Your position on Legalizing drugs

I agree, but legalizing meth seems like a plan for insanity. Granted, prohibition did not make me quit but believe me, I was awful nervous every time I left the dealers driveway.

 

You're pointing out a falsehood. Libertarians are the only genuine liberals around. They're the only ones carrying on the legacy of liberty, which is what liberalism has always been about. The people calling themselves "liberals" these days are just authoritarians masquerading as liberals. Just look at who they supported for president. Hillary Clinton, one of the most illiberal politicians in recent memory. She helped spread damaging and racially charged myths about adolescent "super predators" during the nineties when her husband was helping to fuel the mass incarceration crisis with "tough on crime" policies. Oh, and she supported every disastrous war, including the Iraq war. That's who "liberals" support. Meanwhile, libertarians, the REAL liberals, have been consistently and vocally criticizing the drug war and the imperialist wars that "liberals" like Hillary Clinton support. And libertarians will be reminding people of these FACTS and how "liberals" like you have FAILED them for DECADES with your wishy-washy "moderation" and "centrism", which are just euphemisms for having no firm principles.

Libertarians have been deeply involved in the legalization campaigns in all green States. And those blue States, while making good progress, have not come NEARLY far enough in their effort to LIBERALIZE their social and economic policies. Blue States STILL have MASSIVE prison populations and hugely powerful police and prison unions who ROUTINELY violate the civil liberties of Americans. And of course libertarians are pointing that out just like they pointed out the unjust nature of marijuana prohibition.

 

"Meth" is already legal and prescribed to millions of Americans. Ritalin, Adderall, etc. These are just marketing terms for "speed", which is basically what "meth" is at the end of the day. And just like any drug, they can be abused and misused. But that is not a good reason to keep it prohibited or illegal. I mean, alcohol has destroyed FAR more lives than meth ever will, yet nobody would seriously argue that alcohol shouldn't be legal. The government tends to treat certain drugs like magical substances that instantly turn users into dangerous or hopelessly addicted cretins, yet that is actually the exception, not the rule. Most people who use meth or heroin don't actually destroy their lives, and most of them end up quitting at some point. And to the extent that their lives are harmed by meth, a great deal of that harm can be attributed to the negative effects of the drug being prohibited. Just think if instead of going to a dealer to get meth, you were able to go to a medical doctor instead. Not only would you not have to worry about being thrown in jail, shot, robbed, or given an adulterated substance, but you would have a trained professional to monitor you and provide you with proper medical advice and care.

 

I do agree with that. But pure meth is called "desoxyin" (Sp) and rarely prescribed.

I shudder to think what crap I loaded into a rig and jacked into my vein. My being alive, is a miracle.

That being said, if I had the pure deal I may have ODed. I have mixed feelings on this.

 

You guess wrong again for lack of a response.

Well no but I can understand since you didn't, you were saying if the person is an addict they shouldnt go to jail, that a get out of jail free card.

And yes if they are doing their job rehab, should we work more on that or just not put criminals behind bars? What do you think we should do?

I don think you are in a position to educate anyone. You are the one who said we shouldn't put someone whobis addicted to a drug in jail. A gross generalization.

If a person commits an armed robbery do they not go to jail if they are also an addict?

No it wasn't.

Nope that would be you.

You are saying they is some conspiracy between private prisons and government.

It's your conspiracy theory not mine.

The laws were in existence before all the private prisons but now you are claiming the state legislature create laws so more people will go to jail so the private prison owners fan make more money yet as the study showed there is no difference in incarceration rates.

Well you said plea bargains first and now sentencing guidelines now. What crimes on the books don't give sentencing guidlines. Like the difference between 1st degree murder and manslaughter and again what should the guideline be if the person is an addict they don't go to jail, your original assertion.

As I said we don just send addicts to jail.

 

Legalizing alcohol could be a plan for insanity if you look at it that way.

The point is that prohibition harms all of society, not just the individual drug user. Prohibition is bad and expensive policy for all of society, users and non-users alike.

 

Yuu don't legalize black market drugs. You make amphetamines available through a dispensary like you do whiskey.
If you get amphetimies for 1/5th the cost of Crank, why then do you do crank? If you can get high for $10 a day why pay $25 or $50 illegally. That is why I want drugs legalized and not just decriminalized for use. I want to put every gangster out of business, everyone can afford the drugs just by begging in the streets no need for knocking down some woman and taking 20 bucks from her purse 4 times a day, or stealing 5x the amount to fence.

I want poor neighborhoods where they can send the kids out to play, I want women to be able to walk places.

 

Sorry, I tried to educate you but you just don't get it or don't want to get it because you feel the need to defend it. I posted what I wanted to post and I'm not going to rehash because you insist on defending this inhumane system that is a catastrophic failure, often using red herrings.

 

Yea, else what do you suggest go back to committing more crime?

 

A war on drugs has never worked to stop the sell and use of drugs. Just as the war on booze was a helluva joke and a waste of money, and made organized crime very profitable, with cops and judges even being bought off by the lucrative profits involved.

