Posted on 05/08/2010 4:31:30 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
Andrew has already posted this, and I'm late to the game because I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but nonetheless, I feel compelled to remark. Yes, folks, this is your war on drugs:
VIDEO:
After he watched it, my more temperate better half was literally shaking with anger. My anger is mixed with a sort of bleak despair that this sort of thing could happen in America, and worse, that so few people care. You shoot two dogs in front of a seven year old--who could have been killed by a stray round, and at the very least will carry this hideous recollection to the grave. And why? For misdemeanor pot possession?
This response is nonsensical. It's like hearing that they came too late to catch the family bootlegging cable. Sure it's illegal, and maybe it's even wrong. But "dealer-sized" pot possession isn't necessarily related to actual drug dealings--I have several friends right now who probably qualify, and I'm pretty sure they aren't going to do anything that merits a SWAT intervention, because those sorts of things can get you drummed right out of your Tuesday-night book club, not to mention how they'd take it at the Rotary.
SNIP
This is our nation's drug enforcement in a nutshell. We started out by banning the things. And people kept taking them. So we made the punishments more draconian. But people kept selling them. So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence . . . and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders. Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America better.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
But it’s still illegal to manufacture alcohol.
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That is false. It’s perfectly legal to manufacture alcohol for your own use. My husband and I do it and so do many of our friends.
What’s illegal is to make it and SELL it without a license.
Back in the day cops didn't suit up and storm a house for crimes such as this one. Swat teams are an abomination and unconstitutional. There is no reason to have them. If we need anti terrorism groups then the military should take care of it. Swat teams are a violation of the use of military as police, because swat teams ARE military that are pretending to be police.
There is no need for them. Legalize drugs and not just pot. Drugs were legal in this country at one time and there was no more addiction then there is now. If fact we probably have more people on drugs per capita than we have ever had in the history of this country and you can trace it to prohibition of drugs.
Anyone who thinks the sh** they do today in law enforcement is a good idea is out of their minds and the people who have the biggest complaints about legalizing drugs are those who cannot stand other people to do things they consider immoral.
BTW, before you make some smart a**ed comment, I don't do drugs but I do have a brain and I know that our law enforcement officers in a lot of areas are out of control.
They can't wait to play "soldier" and bust in on someone and shoot a dog or two because that is what their training teaches them.
Take the money out of drugs by legalizing it and you will stop the crime and defund the gangs because the gangs get their money from illicit drugs.
If you distill spirits you are breaking federal law unless you have a license to do so. Beer and wine are legal to make, moon shine and the equivalent are not. You can make distilled spirits if you plan to use it for motor fuel but you still have to get a license and pay a tax, whether you sell it or not.
America is not what it was “in the day” and that is about a lot more than the dope culture.
Cops (sheriffs) have always stormed houses, they just didn’t always take the precautions that they do now, it is excessive today, but we don’t have to legalize the drug world to make changes in our policing methods.
Why this article left such a lasting impression on me was because it was the first story on this subject that I remember that went on to predict that unless something was done soon about this plague, this nation was headed for a sort of benign, fascist police state where a gigantic proportion of future crime would be drug related, a huge portion of the prison population would be addicts and police manpower would have to expand enormously just to keep up the problem.
This was well before the gigantic increase in drug use that took place during the mid and late 60's, before cocaine use became the drug of choice of the "disco" generation, before crack flooded the urban centers of this nation and well before hardly anyone had ever heard of meth.
I wish I could remember the name of the article's author because he really hit the nail on the head with his predictions. It was also a time when we had real newspapermen and women who actually researched what they wrote and performed a real public service. These days when you see an article about drug use it's usually to proclaim that the junkie in question now has their own reality TV show where we are sure to be thrilled by watching the dope fiend in question while he buys his drugs and then in the final episode maybe we'll get to watch as he goes through withdrawal. The article was written a very long time ago and as far as I can see, the problem has only gotten worse.
I would love to see what his predictions about our future would be today.
The War on Drugs is nothing but a sop to social conservatives by the post-New Deal left to trick them into a coalition with the left for unlimited federal commerce clause power.
Wake up and abandon the WOD and the left no longer has enough support to pervert the INTERSTATE commerce clause for most other unconstitutional federal regulation of our lives. At least, Scalia, Roberts and Alito would drop out, tune in and turn on with Thomas to constitutional original intent.
Really? Well, I guess I need to expand my circle of friends. Somebody should call the ATF and let them know they should change their name.
I was actually hoping to get agreement ... it would illustrate your point.
You guys obviously haven’t been paying attention to the drug war news. It’s common knowledge that shooting the family pets is standard operating procedure for a drug bust. Dogs typically get quit agitated when strangers burst into a house and therefore must be neutralized for everybody’s safety.
For a famous example, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQD-btqhKg
In this story, the cops shot a city mayor’s labradors in a botched raid on his house.
Shooting the family pets has become so common that a reasonable person could conclude that it is a form of extra-judicial punishment. You don’t need no steeenking trial to execute the pets. All you need is the word of a drug-addled confidential informant to get a warrant.
Really? Well, I guess I need to expand my circle of friends.
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Indeed you should. Our beer is excellent. :)
WAY OFF TOPIC: One of the few things Jimmy Carter got right was to legalize home brewing. It was legal to make your wine after the end of Prohibition, but the beer lobbyists influenced Congress to keep the prohibition on home brewing of beer. The beer lobby is the most consumer-unfriendly and economically useless of all business lobbies. Its overriding purpose is to keep the three-tier market in place, which imposes an enormous barrier to entry and a huge overhead expense burden for any small brewer. Believe it or not, the lobby that represents beer wholesalers — a line of business that should be fairly small in the US economy — has 5th largest PAC in the 2009/2010 cycle. In 2008, its contributions were in an 8:5 ratio favoring Democrats. Of course, McCain’s family is in the business.
Hey, no people were killed. The dogs were agitated and had to be killed for everybody’s safety.
Drug warriors don’t just kill family pets. They kill innocent people, too.
See http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ .
An Epidemic of “Isolated Incidents”
Over the past 20 years, the drug warriors kill an average of American three civilians per year. If you think that’s bad, imagine how many are killed abroad. (And we wonder why Latin American peasants hate the USA.) Collateral damage in the war on drugs.
Yes, the sarcasm is dripping down your screen. I hate drugs. My brother died of an overdose of heroin. But I hate the drug war even more. Drugs only threaten the liberty of those foolish enough to use them. The government’s war on drug threatens everybody’s liberty.
BACK ON TOPIC: I think home grown marijuana should be legalized as well. I don’t believe it’s any worse than alcohol and I imagine about the same percentage of people would tend to abuse it rather than use it responsibly.
Apparently it already is legal to grow your own opium poppies. There was a whole page in the Garden section of the Dallas Morning News a couple years ago about how to grow them as ornamentals. The article never called them “opium poppies” outright, but they did use the scientific name Papaver somniferum, and that’s what they are.
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