[wardaddy]

The number of folks on this forum who advocate drug legalization astounds me. I agree that decriminalizing marijuana to a large degree is reasonable but having a legal free open market on any intoxicant one wishes is just plain foolish. The problem with the drug war is that true enough, it's more ineffective than we would like it to be and some of the sentencing (Federal) and confiscatory statutes are draconian but the proposed alternative is scarier....at least to me. As much as I hate to admit it, and this sounds like liberal tripe.....the social and cultural issues leading to drug use and abuse are the real issue. Problem is...those are long term perhaps unresolvable problems and we are left with no choice but some kind of prohibition.

I would agree with some of the Randian/Objectivist/Libertarian crowd on the particular issues surrounding property confiscation and mandatory sentencing and gun enhancements. I do NOT think the drug war is puposely racist but it's certainly easy for anti-WOD folks to make that argument when they base their argument strictly on arrests and convictions. Again, the underlying social and cultural predispositions come into play. It's quite a complicated issue and has acquired an inter-generational life of it's own. Restoring some type of moral fabric back into our culture and society will cure exponentially more than the WOD. I know....Libertarians want drug legalization but abhor the societal morality issue....LOL.

[Liberal Classic]

"Restoring some type of moral fabric back into our culture and society will cure exponentially more than the WOD."

Well said.

[Ken H]

Federal government takeover of welfare, education, and other domestic polices over the last 70 years is more responsible for the breakdown of the family and traditional values han any other factor, IMO.

I cannot think of one domestic issue that has not been totally screwed up by Federal control, including drug policy.

The liberal interpretation of the Constitution, especially the Commerce Clause, created the need for a forum such as Free Republic.

Every conservative worth the name should support the Tenth Amendment and reject the FDR/LBJ Commerce Clause school of thought, which has empowered Leftists and Socialists.

[dpwiener]

Libertarians want drug legalization but abhor the societal morality issue.

Societal morality issues are very important, but they are issues that government has shown itself to be spectacularly incompetent at dealing with. And if government is granted the power to impose societal morality rules, there is no guarantee that it will be your preferred rules which will be imposed. Certainly the evidence from recent decades is that government will instead impose rules you personally are likely to detest.

Instilling and inspiring proper moral values is the perview of parents and family and friends and churches and any number of other voluntary organizations and associations, but not government. [Especially not government-run schools, which have tended to shred and destroy proper moral values, but then that's another rant...] The Drug War has exascerbated these problems by creating enormous financial incentives to break the law (just as Prohibition did), by corrupting our judicial system and law-enforcement agencies, and by trashing the Constitution and the principles of a free society upon which this nation was founded.

The most moral thing we can do is end the Drug War, and thereby end this cancer that has been eating into our society and corrupting our government.

[weikel]

Legalize drugs and let the crackheads die problem solved.