Posted on 01/08/2002 3:45:05 AM PST by Wolfie
I personally know someone who used pot to control constant back pain and anxiety. One day after work last summer he unwisely decided he couldn't wait until he got home, and lit a single puff as he drove home. He was stopped and siezed by local police, and held by them for several hours, incommunicado. The State Police were summoned; his car was searched by drug sniffing dogs and towed away.
The search found only marijuana, in an amount less than a gram, although the police kept hounding him and insisting that he must be on crack (his anxiety disorder caused his pulse to be extreme). Eventually, they took him to the hospital to test his blood, and left him there to find his way home.
This person is now spending FIVE YEARS in a deferred prosecution program, forking out gobs of money for mandatory "treatment", lawyers and court fees. The judge deemed that, although this person rarely drinks and alcohol was not involved in any way in his "crime", he is required to abstain from it for this five year period as well.
Now, admittedly, it was foolish of my friend not to wait until he got home before taking his medicine. But, does this punishment, in your opinion CJ, remotely fit the "crime"? Is it right that his family, for whom he is the sole breadwinner, sat for hours wondering if he had been killed, or that they now must sink deep into debt so that some moronic "treatment" facility can get rich having him pay to piss into bottles, at their demand? Is it right that he spend the next five years in untreatable chronic pain?
If my friend had gone to trial, according to his lawyer, he would have been found guilty (because he was driving while "intoxicated"), and would be experiencing similar travails with the addition of a minimum of a night in jail, thousands in fines (and additional legal fees), his driver's license revoked and possible loss of his employment.
Does any of this seem remotely proportional to the severity of my friend's "offense"?
What a sad joke. The government throws 13 million *AMERICAN* people in cages for smoking pot, while we have millions of criminal illegal aliens crashing our borders and spitting on our sovereignty, taking jobs, filling our jails, and choking off our services, yet the government encourages and supports this massive invasion on America.
This government is so anti American and so freaking screwed up. The priorities of this government is disgraceful
Dane, do you WODers ever have anything more substantive than your own opinion? Drugs, bad. Europe, bad. Oh, that's pursuasive.
Why is it that in the debate about legalizing drugs, normally logical, facts-driven conservatives all of a sudden turn into mushy minded people who place more importance on their own feelings than on facts. This is exactly the behavior of liberals they love to pound, but apparently it's OK when WOD conservatives do it.
What do you have to say for yourself, Dane?
And I just love how every WOD-er here picks on Europe as a first resort. I'd venture to say you've never been to Belgium, 4Freedom, but don't let that stop you from speaking as some kind of authority on the matter. I however, have been to Belgium and most of the other countries you guys like to pick on and have never seen the drugged out zombies you're always referring to.
Those are not facts, Dane. That's pure opinion. And you've done absolutely nothing to reinforce your argument with facts or backup your opinion with anything substantive.
How can you go and make the general statemnent that drugs are bad? Do you think prescription drugs like Lipitor, Prilosec, and Prosac are bad? Certainly not. Shocking news here: drugs can lead to a higher quality of life. Oh, yes, but those are presription drugs. Well, the only difference between a legal and illegal drug is some bureaucrat in Washington saying so.
And I find it ironic that you attach the adjective 'socialist' when mentioning Europe. True, much of Europe's economic policies are more socialist than in the U.S., but what does it's economic policy have to do with it's drug policy. They are wholly separate issues. You merely attach 'socialist' there to be pejorative.
Interestingly, your views could be considered more socialist themselves. You've tended to argue in many threads here, that drugs should be outlawed because they are detrimental to the social contract theory of human co-existance. Drug users tend to be less productive, comrade, and that harms the collective. HMmmmm! Who's the Socialist, Dane?
And I thought it was the other way around. So often libertarians will applaud needless suffering and death as "cleansing the gene pool" or some other cruel social-Darwinist statement. In fact, their arguments for medical self-use are always negated by their argument for full legalization of all drugs for any purpose at any time for any reason by anyone in any amount, even unto death. The libs have to come to grips with the unalienable right to life, and they're doing a piss-poor job so far in upholding it.
Libertarians beleive it is not government's role to save you from yourself, that it is dangerous to have such policies.
If you see someone suffering from drug addiction, it would be the humane thing (a very Christian thing?) to help them. Why do you think you need government to be compassionate? Government is not compassion, government is violence. People helped the poor before being forced to at gun point in the modern welfare state.
