#1.. Because the average age when a kid gets hooked is 12. Is a 12 year old able to make rational decisions that will drive the restof their lives? Is your 12 year old? Were you so qualified at 12?
#2 Because after the addict crashes their body, they want the taxpayers to fund their health care for the rest of their lives. Isn't it better to stop the problem in the first place?
I don't believe you can support this statement. I believe that it is false. From my experience, most people who get involved with drugs do so in their late teens and early 20's. A great many don't get involved until their 30's. Most drug dealers are users who invite other people to experience their joy and sell the drugs to finance their own habit.
#2 Because after the addict crashes their body, they want the taxpayers to fund their health care for the rest of their lives. Isn't it better to stop the problem in the first place?
This is our problem in self control, not the drug addicts. No one should be coerced to pay for someone else's self inflicted problems. The amount of mony paid for illegal drug caused problems is miniscule compared to that paid for problems caused by the use of alchohol and tobacco, which are small compared to the amount of taxes collected from their sale.
Stopping it in the first place would be great! Unfortunately, leaving addicts (and their families) pennyless doesn't seem to be working. Currently, our drug (and DUI) laws are basically cash cows for the state with very few judges looking favorably upon drug/alcohol treatment until someone has multiple offenses or worse. Of course, I can only speak from what I know from working with addicts/alcoholics in this area.
I wish I knew the answer... but I have to say that what we are doing doesn't seem to be working.
#1.. Because the average age when a kid gets hooked is 12. Is a 12 year old able to make rational decisions that will drive the restof their lives? Is your 12 year old? Were you so qualified at 12?
We have plenty perfectly legal, constitutional laws against selling booze, etc, to minors. --- Your 'for the children' argument is a liberal mantra, Hillary Mindbender.
#2 Because after the addict crashes their body, they want the taxpayers to fund their health care for the rest of their lives. Isn't it better to stop the problem in the first place?
And what the taxpaying addict wants, the liberal hillarys of this world gotta givem, right mindbender? In effect you say, - 'To hell with the constitution, we must have control!' --- You are a socialist statist, branded by your own words above.
Let people make all the bad choices they want, then let them live or die with the consequences. It's ridiculous to establish "free healthcare" programs, then pass laws further expanding government powers in order to protect the programs from fraud. The programs are fraudulent in and of themselves. It's particularly dishonest to use the existence of such unconstitutional programs as the justification for even more unconstitutional government action.
Parent's problem, not mine.
#2 Because after the addict crashes their body, they want the taxpayers to fund their health care for the rest of their lives. Isn't it better to stop the problem in the first place?
No. Stop all social programs instead.
I could see the WOD if it could stop the problem but it only seems to be part of the problem. We have INS agents getting rich bringing drugs into the US, one was just arrested and got a 2 year sentence for that. I can see controlling who and what is brought over our borders but I can't see going after cancer patients buying pot to control their pain or really any drugs produced inside the US. It's silly now here with the spray paint locked up securely so only adults can buy it. The paint inhalors would be better off if they could buy pot because the paint eliminates their brains very quickly, within no time they're on SSI and Medicaid for epilepsy and all sorts of problems.