Posted on 01/20/2015 10:24:15 AM PST by ConservingFreedom
Either agree with you or you are....dishonest, incompetent, lack character.
When you DELIBERATELY misstate your opponents position, *THAT* is the Obama level of honesty in debate.
Drugs you can ingest. Food you can ingest. Guns, not so much.
Relevance still not shown - your argument still supports gun-grabbing.
Alright. Instead of arguing about which approach might work best, why don’t we look at real-world examples and actually see what is effective and what is not?
Saudi Arabia has some of the strictest drug policies in the world. They publicly behead drug dealers.
How’s that working out for them?
Not very well. Their addiction rates are skyrocketing and they’re responsible for 30% of the world’s amphetamine black market.
http://world.time.com/2013/10/29/conservative-saudi-arabia-is-becoming-a-hotbed-for-amphetamines/
How about our prison system? Here we have an environment where every person is under guard and camera. Everything and everyone is searched before entering the area.
Yet, drug abuse in our prison system is rampant. If we can’t control drug abuse in an environment where everyone is under lock and key, how in the h*ll do we dream to control drug use in private homes?
So we can do as you suggest and ramp up the WOD, toss out what’s left of the Constitution, publicly kill anyone caught selling drugs... and we would make the problem worse.
The methods that I’ve been discussing on this thread are proven. Everywhere that drugs are legalized and regulated, drug use has gone down. Fewer children are doing drugs (even in Colorado, marijuana use in children dropped last year.) Fewer people are in prison, more people are permitted to have productive lives, crime drops, drug addiction rates go down and there are fewer deaths from overdoses.
I used to think exactly as you do, but I had to take a step back and look at the facts. The WOD is not working. Others are experimenting and finding more effective ways to deal with the problem.
It’s the Liberal who says, “our solution isn’t working! we must do more of it!” (And their answer was never wrong. There just wasn’t enough resources or money thrown at the problem. We were never extreme enough for their tastes. Heck, this is their public school argument.) Conservatives examine the situation, measure the results, and are willing to change course if our best efforts were wrong-headed.
The WOD has been used as an excuse to militarize our police force, throw out hunks of the Constitution, and raid and murder US Citizens in their homes. And, in the end, we haven’t made a tiny dent on the drug problem. The WOD has created the gangs and the cartels and increased violence in our nation.
The hard line simply doesn’t work in this area. We need to approach the problem with the same techniques that others are finding useful.
All I said was that in order to win a “war”, one must be willing to actually fight to win...
As far as solutions go...maybe legalization is the answer, but out of that will come bigger government...a double edged sword to be sure. Not counting the potential increase in addicts.
I still hold to my original comment on this thread...
Merchants of death and misery deserve that which they dispense.
“When you DELIBERATELY misstate your opponents position, *THAT* is the Obama level of honesty in debate.”
Sorry pal, that is what YOU did, not me. I accept your apology in advance.
Misery increases drug abuse. A miserable people will seek out greater escapes.
We are not holding steady because of the WOD. We are holding steady because we are a (semi) free and secure people.
The lovely rat experiment that proved that everything is horribly addictive? Yeah. Somebody redid that experiment, but this time they put the rats in a nice cage with toys, company and stimulation. The rats did try the drugged water, but ended up rejecting it the majority of the time, with the occasional sip and nothing more.
The rats that drugged themselves to death in the early experiment were in miserable conditions and reached for drugs as their only means of dulling the boredom and pain.
China has never been known as a ‘paradise’ by any definition. Miserable Chinese people turned to drugs. Shocker. And people in hospitals use more narcotics than any other population. Another surprise. /s
If I thought reality made any difference, i'd go back and quote you, then quote me, and then quote your response, but I'm pretty sure it would be a waste of time for the both of us.
SZ, we have more people in prison per capata than ANY other nation on the planet earth. The majority of that is drug-related.
Other than killing addicts and dealers, how do you propose that we become harsher? How have we ever been ‘soft’ on the WOD? For the love of gd, we’re destroying lives over prescribed pain meds.
In your mind, what would it take to ‘win the war’?
I say end the ‘war’ and turn this into a public health issue. As a smoker, I must admit that they’re doing a pretty good job of dropping cigarette use with this approach and that’s a tougher nut to crack than heroin.
You must ask yourself, what methods actually *work*?
That is a theory. You have no way of knowing if that is true. I find that theory unlikely though. In 1886 when Pemberton started selling cocaine laced drinks, (Coca-Cola) I think that the only reason it didn't result in a massive surge in addiction is because the cocaine got stripped out of the drink shortly thereafter. Why do you suppose they started stripping out the cocaine? (before the government MADE THEM) Wasn't that ingredient their original selling point?
Do *YOU* really believe that society would be okay if cocaine drinks were available?
Oh, and China had been around about 4,000 years without turning to massive drug usage. How does that jive with your theory? Did they just realize they were miserable when drugs got legalized?
I've never heard that said about any drug - although I and others have correctly said that alcohol is a drug whose effects can be compared (NOT equated) to currently illegal drugs.
