All drugs should be legal, and why

[Deep Dish]

Bible Belt:
At some point in the future, I think Raich will considered as bad as Plessy v Ferguson and go down as one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.

Now, NORML may actually have a shot in the high court. The last time they were in front of the Supreme Court in 2005, they lost their case in a 6-3 split. But what is going on outside the marble columns of the Court is even more interesting. Then, there were only around 300 marijuana dispensaries. Today, there are more than 5,000 marijuana businesses nationwide. Did they really lose?

As a result of this real-world shift, the political climate on Capitol Hill is much more willing to talk pot.

“Ten years ago, we were lepers,” said [Allen] St. Pierre. “They wouldn’t even take our PAC donations. So what happened in this election? Numerous governors, congressmen, and senators called and said ‘Hey, I’ve changed my mind, I support these reforms, give me money.’”

...When they recently began getting phone calls from congressmen looking to enact marijuana reform, they rolled out the usual script.

“When we sat down with these representatives, we began with our usual playbook,” St. Pierre said. “They said ‘We don’t care about decrim anymore. We want a tax and regulate bill from you folks.’ And that’s where we find ourselves now, up to our ears with the staff and the parliamentarians writing at breakneck speed, because we’ve got folks competing on the Hill now against each other as to who is going to write the biggest, best, most popular marijuana bill.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/mari...alization-bills-next-year-in-congress-2012-11​

Times, they do come a changin’.

 

[Deep Dish]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILqaL8WMjXM

For what it’s worth, since president Obama has remained silent about the cataclysmic earthquake which just struck the White House (even the Washington Monument, which is under repair from an earthquake, is wobbling), here’s a Youtube video clip of Obama being asked a very simple straight-forward question about medical marijuana. Bear in mind, Obama is an exceptionally extemporaneously gifted speaker. Watch.

Now, imagine him now.

 

[Bible_Belt]

they looked at individual growers of pot, and found that the government should be able to regulate personal cultivation and consumption of crops due to the aggregate effect of individual consumption on the government's legitimate statutory framework governing the interstate marijuana market.

So anything a person produces and uses themselves must be an act of "interstate commerce?" There's a 'statutory framework' for everything. If I pick a tomato from my garden and eat it, is that interstate commerce? Raich says it is, and that should be an insult to anyone's common sense.

The decision is a good example of the concept of Orwellian government - truth is what the government says it is. Forget what the words "interstate" and "commerce" actually mean. They mean what we say they mean!

 

[ArcBound]

Marijuana you have a case for, but things like heroin, PCP and so on.... you'd be stupid to want them legalized. I agree with the principle that a person should be able to ingest something as long as it doesn't harm others and I believe marijuana is probably one of those drugs.

But harder drugs have effects not only on the person, but the society and neighborhood where the drugs are at.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bra...&sugexp=chrome,mod=9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

^Brazilian drug lords and crime syndicates stop selling crack because even they acknowledge the ill effects on Brazilian society. They could be raking in more money, but even they don't want to fvck up their nation on drugs.

Or how about the Opium Wars where England controlled a much bigger country (China) by getting them dependent on drugs?

Like it or not, there is a hierarchy of drugs from least harmful to very harmful to society. That doesn't mean we should say fvckall and let everyone do any drug they want but instead we need to reevaluate the drug hierarchy. It's fvcked up that things like cigarettes and alcohol are legal but marijuana isn't. But that doesn't mean heroin, crack, PCP or all that other stuff should be legal too.

 

[Deep Dish]

ArcBound:
Like it or not, there is a hierarchy of drugs from least harmful to very harmful to society. That doesn't mean we should say fvckall and let everyone do any drug they want but instead we need to reevaluate the drug hierarchy. It's fvcked up that things like cigarettes and alcohol are legal but marijuana isn't. But that doesn't mean heroin, crack, PCP or all that other stuff should be legal too.

