Alcohol Is a Very Dangerous Drug

[MSimon]

People rather distant from me call me Mike or Michael. All my close friends and associates (even the first mate) call me Simon.

So where do you think I fit on that spectrum?

It is up to you to decide. I'm open.

[imaginatium]

It's amazing that year after I still see the same old tired arguments on the subject of Drugs.

If you want to know the effects of legalizing drugs, look at the statistics of the countries where drugs are legal, then compare them to the statistics where they are illegal.

The same could be said for prostitution laws, gun laws, or any other for of prohibition.

By comparing societies, first world societies, in the current time frame, you will see what prohibitions are good or bad for America.

And notice, what I just said reveals nothing about my position on drug laws. The likelihood is upon first reading, your assumption was that my position, was that opposite of your own.

[Diogenes]

It's amazing that year after I still see the same old tired arguments on the subject of Drugs.

If you want to know the effects of legalizing drugs, look at the statistics of the countries where drugs are legal, then compare them to the statistics where they are illegal.

The same could be said for prostitution laws, gun laws, or any other for of prohibition.

By comparing societies, first world societies, in the current time frame, you will see what prohibitions are good or bad for America.

And notice, what I just said reveals nothing about my position on drug laws. The likelihood is upon first reading, your assumption was that my position, was that opposite of your own.

The terminology you use implies you are Libertarian leaning. People who like using the term "Prohibition" would appear to be of a similar thought process to people who use the term "teabagger".


I keep mentioning China, the biggest legalized drug experiment in History. Funny how supporters of legalized drugs just gloss over that.


What do you think about China?

[Diogenes]

I've been pondering how to communicate an idea to people who seemingly cannot grasp it. I've recently come up with a notion as to how it might be accomplished. Even the most stubborn of people can comprehend economics somewhat, so I've decided it might be worthwhile to illustrate the fallacy of Libertarianism by applying it to economics, which is more emotion neutral.



Adam Smith is more or less considered the Father of Economic theory. His ideas were put forth in the famous book "The Wealth of Nations." He advocated a Laissez faire methodology for wealth creation.


Laissez faire is the economic equivalent of Libertarian social philosophy. In other words, it calls for strict government non-intervention in financial matters as the best method for creating wealth in a nation. Adam Smith's ideas were widely adopted in this country and were responsible for a great deal of wealth creation because for the most part, the government refrained from meddling with what was going on in the free market.


How did it work out? Wonderful. Nothing ever went wrong, and the Free Market system never caused another problem.

And they lived happily ever after.

The End.

[Diogenes]

D,

Anecdotes are not evidence. You are probably unaware of that. So I thought I would tell you.

Today I took a poll in the Republic of Me and discovered that Anecdotal evidence wins hands down as it comes from a very reputable source; My own eyes. Diddled Medical Jargon/Sophistry comes in a distant second.

And since you scoff at medical evidence I assume you have nothing to do with doctors.

Your "Medical evidence" I hold in the same regard as the Global Warming "evidence." A bunch of jargon attempting to twist reality by hiding behind complexity. It has the added advantage of allowing it's proponents to look down their noses at the people who are not obsessed with this issue and proclaim them ignorant and uneducated.

As it happens I have two very good friends who are Doctors, (One a Neurosurgeon, the other a General Practitioner) and they think your claims are twaddle.



===

And why do I keep repeating the medical evidence? In the hope (forlorn to be sure) that some day you will read it and provide counter evidence.

You wouldn't do physics (evidence free) the way you deal with this subject. I assume you are emotionally unequipped to deal with evidence that might counter your faith. And yet you would scoff at anyone doing faith based physics. Amusing.

Your evidence reminds me of the old fallacy of statistics.

" If you stand with one foot in a bucket of cold water, and the other in a bucket of hot water, on the average your comfortable. "


"If one ship can sail across the Atlantic in two weeks, Two ships can do it in one week. "

That's the sort of conclusions you are drawing from your "evidence."


