What do you expect...Jake seeing the light.
Posted on 08/28/2006 7:29:35 AM PDT by tang0r
It turns out that alcohol is legal for the simplest, most nostalgic, and most American reason of all. Despite its risks and harmful side-effects, adults are reserved right to drink because they are independent adults in a free country. For all of the empty rhetoric about economics and black markets, the end of Prohibition was due to a single principle: even if drinking may be bad for society, government has no right to keep the people from doing it. The ability to get drunk is an inalienable right that we have forever confirmed with the 18th Amendment.
(Excerpt) Read more at prometheusinstitute.net ...
Persecution complex?
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
If by "conclusive determination" you mean "absolute proof", then you are right. That is not available and never will be, but that's okay, because that is not the way that science works. There isn't absolute proof of gravity either, but I still believe it exists. What we do know is that after crunching the numbers, the researcher found that "the theory which is most consistent with the data is that changes in the homicide rate are responses to changes in substance control policy."
But you don't have to take his word for it. Here's another:
Violence and the U.S. Prohibitions of Drugs and Alcohol(pdf)
This paper examines the relation between prohibitions and violence using the historical behavior of the homicide rate in the United States. The results document that increases in enforcement of drug and alcohol prohibition have been associated with increases in the homicide rate, and auxilliary evidence suggests this positive correlation reflects a causal effect of prohibition enforcement on homicide. Controlling for other potential determinants of the homicide rate - the age composition of the population, the incarceration rate, economic conditions, gun availability, and the death penalty - does not alter the conclusion that drug and alcohol prohibition have substantially raised the homicide rate in the United States over much of the past 100 years.Nevertheless, my comment stands...we hear very frequently about people on drugs committing crimes.
Actually it was a question, not a statement. And no one denies that people on drugs often commit crimes. The question is why. One probable reason is that people who use illegal drugs are already people more inclined to commit crimes, drugs or not. Another is that under prohibition, drugs are prohibitiively expensive, meaning that people have to commit crimes in order to buy those drugs that they would otherwise be able get honestly.
They then go on to say that, but for their drug habit, they wouldn't be committing the crimes.
Don't be so gullible.
How manty treatment professionals have you heard of advocating legalization as a way to help?
Treatment professionals? What do treatment professionals have to do with it? Their expertise is getting addicts clean, not crime prevention.
no, just annoyed with this legalize crapola. By the reasoning used in this thread let's legalize prostitution, and polygamy, and lower the age of consent to 4 years old, and any other thing that is presently illegal. No rules, no propriety, no ethics. Yep a great place to be....NOT
I was noticing some of the usual Tobacco Taliban suspects here, too.
We're natural allies in the fight against the Nanny State, but a few of them persist in seeing cigarette smokers as the reincarnation of Harry Anslinger, for some reason. I could never figure it out.
In all fairness, marijuana users have been putting up with demonization a lot longer than cigarette smokers have, so I guess they're a little further along in the March to the Gulag ;-)
I've smoked marijuana more than once in my salad days, and have always been against the WOSD, from the very beginning.
Never seen a brawl break out because a bunch of people were smoking pot, nor because a bunch of people were sitting around smoking cigarettes.
There's a small segment in both camps who seem to want to get into a morality pissing contest.
And both camps have been the victims of junk science.
The larger argument should be against the Nanny State, period.
Nonsense. Read a book on elementary logic.
You are so right!
The welfare state has been legal for all of your 45 years on earth ... does that make it a good idea?
and quite frankly all of your arguments to legalize them are specious at best.
So let's see the better arguments that prove your claim.
You don't seem to think that there are any negative consequences for making drugs legal. It's all going to be just a happy place and we can all sing kumbaya.
Straw man. The argument here is that criminalizing drugs does more harm than legalizing them would ... as we learned with the deadly addictive violence-inducing drug alcohol back before your years on earth began.
And you believed Mikey didn't you. heh. heh-heh. he-he-he...
What do you expect...Jake seeing the light.
And you believed Mikey didn't you. heh. heh-heh. he-he-he...
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Reply: Yeah - I did believe Mike.
We've been friends for a couple of decades. Mike had just finished sheet rocking my workshop~'deluxe'(that's what the clean-up was - mud and scrap pieces of sheet rock) and is an all-around great guy. Everything turned out just great!
"After about 3/4 of the work was done, I pulled out a couple of joints and we too a smoke break. Owen was really enjoying the time. He got real philosophical and conversation was flowing freely. He said he would like to visit again sometime. Owen went back to doing the work and cheerfully finished. I told Mike how it went and he just smiled. You gotta love anyone who helps your sick brother."(winston2 post #251)
In your line of work - have you ever considered cannabis as useful for those with troubled minds?
"You know, if I had the money, I would smoke two... three of these every day." - Detective Thorn
Lol!
Why bother legalizing it? Since it's smoke, you won't be able to smoke it hardly anywhere anymore.
"Current research indicates that marijuana may actually protect brain cells."
National Institute of Mental Health, 1998
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Come to think of it -
none of my cannabis smokin friends have become mentally ill. (I ain't making this up either.)
They live longer healthier lives too.
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OK - you guessed my age - but I ain't boring - yet.
BTW - Are you for joints or against them?
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