I agree that different drugs have different magnitudes of different effects, which should be rationally considered individually in how they are dealt with, however you have not addressed, nor has anyone else, the cost-to-benefit ratio analysis presented by Jeffrey Miron. Like, for instance, how I pointed out to Backbreaker, “Convicted felons are largely unable to once again be a successful productive member of society, permanently hindering their economic potential. Consequently, stripped of their ability to turn their lives around, people with felony convictions are often compelled to turn to crime because they are unable to bring home the bacon through conventional employment. This is principally unfair and, again, causes more crime. Prisons are also colleges for how to learn to be a criminal—the diploma comes in handy once they graduate, because again, they are compelled to turn towards more crime.”

Drug policy reform is a complex quagmire of contradictions. There are no easy answers. But criminalization is not it. For everybody who is new to drug policy reform, who hadn’t really thought about this before, which I assume is most readers, I highly recommend watching Stephen Soderburgh’s Traffic. It advances highly sophisticated political points and illustrates every side of the Drug War. It’s not the most emotionally engaging movie and feels rather corrosive but that’s the intentional point. Again, there are no easy answers for how society moves intoxicantly forward.

 

[Quiksilver]

let the fools DIE. Why care about a bunch of losers? Don't give them any free care, they KNOW what they risk, let them suffer the FULL penalty of their stupidity, that's all. There is nothing to be done for or with such stupid, weak minded people. If they harm others, especially kids, string them up for THAT. Portugal has no dope laws,and the result is NOT what you fools claim it will be. Vermont has ALWAYS let anyone carry concealed guns there, and there's no problems with that, either.

It's not about "letting" or "permitting" anything.

As I said above, who are you (not specifically you, goundra) to use force to make others live how you want them to?

Specifically with Vermont firearms ... The perspective is, Constitutionally a certain set of individual liberties shall not be infringed by force (laws).



In my opinion, people can destroy themselves all they want with bad habits (drugs, obesity, gambling, violence, etc). I have negative opinions toward self-destructive behavior, but I respect individual liberties enough that I don't think I have a right to force (laws) others to live how I personally want them to.


Also, the only people who I ever debate with who mention the term 'Society' are collectivists(think china, cuba, north korea). Personally, to me 'Society' is just a collection of individuals, not some borg.

therefore the statement "__________ is bad for society" has zero meaning.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Now Bible Belt, if you had read the Raich decision...

I had Con law just like you. We all read the same cases. I'll admit that I didn't do a lot of the assigned reading in law school, but I actually did read Raich, sitting in class and watching the other sixty kids swallow it all. No one had any problem with interstate commerce being neither interstate nor commerce. As usual, the "study" of law was one big exercise in groupthink.

I took Fed Courts, too. That was an elective; I don't know if you had it or not. But we spend a lot of time on the question of Federal jurisdiction. The boundaries of that jurisdiction are supposed to be well-defined and the result of a long history of jurisprudence. And I can tell you that one of the acceptable answers to the question of does the Federal court have jurisdiction over this matter? is not supposed to be "yes, because we say so by re-defining what words mean."

 

[Bible_Belt]

But I'm sure you'd agree there's a more effective way of "overturning" a decision than breaking the law and going to jail for it?

It worked for the civil rights movement. The famous pictures that were really the turning point in it all were taken of Bull Connor's men turning fire hoses on women and girls. It reminds me a lot of the current Fed raids on the med pot dispensaries. The people getting arrested have often devoted their life to trying to ease the suffering of terminally ill people, typically cancer and AIDS patients. They know the risk of arrest and they do it anyway, because they believe they are doing the right thing. I think Gandhi and MLK would both have approved.

 

[PRMoon]

No way "all drugs" should be legal by any stretch of the imagination. Pharmacudical companies would have a field day making rec drugs that would be crazy addictive with no barriers to entry.

 

[Deep Dish]

PRMoon:
No way "all drugs" should be legal by any stretch of the imagination. Pharmacudical companies would have a field day making rec drugs that would be crazy addictive with no barriers to entry.

With all due respect, you are not making any sense.

1. You are trying to dance around the cognitive dissonance which I have laid out in the thread, but completely logically fail. The cost-to-benefit ratio is far more negative. Prove me wrong.

2. With legalization comes regulations and consumer protection.

I should also point out to everybody that Judge Andrew Napolitano has written a new book called It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong. I haven’t read it, but think about the title.

