Posted on 04/04/2010 6:51:11 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Alcohol consumption did drop during Prohibition. What making alcohol legal did was exchange one set of problems with another. When it was illegal, you had a violent, vicious black market and people dying from bad booze. When it is legal, the violence shifts into the background of society - into individual homes, into cars - the violence of DUI car crashes, of booze-fuelled domestic violence and child abuse, due to the far greater availability and lower cost of legal booze - casualty numbers far greater than that of the black market, but much less flashy and therefore far less noticeable.
The same is the case with hard drugs. So it is absurd to pretend that legalizing drugs is a solution in its own right - instead, it replaces one problem with another. And should not be glibly proposed as a result - instead, there needs to be some kind of middle ground, knowing that there is no good answer here, only bad and worse.
Realize that when someone drives drunk, in most cases, they make it home OK. But the consequences of failure when driving drunk, and the much greater likelihood of failure happening when driving drunk, necessitates making such an activity a crime, whether or not violence happens as a result of that activity. Hard drugs fit that pattern as well - the very high likelihood of really bad consequences radiating out beyond the individual consumer of the drugs.
I agree with the education part but the drug war has to go. The grief it causes is vastly greater than any drug problem could cause.
I can speak to your first point. I don’t use illegal drugs. I must use all manner of prescription drugs to continue to survive cancer. I would be delighted if my oncologist announced to me tomorrow, “you’ll never have to take another pill again.” I never would. But I believe that in a rational society alcoholic beverages and marijuana, for example, would be subject to the same regulations.
IMO, the harm from drug prohibition far outweighs and outcosts the harm that would come from regulating drugs in the same manner as alcohol. Anyone who wants pot or cocaine or oxycontin or whatever can obtain it now. In the small town where I live, verboten drugs are more readily available than they would be under alcohol-like regulation. The government cannot “prohibit” the market of buyers and sellers and cannot “prohibit” profit incentive. By making the trade in illegal drugs MORE profitable, government has made illegal drugs more available.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
There is no enumerated power in the Constitution that empowers the federal government to conduct the domestic drug war as it is currently being prosecuted, and the end does not justify the means being employed.
I didn’t mean to say all who favor prohibition are racists. Liberals are almost all racists, they adopt a patronizing attitude towards blacks. They project their own fear and condescention onto conservatives and cannot believe that there are a lot of conservatives who want to treat blacks like responsible and capabile adults.
“-I always wonder if the folks who write these “legalize dangerous and addictive drug” articles would be the first ones who would go out and purchase/use (I suppose at the local pharmacy”
Wonder all you want, but I wouldn’t be doing that, I rarely drink alcohol, and I wouldn’t be using other intoxicating drugs. I still think the Constitution gives the Feds the right to charge excise taxes on intoxicants, which were all legal during at least half of our history, but not the right to ban them outright.
If you think otherwise, by what logic do you call yourself a conservative? It’s usually the progressives who are tryng to control other’s behavior with government force. Are you a progressive?
But your accusation is always the prohibitionist’s last line of defense against the Constitution - “you want drugs legalised so that you can used them legally. You probably use them now, illegally.”
Well, I’m not pro-intoxicating drugs, I’m pro freedom, and pro Constitution. It took a Constitutional amendment to ban liquor, and if you want to ban drugs, by all means, propose a Constitutional amendment, but don’t circumvent the Constitution the way liberals do.
America was able to end Prohibition because Capone and the other gangsters did not own the legislators.
Good luck prying the cartels and politicians apart today!
Drug Prohibition is just one more charming aspect of American-style Socialism - learn to love it, chumps!
Bravo! Well said.
So, you are using the welfare state, which is one abuse of government power, to justify another.
Well, your statement was certainly not well thought-out, either. Please remember that we have a FEDERAL government, not a national one -- & the Constitution leaves the crime-fighting iowers to the states. The only area that I know of where Congress has been given exclusive authority to decide these issues is in the District of Columbia.
The crimes that the federal government have been given the authority to punish have been written in clear language (treason, bribery, piracy on the high seas, etc., etc.) & NO others. The STATES have retained their rights to firght their own versions of the Drug War as strongly or as leniently as they so desire, provided that cruel & unusual punishment is not used.
I'm all for ending the war on drugs, don't get me wrong, I'm also for ending the war on business and the war on irresponsibility as well. If someone chhoses to live whatever lifestyle they want, they also have to be prepared for whatever consequences come with it. Current laws don't support that.
It is easier to deal with the other issues sans a hail of bullets.
"Love the people for what they are,not what you would have them be";old advice but still relevant.