===

BTW Eric (of Classical Values) and I both admire our prohibitionist friend because of his knowledge of the subject. We come to different conclusions than he does but Eric and I agree that our friend does know the literature. And if I come up with something he is unfamiliar with he reads my evidence. I do the same with the evidence he provides. We have HONEST disagreements.

You acknowledged he's an expert but you won't listen to him either?
Sounds like a faith based mindset. Next thing we know, you'll be pushing for prayer in school or something.

All I get from you are anecdotes and repetition of government propaganda. All the better for me.

I agree about the "repetition of government propaganda." You keep using that phrase over and over. Why you keep repeating that my own experiences are "Government Propaganda" I really cannot understand. If you don't like the repetition, why do you keep repeating it?

[choff]

Mike, do you believe that all date rape drugs should be legal without prescription, in any amounts, without age limits for purchase. If we say that the less government controls, the better, should we not remove restrictions on things like Ricin and VX gas. There was a drug bust in my town lately, enough Ketamine to knock out the entire population.

I believe we should ban the #1 date rape drug of all time: alcohol.

/sarc

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Banning the drugs provides a false sense of security. And as your examples show - it doesn't work.

=====

I see by the appellation you use to refer to me that you are no friend. Nice to know.

=====

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Law_of_Prohibition

The Iron Law of Prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cowan which states that "the more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the prohibited substance becomes." This is based on the premise that when drugs or alcohol are prohibited, they will be produced only in black markets in their most concentrated and powerful forms. If all alcohol beverages are prohibited, a bootlegger will be more profitable if he smuggles highly distilled liquors than if he smuggles the same volume of small beer. In addition, the black-market goods are more likely to be adulterated with unknown or dangerous substances. The government cannot regulate and inspect the production process, and harmed consumers have no recourse in law.

This is true not just for individual drugs but the whole drug scene. You ban a mild drug like pot and the dealers will be dealing stronger stuff.

You ban opium and you get heroin. You ban heroin and you get even stronger analogs.

So the harder the drug war is fought the more self defeating the war becomes. Think of prohibition as an incentive plan to provide more, stronger, more dangerous drugs to the drug market.

Conservatives can apply economic thinking most exquisitely to almost any market except the drug market. The mere mention of drugs makes conservatives stupid. A word makes some folks instantly stupid. That is some powerful shite.

===

And just as alcohol prohibition corrupted law enforcement so has drug prohibition done the same:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_17415662?nclick_check=1

The arrest not only calls into question the credibility and integrity of Wielsch as an individual, she said, but also that of the task force as an investigative body and the guardian of prosecution evidence.

"Was he motivated by a desire to confiscate as much drugs as he could so he could turn around and sell them? Was he writing false police reports? Was he exaggerating in police reports? You have to question everything in a CNET investigation," Lipetzky said. "You also have to wonder when it's the top cop of the investigation that's a crooked cop, what did others in CNET know?"

Wielsch and Chris Butler, who runs the investigative firm Butler and Associates, were arrested together in Benicia by federal agents Wednesday morning after an undercover investigation that began in January, said Department of Justice special agent Michelle Gregory.

Both men were booked into County Jail in Martinez on as many as 25 suspected felony offenses, including possessing, transporting and selling marijuana, methamphetamine and steroids, and embezzlement, second-degree burglary and conspiracy. District Attorney Mark Peterson said his office will likely decide whether to file charges Friday.

Deputy public defenders on Thursday began requesting police reports surrounding Wielsch's arrest during court appearances for clients arrested by CNET.

"At this point, this is material we are entitled to because it could impact the integrity of the investigation of any open case," Lipetzky said.

She said she is waiting to hear details about the allegations against Wielsch before assessing how his arrest would affect past CNET cases. The further back criminal activity is alleged to have occurred, the more cases would be affected. The public defender said she is prepared to have the office revisit cases from years back at a time when staff time and resources are already scarce.

===

The belief in prohibition is equivalent to the belief in socialism. It is a faith not founded on facts. And yet no amount of failure can dissuade the believers (generally). Darndest thing I have ever seen.