 

[Married Buried]

How was it snarky? Pro-legalization arguments are absurd! I mean come on BB, comparing the legalization of harmful addictive drugs to movements for freedom and independence? My response was common sense, PPRF it was YOUR answer that was snarky, short, and didn't even make an argument.

PPRF you're just pissed off cuz I'm shutting down all of your arguments, and I'm showing everyone how ridiculous the pro-legalization stance really is. You have no way to logically win your way around this, so you have to resort to calling me a "devil's advocate." What kind of weak argument is this??

Is it playing devil's advocate to want to protect people and kids from harmful addictive drugs? You need to go back, do some more research on this, and come back with some stronger arguments.

Brad, what do you think about the synthetic drugs? Because people are denied access to real marijuana they are buying the synthetic equivalent. I know this for a fact because I can pull up 5 sites right now, and buy ounces of synthetic weed. I have 3 pounds in the closet, and the effects are stronger and more addictive than real marijuana.

Believe me, legalizing it is in everyones best interest.

 

[Bible_Belt]

I mean come on BB, comparing the legalization of harmful addictive drugs to movements for freedom and independence?

The drug war is not very big on "freedom and independence." I was talking about the med pot dispensary owners. They believe that people who are dying and in pain ought to be able to have the one thing that makes them feel better. Pot is so popular among cancer patients because it helps negate the miserable effects of chemo. They get their appetites back and stop feeling like complete dog sh!t. Those dispensary owners see it firsthand, and they are willing to go to jail because they believe what they are doing is right, regardless of the law having not yet evolved to agree with them.

 

[PRMoon]

With all due respect, you are not making any sense.

1. You are trying to dance around the cognitive dissonance which I have laid out in the thread, but completely logically fail. The cost-to-benefit ratio is far more negative. Prove me wrong.

2. With legalization comes regulations and consumer protection.

I should also point out to everybody that Judge Andrew Napolitano has written a new book called It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong. I haven’t read it, but think about the title.

With all due respect you're completely and utterly short sighted in this subject. There are legal drugs with unforseen side effects that kill people on a regular basis now. That's with "standard fda" protocol in place. I'm not going to dig any further into this troll bait thread but at least once daily I see class action law suits about having taken some regulated drug and some how you think those same people will come up with something "safe"for recreational use? Come on man, that's just plain stupid.
And I'm out.

 

[Deep Dish]

With all due respect you're completely and utterly short sighted in this subject. There are legal drugs with unforseen side effects that kill people on a regular basis now. That's with "standard fda" protocol in place. I'm not going to dig any further into this troll bait thread but at least once daily I see class action law suits about having taken some regulated drug and some how you think those same people will come up with something "safe"for recreational use? Come on man, that's just plain stupid.
And I'm out.

I present to you the riddle I have presented to Backbreaker and ArcBound, which nobody has even tried to refute.

“Convicted felons are largely unable to once again be a successful productive member of society, permanently hindering their economic potential. Consequently, stripped of their ability to turn their lives around, people with felony convictions are often compelled to turn to crime because they are unable to bring home the bacon through conventional employment. This is principally unfair and, again, causes more crime. Prisons are also colleges for how to learn to be a criminal—the diploma comes in handy once they graduate, because again, they are compelled to turn towards more crime.”

I await your rebuttal. If you don't, it speaks volumes.

 

[Who Dares Win]

I present to you the riddle I have presented to Backbreaker and ArcBound, which nobody has even tried to refute.

“Convicted felons are largely unable to once again be a successful productive member of society, permanently hindering their economic potential. Consequently, stripped of their ability to turn their lives around, people with felony convictions are often compelled to turn to crime because they are unable to bring home the bacon through conventional employment. This is principally unfair and, again, causes more crime. Prisons are also colleges for how to learn to be a criminal—the diploma comes in handy once they graduate, because again, they are compelled to turn towards more crime.”

I await your rebuttal. If you don't, it speaks volumes.

There is some truth in this but which one is the alternative?

Not saying a future employer that his gardner is a former rapist? or that his new accountant was in for fraud?

