Tancredo Says It's Time To Legalize Drugs; Former Congressman Says Drug War Lost

KMGH-TV ABC 7 Denver, Colo. ^ | 2009-05-20 | Steve Saunders

[rabscuttle385]

DENVER -- Admitting that it may be "political suicide" former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said its time to consider legalizing drugs.

He spoke Wednesday to the Lincoln Club of Colorado, a Republican group that's been active in the state for 90 years. It's the first time Tancredo has spoken on the drug issue. He ran for president in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform that has brought him passionate support and criticism.

Tancredo noted that he has never used drugs, but said the war has failed.

"I am convinced that what we are doing is not working," he said.

[oldplayer]

“Addiction is first and foremost a -——— PRIVATE-—— health problem, not a criminal justice problem.”

There! Fixed it.

Oldplayer

[dcwusmc]

Then please hurry up and do so. Thanks!

[CharlesWayneCT]

The United States has not succeeded in eliminating drugs, but that in itself doesn’t mean we should give up.

You have to have a positive reason why drugs should not be a concern for the government, not just a “well, we can’t control it, so why bother”. After all, such an argument would prevent us from ever stopping abortion. And we’ve made shoplifting illegal for decades and people still shoplift.

If more people would use drugs if we stopped trying to fight it, that would mean we didn’t “lose”, we simply couldn’t win.

[dcwusmc]

And the War on Some Drugs is part of that looting... you know, asset “forfeiture” (grand theft, in other words), trashing the Constitution, all that sort of thing. It all ties together as you should well know. You’ve been around here long enough to have learned at least a LITTLE bit!

[dcwusmc]

WHERE in the Constitution is government handed the authority to ban substances which folks might ingest? WHERE? Please be very specific.

[devere]

“WHERE in the Constitution is government handed the authority to ban substances which folks might ingest? WHERE? Please be very specific.”

No where.

[GeronL]

of course.

But its not the major problem by far.

the looter government is out to stomp this nation into the ground and shooting at its toes isn’t going to stop them

[RC one]

I can see legalizing pot and maybe a few other substances and maybe decriminalizing a few others. I have a hard time getting on board with legalizing meth, coke, heroin, etc. Pot doesn’t turn people into slaves like coke, meth, and heroin.

[PizzaDriver]

Allowing each of the different States to experiment in Unique legalization plans could yield positive results.

Just off the top of my head, I'd like to see one State try allowing ONLY Walgreen's to sell “single Day, One user” supplies; the buyer MUST pay with “plastic”. Each transaction would go into Walgreen's’ mainframe & lockout that buyer {from further buys] for 24 hours.

Another could try “only Home Delivery & only paid with Plastic”; that delivery MUST be to the Card Holder's “address of record”[the valid Billing Address]. Each transaction would be automatically reported to the Feds & Local Law Enforcement.

Yup, there are untried ways to limit Drug Abuse, and cripple the illegal drug profiteers.

[Cedar]

Oh, great. A nation of candle-watchers. Just what we need.

[dcwusmc]

Precisely!

[dcwusmc]

It needs to be addressed, right along with all the rest. The abuse of the Constitution can, IMO, be traced right back to the WOSD and the war on guns and gunowners. They ALL need to be addressed and stopped.

[Cheap_Hessian]

Libertarians will never get me to go long with legalizing drugs until they successfully get rid of the social welfare state. All this will do is promote more bad behavior and allow a bunch pot smokers to do nothing other than live on taxpayer money. Put in personal responsibility into our system first where stupid people fail, and then and only then will I even entertain the idea.

[Ken H]

WHERE in the Constitution is government handed the authority to ban substances which folks might ingest? WHERE? Please be very specific.

My favorite question! As best I can recall, I've seen 3 or 4 people come right out and endorse Wickard. Most often, the responses are awkward evasions or no answer at all.

[rabscuttle385]

Libertarians will never get me to go long with legalizing drugs until they successfully get rid of the social welfare state.

Who says that small-l libertarians don't want to get rid of the social welfare state, at least, at the federal level?

Social welfare and combating drug abuse are not among the constitutionally enumerated powers of the federal legislature, and as such, per the Tenth Amendment, are powers exclusively reserved to the individual States and to their citizens.

[DoughtyOne]

I believe there are good arguments to make drugs legal.  I also believe there are good arguments not to.  I come down on the big NOT TO.

Why do some poeple want to legalize drugs?  Well, there seems to be two main reasons.

1. Some people believe adults should be able to do anything they please as long as they are not hurting others.
2. Those same people believe that by legalizing drugs, the black market will be eliminated and all problems with law enforcement will simply evaporate.

