choff wrote:That people are smuggling and not being arrested mostly, because of who they are associate with, or flight schools that aren't flight schools, or perhaps the sheer scale of the whole operation, all in broad daylight, or just the whole cast of characters and connections to each other. Even if what's expounded is 25% true that's enough to take down a sizeable chunk of the upper echelon of US society.
The upper echelons have ALWAYS used prohibitions to their advantage. Money and power:
People were earlier calling into question the stat from the "druglibrary" that said 50% of the population of China was addicted in 1905. I found this bit at YOUR link.
China and India reached an agreement for cessation of Indian opium imports. By 1920's opium had infiltrated every part of Chinese life, 90% of males in some provinces smoked, morphine was called "Jesus opium" because of its introduction by Western Missionaries as a cure for opium addiction.
90% of males smoking opium wouldn't be a problem would it? Why, we have MSimon's theory that people are self medicating because of need, and that usage would stay around the 1.3% range. Who knew that 90% of males might have need to self medicate, and that usage might actually rise?
Seriously Talldave, what do you think the odds are of protecting anyone's rights if 90% of the males (and nowadays it would be the females as well, Horaah for women's rights! ) were smoking opium?
You sometimes give an honest answer, how about an honest answer on that question?
We have spent billions (if not trillions) to defend the nation. It occasionally causes death to ours and others. Why do we persist in this foolish behavior when it obviously isn't working because we're still having to spend so much time and money to defend ourselves.
It is possible to defend the nation from attacks.
How can you defend a free country against individual choice?
We phrase drug addiction in such lofty sentiments. It's not a choice because it's a mind altering substance. One cannot make rational decisions about tampering with their pleasure button. It is, in fact, a disease, and a threat to the survival of the nation, Ala China.
It will BRING a dictator. Ala China.
MSimon wrote:[
Not even Jesus could do that. What was his advice to his emissaries? If the message is not well received move on.
Whatever Jesus's advice was regarding spreading a philosophy, the drug problem is more akin to fighting a fire. If we do not keep hosing it down, it will burn us all. It would help if we could actually put out some of the flaming wood, instead of just temporarily removing it from the stack.
Some would answer yes. So many said yes that alcohol prohibition was introduced to the country. It lasted 13 years. Drug prohibition as originally instituted only affected a small minority; so until a large enough fraction was introduced to the evils of prohibition majorities favored it. We are now at the stage where enough understand the issues from direct experience that support is falling like a rock.
And this is a good thing because we all know that it is impossible for people to do anything foolish, like prohibition. You see, the people nowadays are far more sensible and well adjusted than the lazy irresponsible people who lived back in 1920. They are much smarter nowadays.
MSimon wrote:
I expect the fall of drug prohibition will be quite spectacular in its effect on the country.
I see two positive effects coming out of the fall.
1. The discrediting of government
2. The discrediting of socons
I suspect it will result in some sort of celebratory march. A Long one.
MSimon wrote:
What is my fondest hope? As a famous Republican once said: "a new birth of freedom".
The saddest thing is the discrediting of socons. They are correct about many things. However, every time they fall for the progressive line (and the Drug War was instituted by a coalition of Socons with Progressives) they lose their way.
Ha ha ha ha ha...
MSimon wrote:
The problem of the Socons is the same as the problem of the Progressives. They are addicted to power and control. A much worse vice than any addiction to drugs could ever be. And yet their so called master ("so called" because they do not take him to heart) never spoke in favor of temporal power. In fact his career was a fight against it. The original separator of church and state.
D@mn those silly people for advocating responsibility? Why don't they understand the nation NEEDS bastards and drug addicts?
The notion that Irresponsible spending is connected with being irresponsible is just INSANE! INSANE I say!
At what age would children be allowed to purchase legalized drugs, and wouldn't making them legal provide that much more access for kids.
Beer - which is legal - is harder for kids to get than illegal drugs. If you are sincere about reducing the access kids have to drugs legalization is the way to go.
THERE IT IS! I was wondering when you would recite that mantra again.
MSimon wrote:
Evidently you have never studied the matter.
Well, actually I have. You see, a beer costs ~ $1.00 and people who buy beer usually keep a bunch in the fridge, where the kids can get it easily.
A rock of crack is around ~ $20.00, and you have to have the money and find a dealer who won't rob a little kid. If you try to steal the rock off of a junkie, (assuming you can find one with a rock he has not yet smoked) the dope fiend will beat the hell out of you for trying to steal his rock.
As near as I can tell, it is FAR harder for the average kid to get his hands on a rock of crack than it is for him to steal a beer from his parents fridge. Now of course, if the kid lives with a crack dealer, he might have a better chance, but i'm pretty sure beer drinkers are a lot more common than crack dealers, even in the inner city slums.
choff wrote:Your wrong diagnosis site has this disclaimer|:
Extrapolation of Prevalence Rate of Drug abuse to Countries and Regions:WARNING! EXTRAPOLATION ONLY! NOT BASED ON COUNTRY-SPECIFIC DATA SOURCES. The following table attempts to extrapolate the above prevalence rate for Drug abuse to the populations of various countries and regions. These prevalence extrapolations for Drug abuse are only estimates, based on applying the prevalence rates from the US (or a similar country) to the population of other countries, and therefore may have very limited relevance to the actual prevalence of Drug abuse in any region:
Yes, this is a problem for a lot of statistics, such as perinatal/infant mortality, because there aren't clear international standards for how things are measured. If you have a better, or even just different, source I'd be interested.