You may as well try to empty out the pacific ocean with a teaspoon. ha ha. But emotions have a habit of trumping logic, rationality and reason, and when it does, you can ruin millions of lives, and spend a helluva lot of money that we end up having to borrow.

Now this is the verifiable reality of this deal, and yet reality is an inconvenience to the emotion driven people, who also want to dictate what other people do with their own bodies and minds. The hypocrisy comes in when I recall many of the war on drugs people used another drug, booze, to get their buzz. Stopping people from getting a buzz( something even some animals do) is a battle against basic human nature, which cannot be won, without killing off humanity. It is just that absurd and irrational, and yet many of us will not accept fact when it goes against our emotions or our desire to own the mind and body of others, so we can punish them for exercising the most basic freedom of them all, the right to own ones own body, instead of you. ha ha It is really that simple, and very inconvenient truth.

 

You posted we should not send drug addicts to prison, an over generalization as I noted. We don't send drug addicts to prison just because they are a drug addict. You claimed we do so so that private prisons can make more profit, a claim you cannot support and I refuted that there is no increase in the numbers of people being sent to prison in states with private prisons. And yes there are improvements we can make to the prisons systems and Trump just presented a prison reform bill, do you support it? And yes I support decriminalization of some drugs. But to say if a person is an addict and they commit a crime they should not go to jail is nonsense.

 

The usual red herring. This is why there's nothing more I want to discuss with you on this subject, you just can't/don't want to stick to the facts or the point of the discussion, plain intellectual dishonesty.

 

Here was the start of the discussion

Daggdag said
Throwing an addict in prison does nothing to help their addiction problem.
I said
Where are they throwing addicts in jail because they are addicts?

You argued addicts should not be sent to prison..............that is nonsense. Then you argued they are sent there because of the private prison system..........that is nonsense. I posted the facts about sentencing ad the states with private prison systems and you ignored it. So back to do we send addicts to prison BECAUSE they are addicts...........no and being addict should not be a get out jail card. That is intellectual honesty and here is a hint, claiming someone is being dishonest of in this forum will get your post deleted. So stick with the facts instead of the personal attacks for lack of rebuttal.

 

Was there something you didn't understand about there's nothing more I want to discuss with you on this subject?

 

Then don't respond with your invective to which there will be a response. If you can't discuss the matter without it so be it.

 

yeah, you go to jail the third time you are caught with class a drugs on you, whether it was one hit or not.

But that is besides the point, the law against being an addict is what causes the crimes to be committed. If percs cost the addict the 25 cents that it cost to make and ship the only thing that makes the addict commit a crime is the artificial cost caused by the blackmaket. We created a crime out of nothing but a person's desire to inject something in their body.

 

I believe Marijuana in all of its varied forms should be legal. The rest of the "illegal" drugs along with some FDA approved drugs containing opioids have proven to be destructive to individuals, families and communities - send users to rehab and execute ALL dealers.

 

Medical marijuana should be allowed by prescription (real federal prescription, not the farcical current state prescriptions) in all 50 states. Recreational marijuana should be a state by state decision (or even county by county decision).

The amount of people in prison due to the drug war is a highly overrated number. In terms of overall prison population (state and federal combined), most people are in for violent crimes, not drug crimes.

 

WFB was advocating against marihuana prohibition in 1972, hardly "later on" in his life. Love your revisionist history, though.

 

Expensive is more like it. When you have to pay civil service salaries/benefits to cashiers, it costs a lot. That said, I have lived in states with state liquor stores and those without. I felt much safer in the state liquor stores--they were usually clean and in safe locations. My wallet prefers private liquor stores.

 

Please show your stats (government sources) for this. My delving into this is that most people in crime for drugs are for distribution and possession of large qualities, not merely use. Prison is different than jail. Please distinguish between those on the stats you show.

 

Black markets come into existence by way of poor legislation that creates prohibition. There is a cause and effect relationship: because of legislation, black markets exist.

Therefore, as numerous Nobel Laureates in economics have pointed out, Milton Friedman being one of them, if you want to get rid of the harms caused by black markets, get rid of the cause of the black markets, the poor legislation.

If you want to get rid of the black market drugs, you repeal the bad legislation, you get rid of the prohibition. It's really quite simple and has been demonstrated many times in history.

 

Correct, how we ever got to this mess is beyond me. This nation is willing to make prisoners of a million people and have 20 mill of us afraid to let our children play because some guys want to get high.

 

What? you think more people got busted for intent to sell than possession? There are 20 users for every seller how can you even make that statement, just the odds of being caught with one gram is is much greater than 10 grams. The first time a cop catches you with a class A, every time he sees you after that he is going to frisk you until you tell him where you got it from. And I don't see the diff between jail and prison here in Mass, in county jails you serve up to 2.5 years, state prisons are for more serious violent offenses or multiple repeater.

 

We got into this mess in 1914 with the Harrison Narcotic Act to start. The Controlled Substances Act later buttressed and refined the prohibition, as Timothy Leary defeated the government in its own courts.

There is huge bureaucratic impetus for such prohibitions. Careers in the various enforcement agencies such as DEA have been made on the prohibition. The Federal Bureau of Prisons also benefits, even though the rest of society and the tax payers are the losers.