Posted on 06/16/2010 9:58:48 AM PDT by logician2u
I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and terrorized a 7-year-old boy -- for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana.
Two years ago, in Prince George's County, Md., cops raided Cheye Calvo's home -- all because a box of marijuana was randomly shipped to his wife as part of a smuggling operation. Only later did the police learn that Calvo was innocent -- and the mayor of that town.
"When this first happened, I assumed it was just a terrible, terrible mistake," Calvo said. "But the more I looked into it, the more I realized (it was) business as usual that brought the police through our front door. This is just what they do. We just don't hear about it. The only reason people heard about my story is that I happened to be a clean-cut white mayor."
Radley Balko of Reason magazine says more than a hundred police SWAT raids are conducted every day. Does the use of illicit drugs really justify the militarization of the police, the violent disregard for our civil liberties and the overpopulation of our prisons? It seems hard to believe.
I understand that people on drugs can do terrible harm -- wreck lives and hurt people. But that's true for alcohol, too. But alcohol prohibition didn't work. It created Al Capone and organized crime. Now drug prohibition funds nasty Mexican gangs and the Taliban. Is it worth it? I don't think so.
Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean government can stop it, or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to protect us from ourselves.
Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have. One Dutch official told me that "we've succeeded in making pot boring."
By contrast, what good has the drug war done? It's been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, government has spent billions and officials keep announcing their "successes." They are always holding press conferences showing off big drug busts. So it's not like authorities aren't trying.
We've locked up 2.3 million people, a higher percentage than any other country. That allows China to criticize America's human-rights record because our prisons are "packed with inmates."
Yet drugs are still everywhere. The war on drugs wrecks far more lives than drugs do!
Need more proof? Fox News runs stories about Mexican cocaine cartels and marijuana gangs that smuggle drugs into Arizona. Few stop to think that legalization would end the violence. There are no Corona beer smugglers. Beer sellers don't smuggle. They simply ship their product. Drug laws cause drug crime.
The drug trade moved to Mexico partly because our government funded narcotics police in Colombia and sprayed the growing fields with herbicides. We announced it was a success! We cut way back on the Colombian drug trade.
But so what? All we did was squeeze the balloon. The drug trade moved across the border to Peru, and now it's moved to Mexico. So the new president of Mexico is squeezing the balloon. Now the trade and the violence are spilling over the border into the United States.
That's what I call progress. It the kind of progress we don't need.
Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote: "(O)nce the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness ... (w)hy not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays ... ? The mischief done by bad ideologies is more pernicious ... than that done by narcotic drugs."
Right on, Ludwig!
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM moved to Mexico. So the new president of Mexico is squeezing the balloon. Now the trade and the violence are spilling over the border into the United States.
Why did you trim this part off?
and quit, possibly with long term side effects;
I trimmed
“and quit, possibly with long term side effects”
for brevity. You had already quoted the whole thing to me. I quoted back the beginning portion, for reference. I don’t see what the problem is.
If you use drugs, and quite, you can possibly have long term side effects. If you shot drugs, you could have HIV. Or not. If you did meth, you could have nasty teeth. Or not. If you dropped acid, you could have brain damage. Or not. If you smoked pot, you could still be paranoid. Or not.
It depends on a lot of factors, including how much you used, how often, and how susceptible you were to the effects.
Right?
I see the ubquitous nanny government having it's roots in a mindset that says anything that's possible is probable, and legislates based on the worst case scenario.
You say that you believe most people given the opportunity to use potentially addictive drugs would abuse them, and the only outcomes you forsee are that they quit after becoming addicted, die of their addiction, or end up in prison.
You believe that for most people any use of any potentially addictive drug (except alcohol) without becoming addicted is simply not an option, and theorize that there's something about alcohol that makes it an exception.
I don't believe that. I believe that the fact that most who use alcohol manage to do it without becoming addicted is because most adults have the ability to moderate their use of potentially addictive drugs.
Put into political terms, our difference of opinion comes down to a difference in how the government should look upon the governed. As adults who should be assumed to be capable of recognizing risks and making decisions, or as helpless incompetents who need to be told what to do, and made to do it.
“and the only outcomes you forsee are that they quit after becoming addicted. . .”
No, I do NOT think that people can quit only after they are addicted. I think many people try drugs, perhaps use them for a while, and then decide to stop, without ever having been addicted.
“Put into political terms, our difference of opinion comes down to a difference in how the government should look upon the governed. “
And upon those that the (stoned) governed negatively affect - their dependents, their interdependents, and unrelated passersby.
The high do not just sit quietly in their armchairs. They interact with people, often very negatively, and most of the people they interact with are either somewhat or completely defenseless.
So if you're taking a potentially addictive drug, you're killing youself and endangering others before you even develop an addiction to it?
They're a lot more likely to than the drunk.
You are on the road to killing yourself. You may get off the road.
You are endangering others if you get high. You are not your normal, rational self. You can be anything from slightly stupid to completely out of your head.
Are you submitting that as objectively verifiable fact, or personal opinion?
Define “high”. Was Rush Limbaugh “high” when he was taking pain killers?
“Was Rush Limbaugh “high” when he was taking pain killers?”
I don’t know. I assume so, or why did he take the stuff? I believe he said they were initially for pain, then for pleasure, then he was an addict and had to take them to feel somewhat normal.