Real legit stats are a problem. So far, the stats i've seen for the addiction rate in China is 25%, 50%, and now 90%. How do people get any accurate numbers for this sort of thing? Yup, accurate numbers are a problem.
TallDave wrote:
The dangers of tobacco were not widely know until after WW2, and even then not until the Tobacco lobby propaganda was overcome, at that point the addiction rate was at least 35%. Addiction to tobacco products is slowly declining, but not without opposition from the pushers. Are you suggesting that one third of the population suffer from trauma, or could the usage by parents not be a larger factor.
It's not clear what % of tobacco users should be considered "recreational" vs "addicted." Generally addiction connotes some kind of associated dysfunction. This is usually easier to identify in "hard" drug users. But it is known that tobacco eases the symptoms of schizoprenia.
I'm thinking that addiction is only a problem if it can be avoided and if it has negative consequences. (Lung cancer, fires.) Humans are addicted to sex, but that cannot be avoided, even though it sometimes has negative consequences.
kcdodd wrote:Congratulations. You just admitted to intentionally deluding yourself and others.
It is amusing that our friend who presents himself as the soul of morality admits to being a deceiver. Which according to his religion is the province of evil.
I assume you are referring to me. I do not present myself as the "soul of morality" I present myself as someone who thinks morality is the condensed wisdom of ancestor mistakes, and therefore should not be dismissed lightly.
MSimon wrote:[
There are other religions that do not take lies so seriously. Perhaps Mr. D it is time for a change?
I am currently an agnostic. Unless something opens my eyes to spirituality, I will have to reason out my thoughts and beliefs. Back when I was a believer, I was more of a deist anyway. I never quite understood why the son was supposed to be more significant than the father, and nobody wanted to answer that question.
MSimon wrote:[
I belong to the other side. I may well be in error (it happens often enough and in some cases doozies). I am determined to never ever intentionally deceive myself or others. Integrity is the soul of engineering.
Fine. Consider this. If drugs are legal, and addiction is allowed to grow, does it at some point not constitute a threat to freedom by creating a population unable to defend itself?
choff wrote:and...and...and...
when China had such a high level of Opium addiction obviously they had all that disposible income and stuff too! But that doesn't explain why you actually think you need it when you could survive without just like everybody else. At a minimum its very shrewd marketing that makes you buy, or just perhaps a deeper level of conditioning.
But that just sidesteps the issue of THE VENICE BEACH AIRPORT, FLORIDA, especially today. It's an issue nobody in your country is prepared to touch, not the FBI, probably not even the President.
You want to know about the opium wars? It is rather simple:
It was a British money making scheme. They got China to make opium illegal while keeping it legal in India. The perfidy of Albion is legendary.
The Opium Trade
"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us."
-- Directors of Jardine-Matheson
Did you forget about the part where the British forced the Chinese to make Opium legal in China, resulting in a 25% or 50% or 90% addiction rate? (depending upon which source you want to cite. )
Alcohol consuption has been going on since the beginning of agriculture, wine and beer sit in the grey area between drugs and food.
The consumption of hemp as a drug has 5,000 years of recorded history.
Opiates have a similar history. In fact opiate use it America was so noncontoversial that it was a legal over the counter drug until the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.
Because nobody had a freakin clue as to how dangerous the stuff was. Even that Doctor fellow that TallDave mentioned became hopelessly addicted to heroin before he realized the stuff was addictive.
MSimon wrote:
Thomas Jefferson had quite an opium garden.
Again, if it took them till 1914 to realize the stuff was dangerously addictive, why should anyone earlier be afraid of it? We can all forgive Jefferson his ignorance, or perhaps he had the good judgment not to abuse the stuff?
MSimon wrote:
And hemp use?
Did the Founding Fathers of the United States of America smoke cannabis? Some researchers think so. Dr. Burke, president of the American Historical Reference Society and a consultant for the Smithsonian Institute, counted seven early presidents as cannabis smokers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. 41 "Early letters from our founding fathers refer to the pleasures of hemp smoking," said Burke. Pierce, Taylor and Jackson, all military men, smoked it with their troops. Cannabis was twice as popular among American soldiers in the Mexican War as in Vietnam: Pierce wrote to his family that it was "about the only good thing" about that war.
So it appears that Presidential Pot Heads didn't begin with Bill Clinton.
Hemp is probably more harmless than alcohol. Of that, I believe I am convinced. What people did with it before it was made illegal is beside the point that one Presidential candidate had no troubles breaking a law he disagreed with, even though he wanted to be the top enforcer of laws in the land.
