Lies our drug warriors told us

Reno News and Review ^ | August 24th, 2006 | Dennis Myers

[A CA Guy]

Sure, if your neighbor does drugs, deals and plays the Bay City Rollers all day loud with the windows opened while chronically unemployed at home, I'm sure you are still good...

[CWOJackson]

I thought the war on drugs was over.

Informed people here on FR have repeatedly said that we'd lost the war on drugs and it's been years since I've heard the topic brought up in public.

Are you sure it's not over?

[Zeroisanumber]

Some of you may think that action was overly harsh, but they were warned what the concequence would be if I ever caught them.

That was a little harsh. My dad just took away my pot and grounded me for a week.

[Zeroisanumber]

The Libertarian platform seems to really have but one plank: We want our pot.

They want their guns, too.

Pot, Guns, keeping the government up on out of my grill. It's all good.

[mugs99]

Sure, if your neighbor

If I have a problem with my neighbor I'll take it up with my neighbor. I don't expect government to wage war in your neighborhood because I have a problem in mine.
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[A CA Guy]

Simple law enforcement is not a war and drug use is not a sacrament.

[tpaine]

Moonman defends prohibitions:

"-- The founding fathers were for independence and against the abuses of monarchy. They were especially interested in all citizens having rights, not just nobility. They weren't Libertarians or Anarchists.
It did not take long for President Washington to command an army (larger than the one he commanded in the Revolutionary War) to put down then Whiskey Rebellion, which was the first major test of the strength and resolve of the young federal government.-- "

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The Whiskey Rebellion was all about taxes. It had nothing to do with prohibition.
You really should read a bit more history.

And I have thought that G. Washington thereby betrayed the Revolution.

Yep, he let the politics of an unfair tax lead him into using force against unjustly injured citizens. -- Even though the gov't 'lost' and the tax was finally repealed, it set a bad precedent. -- Some misguided socialists still use it as an example of 'commerce clause power'.

[mugs99]

Simple law enforcement is not a war

Are we talking simple law enforcement? Simple law enforcement is when the sheriff goes to that neighbor you complained about and tells him to knock it off or he's going to jail. Enforcing morality dictates is far from simple law enforcement...It's war.

and drug use is not a sacrament

A sacrament is a rite. Drug use can be part of a rite. Do Catholics not use wine (a drug) in their rite?
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[A CA Guy]

Yeah, I guess drug dealing, using, killing, transporting across state and national boundaries and addicting all kinds of people including kids would be only morality issues to some.
That is why people laugh mostly at Libertarians IMO.

[mugs99]

And the war on drugs has stopped drug dealing, using, killing, transporting across state and national boundaries and addicting all kinds of people including kids?

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition:
The stated goals of current U.S.drug policy -- reducing crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use -- have not been achieved, even after nearly four decades of a policy of "war on drugs". This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world's population, America today has 22.5% of the worlds prisoners. But, after all that time, after all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called "war on drugs".
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[A CA Guy]

And the war on drugs has stopped drug dealing, using, killing, transporting across state and national boundaries and addicting all kinds of people including kids?

Law enforcement has reduced what would have been a much bigger problem as does jailing murderers.

[drlevy88]

Quite so, Twain was a marked critic of the religion itself

[mugs99]

Law enforcement has reduced what would have been a much bigger problem as does jailing murderers

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition disagrees with you.

"Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds – cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) – or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and “precursors,” used, for instance, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the United States' prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption."...Norm Stamper, Retired Seattle Chief of Police and San Diego assistant Police Chief.
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[Lurker]

Well, Roman Catholics use rhythm

Remind me in the future to check the posters name before reading the comment as it might have been posted by you, and if that's true it's most likely your comment will cause a violent expelling of the soda I just purchased thereby making me liable for damage to my employers rather expensive computer equipment.

L

[A CA Guy]

Illegal drug expense isn't the issue.

Problems are we have people self medicating for recreation.
That is dangerous and beyond stupid.

[mugs99]

Illegal drug expense isn't the issue.
It most certainly is. Heroin was expensive and scarce before the war on drugs. Now it's cheap and plentiful thanks to the war on drugs. The same is true for all illegal drugs.

Problems are we have people self medicating for recreation.
That is dangerous and beyond stupid.
It may be stupid and dangerous, but in a free republic government does not have the right to stop stupidity. The people have the Constitutional right to be as stupid as they want to be.
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[A CA Guy]

Heroin is cheaper because people are getting more advanced in labs, resources are cheaper and many moved on to use it along with their pot.

When people are out of control and break the laws that are created by elected officials, they get to go to jail before they can damage other even worse.

[mugs99]

When people are out of control and break the laws that are created by elected officials, they get to go to jail before they can damage other even worse.

Lol!
Those laws protect the violent criminal gangs that produce and distribute illegal drugs. How could it get any worse than that?
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[LloydofDSS]

>>Those laws protect the violent criminal gangs that produce and distribute illegal drugs. How could it get any worse than that?<<

I am not sure how the laws protect drug gangs, but it is very clear that the drug laws create the niche that drug gangs fill perfectly. The illegal trade that the drug laws create funnels billions of dollars into the hands of the most sinister and ruthless men on the planet.

End the war on drugs and these men would have to crawl back under the rocks they emerged from to damage us all.

[Straight Vermonter]

A Florida report noted, "In the end, it is safer for the baby to be born to a drug-using, anemic, or diabetic mother who visits the doctor throughout her pregnancy than to be born to a normal woman who does not."

Pardon me if I take this with an enormous grain of salt.