Sorry if I've rubbed you the wrong way Simon, but shouldn't Heroin be totally replaced by Fentanyl by now, being Heroin was banned first, and Fentanyl is way more potent. Actually the dealers can only crank up the potency so much before it kills off the customer first time used, then its a completed money loser.
The intel community has a free pass on drug smuggling, and its not being done for financing special ops, its greed. The drug war is more about eliminating public sector competition. So an arguement could be made that real prohibition has never been taken seriously. The amount committed is chunk change in the greater scheme. The local yokals busted in your example clearly weren't high enough up in the food chain for protection.

[MSimon]

Sorry if I've rubbed you the wrong way Simon, but shouldn't Heroin be totally replaced by Fentanyl by now

You would think so and things were headed in that direction for a while. But it turns out that Fentanyl is hard to cut reliably on a kitchen table. So the variation in "product" was extreme making it more dangerous than heroin.

Drug users may be obsessed but they are not totally stupid.

And it may be that the high is not as congenial as heroin.

BTW I was reading about opiates and PTSD for military vets (official prescriptions) and found a case where Fentanyl made the user disoriented and the vet had put a patch on before taking the old one off and died.

So the safety margin may be less than heroin. Also the vets seem to be mixing and matching drugs to get relief - i.e. "pill" trading among users.

Marijuana can reduce opiate requirements but it is unavailable on a Federal level.

I have a short version here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/201 ... vegas.html

with links to the full article(s).

[MSimon]

choff,

I agree that real prohibition hasn't been done. In fact it can't be done do to the corruptibility of man. I have examples of that here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/201 ... -cops.html

[choff]

This is why I keep going back to the idea of the class action lawsuit, I'm not expert enough on US law, but there must be some such recourse.

Basically, one man's meat is another man's poison. That's why you can't convince people of a certain mindset like myself to change position on drug prohibition. We all have our own experiences, there are thousands of studies, and we can both cherry pick whichever ones support our point of view from here to eternity.

The result of debate will be an endless stalemate, likewise repeal campaigns in the political arena. Therefore, to my way of thinking, the best way to change the law is the class action suit. Think of the effect a selective proscecution suit would have on the whole system. There are 2 million people in prison, largely for drug related crimes, plus how many more that have been inside. That's a very difficult number to ignore by the mainstream.

Think of the effect on the system if under oath, DEA and Justice department officials provided evidence of drug importation by CIA, and not just small amounts either. Once CIA agents are put on the hot seat, they start to spill on the politicians and bankers that allowed it to happen. Something would give in the system somewhere, probably to the betterment.

[KitemanSA]

I keep mentioning China, the biggest legalized drug experiment in History. Funny how supporters of legalized drugs just gloss over that.
What do you think about China?

We seem to have a completely different view about what happened in China.

Please provide a SHORT description of the "experiment" as you see it. I say short because you tend to write fairly long, rambling, and to me non-sensical missives so I must admit I frequently do not read them.

Start off: "History of Chinese Drug Experiment"...

Thank you.

[MSimon]

That's why you can't convince people of a certain mindset like myself to change position on drug prohibition.

In fact we have a VERY IMPORTANT data point in the material I recently found.

The US military is using opiates to treat PTSD. A point I was making about self medication with heroin ten years ago. To much derision from some quarters I might add.

As to getting the agencies to reveal their dealing? Not going to happen until prohibition is over. The best we can hope for is that the occasional dealing is found out.

BTW Ollie North was importing cocaine. It came out during Iran Contra. And then disappeared from the radar screen. Or you can read Alfred McCoy's books on opiate dealing when Vietnam/SE Asia was the happening place for military operations. It is pretty much an open secret for anyone interested. Or should you be interested in cultural artifacts there is the movie "Air America" which is a semi-fictionalized version of McCoy's books staring Mel Gibson.

I have hopes since you seem rational that I can change your mind. There are others here that I have no hope of convincing. I engage them because I can make them out to be insane on the subject. You on the other hand seem open to at least modifying your view based on new (to you) information.