Not to mention being the original basis for a certain very popular soft drink.
I have mentioned before, that chewing coca leaves is probably not a serious problem. It's when people concentrate the stuff that it turns into a poison.
TallDave wrote:It's sort of ironic that the Progressive movement took us so far backwards in the first half of the 20th, given that the overall effect of progress has been to render unnecessary the proscriptions of the past (e.g., for most of history, when women had to have several children just to ensure one or two made it to reproductive age and needed a man to provide for them else face likely starvation, homosexuality and premarital sex were arguably things no society that wished to survive and grow could afford to openly tolerate).
STDs were fatal in those days. Active Homosexual was it's own death sentence.
Seriously Talldave, what do you think the odds are of protecting anyone's rights if 90% of the males (and nowadays it would be the females as well, Horaah for women's rights! ) were smoking opium?
I think violating their rights in the name of protecting their rights is extremely ironic.
Anyways, why do you immediately assume it would be an existential crisis for the nation? Chinese society didn't exactly collapse into the ash heap of history. I think it would be fine, as long as they smoked at home or in safe situations. Opiates have a long history of usage.
Again, every argument you make assumes that people cannot be trusted to behave responsibly and must be cudgeled into line.
We can all forgive Jefferson his ignorance, or perhaps he had the good judgment not to abuse the stuff?
And yet you assume society at large is incapable of such judgment.
If drugs are legal, and addiction is allowed to grow, does it at some point not constitute a threat to freedom by creating a population unable to defend itself?
No, there's no reason to think they won't be able to defend themselves.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
IN JUNE, 1931, at the request of the Commanding General, Panama Canal Department, a committee was designated to reinvestigate the effect of the smoking of mariajuana on military personnel, with a view to securing additional evidence that might possibly be used as a basis for the formulation of regulations forbidding the cultivation, possession, or sale of mariajuana in the Canal Zone. The Governor designated three members to serve on the committee (Health Department officials) ; the Army two members (officers of the Medical Corps) ; and the Commandant, 15th Naval District, one member (medical officer of the Navy).
The committee concluded that the principal and most practicable method of securing reliable information would be to hospitalize a considerable number of soldiers who were known to be users of mariajuana, permit them to use it, then withdraw it and have the patients observed and studied throughout the period of hospitalization by a psychiatrist of high professional standing. The mariajuana used was grown at the Canal Zone Experiment Gardens, assuring uniformity of product. Thirty-four soldiers were observed.
There is no evidence that mariahuana as grown here is a "habit-forming" drug in the sense in which the term is applied to alcohol, opium, cocaine, etc., or that it has any appreciably deleterious influence on the individuals using it.
The Committee recommended "that no steps be taken by the Canal Zone authorities to prevent the sale or use of mariahuana, and that no special legislation be asked for."
The committee, in making its investigation, held hearings which were attended by the Post Commanders of Fort Clayton and Fort Davis. These officers were invited to give their opinions on the subject and to cite instances where mariajuana was the direct cause of military delinquency among soldiers. Members of the committee also visited Fort Davis and the Corozal Hospital for the Insane where they observed soldiers smoking mariajuana, and in addition members of the committee observed four physicians and two members of the Canal Zone Police Department who smoked the drug in their presence. Persons who smoked the drug at the request of the committee rendered written reports on the effect. Numerous written and oral statements of opinion were submitted for consideration. Military records of delinquency among the military personnel were also available and the committee found that in only a very small percentage of individuals brought to trial before General Courts Martial, in which there was a record of violence or insubordination, was it possible to attribute the delinquency to mariajuana.
The circular which forbade the possession of mariajuana was rescinded on January 29, 1926. In December, 1928, the law forbidding the possession and use of mariajuana in the Republic of Panama was repealed.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Well I went looking for evidence and this is what I found:
One episode that provides information on the consumption-reducing effect of drug prohibition is the Chinese legalization of opium in 1858. India was a major opium producer during the 19th century, and the British East India Company exported much of this opium to China and Southeast Asia. China prohibited the consumption and importation of opium during the early part of the century, but after the Second Opium War China yielded to British pressure and legalized opium.
The critical feature of this episode is that the Company kept records of opium exports from India to China. These exports were legal throughout the 1800s even though importation into China, and consumption within China, were prohibited until 1858. Exportation occurred before this date because third party entrepreneurs purchased the opium in India and smuggled it into China. If China’s prohibition reduced consumption to a substantial degree, legalization should have increased exports from India to China unless legalization also spurred production within China. In that case, however, Chinese substitution of domestic for imported opium should have reduced the export price of Indian opium. Thus, the joint behavior of opium exports and price indicate whether prohibition reduced opium consumption.
We examine the impact of China’s opium legalization on the quantity and price of British opium exports to China during the 19th century. We find little evidence that legalization increased exports or decreased price.
But what do we know about opium in the US? Prohibition hasn't budged opiate use. Not even by .1% (in so far as such precision in an illegal trade can be reckoned).
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
