Posted on 02/27/2015 6:24:23 AM PST by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
I agree. I live in Greenville, SC and our local news had “Greenville” spelled wrong under a news blurb on the screen. I mean, if you can’t spell the city where you are, maybe you should find another job.
I remember some news idiot describing a car used in a crime as a Bonneville, Pontiac. He said it at least twice. This was in Detroit. Unforgivable in the Motor City.
Another news babe was standing in front of the bank thermometer telling us how cold it was and warning us to not go inside. It’s 6 degrees. The ditz was too dumb to know the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
While prohibition may have increased homicides by mobsters who killed each other and occasionally innocent bystanders. It certainly increased the reporting of the crimes as they were almost always sensational by nature and often increased newspaper sales.
However, did alcohol contribute to rising crimes rates previous to the enactment of the Volstead Act (prohibition)? Statistics show that homicides began increasing at the turn of the century and climbed steadily. Obviously prohibition did not play a part prior to 1920 when sales of alcohol were prohibited. Strangely enough possession & consumption was not illegal during prohibition, at least not at the Federal level. The Amendment said nothing about those activities. Some states outlawed possession, consumption, and/or manufacture of alcohol, while others outlawed no activity other than the sale activity.
Prohibition did have positive affects though. Statistics show that deaths caused by Cirrhosis were reduced significantly. Domestic types of abuse were not really followed that closely back then, but my guess is that they shrank as well. Another statistic that was documented, regarding admissions to mental hospitals were markedly reduced during prohibition. My point being obviously, that prohibition had its positive affects, while attributing increased violence as questionable. We can say with confidence that violence attributed to prohibition was definitely used effectively to repeal prohibition.
History beyond prohibition shows that violent crime can be attributed to alcohol, as well as, drug usage. When you add in deaths attributed to impaired operators of vehicles, it is expanded even further.
What we do know is that laws will not stop those who choose to disobey laws as written regarding usage of legal & illegal mind-altering substances. These laws may or may not infringe on one's freedoms. If you want to engage in their usage, or you wish to make big money catering to their users, they infringe.
We also know that absence of laws regarding those same substances, also create problems for those imbibing and others that come into contact with them. In addition they create problems for society at large by increased healthcare costs, increased insurance costs, and increased likelihood of jeopardy from a percentage of them. As that percentage increases, those who abstain from them are impacted more and more, which is an infringement upon them.
I guess my overall point here is this. What is you proposed solution?
BTW, this is an interesting, if in places poorly written, piece on drug usage in America. Not just recent history but back to the times you described and even prior. Bad Medicine: A History of Narcotics in Pharmaceuticals
Your tagline is right on spot. Too bad more people cannot see that fact.
RIP for the victims.
2 in 3 murders are solved - how many drug 'crimes' do you reckon are even detected: 2 in 3,000, maybe?
That is perhaps a fact, just as having no government does not ensure your freedom, is a fact. I say perhaps may be a fact, because it may add freedom to some while taking from others. So it really depends upon your point of reference. If it held true for all, then no one would be for it and government would have to resort to force to increase power. Believe me, I am for a much smaller government at all levels, but especially at the Federal level
However, I asked what your solution to the problem is. You seem to think the problem is only the WOD, which in reality was just the ineffective solution created to solve the ills drug usage inevitably create. While drugs affect the users, they sadly are not the only ones affected. It affects those who come into contact with them on a regular basis, wives, husbands, and their offspring. Furthermore it has an adverse affect on society at a whole. With increased costs for healthcare, property losses & damages, and increased violent crimes against persons ranging from battery, rape, to even murder.
Fast and Furious should have clued us that the WOD is Fedzilla exterminating the competition who will not do business with the fedzilla importers.
BTW, the drug issue has nothing to do with freedom or even security. It is about the problems drugs create within society on the large scale, and the problems they create for the user, and the innocent people that are closest to them on the smaller scale.
If a drug user was the only person affected by its usage, then there would be no need for a solution. Let them ruin their own life. However, that is not the reality.
Illegal drugs are readily available to anyone with a will to find them. The government has passed thousands of laws that give them the power to monitor your bank accounts, restrict the amount of cash you can travel with and take your property without any evidence under the mere suspicion that you are involved with illegal drugs. And they suspect everyone.
