Your position on Legalizing drugs

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Observing, Nov 22, 2018.

  1. Observing

    Observing Well-Known Member

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    It will be a controlled substance like Alcohol, and it will be dosed out like pills.
     
  2. Observing

    Observing Well-Known Member

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    And that is fine. You go to the next county and purchase it and return home, just like now with alcohol. But I think they will have a harder time banning a item that can be sold in a drugstore but not somewhere else. Whiskey is not sold in drugstores but percs are.
     
  3. wist43

    wist43 Banned

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    The "war on drugs" is wholly a leftwing undertaking.

    The left is all about using government to control people, property, money, and literally all aspects of society.

    Yes, the "war on drugs" started with decidedly racist overtones, but it continues to this day b/c it is such an effective tool for controlling society.

    The US Government invaded Afghanistan for the purpose of protecting the world heroin supply.

    When the fundamentalist Muslims took over that country they put the poppie farmers out of business. As soon as the US military arrived, production fired back up, and exports went right back to where they were before the Muslims took over.
     
  4. Observing

    Observing Well-Known Member

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    I don't care if it is leftwing, rightwing, centrist that has nothing to do with where we are now and how to get out of it.
     
  5. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well that's easy to answer.

    The effects of these drugs are not moderated by them being legal. They're extremely addictive and will still send anyone taking them on a downward slope. Legalizing just makes them available to people who would not normally risk doing something illegal, or doing something risky like associating with drug dealers.

    This means that people taking them will still suffer their effects, and will still commit crime to get them, when they invariably lose their jobs or can no longer afford their habit.

    Alcohol is a good example. Legal or not, it still kills around 90k people a year.

    So, making them legal doesn't make the problem go away, and unless you provide them at a very cheap cost, they will still be made and sold illegally.
     
  6. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    By whom and under what circumstances is EXACTLY what should be determined by the rational construction of laws and rules by the legislature, exactly as we do with the other drugs that are legal, alcohol and tobacco.
     
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  7. Mackithius

    Mackithius Well-Known Member

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    Your post is too smart for most people here. Kudos, and I’m in complete agreement.

    I would argue for all drugs to be decriminalized, and some to be legalized and regulated. There’s data that shows benefit in cases of certain disease processes, depression,etc of marijuana, and some psychotropics, including mushrooms, pcp, lsd and ketamine. Things like narcotics, cocaine, methamphetamines I believe are too dangerous for selling and regulating. For those people, I’d offer clinics and MEDICAL HELP to get off those drugs.

    It’s ludicrous we treat these people, some with actual clinical problems, like addiction, in the same vain as we treat murderers and rapists. It’s so stupid. And in before the idiot comments about drug users committing violent crimes, more often than not, that’s to feed their disease process, IE addiction. Those people need help, not jail.
     
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  8. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    Because you differentiate in your post, I would like to ask you to please explain the difference in meaning, as you see it, between decriminalize and legalize. Thanks
     
  9. Observing

    Observing Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
  10. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  11. Mackithius

    Mackithius Well-Known Member

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    Legalization would be possession, sale, distribution of the drugs as products. Like tobacco, alcohol,etc.

    Decriminalization IMO would eliminate the criminal charges against an individual for possession of the substance. The grey area is whether or not production and/or sale would be prosecuted. I leave that to the courts. But considering more than half inmates are in for posssion, this would be a good first step in righting the ship that is our criminal justice system.

    So the beneficial ones I’d have legalized. While the dangerous ones I’d have decriminalized, with avenues for those people to get medical help.
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
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  12. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I smoked pot in my youth - lots and lots. This was the norm back in the day - at least where I grew up. Somehow - despite all that "brain damage" I managed to complete a chem degree. Who knew :)

    As did most of the people I grew up with - I stopped smoking the stuff in my early 20's. I didn't move on to "heroin" and nor did anyone else that I know of ... and obviously this is the case for the vast majority of Pot smokers. One only needs compare the number of pot smokers to the number of heroin users to dismiss the "gateway" nonsense.

    We had an adage in high school labeled AAA. Take an Athlete, add Alcohol, and you get an *******. While alcohol is now my drug of choice - just because I like alcohol and don't really like Pot - I have no patience for wasting billions of dollars and police resources on going after pot smokers.

    My main argument is because I have respect for essential liberty. The "harm reduction" argument is fallacious utilitarianism on steroids. All kinds of things in society have a risk of harm. Skiing, Boating - good grief one could drown, God forbid one drives a car, sky diving and so on.

    In a free society one has the freedom to risk a reasonable amount of harm to themselves. I have no desire for a nanny state. Either one has respect for essential liberty - the principle on which this nation was founded - or one does not.

    In cases of Heroin, Meth, Fentanyl and so on. The solution is to go back to the founding principles. The Gov't has no legitimate authority to make any law that messes with essential liberty. It can however ask for a change to the "Social Contract" - construct by which "the governed" give consent.

    This change requires not 50+1 or simple majority mandate as this would be "Tyranny of the majority". What is required is "overwhelming majority" - at least 2/3rds and perhaps 75%.