You’d like to discuss what “high” means.
I’ll take a stab at it -
if your motor skills are significantly impaired.
if you are losing touch or have lost touch with reality.
if you are in a condition where it is difficult or impossible to rouse you.
if you are attempting to harm or kill yourself.
if you are attempting to harm or kill others.
if you are engaging in neglectful acts that could harm or kill others.
due to your ingestion of a psychoactive substance. . .
you are high.
You need me to objectively verify that people who are high interact with other people?
That is ridiculous.
They live in families or groups of people. They shop. They drive, they walk. They work sometimes. They go to the movies. Good grief. Of course they are interacting with people. ALL THE TIME.
Do you have an objectively verifiable fact that every high person zips himself into a plastic bubble while ingesting and enjoying, and only comes out again when sober? What are you trying to say?
Were they killing him as soon as he started taking them?
We used to routinely give amphetamines to our military pilots on long range missions. Were they high?
I need you to objectively verify that the people they interact with are defenseless. Or was that some more trimming for brevity?
“Were they killing him as soon as he started taking them?”
I suppose in the beginning, when used for legitimate need, to decrease of pain offset the negative physical effects. Again, risk/benefit. There are negative effects to taking opiates. But there are negative effects to chronic pain. So, you reduce or obliterate the chronic pain effects although you do take on the opiate effects.
After chronic pain was no longer an issue, presumably, yes, the overall effects were negative. That is how he lost his hearing, you know. Obviously the Vicodin was doing him great harm.
As for the military pilots, again, risk/benefit. The amphetamines are not good for them. They are taking them for what I assume is a legitimate purpose. That is the benefit. Should they take them just to get high? No. No benefit. To run important long range missions? Yes, that is a great benefit, to all of us, not just them.
A relative of mine took some extreme toxic drugs to combat cancer. They basically almost killed him to kill the cancer. What that good for him? Risk/benefit. The cancer would have killed him, untreated. The chemo almost killed him and had lots of side effects, but was better than death.
Of course you don’t get high off chemo, so nobody abuses it. The point remains, though, there is a risk/benefit question to answer. If the risk outweighs the benefit, you don’t do it.
The risk, in the case of psychoactive drugs, is the risk of everyone around you, not just yourself.
Again, we are not all living on our own personal private island. People deliberately giving themselves brain damage, or deliberately making themselves irrational, or deliberately destroying themselves physically, or deliberately making themselves unresponsive, or deliberately making themselves hallucinate, or deliberately making themselves uncoordinated, or deliberately making themselves useless, or deliberately making themselves crazy, are a danger or detriment to us all.
“I need you to objectively verify that the people they interact with are defenseless. Or was that some more trimming for brevity? “
Children are defenseless.
The frail elderly are defenseless.
Mentally impaired people are defenseless.
People with no reasonable expectation of attack (walking down the sidewalk, fixing a tire by the side of the road, living in the same house while you nod off cooking your junk, trying to get their work done at their place of business) are defenseless.
Here, I’ll give you defenseless. True story, one of my worst interaction with a stoner.
I am 5 months pregnant with a three year old kid and a husband. We are minding our own business at home. Getting ready to go to church, as a matter of fact! Suddenly there is a hysterical pounding at the door.
Who is it? A neighbor we have known for three years. Likes to sit in his garage and smoke pot all day. Pot only, mind you, if he did any other drugs I don’t know about it.
He was eccentric, but harmless, so I thought. I even had him over for dinner once. He came to check on us after a local earthquake. I gave a couple of odd jobs, too. He was always mellow, like a typical pothead.
But the pot had accumulated to its paranoid delusional effect. As my husband opened the door, he came barreling in, screaming about his mother, demanding to know where she was and what we had done to her.
We had never even met his mother. He was swinging like a madman, throwing furniture, absolutely out of his mind.
I grabbed my 3 year old and shuffled my pregnant self into a bedroom, leaving my poor husband to beat the living tar out him. He was so psycho he was pretty much uncontrollable, and at my husband’s call I left my 3 year old alone and got him the stun gun, which only weakened but did not fell him.
There was blood everywhere. Blood on the ceiling! Furniture overturned. The victim was the addict (my husband is a beast, seriously, strongest man I’ve ever known).
After 20 minutes of fistfight (the man’s head was swollen to the size of a watermelon), we finally tied his hands with some duct tape and called 911. The lunatic was still trying to attack with his HEAD.
Well, I am glad he was not armed. I am glad my husband was home. I am glad God is in heaven. I am glad my kid didn’t open the door.
But drugs are harmless, yeah.
You’re very good at presenting the worst case scenario and the arguing that it’s the most likely scenario.
When Rush was taking pain killers did they do something to him that made him avoid all the other people he normally interacted with except those defenseless people?
Well, you do put a lot of effort into pretending that drugs are some sort of benign, harmless pastime.
I’ve had a good friend who killed himself when high. I’ve been woken in the middle of the night to go identify a person they though was my sister who almost killed herself when high. I have been accosted by lunatics, who, as far as I can tell, are high on one thing or another.
I don’t live in the ‘hood, my parents are law abiding, and I have never been addicted to anything.
So if these are “worst case scenarios,” they are disturbingly commonplace.
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