Make all drugs legal; stop the myths~

Short version; Should Drugs Be legal ?


Long version;


It’s my opinion that Marijuana* is more helpful than harmful and should be legalized (for adults only). Marijuana aka bud, pot, weed, reefer, smoke, and many other names that I haven’t heard of. I looked it up on the slang dictionary already knowing the above names and a few more but man! There is a near a hundred names for the stuff. http://www.casapalmera.com/articles/nicknames-street-names-and-slang-for-marijuana/ Anyway seeing the war on drugs is lost and has been lost nearly before it began, not only pot should be legal almost all drugs should be either legal or decriminalized.

Think about it. The DEA could be gutted. Two billion dollars right off the top. The $2b is only the tip of the iceberg. There are local agencies such as nearly every county in the USA having a drug task force. Then the Coast Guard and other armed services (illegally and un-constitutional IMO) assist the DEA etc with drug interdiction. However I am fully aware that some drugs are truly dangerous, highly addictive and lethal if misused or abused. Maybe those could be decriminalized. Maybe one or two should not be legal I am a fence sitter about that. All could be taxed in accordance to how much it cost to treat the specific addiction. The real crime is that in the USA its nearly impossible to get proper treatment for addiction either in jail or via private means. Only the very best insurance pays for a full 28 day de-tox, with a year of follow up.

An addict is lucky if they get a three day detox. Many go through withdrawal in jail. Add making a felon out of someone that has a oz of pot in his home. Add losing the home via seizure. Add draining bank account if trying to defend him of herself against the charge, if they are lucky enough to hire a good attorney. Add having a felony on his record and serving one to ten years and fine of up to $ 10,000.00 for an oz of pot. Anyway it’s time for the police the federal government with it’s reefer madness legislative and judicial branches to be drug(ed)[sic] into the twentieth century. At least marijuana and all non physically addictive drugs should be legal if not the other highly addictive substances. What say the PF minions er’ members?

Reva

 

Broadly speaking we are, as a first principle, free to put into our bodies what we like. We are stopped by society for good reasons from doing so. It would be good though for us to make our own, informed decisions about what we put into our bodies rather than be told that there are substances that we cannot. Crumbs if we know when what we know now we would prohibit sugar and salt.

 

The OP is ignoring why drugs were made illegal in the US, in the first place.

Alcohol was made illegal, to prevent competition, with petroleum fuels. Drugs were made illegal, to build prison and court cartels and to present an appearance, of common anal compulsion, since the alcohol ban was similar, but actually directed, to marketeering and profiteering, in favor of fossil fuel cartels, and of course, gangs and overtly criminal cartels.

When a hemp processor was developed, which was about to make hemp the number one cash crop, in the US and in the world, FDR and his Congress sold out, to Andrew Mellon, W.R. Hearst, their timber and oil interests, and they made Mellon's son-in-law Harry Anslinger and his evil descendants into something, to be feared.

Our economy is always about to tank, thanks to the top-heavy bureaucracy, from all this. Heard of the Great Deptression?

So is our environment always about to tank. Any time atmospheric CO2 rises, partly as fast as it is rising, today, a mass extinction event results. Ours is Mass Extinction Event 6. Welcome to reality. When that Arctic ice cap melts, say about 2030, the Earth will absorb energy faster, every northern summer. The northern ice albedo is already failing, so the NH is heating up, faster than is the SH.

When the Arctic cap fails, and the Greenland sheet ice starts to melt, and GHGs are even more off the hook, all of warming, melts, sea level rise, and oceanic acidification will accelerate.

Stopping hemp, in 1938, to begin passing the drug war, around the world, by treaty was directed, toward preventing biofuels. But hemp is the resource, for 25,000 market-leading products. When you focus on marijuana, for legalization, without noticing WHY hemp is a Schedule I CS, while crack, smack, crank, and George Zimmerman's Adderall are all Schedule II Controlled Substances, you just aren't catching on, to how markets are manipulated, by the corrupt drug war. Of course, we also have fabulously corrupt police, courts, and prisons.

Of course, in the US, we are 5% of the world's population, funding 25% of the world's prisoners, directly, while the US squanders our money, on international drug war funding and other crusades, which is about to get the US kicked out, of all sorts of countries.