It's MY body, I am not hurting anyone else"
More accurately, the hurts done to others are not government's business to prevent - with the exception of parents who drug themselves into inability to meet their responsibilities to their minor children, a problem that does not appear to be properly addressed by banning all drug use for all adults including childless ones.
"I can quit any time, I'm not an addict..."
Some addicts tell themselves and others this as a lie - and non-addicted users say it truthfully. It's not "impossible to inform" people about the reality of addiction ... there are many people in 12-step programs who are ready to tell their stories.
the distribution and use are glorified by award winning shows.
I've never seen one - have any examples? I have seen the award winning show Breaking Bad, which presented the drug world in a quite negative light (and correctly so).
“If I thought reality made any difference,”
Of course you won’t check. You couldn’t care less if you were wrong. Classic sociopath. Have fun with that.
Again, I’m not coming down on one side or the other...yet.
If one is going to fight a war, fight to win. Otherwise, don’t fight. I’ve already given you my tactic for “winning the war”...
Yet, by all appearances in the video you posted, the cop had no problem with helping to populate the prisons did he?
He and thousands like him were and are part of the problem...
So I ask myself, how does it benefit him and others like him who were once a major contributor to the “problem” now likely to benefit by promoting legalization?
How’s that working out for them?
Not very well. Their addiction rates are skyrocketing and they’re responsible for 30% of the world’s amphetamine black market.
All I said was that in order to win a “war”, one must be willing to actually fight to win...
And as Marie showed, even that doesn't always work. Any war on drugs is really a war on human nature: the as-old-as-humanity urge to alter one's mental state, and the profit motive.
As far as solutions go...maybe legalization is the answer, but out of that will come bigger government
How so? Regulation is by any sensible definition smaller government than prohibition.
What part of ‘legalize and REGULATE’ do you not get?
I have said, over and over, that the most effective means of fighting drug abuse is to legalize and regulate. Meaning that heroin addicts are given a 24 hour supply of heroin at government-regulated centers.
I do not, and never have, supported the unlimited access of drugs for everybody.
You treat addicts humanely. (Alcoholics don’t go to prison and lose everything. They go to meetings and hold down jobs and pay taxes. Shockingly, most alcoholics really do these things. It’s called a ‘functional alcoholic’ and it’s really difficult to get these people to realize that they do have a problem. Their lives are fine.) Allow them to seek out a profession, work and pay taxes while they’re dealing with addiction instead of putting a permanent stain on their record that prevents them from honest employment.
You cut off the dealers’ customer base by supplying the addicts in another way.
Legalize marijuana because it’s ridiculous. It’s not as bad as alcohol when it comes to impairment and harm. Let the novelty wear off and then the young people won’t be so mystified by the forbidden. (that’s what happened in the Netherlands. They relaxed the law and their drug use dropped to levels that we can only dream about.)
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/netherlands_v_us#sthash.2BGBVZec.dpbs
If we just legalize everything and say, ‘have fun, people!’ we’ll be creating a problem. But by getting drugs out of the black market, we’ll solve many problems that are caused by the WOD itself.
I’m never going to say that rampant drug use is a good thing. I’m saying that we’re fighting the ‘war’ in an ineffective way"
You'll never convince Diogenazi. He can only see the Final Solution.
As you've said, "Till someone presents an argument that there are better figures, I will have no choice but to use what is available."
What's available says that addiction was low and declining in post-Civil War America: "In 1880 [...] there were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. [...] By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict." (http://web.archive.org/web/20110529221013/http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm) 400,000 in a population of 50M is one in 125 - ergo, between 1880 and 1900 addiction declined.
Really?
Let's look at dope like we do Tylenol or something similar...
The amount of federal bureaucracy involved in getting that bottle of caplets to your medicine chest is enormous.
Now we inject drugs that are instantly addictive in nature to the flow...I won't go into the current federal laws that are creating opportunities for thieves to rob the "stores" as result of banking regulations [see Colorado and laws of unintended consequences].
The front end is already accounted for, then there's the backend...dealing with the addicts.
Who regulates? Who institutes the "treatment" centers? Who runs the "treatment" centers? Who regulates the treatment centers?, most importantly, WHO PAYS?etc., etc. ad nauseum.
For anyone to naively or intentionally disregard the fact that the government will NOT get engaged in this at some point is absurd
There is just too much money and most importantly, power involved in this. Legalization of drugs like heroin is idiotic...marijuana is one thing, but heroin is an animal of an entirely different stripe.
And like I said before, we're not actually fighting a war, we're skirmishing, thus the results are what one should expect, ineffective. If we were to actually fight to win, the fields would be destroyed, the whole distribution network and anyone associated with it, destroyed, etc. Not this piecemeal BS we've been engaged in the past few decades.
IOW, no one has the balls to actually fight to win or they never intended to win [which I think is more to the point.]
And you both either ignored or missed my point about the "war"...and what these ex-cops who are now proponents of legalization stand to gain from their change of position.
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