Posted on 10/26/2010 6:28:08 PM PDT by prairiebreeze
Tokin' Resistance
By Howard Stansfield, 12/12/96
Soros, who declined to comment for this story, writes that “the drug problem as primarily a criminal problem is a misconception” and that “eradicating the drug problem is a false idea.”http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1996-12-12/news/tokin-resistance/“A drug-free America is simply not possible. You can discourage the use of drugs, you can forbid the use of drugs, you can treat people who are addicted to drugs, but you cannot eradicate drugs.”
So what would he do?
“I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available,” he writes. “Initially, I would keep the prices low enough to destroy the drug trade. Once that objective was obtained, I would keep raising the prices, very much like an excise duty on cigarettes, but I would make an exception for registered addicts in order to discourage crime.”
That FRName is just too obvious to miss having a little fun with. Besides -- that photo of the cat makes me grin every time I see it... ;-)
Its posting history is so-so, but time will tell... If it has to be too careful, its trolling won't have much effect. If it gets too bold -- it is now on notice, and others will handle it...
If it proves to be legit -- fine...
But, for now, I'll just say, "Welcome to Free Republic!" '-)
And I will say “good night”!
(even though it’s 12:24 AM) ;^)
They went much farther than what is being proposed here, but take a look at their results and give a fair opinion on them.
First, let me admit that I don't do "fair" opinions when it comes to drug use since I believe that moral laws shouldn't be based on statistics but rather on the morality of the activity itself. That seems to be lost in the conversation.
Second, we are talking Time, not exactly your more objective medium. For example, they chose to ignore Amsterdam because it would not support the agenda. It reminds me of an article that tried to show that Christians have a higher divorce rate than atheists. In order to do that, they cherry picked their data by selecting the state of Alabama, which had a higher rate of divorces in the church. Second, they didn't bother to discern whether the divorces occured before or after the person was "born again". This is a huge issue because, next to death of a loved one and before loss of job, there is the event of divorce that causes emotional distress. The evangelical churches in Alabama are more of the variety of "seeker-sensitive" so that they actively seek the distraught and broken in society with the goal of patching them up with Jesus. Ergo, a divorced person is far more likely to go to church to seek free counseling and join a "singles and singles again" social group with the intent of finding a better class of future mate than what they may have dug up in a bar or fresh from high school.
The Portugal story is lacking in much needed detail. Notice the slicing and dicing of the noted statistics picking certain age groups and manipulating the demos until they get the numbers that support the narrative. Time is well known for doing this sort of thing, and Cato is also well known for selective editing of data too.
If you want to impress me, I need a larger sample over time, and probably the most important yet probably elusive stat would be to measure the tonnage of dope smoked by that population over the course of time before and after the decriminalization took place. The "age of first use" stat is meaningless to me when one considers that one from a Western culture that would consider dope smoking is largely lawless and not intimidated by law enforcement. Sort of like the arguments 2nd Amendment types make when they point out that murderers aren't likely to go on the straight and narrow just because the city has draconian gun prohibition.
The gun laws didn't save the kids at Columbine, and drug enforcement by the local gestapo isn't going to scare young experimenters into a night just eating pop corn and drinking a Pepsi.
I can't explain the alleged drop in drug use other than the evidence-less guess that the taboo "forbidden fruit" effect is playing here. Many people like to point out Europeans aren't as anal about alcohol consumption by minors and thus there are fewer binge drinkers in that age group. I don't know if that is true particularly since kids in the US don't really have difficulties in acquiring alcoholism habit if they so desired.
Another thought is, that without the huge financial incentive, the marketing of drugs is lower in Portugal. Its sort of like trying to sell electronics to someone when they can buy it cheaper on-line. Why put in all the effort of convincing a buyer for so little reward?
I suspect that the reason why California is considering a state-wide decriminalization effort is because the lawmakers are dopers who see absolutely nothing wrong with getting high, and that by making it state-wide, it doesn't make for high density pockets of dopers who required even more social services with practically no contribution into the system that must pay for it.