[choff]

I've heard of one report by an FBI agent who said "We knew Atta and the others were terrorists but we couldn't do anything about them because they were smuggling drugs." Essentially, they had infiltrated politically protected Intel drug smuggling ops, so the FBI, DEA and local police couldn't touch them. I've heard other commentators claim a danger exists of WMD's being smuggled into the US through politically protected drug pipelines.

If, say 5 million current and former drug convicts sue the Federal government, it becomes impossible to ignore. I would think that even people who oppose legalization would agree to support such an effort. They and other US citizens fed up by the banksters who both received a bailout and launder the drug money. There being a revolving door between Wall Street, the banks, and the intelligence community.

The current drug war strategy of busting into the average citizens home at 3am isn't a strategy at all, it's a low level tactic. But turning the highest levels of the system inside out, the politicians will be forced to adopt a policy that addresses the root causes of drug usage.

Think of it, Diogenes and MSimon on the same side, fighting in common cause with the same energy they currently expend on each other. If you have doubts about victory, have a look at what's happening in the Arab world right now. If they can change the system, I'm certain millions of p!$$ed off Americans can do the same!

I've seen Air America, Traffic, No Country for Old Men, and dozens more, 2 movies a week when I was single.

Unrelated, the cellular telephone is to this era what the tank was to early WW2 and the AK to guerilla war.

[Diogenes]

I keep mentioning China, the biggest legalized drug experiment in History. Funny how supporters of legalized drugs just gloss over that.
What do you think about China?

We seem to have a completely different view about what happened in China.

Please provide a SHORT description of the "experiment" as you see it. I say short because you tend to write fairly long, rambling, and to me non-sensical missives so I must admit I frequently do not read them.

Start off: "History of Chinese Drug Experiment"...

Thank you.

Here's my short response.

Then, in 1906, the incredible happened. After over a hundred years of steady demoralization, with
half her population opium addicts,
or worse still, making enormous profits out of the trade, China determined to give up opium.

[KitemanSA]

The illegal drug trade has arisen as a result of drug prohibition laws. In the First Opium War (1839–42), the Chinese authorities had banned opium but the United Kingdom forced the country to allow British merchants to trade in opium with the general population. Smoking opium had become common in the 19th century due to increasing importation via British merchants. Trading in opium was (as it is today in the heroin trade) extremely lucrative. As a result of this illegal trade an estimated two million Chinese people became addicted to the drug. The British Crown (via the treaties of Nanking and Tianjin) took vast sums of money from the Chinese government through this illegal trade which they referred to as "reparations".

(minor edits and emphasis added).

The British GOVERNMENT for its own political purposes plied drugs, PUSHED them HARD, on the Chinese people. This is NOT the "ending prohibition" that is being discussed here. This is anti-prohibition, this is mandition. (With absolute government control, what ain't prohibited is mandated.) Please choose a more rational example of where "freedom wrt to drugs" lead the free people to use in excess.

PS: I'm rather surprised at you. I didn't think you would be this... well, either foolish or intellectually dishonest.

[Diogenes]

The illegal drug trade has arisen as a result of drug prohibition laws. In the First Opium War (1839–42), the Chinese authorities had banned opium but the United Kingdom forced the country to allow British merchants to trade in opium with the general population. Smoking opium had become common in the 19th century due to increasing importation via British merchants. Trading in opium was (as it is today in the heroin trade) extremely lucrative. As a result of this illegal trade an estimated two million Chinese people became addicted to the drug. The British Crown (via the treaties of Nanking and Tianjin) took vast sums of money from the Chinese government through this illegal trade which they referred to as "reparations".

(minor edits and emphasis added).

The British GOVERNMENT for its own political purposes plied drugs, PUSHED them HARD, on the Chinese people. This is NOT the "ending prohibition" that is being discussed here. This is anti-prohibition, this is mandition. (With absolute government control, what ain't prohibited is mandated.) Please choose a more rational example of where "freedom wrt to drugs" lead the free people to use in excess.

PS: I'm rather surprised at you. I didn't think you would be this... well, either foolish or intellectually dishonest.

Right back at ya dude. No doubt the British troops put the pipes in their mouths and offered them a light.