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!
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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.
I have a low tolerance for hyperbole.
If you take a psychoactive drug, enough of it, you absolutely lose your head. I have seen it.
Not necessarily, as you acknowledge, with "can become absolutely psychotic." In fact, I know of no "psychoactive" drug whose normal dose necessitates psychotic or, more to my point, assaultive behavior.
And that's what you're talking about here, isn't it? An increase in assaultive behavior, significantly greater than alcohol, due to the psychoactive properties of drug "X" at its normal dose.
For example, would heroin merit legalization, if its "assault causing" properties turned out to be less than the "assault causing" properties of alcohol?
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.
Limbaugh took massive amounts of Oxycontin, chemically almost identical to heroin. If one is legal and the other illegal, even with a prescription, is the law askew, assuming they both have the same "assault causing" properties?
“If one is legal and the other illegal, even with a prescription, is the law askew, assuming they both have the same “assault causing” properties?”
I saw the law is not askew, because if you have chronic pain, the benefit of the pain relief exceeds the deficit of the drug’s negatives.
“I have a low tolerance of hyperbole”
My recounting of our home invasion, the suicide of a close friend, and my midnight visit to an ER as a child are not at all hyperbole but absolute truth.
I don’t have much tolerance for cherry picking, either.
“And that’s what you’re talking about here, isn’t it? An increase in assaultive behavior”
An increase in assaultive behavior.
An increase in negligent behavior.
An increase in irresponsible behavior.
An increase in crazy behavior.
An increase in lazy behavior.
Cherry picking? These are real stories from my life.
“Not necessarily, as you acknowledge, with “can become absolutely psychotic.” In fact, I know of no “psychoactive” drug whose normal dose necessitates psychotic or, more to my point, assaultive behavior.”
It doesn’t necessitate assaultive behavior. It just makes it a lot more likely.
If, every time somebody dropped acid, they decided they were Superman and drove down the street backwards, it would be easy to convince you, I suppose.
But sometimes they just sit around and giggle. Sometimes they just go to raves and don’t get into any accidents. Sometimes they go to class and, although they are acting weird, don’t hurt anybody.
You never know. Just like someone who is psychotic isn’t killing or hurting people all day long. It’s not constant.
Cherry picked from all the arguments you've submitted on this thread.
Sarah Brady's got some "real stories from her life" she thinks ought to be the basis for our public policy on gun control, and I disagree with her, too.
Well, you can list all the benefits of drug abuse if you like. It’s an open forum.
And I can call you out for trying to pass off a strawman argument.
Listing three terrible things that happened to me as a result of other people’s drug abuse is a straw man argument?
“Sarah Brady’s got some “real stories from her life” she thinks ought to be the basis for our public policy on gun control, and I disagree with her, too. “
Sarah Brady’s arguments do not correlate to mine. What is the risk/benefit to access to guns?
The risk is, people will use them to commit crimes.
The benefit is, people will use them defend themselves from criminals.
Also, hunting and sports, but that’s not the beef of the argument.
The benefit way outweighs the risk, demonstrably.
We agree that it's a matter for the States. If you want to recreate the DEA in your state, have at it. People can move.
Beware the WOD Industrial Complex....too many people make too much money keeping drugs illegal....and then there are the cartels to contend with.
Beware the WOD Industrial Complex....too many people make too much money keeping drugs illegal....and then there are the cartels to contend with.
That doesn't answer my question.
To rephrase: “Oxycontin is legal and heroin illegal. Is the law askew in treating the drugs differently, assuming they both have the same negatives?
It is when you start implying that those experiences will be come everyone's experience, all the time.
Should laziness be against the law?
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