    Good luck getting 66% to agree to criminalization of Pot. Heroin on the other hand .. I doubt more than 33% think that heroin should be legal.

    Bottom line - let the people decide. If something is so harmful and so dangerous - that Gov't should be given the authority to use physical violence to stop people from doing this thing - an overwhelming majority will agree.

    What I don't want is a nanny state deciding for me - what I can and can not do with respect to essential liberty.
     
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  13. RodB

    RodB Well-Known Member Donor

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    Excellent comment. Two other more down to earth things to consider. If one knows the history of making marijuana illegal it makes one scratch and shake theri head. It was all done to protect the investments of DuPont, Hearst Newspapers, and the Mellon Bank. Second is the harm. To the best of my knowledge there have been no -- as in zero ever never -- deaths attributed to pot (as is true for second hand smoke by the way.) Everybody knows or knows of mean drunks, but nobody has ever met or heard of a mean pot smoker.
     
  14. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am sure there are mean pot smokers out there That some person is mean however - does not mean that it is because of the pot smoking. They would probably be meaner without smoking it and 100% they are meaner when drinking.

    In addition to the things you mention - I am against the use of State Propaganda to try and sway opinion - and that is exactly what "reefer madness" was. Completely false nonsense in order to drum up public support.

    It is now legal for our intelligence agencies (since 2013) to create and disseminate propaganda on US citizens. The budget (including dark projects) for these agencies is 130 Billion /year. To put this number in perspective - this is double the entire federal spend of Mexico, a nation that ranks 11th in the world in terms of purchasing power.

    Even the second hand smoke false narrative is just that. I mean think about it .. people smoke for 50 years or more and do not drop dead. How is it that an occasional wiff if second hand smoke can pose significant harm ?

    The main study that was done - in relation to childhood related disease related to SHS - looked at 100,000 smoking vs 100,000 non smoking households.

    They found 9 in the non smoking households vs 11 in the smoking households = in 999,989 of the smoking households they found no incident. Given the sample size - the difference of 2 is not even correlation never mind "Causation" - YET - the EPA divided the entire US population by 100,000 = 3000 at the time and multiplied by the difference (2) .. then claimed:

    6000 second hand smoking related illnesses per year. A complete falsehood. So much so that the EPA claim was ruled "Bad Science" in a US court of Law.

    YET - we still see this statistic cited on Gov't websites and quoted by Politicians wishing to make policy.
     
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  15. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So we'll have more people experimenting with heroin than we do now. That's not a pro-argument.

    Why it matters to me is that I'll be out on the roads with the heroin users.

    They're not going to be selling it cheaply. They're going to be strictly controlling who sells it and making a bundle off it, just like they're doing with marijuana stores now.

    If you take heroin legally or illegally, you're still going to be broke and committing crimes to get money. The effect is the same.

    Decriminalizing alcohol didn't stop the 90k people it still kills every year, or the drunk driving, rape, domestic violence, suicide and medical problems it causes.
     
  16. AKS

    AKS Banned

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    I tend to agree. I'm a huge fan of not prosecuting victim-less crimes. That said, I've seen the utter destruction that hard drugs cause. I think the humane thing to do is to eliminate those substances as much as possible.
     
  17. AKS

    AKS Banned

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    Not to derail but our dui laws are out of control. The .08 is arbitrary... And while there's obvious a point that one should not drive I have a hard time, in principle, prosecuting someone because they are more likely to hurt someone than they otherwise would be. Maybe someone is more dangerous at .08 than they would be stone sober but still safer than the 80 year old that can't see more than 20 feet in the distance and the reaction time of sludge in January.
    I've known people who have had their lives ruined because they split a bottle of wine over dinner. It's not right.
     
  18. AKS

    AKS Banned

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    I've heard this but it's not my experience. I'm not a pot smoker, I've only used it a handful of times, but every time I've tried it I would not have been comfortable driving.
     
  19. wist43

    wist43 Banned

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    The point is, the drug "crisis" is deliberate. That is why it matters from whence it came.

    It's importation is "allowed/abetted". The "war on drugs" is a fraud, and always has been.

    It is literally "the crisis and solution" conjured in the same laboratory.

    Governments, heads of state, and players in the power game have always used "crisis" as a means to manipulate the masses and promote themselves and their interests.

    There is a reason Heads of State and CEOs all read Machiavelli's The Prince.
     
  20. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    True conservatives would.

    It's part of the second amendment which limits the federal government's ability to make any laws concerning arms.
     
  21. wist43

    wist43 Banned

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    I think you mean "Constitutionalists" would.

    Not really sure what the term conservative means anymore, but fidelity to the Constitution isn't on the list.

    The "war on drugs" is exhibit one.
     
  22. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    conservative means constitutionalist.

    We value the constitution. I know you don't.

    And yes, the war on drugs is unconstitutional. There's nothing in there about drugs.
     
  23. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    On what basis will we have more people experimenting with heroin ?
     
  24. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Ever watch the movie Rush? About the competition between Formula One drivers Nikki Lauda and James Hunt?
     
  25. AKS

    AKS Banned

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    I have not. I’ll check it out.
     

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