As a Christian, the Bible condemns intoxication and likens it to witchcraft, so to me it not negotiable. If I didn't think that God's ways were the best ways, then I wouldn't be a Believer since to me my religion is Truth not a cultural superstition. This falls into the category of "before you tear down a fence, it is important to discover why it was put up in the first place." At one time we had no drug laws, then we had Prohibition, saw what kind of disaster that became and decided that we preferred to have thousands slaughtered on our roadways each year by drunk driving than the thought that an Al Capone might have the same political power as the despots in Chicago have right now. I don't know what the body-count would be if we liberalized our attitude about drugs. It would be great if we could use peer pressure rather than SWAT teams to achieve the results many of us desire, but for now, it seems that as long as the pro-drug abuse lobby continues to sing the praises of chemical addiction and the destruction of mind, body and spirit, there will always be that tension designed to tear society apart.
What should really make you puke is their insistence on universal preschool. Dewey wanted kids early but didn’t dare ask for earlier than 6 years old. Parents wouldn’t have allowed it them. The thought of strangers forming the thinking of children in formative years was suspect (which it should be). This sex education in grade schools (remember bambi wants it in K.) is all directly from Marcuse—Freudian-Marxism. I would never allow my child to be in public school nowadays....never.
I will write some—soon—I think I am going to get my computer tomorrow. :) I was going to get my masters in Curriculum but think I am too old to spend that kind of money and time to make that much difference anyway.
Yes, I grew up during that 60’s revolution but I had solid Catholic upbringing (moral absolutes) that protected me from falling for the garbage....I looked the part, but bluffed my way through a few years of college indoctrination. My sister was 5 years younger and had went to public schools and didn’t have the same foundation.
She had written a paper on “death” in high school. I still have the paper...it seemed so odd to me until I read about Columbine classes, and it all rang a bell.
My sister was 19 years old, very cute and fun. She got involved with hippies in a commune and it all went downhill from there and she took her own life with a gun. She had a lot of artistic talent—more than me. It was a waste.
I was married by then, was in another state, and had children right away.
How terrible, Savagesusie. How horrible.
You have knowledge and spirit and a desire to communicate.
I look forward to whatever you write, and I will ping the lists.
What I don’t get is...I thought it was against the law to smoke regular cigs in 99% of CA., is there going to be an exemption for smoking ‘wacky tobacky’?
“the Bible condemns intoxication”?
Didn’t Jesus drink wine?
Let me help you with your response ...it was grape juice, it’s not “wine” in the fermented state, something got lost in the translation from ancient Aramaic to the English King James version.
Let me help you with your response ...it was grape juice, it’s not “wine” in the fermented state, something got lost in the translation from ancient Aramaic to the English King James version.
Hardly. Those folks knew how to get smashing drunk.
Rather than consult teatotallers for their opinions, it is much simpler to find relevant passages in Scipture. Proverbs 31 prohibits the king from wine and princes from strong drink, yet encourages losers to get blitzed so that they can forget their pain.
The theme regarding intoxicants in Scripture have to do with the association with recklessness and debotchery. In Mark 6 the drunks at the party thought it would be a great idea to lop the head off of John the Baptist. How can anyone forget Balshazar's last party? Then we have fun passages like this:
Isaiah 28:7-8 "But they also have erred through wine, And through intoxicating drink are out of the way; The priest and the prophet have erred through intoxicating drink, They are swallowed up by wine, They are out of the way through intoxicating drink; They err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filth; No place is clean."
Which doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement for intoxication.
The prophet Hosea said "Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart." Aaron was warned in Lev 10 that intoxication makes one unable to distinguish between what is "holy and unholy, between clean and unclean." And so my argument against intoxicants has been that it is incompatible with civilization. If you want to live like crude, selfish, barbarians then load up on what ever screws you up, and proudly proclaim the "Allah Ahkbar" of the Darwin Award candidates - "Hold my beer and watch this."