As a practical matter, the American idiot and American hegemon aren't welcome. People can see the idiot and its boss running OUT OF MONEY.

Drugs need to be swung, from contraband, to resources, including as tax base, for a myriad of vital, practical reasons, not just because, "Hey, we're tired of the drug war." We legalize and resource, or our funding will fail.

We have until 2030, to get busy re-greening and making biofuels, before warming and climate change both accelerate. The drug war has a carbon footprint. Ending just the pot law will allow hemp, to join other biomass, oil, and sundry resources, such as pongamia trees, switchgrass, and algae, to make CO2-neutral biofuels. Henry Ford was making hemp ethanol and plastic, since the Model T.

If you won't "whatever, maaaahn," and re-green, you won't enjoy the climate change, which will include more droughts and deluges and other natural disasters, which are all increasing, as we approach Phase II, of runaway global warming, 2030-2050. People may not be as numerous, for Phase III, and I doubt people today are smart enough, to procreate, to survive Phase IV.

Only two bad years of oceanic food web failure are necessary, to wipe out a LOT of desirable species. Then jellyfish become the top ocean predator, which will impair restocking the oceans, IF we even have stocks, for the lousy oceans, IF we can get fish acclimated, to lower pH.

Global warming is no joke. It really is human-caused, due to aversion of cyclic carbon media, abuse of sequestered carbon media, clearing of CO2 respirators, and abuse of fire and chainsaws and any other invention. Humans do not simply emit CO2, without CH4 and all kinds of industrial GHGs, which didn't exist, before the 20th Century.

We need to get rid of the bad heat, spawned by Wilson, FDR, Nixon (DEA), and Clinton (signed functional deregulation of state courts) AND ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT AND BUDGET ASSAULT, to swing contraband, to resource and tax base, OR WE WILL FAIL, LIKE THE US DID, IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION. Heard of it? Here comes January 2013, BTW.

 

Legalizing all narcotics, booze and other contolled substanes for adults would be fine, but the side effects are so terrible that they not only destroy the individual that uses them but others around them.

Alcohol and hemp are cool, until the person high on them rams their car, airplane or oil tanker into innocents.

Druggie parents fail to take adequate care of their kids.

If meth is made legal, and parents cook their own at home and kill their children in the process, are the parents innocent?

If meth, herion and cocaine are made legal by the government and manufactured by the government or private industry, would any of them be liable for the all the known dangerous and lethal side effects for those who use them?

Maybe RevAnichrist feels that warning labels should be put on bags of meth, coke, pot, heroin, PCP and similar legalized drugs to protect the public. Obamacare then can take care of all the aftermath. Only the taxpayers would be hurt.

 

Marijuana is one thing, other drugs are not.

As I said in another thread, I do neuropsychiatric pharmacotherapy for a living. Many of those patients suffer from mental diseases or brain injuries, many others from substance abuse.

Legalization is not the answer.

 

Reva,

You need to step away from the keyboard, smoke some more dope, hit the crack pipe a few times, shoot some heroin, wander out in the middle of a crowded Interstate, and make your pitch to the cars and trucks whizzing by at 75 miles per hour.

I'm sure you will get a much more satisfying response out on the highway than you will here on the internet.

(Well. It will be satisfying to some of us, anyway.)

 

If drugs were made legal or decriminalized, would you become a user? What about your friends and family?

Changing the law and diverting resources to adequate health care treatment for addiction would not hurt society. In fact, it would probably help.

 

Legalizing recreational drug use and utilizing a portion of drug task force funds to provide treatment would greatly enhance your bottom line, would it not?

 

Reva, you reminded me of this:


New Hampshire Jury Acquits Pot-Growing Rastafarian

Something about jury nullification.

 

It would, at first. But I'm not concerned with that stuff, I got into this field for the clinical aspects; not managerial, not yet.

But assuming a fair portion of the population would at least try the drug; let's say 20%, obviously higher among 18-30 year old men, and a fair share of that amount would become addicts or suffer from substance-related problems; the cost of treating that appropriately and the amount of wages and so forth lost would not come close to the DEA budget.

 

It would, at first. But I'm not concerned with that stuff, I got into this field for the clinical aspects; not managerial, not yet.