Or create some more quotas so now its 10%for minorities,10%for women and 10% for them? if we keep going like this its gonna be us to have crime as last option.

Anyway indeed about prisons being universities of crime, I guess the alternative would be shorted detention but spent smashing stones so they wont have time for that and somehow they'll give to the state something back economically.

 

[PRMoon]

I present to you the riddle I have presented to Backbreaker and ArcBound, which nobody has even tried to refute.

“Convicted felons are largely unable to once again be a successful productive member of society, permanently hindering their economic potential. Consequently, stripped of their ability to turn their lives around, people with felony convictions are often compelled to turn to crime because they are unable to bring home the bacon through conventional employment. This is principally unfair and, again, causes more crime. Prisons are also colleges for how to learn to be a criminal—the diploma comes in handy once they graduate, because again, they are compelled to turn towards more crime.”

I await your rebuttal. If you don't, it speaks volumes.

I can't believe I'm doing this on a f*cking monday. I just told you people die from drugs that are already legal and you counteted it with point about personal freedoms. THAT speaks volumes about you bro.

 

[5string]

Taxing drugs won't cause all sorts of illegal activity any more than taxing cigarettes.

Marijuana should definitely be legal, as well as some other forms of drugs. But the lines get blurred around the addiction and the results that can occur.

The highly addictive drugs can cause serious problems on society. Others, not so much at all. But as Deep Dish and Quicksilver say, it comes down to people imposing their will on others. I agree with both of them that it is ultimately the wrong thing to do.

Uh oh! I finally disagree with Danger. Who would have thought it could happen?

Imposing their will? Drugs are bad news both for the individual, society and others (like me), that find themselves caught up in the fvcked up behavior of others.

My wife's daughter got busted 3 weeks ago for meth along with some other clown that she had been living with in her house with her 3 kids. We had just got her into an apt after she left an abusive druggie husband. 3 kids, 3 different baby daddies. All because of drugs. She's almost 40! After being busted, she lost her apt and is now living with a friend. The 15 yr old is living with his dad, the 9 yr old is living with his dad and the 10 yr old is living with us. Nobody knows for sure who his dad is. He showed up with one pair of underwear, one pair of socks and no coat. I took care of that of course and now he has is own room and his needs are now met. Mrs.5string takes him to school every am and we help him with his schoolwork.

I have seen the effects of drugs. Not only does it affect the druggie, but the druggie's family and friends, not to mention the taxpayers.

Maybe there should be some exceptions as other posters have said above but if you ask me, anyone who manufactures meth should be on the receiving end of a .45 cal bullet.

 

[Deep Dish]

PRMoon:
I can't believe I'm doing this on a f*cking monday. I just told you people die from drugs that are already legal and you counteted it with point about personal freedoms. THAT speaks volumes about you bro.

Like I said in the opening paragraph of my essay, there is no perfect solution. I am talking crime economics. You are locking people up, who were not harming anyone but themselves (if they were harming others, lock them up for that), supposedly to prevent crime, but the end result is you are only causing more crime. Again, cost-to-benefit.

Who Dares Win:
There is some truth in this but which one is the alternative? Not saying a future employer that his gardner is a former rapist? or that his new accountant was in for fraud?

The cost-to-benefit of felony convictions is positive for acts of moral turpitude. Felonies have their place, but prisons are no venue for public health.

 

[5string]

I know Danger.

In my case, meth has affected many more people than just the user, in a very bad way. Marriages are broken, kids are split up and other family members and friends are harmed.

I cannot agree with anyone who says all drugs should be legalized (not to say you did).

Running a stop sign is illegal right? Not only does the driver risk harm to him or herself, the driver also put's others at risk by breaking said law.

 

[Epimanes]

NO .. all drugs should NOT be legal. Some yes ... all no.

However .. they did legalize weed in Washington just a few weeks ago. I am guessing its because USA is seriously lacking in funds ... so they are looking at other avenues of revenue.

Colorado and Washington legalize Marijuana here - http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/07/news/economy/marijuana-legalization-washington-colorado/index.html

*shrugs*