I lived next to Oakland in the 80s. Legal pot will have no bearing or not on them being worse than Detroit, as they’ve shown they can attain that status well before pot was ever legal there.
It would make more Americans dependent on the state as more people lose the ambition to succeed as so will be more likely to vote Democrat.
I might make marijuana laws less stringent in regards to jail time to free up space for violent criminals but would never legalize it.
http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-hidden-soros-agenda-drugs-money-the-media-and-political-power/
And how many families did he as a nazi ghoul rob of gold and and other precious heirlooms ,all with the OK of the nazi’s. My wife and I were talking about Soros this evening and we were dumbfounded as to how this man’s evil past has gone by the usual scrutiny of diabolical acts against the Jews at the time. Hard to believe Soros being a Jew gets a pass on past acts.
“Do we need another legal drug? No, but we don’t need to make tens of millions of our fellow citizens criminals over this stuff.”
That’s pretty much my opinion. Pot definitely is not a good thing, but millions of people are going to use it no matter what enforcement is in place. Most of the pot heads aren’t violent criminals by nature, but as long as pot is classed along with meth, coke, and the like, we’re kind of pushing those people to the margins of the criminal world, and wasting space in prisons that could be better used for real threats to society.
“Who cares? Soros ALSO thinks heroin should be legal - HOW MANY FREEPERS agree with THAT? NOT ME. NOT many...”
Well, opiates which are nearly identical to heroin, even ones much more powerful, are legal, but regulated, already. Millions of people have prescriptions for them, and they have pretty much the exact same effect as heroin, so I don’t see much logic in the current classifications.
Soros’s statements show he has a perverted view of the relationship of laws and societal structures, at least to historical USA history and traditions. Probably his experience with the nazis and his confiscation of doomed Jews’ properties is the essence of his character. It is a shame he has been able to cover all his past with his money used to promote anti-USA ideology.
That’s what I was thinking. Tobacco is practically illegal in NY and costs what — close to $10 for a pack of cigarettes, I don’t know I don’t smoke. So where could you legally smoke pot? I can’t stand the smell, maybe that’s why I was never interested in it. If it’s taxed to death people will still buy it underground, so where will the big tax revenues be? For some pot is a gateway drug, I’m not saying everyone, but some. And people can say “everyone does it”, no they don’t, but many more will if it is legal. And if it’s legal, how would you determine a “safe” amount in the bloodstream to work, drive, etc? Back in my college days I would see people acting fine after smoking who knows how much and those taking one toke and tripping all over themselves.
It is a states right. I don’t agree with it, I wouldn’t want it in my state, but it is a states right to grow and sell commercially anything it wants to the citizens of that state.
What does bother me, is our current admin, uses its Superiority Clause when it deems it suits their causes only, ie Arizona.
But, since I don’t live in California, I really have no say so in what California wants to do.
Now, this attitude changes dramatically, when federal funds will be used (either upfront or when CA goes bankrupt and the whole US has to bail them out) to treat, enforce, etc, every bit of bathwater that goes along with the idea of making an already stupid group of people even more stupid.
I am sure trial lawyers are salivating at all the lawsuits, from suing employers for not hiring dopers, to the person who was harmed financially or physically because a doper at company X was too stoned to think properly, and now company X is liable for damages.
The list is endless. But in the end, the feds have no business in booze, alcohol, firearms, tobacco, etc, or many of the other things they are involved in.
I know that once legalized, our nationwide, mandated taxpayer funded Obamacare will be treating all the potheads, and our national sociol security will be supporting those who go out and claim that their drug addictions prevent them from working.
These issues are my objection, not the morality. You cannot legislate people to behave or be smart, and I resist all attempts by the federal government to do so, whether I agree with the stance or not, it is a states right.
I do find it compelling though, that CA is so anti-smoking, but they are OK with allowing one to smoke something far more dangerous to the general public than cigarettes or cigars. I wonder what the peoples take will be on it when Big Pot companies get into the act and start (dare I say) showing a profit? Oh the Huge Manateee!
Anyways, good luck CA, I hope you get what you wish for.
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