We have seen the down side of legalizing alcohol.  Yes, there are down sides.

Children gain access to alcohol.  Adults cannot control themselves, and drink alcohol and drive.  Others become alcoholics and destroy the family unit.  The work force is negative impacted.  Lives are ruined.  Society is negative impacted.

We can kid ourselves about how drugs are actually better than alcohol.  In some ways they may be.  In other ways they are much worse.  We will have the same problems with drugs that we now have with alcohol, but the legalization of drugs will spread the problems exponentially.  There will always be a class of people who wish to drink alcohol.  Others won't be tempted by alcohol.  But if you place all the drugs that people want to abuse within their reach, you will have people who want to abuse, morphine, Demerol, Fentanyl... and on and on.  Where would it end?  There would be forty new products if not more, that people would want to abuse.  There would be segments of followers for each one of them.  There would be abusers of each one of them.  And there would be children getting ahold of each one of them.

Ah yes, children.  It's my assumption that those who wish to legalize drugs would have the common sense to set an age limit under which you could not use these drugs legally.  Okay, since those drugs are now on the street, what happens immediately?  That's right, a black market pops up to make sure kids can now not only get access to alcohol as they have in the past, but now they can have access to all the other drugs too for a price.  So have you eliminated the problems with law enforcement by legalizing all the drugs?  No.  You'll still have the cops knocking down doors to stop pushers who supply kids.  And folks, these kids have expendable incomes, and there will be plenty of money to be made.

The only way to stop the black market problem would be to let any human that wanted to, have access to any drug they wanted.  Then you've got grade school kids shooting up Heroin if they want.  Look, I'm not saying all those who push for legalization will want this, even though I'm sure some would.  I still think this is a stark reality.  You can't stop the abuses of law enforcement unless you open the flood gates to everyone.

Well, if we're going to do that, we might just as well allow kids to have sex with adults at any age too.  What's the difference?  If we're going to allow them to F up their brains duirng the formative years, we might just as well let them trash the physical as well.

The truth is, even it if it's not the goal, the black market profiteers will have access to any drug they want under legalization.  Some folks will go in to get the drugs, and sell them to the profiteers.  So kids will have easy access to many narcotics.

We have enough problems today.  Do we really need to expand them exponentially?

I don't think so.

I know a lot of you will disagree with me.  I've had this discussion a number of times before.  I'm not changing my mind, and I know you aren't.  I just wanted to put some food for thought out there.

I would encourage others to make their own statements like I have.

I don't have the time to debate five to ten of you at the same time like I have a number of times in the past.

[Ken H]

We should only reserve certain cities for drugs, prostitution, globalist slavery, gambling, etc...and build tall fences around them.

Slavery is unconstitutional and therefore is legitimately the business of the federal government. The Wickard decision makes drugs, along with health care, welfare, gun control etc. subject to fedgov control.

Do you think Wickard is in keeping with the original meaning of the Commerce Clause?

[x_plus_one]

Abandoning all pretense of a war on drugs is like opening the doors of the alamo to santa ana. othing good can come of it...and it could only be the plan of wishful thinkers who are exhausted and confused.

[Cheap_Hessian]

Yeah, I know... but Libertarians make a great mistake attacking social issues against conservatives before winning any economic ones against liberals. The government has an incentive to legalize drugs so they can tax it. It is an easier fight. Have you found an incentive for the federal government to get smaller?

[roamer_1]

[...] combating drug abuse are not among the constitutionally enumerated powers of the federal legislature, and as such, per the Tenth Amendment, are powers exclusively reserved to the individual States and to their citizens.

Not precisely true, FRiend. The federal government does have the right to control import/export into the country, and also interstate trafficking, so there is a proper role for the federal government in defining contraband.

That being said, I will meet you in the middle, and agree that the federal government has far out-stepped it's boundaries wrt the WOD. I will agree with the libertarians that states rights and private rights have been lost in the process, and need to be restored.

But I will still remain against the notion of legalizing all drugs, or a panoply of 50 different definitions, which would make interstate enforcement impossible. Some reasonable middle ground must be found.

I find the libertarian view to be short-sighted in this regard, as what one endorses, one will invariably get more of.

Who will pay for the increase in drug use? Crime will go up, legal or not... drug users cannot afford meth now, which is fairly reasonable to buy... but the nature of their addiction makes them useless as workers, so they steal for their fix. That will not change if their drug is legal. But since they cannot be processed by the system for their drug use, they will remain on the streets until caught actually committing a burglary.

And who will support the increase in unwed mothers and addicted children? More grist for the welfare system. What of all the illegitimate children pumped into the system?

Legalizing drugs will not make things better. It will make things predictably worse. And they are bad enough already.