. So I own my body, unless I want to do something with my property that you disapprove of. That's like saying by taking certain actions (speaking), you have forfeited your right to freely speak.
Does my right to swing my fist end where your nose starts?
Yes, of course it does.
No rights are absolute; they end where they start to adversely infringe on the rights of others. Drug abusers do this constantly.
Tell me how.
The problem with drugs is that, with a great many of them, there is a loss of control over one's actions.
You've swallowed the propaganda, you're using what Reason Magazine's Jacob Sullum calls "voodoo pharmacology": the idea that there's no such thing as responsible drug use, that anyone who takes drugs suddenly transforms into Mr. Hyde, completely unable to take responsibility for his actions.
How do you simultaneously allow people to do something that deprives them of control of their actions, and hold them responsible for those same actions?
Very easily, actually. By holding them responsible for the earlier action which had the criminal action as a reasonably foreseeable consequence. By refusing to accept "I wasn't responsible for my actions" as a defense.
Just like we do with alcohol. It's not criminal to get blisteringly drunk. It is criminal to punch someone in the face while blisteringly drunk. We don't let such criminals off the hook by letting them say, "I was drunk, I wasn't responsible for my actions." We tell them, "You were responsible for your actions when you chose to get drunk, you could have reasonably foreseen that your fistfight would be a consequence of your drinking, therefore you're responsible for the assault even though you weren't in your right mind at the time."
Either you have to place drug users out of the protection of society, or society has the right to defend itself from the behaviors of the drug users.
Or you have to arrest those who commit criminal acts while under the influence of drugs, and leave the vast, vast majority of drug users, who harm nobody, the hell alone.
Speaking of the Kennedy's, if it wasn't for Prohibition and the opportunity to make a large amount of money illegally, we would never have had Ted Kennedy, would we?
I can't argue about that. I do know that the desire to get the next high or stay high motivates a lot of pot smokers.
I also know that when pot is not available, if they are offered something else, they often will accept it.
I will be afk for a while, so I can't argue with you any more.
That is exactly right
Didn't crime drop substantially after the repeal of Prohibition, and remain low until the mid-60's?
Meth was declared just today to be the number one drug problem. But the WOD is neither a Conservative nor a Liberal cause. It is a little robot creature running autonomously after Congress budded it off.
Got it.
Yeah, and if we legalized pot, I'm sure we'd see the number of fatalities from marijuana overdose rise a thousand times. That's not a joke. Read the replies to your posts you've chosen to ignore to see why.
So your 3% was assuming that everybody who used drugs would die of an overdose. This despite the fact that the vast majority of drug users do not die of overdose, and despite the fact that the vast majority of overdoses that do occur are accidents brought about by unknown dosage levels. When someone buys a bottle of vodka or a bottle of wine, he knows exactly how much drug it contains. When someone buys a bag of heroin, he has no idea. He has no idea how much of a dose would be required to get the desired effect, or how much of a dose would be dangerously or even fatally high. Were drugs legalized, they'd be labeled for potency, and accidental overdose would drop dramatically.
I factored in that most drug abusers, given the chance to have a free-for-all drug fest, the numbers of ODs would rise dramatically.
So you're assuming there is a huge number of people out there who a) want to use drugs but b) can't get them? That seems rather silly... if you wanted to use drugs, would you be able to get them? Given what you've said about your circle of acquaintances, I have no doubt that you could. Do you think there are literally millions of people who want to take drugs but just can't figure out where to get them from, and would therefore be unleashed were drugs legalized?
Then, once those are gone, more sensible people would see the dramatic results of drugs and avoid them and the whole drug scene would be an anathema.
Yeah, just like nobody smokes, despite the hundreds of thousands of annual deaths.
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