[Roscoe]

Clearly, the Libertarian viewpoint on drugs is patently wrong-headed, and would have a profoundly pernicious effect upon our culture.

Bump

[SunStar]

I'm glad that drugs are illegal. If they weren't, people would probably use them.

[gdani]

Does anybody who *wants* to do drugs reeaaalllly not do them just because they are illegal?

[Liberal Classic]

This entire essay could equally be used against alcohol. Delete all the bits with "drugs" in it, and replace it with "liquor" and you're done.

[BikerNYC]

For me, it's just a question of money. I'm tired of paying to lock drug users and sellers up, and I'm tired of using government inefficiency to solve this problem.

If people care so deeply about it, they will contribute to responsible charities that will help get out the message that drugs are bad, and will help those on drugs to come clean.

[Windsong]

Old News. They have been whining about drugs this and drugs that for what seems like centuries now. If they want to get high and erronously think that they are not "harming anyone else", then let them do it in a country that tolerates it. LSD, Cocaine, Heroin, PCP (God only knows what they will be harping about in 20 yrs) is OFF LIMITS to my kids. Permanently. If the Libertarians/Liberal athiests and anarchists dont like it, tough. Get the HELL out of the U.S. and start your own damn country. Then you can get high as long as you like. This country has ENOUGH problems without legalizing this filth.

[Liberal Classic]

For example:

Legalization of spiritous liquors would increase alcohol abuse, especially among youth, and would cause social pathologies to flourish to an even greater extent than they are flourishing now. Government programs to address the societal problems, spawned by the growing alcohol abuse culture, would augment the size of the public sector and reliance on taxpayer monies. In effect, liquor legalization would spur negative consequences across the societal spectrum.

Clearly, the Libertarian viewpoint on alcohol is patently wrong-headed, and would have a profoundly pernicious effect upon our culture. But beyond the question of alcohol legalization, we as a society must make it a priority to inculcate values in our youth, and help them build character, so that they can be equipped to resist the temptation of alcohol usage under any circumstances.

This is just a silly example, perhaps, but my point is that people who oppose or even have reservations about the current prohibition are not all the same. Someone who has problems with the so-called "war on drugs" does not necessarily believe in the total legalization of all drugs.

[dpwiener]

Although Conservatives as a group generally espouse a Libertarian bent, social Conservatives in particular are not purists regarding government intervention, especially when they perceive a threat to the greater good of the citizenry.

Social Conservatives don't seem to care much about the Constitution, either. It required passage of a Constitutional Amendment to grant the Federal Government the authority to enact alchohol Prohibition. So where's the Constitutional Amendment which grants the Federal Government the authority to prohibit drugs?

But then it's so inconvenient to allow a silly little thing like the Constitution to get in the way of "government intervention, especially when they perceive a threat to the greater good of the citizenry."

[WhiteGuy]

Propaganda from GOPUSA......

well stated arguments.....

I would suggest that the "war on drugs" has been a huge failure and a giant waste of money.....

[Dakmar]

Legalization of drugs would increase substance abuse, especially among youth

Is there a big problem with liquor store clerks pushing whiskey on juveniles where this lady lives? She claims to be a Republican, yet doesn't have the faintest clue about licensing and regulation.

[Charlotte Corday]

Hard to know where to start here:

Moreover, enacting drug legalization would fail to send the salient message to our youth that indulging in drugs is morally wrong
That salient message goes over real well after we've pumped their little brains full of Ritalin for ten years

As a professional in the field of criminal justice,
Translation: My salary depends on drug prohibition.

And there is supporting statistical data to demonstrate that substance abuse activity has gone up in recent years
Therefore the greatly increased powers of the WOD agencies have failed to solve the problem.

But we must ask ourselves why hard-core usage and accompanying drug activity is not responsive to the aggressive policing and negative sanctions effective with most other types of crime.
Notwithstanding, we're going to go full speed ahead with those policies to which the problem is not responsive?

Certainly there must be some middle ground where we can realize that while drug legalization may not be a good thing, the ridiculous excesses of the existing "War On Drugs" are just as bad.

[marshmallow]

If drugs are to be legalized, I presume that means advertising of said drugs should now also be permissible. After all, those in the retail industry are allowed to publicize their wares.

In my minds eye, I see some of those 100ft billboards, similar to the "Marlboro Man" or "Burger King", with "Get Your Smack from Jack" or "For a Great Shoot Up, Go to Lenny's" dotting the landscape.

An admirable goal, which is well worth striving for. Progress, indeed.

[ravinson]

...social Conservatives in particular are not purists regarding government intervention, especially when they perceive a threat to the greater good of the citizenry.

In other words, "social conservatives" admit that they are pet program socialists.

[Ol' Sparky]

Thanks for posting this....You can bet the libertarian potheads at Free Republic will be flooding this thread with their pro-druggie propaganda.

