This is your law enforcement resources being devoted to enforcing drug laws. Any questions?
We can barely handle the social and economic costs of "legal drugs" like alcohol. So instead of throwing our hands up in frustration like libertarians, why not use the same shaming tactics on dopers that we use on smokers?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1414976/posts?page=399#355
pong
It's part of the general sense of megalomania that most narcotics import. What is surprising is that feeling continues on into their brief, intermittent, periods of lucidity where they find themselves in FR trying to post.
Milton Friedman is no looney. He is a Nobel Prize (1976) winning economist. You may disagree with his conclusions, but he at least presents evidence to make his case.
Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.
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Rather than legalizing MJ, to save tax dollars, WHY NOT MAKE ILLEGAL ALIENS I-L-L-E-G-A-L and multiply that savings number by about TEN OR MORE. Sorry Mr. Friedman, you are looking in the wrong place to save tax dollars. Pick the LOW-HANGING FRUIT FIRST!
The reason it will never end is because that $7.7 billion pays a lot of salaries in the law enforcement and prison industries.
Yeah.
The drug prohibition laws are what lead to the federal monopoly on health care.
Federal control is the reason health care costs are through the roof.
The Feds give free healthcare to any illegal alien who makes it across the border.
My question is: How do you feel about being a rabid supporter of socialize medicine via your rabid support of the controlled substance laws?
We can barely handle the social and economic costs of "legal drugs" like alcohol. So instead of throwing our hands up in frustration like libertarians, why not use the same shaming tactics on dopers that we use on smokers?
It makes me so angry to see the extent to which others wish to control their neighbors through legislation and regulation. The fact that the author of this opinion is a Republican shows the certain doom our nation faces. We are bound for socialism.
Before the War on Drugs, nobody used those drugs.
Much of the really bad stuff out now, was invented during the war on some drugs.
I know lots of high ranking cops. They all favor decriminalization. Over a thirty year career, most come to realize it is a waste of time and does more harm to the Constitution than good for the citizenry.
But the JBT's do get to confiscate a lot of money and stuff without due process and they get to keep it all.
You'll see the War on Terror eventually go the same way, just like the War on Poverty.
MJ should be legal for the simple reason that any activity that a person engages in that does not end your right to pursue life, liberty and happines through either fraud or force should be legal.
And druggies tend to vote Democrat.
My guess is that, like sodomy, these laws, even when hardly ever enforced, will be kept on the books so that prosecuters have something else to pile on a defendant.
Yes. What is your brain on? Social engineering statism?
What possible difference can it make to you if someone wants to go home and smoke a joint? What conceivable right do you have, such that you can delegate it to the government, to interfere with the self-evident right of individuals to indulge in that pastime?
Oh. That's right. It drives up "our" health costs. Well, I can't think of too many human activities that couldn't be outlawed using that justification (including watching TV when you should be out exercising), assuming that such a justification was remotely conceivable as a basis for our laws.
Some conservative you are. One of those "Now-you-see the Ninth amendment and now-you-don't" conservatives.
I just don't understand you guys at all. Why do you support the use of federal tax dollars for such a blatantly intrusive, unnecessary and dangerous policy?
I agree with Friedman. Marijuana is no worse than alcohol. The drug war should focus on hard drugs.
The federal government has only one role, and that is the defense of the nation, and managing trade.
That's it, the federal government has no right to dictate to the states what they will or won't do
Unfortunately, that's what they have been doing ever since Abraham Hussein legitamized the destruction of state's rights for his own purposes.
I agree with him the costs are large, and not just monetarily. But loss of freedom. America was created to be a free nation where the individual could make decisions and also the individual would be responsible for his or her own decisions. Aka liberty.
Whether or not marijuana is harmful or helpful should only be an argument to disuade or persuade people to use it, not an argument for outlawing the plant. That is if we are free adults. If on the other hand we are going to be a nation that rules over its subjects for their own good, aka social engineering, then those arguments matter for whether or not the plant should be legal for adults or not.
We never openly had that debate in America.. and infact it was the very socialist leaning people that came in during the depression like Roosevelt who outlawed drugs, and brought us incredible amounts of regulations that the nation hadn't known before.
This is your law enforcement resources being devoted to enforcing drug laws. Any questions?
Sorry, Miltie. Your John Hancock a'int worth $hit these days. Smoke pot and you will go to jail. It's the law, and it will not change.
you know, it really spurises me that the government BANS MJ rather than SUPPORTING it. if they're trying to go socialist, would they want as many people as possible in a state of placidness? isn't it easier to control a culture that's docile?
Friedman is a johnny-one-note bore.