Then that spouse made a bad decision in marrying someone of weak character. How is that the taxpayers’ problem?
Try 110-120 years ago and the many problems with abuse of legal opium, cocaine, morphine and later heroin. Drug and alcohol prohibition did not occur in a vacuum.
Reasons for conservatives to oppose the drug war:
1) It is the sole reason for many anti-American, authoritarian, and corrupt laws. Without the WoD, there would be NO rationale to support things like “no-knock” warrants; deep and intrusive surveillance of financial accounts; corrupt property and wealth “arrests” (confiscations) when no person has been charged with a crime, much less convicted. Added to this are thousands of other laws, based solely on the WoD.
2) The WoD is a “jobs program” for a dozen federal police narcotics agencies, prison unions (now the largest union in California), many of whom actively lobby to keep drugs illegal, and invariably support the Democrat party.
3) The WoD has resulted in the US pouring billions of dollars into corrupt foreign regimes, including providing them weapons and equipment to oppress their own people. Much of this money is grafted off, used for bribes and other corrupt purposes.
4) The WoD has also created enormous criminal mafias and cartels around the world, funding revolutions, and subsidizing all sorts of other criminal activity. It is driving Mexico to the brink of Civil War, and fully funds the Taliban in Afghanistan.
5) The irrationality of the WoD has long divided conservatives. Without it, we are far more unified.
Justice Thomas, dissenting.
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
I Respondents’ local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not “Commerce … among the several States.” U.S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3. By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power. The majority supports this conclusion by invoking, without explanation, the Necessary and Proper Clause. Regulating respondents’ conduct, however, is not “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” Congress’ restrictions on the interstate drug trade. Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Thus, neither the Commerce Clause nor the Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress the power to regulate respondents’ conduct.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1454.ZD1.html
Well, to be completely cynical, black markets thrive in the sectors of society that most voters don't go to. Whereas legalization brings more of the problems out to their neighborhoods. Hence the politics of the drug war.
But at the end of the day, legalization both would increase both the depth and the breadth of the overall problem, hence why even many inner-city politicians, whose districts bear the brunt of the black market, are opposed to legalization.
"A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury."
Do you believe that the government has the right to prevent fraud? Do you believe the government has the right to force people to disclose to their buyers the harm that may come from the use of their products? I do.
The reason I do is because of simple economics. What if everything was laissez-faire to the point that there were NO restrictions? A company could claim anything and sell you anything. And until you use it, you would have no idea that it could kill you. Some of these drugs, if not cut are a single trip. How would you know until you were dead? But what if it was not drugs? What if it was an improperly wired drill that as soon as you used it, it killed you from electrical shock? Or a propane tank or natural gas appliance that blew up and killed your family?
In order for commerce to exist, there has to be three things that are trusted. First, the currency has to be trusted. Second the method of payment has to be trusted. And third, there has to be a trust that the exchange was fair to both the buyer and the seller. If not, if every time you purchased something, you did not trust that it would be "right", you would have to disassemble and check the product. Think about this the next time you are at the grocery store. How do you check a can of peas or the fish behind the counter, or the pot pie in the frozen foods. Is that beer or is that piss in a bottle?
Do you know of any drug dealers that tell the 14 to 16 year old kids that if they take a hit of crack it can kill them? Or permanently fry their brains with LSD or other hallucinogen. Do you know of any drug dealer that practices TRUTH IN ADVERTISING? I dont.
Selling powerful drugs to individuals of impaired judgment either through age or lack of judgment to gain profit is fraud - period. No ands, ifs or buts about it.
And you know what, if you want powerful drugs ... you can get them. Yes you can get cocaine and other mind altering substances. You just have to get them through a Doctor is is trained on the dangers of these powerful drugs. And those doctors should know what will kill you, fry you or make you sick.
I’m not totally opposed to legalization either but there are some cold hard facts that we need to look at before we can ever consider legalization.
For instance, George Soros is a big supporter and funder of the drug legalization push on both sides of the aisle and we need to be asking why.
Then there’s the fantasy that the prisons are full of people whos’ only crime was using drugs. The fact is that most of those people are in prison for other crimes committed while under the influence of drugs or selling drugs. I do know a crack addict who was locked up for smoking crack while pregnant. She says its a victimless crime.
Funny thing is that it took a Constitutional Amendment to make Prohibition happen.
i didn’t see the Constitution Amended for the War on (some) drugs.
i didn’t see the Constitution Amended when some cities and states started telling people how much and what kind fat they can put into their food, or whether they can cook with salt.
i had a mother. She’s dead. The Government is not her.
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