But assuming a fair portion of the population would at least try the drug; let's say 20%, obviously higher among 18-30 year old men, and a fair share of that amount would become addicts or suffer from substance-related problems; the cost of treating that appropriately and the amount of wages and so forth lost would not come close to the DEA budget.

 

Right now Your child has access to the full market of drugs and its easier for them to get drugs than say a pint of whisky. Dont fool yourself, your child has access to a particular large market of drugs that is closed off to you once you become an adult and look old enough to be a cop. Drugs have flooded the market for your children and the prices are low enough for them to easily obtain it. IT doesnt take much research to find this info. Not to say that adults dont have a market for drugs only that the your childrens market is a subset of the larger drug market and one that most parents reall do not see.

If drugs werer made legal and treated as a medical condition locally then less children would have access to it. Just like liquor, kids will be hard pressed to get it so easily.

If you end the war on drugs you will reduce government, reduce spending and increase revenue via taxes on drugs. You would open up a huge new crop that produces many benifits in Hemp.

Instead folks want to beleive the war on drugs is actually preventing their children from having access to drugs. These same folks are believing a lie. All children except "maybe" in remote small towns have access to drugs.

Even the Amish community suffers from drug use among their children....The war on drugs is a failure.

Back in 1998
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/19..._1_amish-community-hard-drugs-methamphetamine
In 2011
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/05/methamphetamine_seeps_into_idy.html

The war on drugs is a failure. Stop the ignorance! The government can not protect you or your children from drugs better than you can. The drugs are there right now.......It will continue to be there if made legal but without all the negative benifits the feds and criminals bring to the war on drugs.

Stop treating it as a crime and start helping our children by treating it as a medical condition. Conservitives need to start walking the tallk and really make cuts to federal spending and the size of government. Ending the drug war is a good start.

 

There are a lot of problems with that assumption, like the assumption itself.

 

You missed the biggest effect to the average person.

You know all these budget shortfalls for the states that are causing them to fire teachers, and police, and cut back on infrastructure spending?

Easily covered, and then some by cutting the prison population in half.

Imagine it conservatives. We could have balanced state budgets, and a tax break!

 

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

 

Or we could just have businesses do regular drug testing of their employees, that would cut off all funding to drug dealers.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/13/us-portugal-drugs-idUSBRE87C0N120120813

Most don't have that great of jobs, I think.

 

So what I took from the article is that the banking crisis that has led to economic downturns, increases stress which increases relapses. Then these people go back to rehab when they want to get clean.

Still sounds better then paying 50K a year to house people, and export prison culture.

 

It's situational. Bad times and some will resort to drug use, that it becomes a habitual thing; and Portugal isn't quite like the USA with a culture of these kinds of abuses being so glorified in media and so forth. Funding will likely have to go back and forth every few years, leading to an uncertain program. Not to mention the cost of rehab and the cost of lost labor while in rehab or under the effects of substances. Portugal has a significantly different lab structure.

 

The majority of the cash for the war on drugs goes to fighting against Pot.

Pot is not relatively worse that cigs or booze which are legal so it makes a bit of a joke of the law keeping Pot legal.

Other drugs such as Heroin and espectially meth and the new variants of these drugs are extremely dangerous such that the state is justified in keeping these illegal. This is just not the case for pot.

We need to stop Pot prohibition.

 

I somewhat agree. It shouldn't be necessarily decriminalized, but there shouldn't really be actual prison penalties for it. Perhaps just fines for pushing or large possession with intent to sell.

 

Why would this effect the fact that drug use went down when they decriminalized all drugs?

No matter what the external factors, the statistical fact that treatment is superior to incarceration is present. Whether you choose to recognize this is up to you.

 

In one country, at one timeframe. But I didn't argue against this. So I don't quite get what you're discussing.

 

I don't know, what was your point when you linked the story of the lapsed heroin user in Portugal?

 

That it's not a perfect solution, nor one that would be apt at this time (rather dreary level of optimism regarding the future, the economy, etc). Rehabilitation is very powerful, no doubt. Substance abuse is a problem and punishment doesn't fix the problem; I don't expect it to, that's not its purpose.

I don't, however, see the purpose in legalizing drugs only to spend money on rehabilitation and so forth, why not just not legalize the drugs?