The right to life, is obviously the most fundamental. I'm not following what your point is regarding that.
This is not to deny that certain folks can be turned into shiftless layabouts due to the stuff, but a bad alcohol habit can turn a man into a layabout who lives only for his next binge as well. We tried illegalizing alcohol and the treatment was worse than the sickness. The thing to remember is that its just bad policy to have a government telling people what they can't do with their own brains. The whole point of conservatism is that of personal responsibility, not a government nanny looking out for you. Well, as long as I'm at it, let me continue. The reason certain intoxicants are sold by decidedly unsavory characters is because it is illegal, which automatically precludes decent people from growing, manufacturing, etc. Drugs are used and sold by criminals because that's what our laws have necessitated.
I knew of several kids in high school who were killed in wrecks. A kid who was in my driver's ed class was run down as he walked along a highway. Don't know if drugs or alcohol were involved -- they never caught the person who did it. Another bunch got drunk one night and ploughed into a phone pole. Another girl was riding on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle when a car ran the light they were turning at and killed them both. Another one drank too much and wandered out into traffic.
Note that drugs currently designated "illegal" had no known factor in any of these tragic occurrences.
We don't come into this world with guarantees of "safety", and for the government to even pretend to promise it can deliver same, would be farcical if it didn't cause so much misery to so many people.
Think of how many tax-paid resources were expended, just in the various stages of persecuting my friend. Three court hearings, the three or four carloads of police who spent three to four hours grilling him, the dog, the tests. Imagine if those resources had instead been available to, for example, apprehend and prosecute the people who stole more than 8,000 cars* here in King County just in the first half of last year. Those thieves caused real harm to others. But instead, they piddle around harassing easy targets, guys with long hair and tiny amounts of illicit substances, like my friend.
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Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!
How's it comin' over here?
Wow, CJ, there may be hope for you yet! Maybe now you can understand just what many of us libertarians and others have known all along about the FEDERAL component of the the drug war, and how it is the most pernicious and corrupting aspect of it.
So, with that said - in the absence of any state laws prohibiting it, would you support allowing individuals to grow marijuana in their homes for their private, personal use, without interference from the DEA or the FDA? Or do you still think that it's the responsibility of the feds to "send a message"? Care to comment?
Then there is Foster who got 93 years for the same "crime" as Ashcrofts' nephew and Allegro. Ok, he was released on parole yea, but what, after 6 years served?
How do we end these injustices and this inhumanity to man? Especially when the politicians like Ashcroft are in a position to take care of their own while all the rest are bantam fodder for enforcement and the courts.
Seems to me we have a huge discrepancy of "justice" here. A matter that goes well beyond the issue of drugs.
It looks to me like you're for government control and meddling in our personal lives. Why don't you move to Singapore or Saudi Arabia? No drug problems in either country. No freedom either and that's not a coincidence.
Or perhaps this 17 year old was so frightend of the results (legal, parental, other...) of being busted he chose to try and flee. Poor judgement to be sure, but 17 year olds have been known to exhibit such even when they're stone cold sobre. Given that the cops are starting to shoot people in no-knock raids on their homes for even being accused (sometimes falsely) of drug use/dealing... well, you get the idea.
There was an article here on FR a month or so ago about how such things were dealt with in the past; before the WOD. Church, community, family, peer review all came into play. Indeed, I know someone who damn near ruined his life because of cocaine. It wasn't the courts or rehab, loss of wealth or jail; none of those turned him around. It was us, the people who loved him. We didn't give up on him, but each inour own way made damn sure we let him now how we all felt about it. All those things finally took their toll, and he just up and quit. Yea, he could still get it if he wanted to, but he doesn't and he's happy about it. I have my friend back.
Pot? I don't like it, some people do. I've never seen anyone get violent on it. The worse someone might do on pot is drive too slow, or come to a stop at a light 5 car lengths back, or some other stuff like that. I don't believe it to be addictive. So I figure we could legalize it; get the drug lords out of the loop, tax the hell out of it (it would probably still make it cheaper than the black market), apply similar laws for age and motor vechicle use as alcohol; employers could mandate no use during business hours (like they most all do regarding booze) and be done with it.
At least pot is 100% natural, the way God made it. These new designer drugs are more troubling. And with genetic engineering getting more commonplace and sophisticated; that problem is only going to get worse. Pot is the least of our worries and the WOD, the way its being fought now, is a bust.
When you find yourself in a hole - STOP DIGGING!
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