[PaxMacian]

Ahh! 'SOCIETY' powerful corporate lobbies attempting to control and tax the particulars of the twisting of your minds. (alcohol and the A.M.A.) Reality is a greater decay of individual freedom and true liberty. This is the great country which is the bastion of freedom, where the possesion of a plant which countless generations have, with the grace of God, partaken should allow masked government thugs to pillage your possessions and send you to jail to be sodomized.

[GSWarrior]

There are thousands and thousands of drug dealers who share your hope that drugs remain illegal.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

If not legalizing drugs, we should at least not jail people for just using them. However, people who use drugs and then commit crimes, while on the drugs, should have the book at them. But if they use drugs and just zone out in their own little corner, leave them alone. Basically, treat drugs like we presently treat alcohol.

For the record, I do not use illegal drugs, I never have used them, and I have no desire to use them. If I wanted to use them, I had every opportunity during college. (Heck, I was sometimes the only person at a party not getting stoned.) However, I do consume large amounts of caffeine. More seriously, I take prescription medication for Attention Deficit Disorder and/or Depression.

[hove]

Yes this essay sure makes sense. It's a good thing that drugs are illegal and unobtainable. Imagine all the people that would run out to find drugs so they could become addicts...if drug became legal! Everybody I know would go looking for drugs if that happened. Because of the war on drugs, there just aren't any drugs to be found. That is why we don't have any drug users and addicts. I vote we stay drug free as a nation.....like it is now!

[CWRWinger]

The Libertarian Party and like-minded think tanks and policy research centers, most notably the Cato Institute, are proponents of drug legalization.

That's all the further I got, have to say this: A free Republic cannot be maintained if its citizens are stoned or drunk.

The Cato Institute loses credibility with this flush from their 'think tank'. (Change their name to Cato Rooti-Toots?)

[Suzie_Cue]

Canadian marijuana reform concern to U.S.

http://www.canada.com/national/globalnational/story.asp?id=A75EC010-5378-4E0A-8631-84C7CA9DC948

Monday, May 13, 2002

Who would have thought you'd live long enough to see this. Hearings by Canadian parliamentarians into legalizing marijuana. And even more amazing is whose running the hearings.

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Global reports

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Senators, whose average age has tended to those 55 plus. But today in Regina they kicked off a series of meetings aimed at looking at whether it's time to take smoking pot off the list of crimes in Canada. And framing these discussions is a little-noticed report they've just issued reaching some startling conclusions.

The Senate committee concludes there is no convincing evidence that smoking pot leads to using harder drugs.

It says marijuana use does not induce users to commit other crimes, or engage in risky activity such as driving quickly.

The Senate also found that one in every three Canadian kids age 15 and 16 has smoked at least once in the past month, and that one and a half million Canadians have a criminal record because of what the Senate calls simple possession.

Ground-breaking stuff. But this report, and Canada’s willingness to allow people to use marijuana for medical purposes, also seems to have raised the ire of the U.S. in a significant way. We’ve learned tonight that its drug czar is pressuring Canadian authorities not to loosen Canadian law and he's carrying a very big stick -- threatening trade sanctions if we don't do what he wants. Global National's Carl Hanlon has the exclusive details.

On the street its called B.C. bud and American demand for it is reaching new highs.

Sources close to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency say it will soon issue a report claiming there are 15 to 20,000 marijuana growing operations in British Columbia alone and 95 per cent of the output is headed south.

"A dramatic increase in the gross quantity of marijuana of high potency coming across the border," says Colonel Robert Maginnis, a U.S. government adviser on drug policy. He says the bush administration is alarmed by a recent Senate study that says Canada’s marijuana laws are ineffective.

The U.S. fears the next step could be looser regulations leading to more drugs crossing the border and its ready to play hardball with trade to make sure that doesn't happen.

"To antagonize government leaders and grass roots leader because you insist on having a radical drug policy that we will not ignore in the long term, then its going to have adverse consequences and I hope we would be able to rectify it before it comes to blows," explains Maginnis.

The U.S. is closely watching the Canadian marijuana debate and is working behind the scenes to influence the outcome. Next month the president's chief of drug policy attend a drug conference in Quebec and he'll make sure his counterparts understand the U.S. opposes liberalization.

As for the Canadian government, solicitor general Lawrence Macaulay did not respond when asked if Canada is being pressured by U.S.

The organization for the reform of marijuana laws says the Americans have a habit of throwing their weight around to influence other country's drug laws.

Ottawa was pushing ahead with plans to provide government grown medical marijuana people with serious illness, but those efforts appear to have stalled.

But the American angst over medical marijuana use may be a little premature.

As of Friday fewer than 255 Canadians have received licenses to smoke,

And of those 164 can smoke their own because enough government grown isn't available yet.