We even agree that the WOD application has done harm to those innocents who are not involved in illegal drugs, yet get caught up because some activities fit within parameters created to identify the profiteers.
But again, what do you suggest be done? Just legalize all drugs?
This might intest you: Bad Medicine: A History of Narcotics in Pharmaceuticals
This might intest you: Bad Medicine: A History of Narcotics in Pharmaceuticals
That government stay within the confines of the Constitution. Let states regulate intrastate drug policy, per the Tenth Amendment. Are you on board with that?
” Just legalize all drugs? “
IMO, we would be better off treating drug abusers than imprisoning them. Decriminalization would defund a lot of organized crime, which is probably why so many politicians are against it.
There is no evidence suggesting government can solve the problem of drug abuse - but plenty of evidence that it can make things worse.
While drugs affect the users, they sadly are not the only ones affected.
Almost everything anyone does "affects" someone else; if that's the test for government authority, we can kiss freedom goodbye.
Prohibition is a fundamental attack on human Freedom. The problems that drugs cause will never be addressed by imprisoning people using contraband law.
The preemptive authoritarian arguments used by Prohibitionists are of the same order that the Left uses to justify the collectivist Tyranny that it espouses.
Those who embrace Prohibition ultimately embrace Tyranny in all of its forms, for the Laws which flow from it are arbitrary.
Crime and negligence occurs when rights are actually infringed upon, with force or fraud. Not when they might be infringed upon.
If People accept the arguments for the existence of contraband law, then any amount of Tyranny can be justified using the same "what about the children" or "we must be saved from ourselves" reasoning. This absurd logic was used during alcohol Prohibition (parenthetically, alcohol is the worst drug on the face of the Earth, far exceeding the damage of all other drugs combined) yet the even more evil fruit which Prohibition bears was and is clear for all to see.
Those who are not Tyrants in their heart must therefore be content with criminalizing people after they have committed actual crimes. This is the essence of true Freedom. Freewill, by its very nature, does not guarantee peace and tranquility, indeed quite the opposite. It is within those confines that education and morality must prevail without the use of coercion.
The authoritarian on the right who wishes to imprison somebody for possessing the wrong plant, medicine, or liquor uses the same Tyrannical logic which the authoritarian on the left seeks to use to ban smoking, guns, bullets, the right to work, and so on. There is no difference.
Authoritarians on either side of this phony left-right spectrum invariably offer a choice between whose petty visions of Tyranny and "order" shall prevail.
I reject such false choices utterly. I choose freewill for myself and my brethren, with all its perilous adjuncts, warts, inconveniences, potentials, and opportunities.
Therein lies true Liberty, and taking shortcuts with Liberty will never create a better world. Indeed it will create a less-free, and therefore less ideal world.
Those who wish to lead must do so by example using education and persuasion, not by using the force of the state to oppress those with whom they disagree.
True crime should be punished aggressively and severely. Yet, as we have seen, all People are now made criminals due to their violation of one rule or another; rules promulgated by misguided nanny-staters who seem to prefer the peace of a police state to the animating challenge of Freedom.
</rant>
Whether we want to admit it or not, that also impacts on our freedoms, primarily because we are getting stuck with the bills. In addition our society is becoming more violent which in the long run will continue to erode our freedom of movement.
While most everything does affect someone else, some are positive. Drug abuse is nothing but a negative over the long haul. My biggest concern is the children who are not only facing probable physical & mental abuse, but indoctrination into the drug culture. Thus the problem expands exponentially.
Drug abuse is a two sided coin in which both sides leave us with lost freedoms. No matter which side the coin lands on we lose. If we try to force non usage we lose, and if we legalize it we also lose.
I think we can indeed kiss freedom goodbye, as I see no solution. Especially since we have taught generations of American youth to be irresponsible for their actions.
While treatment is more humane, it only works when the abuser wants the treatment. Forced into treatment and then released back onto the street means they will quickly return to their abuse of drugs. Furthermore, we are stuck with those bills.
Here's a glimpse of we that might look like if drugs are decriminalized. 'This Is Working': Portugal, 12 Years after Decriminalizing Drugs
Then again, it may not work the same here as there.
Absolutely. 100%
the lawyers don’t make much money off petty criminals. The lawyers make the big bucks off lawsuits.
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