Posted on 09/28/2001 7:45:14 AM PDT by sendtoscott
Conservatives are fond of preaching the importance of taking "individual responsibility" for one's actions and beliefs. But when you ask them whether they're willing to take responsibility for the robberies and muggings that their beloved decades-long war on drugs have produced, they always and inevitably respond with, "Oh, no. We don't intend our policies to result in those things and therefore we're not responsible for them. Only robbers and muggers, with their lack of respect for liberty and private property, are responsible for their actions and beliefs."
Today, when you ask conservatives whether they're willing to take responsibility for their beloved decades-long foreign-aid program and interventionist foreign policy that have produced so much enmity, hatred, and perverse consequences for our country, their response is, not surprisingly, the same: "Oh, no. We don't intend our policies to result in those things and therefore we're not responsible for them. Only terrorists, with their lack of respect for liberty and private property, are responsible for their actions."
Question for conservatives: With respect to welfare programs, do you still feel that good intentions don't matter and that advocates of the decades-long war on poverty should take responsibility for its destructive consequences, or do you now feel that only the food-stamp mother in the grocery-store line is responsible for her actions and beliefs?
Was it wrong to lend-lease to Britian? Was it wrong to support Israel?
By "interventionist" foreign policy, does Jacob mean that the USA should have NO "national interests" beyond our shores?
Your short, glib response lacks facts, history and anything besides your own vitriol.
It was part of the rationalization behind the Marijuana Tax Act (1937) and also the NFA (1934, the act that put the F in ATF), but not of the Harrison (anti-coke and opiate) act from the 1920's ( or late teens). Actually, plain old D*m*cr*t party racism was also very important, can't have those [darker-skinned people] looking at white women the wrong way. As I said above, just another shameful, big-governmant legacy of the Progressives and New Dealers.
Yes, but since insurance premiums are scaled to the lifestyle and past medical conditions of the patient, the higher insurance premiums would be for the drug addicts only.
Having to wait three times as long in the hospital emergency waiting room because of irresponsible people undergoing unneeded suffering is not the result of socialism, either.
Wow three times? How did you come up with that figure?
Not having a cure for cancer for your Mom next year because the person who would have discovered the cure died of AIDS last year also equates a payment of some kind, albeit not in a socialist sense at all.
Wait. I thought drug users were incapable of productive activity? How could someone capable of curing cancer get AIDS from IV drug use? Even if it were possible for this nightmare scenario to occur -- you seem to be grasping. If the dead, cancer-curing drug addict exists, wouldn't he go to jail under your system? How would he cure cancer in the big house, hmmm?
This statement, which Cultural Jihad agreed with I believe, is interesting. I have to ask you to define "hard" and "soft" now.
What are the objective criterion we could use to evaluate the "hardness" of a drug? Assume for a minute there's a brand new drug on the market. How do we determine whether to ban it, in your view?
(As an aside, I think we can agree that the federal drug war is unconstitutional. State laws are a different matter.)
Not utopia, just a few less federal employees. If, say, we got 10 new 'drug abusers' for every drug bureaucrat or narc who was laid off (how can drug warriors speak of lost productivity when their own policies are responsible for the hiring of tens of thousands of drug bureaucrats, many of whom are probably capable of actually doing something taxable ?), I'd lay them all off in a heartbeat, ten addicts can't do nearly as much harm to society as a single narc or bureaucrat.
Are you 'pony tail guy'? You remember, the guy who told Cl*nt*n that he was a child who looked to the gov't as a parent?
Works for guns, applies equally to 'drugs', -- Both can be dangerous possessions when used by immature/deranged individuals. -- Thus the key is constitutional methods of regulating public use, not prohibition.
tpaine: The owning of a gun does not make one sick and insane,
--- Where have I said it did?
except in very unusual circumstances. Continued use of drugs virtually guarantees that a person will become sick and insane, except in very unusual circumstances!
-- Generalization & fallacy. No basis in fact.
As a point of principle, the rights of a drug user end where the rights of the normal citizen begin.
Weird 'principle'. This is just empty nonsense rhetoric.
People who get smashed on heroin will most certainly be irresponsible and unproductive members of society, creating a mess which will have to be paid for if only for cleaning up the body.
Substitute 'booze' for heroin, and whataya got? A drunk we ignore. Big deal, empty argument.
This involves getting into a discussion about degrees of bad. As I say, soft drugs should be legalised - because it is possible to "maintain", i.e., remain a responsible citizen and not be a burden on others. Hard drugs are not like that.
--- And as I say, the solution is finding a constitutional method of regulation. --- You seem incapable of addressing that point. I'm beginning to understand why.
No, that's not really true. I've known a few weekend crack- and smack- heads. I guess you could say they were addicted, in the sense that a person who has a binge every few weeks is an alcoholic. BTW, the crackheads had regular jobs in a factory, one was a minor union official. Another casuality of the WOsD is the lack of accurate information about both drugs and their users and abusers - most such studies are grant-driven rather than truth-driven. How much time, how many dollars, have been spent trying to prove that marijuana smoke causes cancer? All they have to show is the claim that the smoke "contains more of the [bad chemicals] than tobacco smoke", ignoring entirely the fact that chewing tobacco causes mouth cancer.
I have never seen any statistics that show a higher rate of heroin addicition in the early 20th century than today.
Second, you really don't want to deal with simple economics either. When the price of a thing falls, greater consumption becomes possible.
Assuming demand isn't inelastic. Drug demand is highly inelastic. Thus a drop in drug prices will only shift income from expenditure on drugs to other expenses. This will mean that poorer addicts can still feed their families. Very few kids go hungry because of a father's booze habit.
Nicotine is more addictive than most schedule one drugs.
risk of instant death by taking one dose,
Common dosage size is affected by prohibition. This is not a fair means of comparison.
long term damage from consumption,
How much? Cigs cause lung cancer, alcohol causes liver damage.
whether "casual consumption" is possible (I would suggest that heroin is not a drug of choice for the "casual" consumer),
Heroin's non-casual status is due more to the heavier law enforcement scrutiny given it than its addictive properties. Same with cocaine.
and medical use.
How can medical uses be determined if a substance is illegal? There are as yet unknown uses for any number of addictive substances which we may never find out about due to prohibition.
Heroin and cocaine, for example, have absolutely zero medical benefits, can easily kill with a single hit, and the long term damage is enormous.
Neither of these substances will kill with a normal, untainted dose. "Single hit" is a misleading term because it fails to distinguish how large the dose is and how clean the drugs are. Long term damage from these drugs is not significantly different from alcoholism. The fact that people believe they are "worse" is purely due to media hype.
You mean the California that has given our country Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Gray Davis, Gary Condit, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Tom Lantos and Loretta Sanchez?? That California? I don't know if you'd call them diseased or poverty-stricken but I'd argue California is mentally diseased and morally poverty-stricken and are not a splendid example of a healthy way of life for others to emulate. Those bastards can't even keep their lights on!
And if pot really is California's biggest cash crop (probably abNORML propaganda since its impossible to quantify), woe to our economy given the importance of California's agriculture to the rest of the nation.
Agreed. ;) And how much do people pay you for your coveted opinions on Constitutional law? Ziltch? One wonders why.
Agreed. ;) And how much do people pay you for your coveted opinions on Constitutional law? Ziltch? One wonders why.
--- Does one? - How weird. Maybe it has something to do with one being a self described 'illumined yogi'. --- What sect of jihadic yogi's do you belong to, oh great one?
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