"Malum Prohibitum"

[GIThruster]

But pot is overwhelmingly the majority of our illegal drug problem, always has been. Let's tame that horse first. Let's deprive illegal cartels of a huge percentage of their market. Let's eliminate the majority of the motive for street gang violence and the majority of the ill-gotten gains that funds them. And let us do something about the insane increase in THC content, almost 20X times in 4 decades, legal and regulated should take care of that, and eliminate whatever else illegal supplier "juice" the pot with.

You just don't get it. Pot makes people nuts. It destroys ambition. It destroys memory. It causes hallucinations and delusions. It causes people to throw away their lives every day. It causes them to skip school. It causes them to quit school. It causes them to call in sick from work. It causes them to get fired from work. It causes them to carry illegal weapons, and to use them on others who also carry illegal weapons.

Someone who has never been part of the drug culture and left it behind, cannot understand, that all drug users are liars and corrupt to the core. They do not understand all drug users are completely untrustworthy. People who have not successfully left the drug culture behind, do not understand what cannabis use does to self esteem, to self image and to self worth. There is no pandering to cannabis use. Anyone who understand what cannabis does to people, understands there is no common ground, no middle way, no deep compromise to be had. The situation is pretty simple: we're at war.

The vast majority of all crime in this country, is committed by pot smokers. Despite that <10% use cannabis, almost all violent criminals use cannabis. There is no middle ground on this issue when you understand the facts. All drug users need to be placed in mandatory rehab, and all drug sellers need to go to prison for a minimum of 10 years for the first offense. There needs to be a federal mandate that all police officers in this country will enforce the laws against drugs, and people need to stop acting like drug use is a "victimless crime". No crime has more victims than cannabis use.

The answer to the drug problem is not legalization. Only people who refuse to look at what drugs do, can believe such a notion. If you think cannabis should be decriminalized, you should go spend some time with some dopers and find out what the drug culture is really like. There is no getting rid of it, but it can be kept in check. That is all that's required.

[hanelyp]

I've known a couple "recovering drug addicts" that literally praise the lord that drugs no longer control their lives.

[ladajo]

Mixing Drugs is cool and good for you, the most popular past time of anti-establishment folks

[ladajo]

The debate continues elsewhere

Personally, I liked this article. Made goodpoints both ways.

[williatw]

The debate continues elsewhere

Personally, I liked this article. Made goodpoints both ways.

Yes it does, thanks for the post. I especially agree with:


It's the poor and minorities who are currently suffering the most under US drug laws, writes MSNBC's Adam Serwer. Even if they get caught using, people like Brooks usually get off with a slap on the wrist.

"Legalization means that other people, not just elites and their children, can have the opportunity to shrug off past drug use as a youthful dalliance rather than a life sentence," he writes.

The worst thing about Brooks's line of reasoning, argues Reason's Matt Welch, is he confuses the "absence of prohibition" with government endorsement of marijuana

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/marijuana-le ... ion-elites

Anyone who wants to see what a de facto legalization environment looks like can visit an elite college campus, where both the trade and use of marijuana are highly visible, and where those who get caught face the relatively minor sanctions associated with breaking campus rules rather than the lifelong consequences of breaking the law. What we basically have now is a system where marijuana is practically legal for the wealthy and white and illegal for everyone else.

Although marijuana use among blacks and whites is about the same, according to a 2013 report by the ACLU, blacks are almost four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.

According to the report, there were more than 8 million marijuana-related arrests between 2001 and 2010, almost 90% of which were for possession. Marijuana arrests now make up more than half of all drug arrests in the country. And use of the drug has only increased over time.
As Michelle Alexander notes in her book, The New Jim Crow, the consequences of being convicted of felony marijuana possession can be far more dire than the sentence itself. Former offenders can find themselves deprived of professional or driver’s licenses, educational aid, food stamps, public housing, their right to vote, and they may find themselves fired and unable to find new employment, having been marked by society as little more than a criminal. For blacks caught up in the system it can compound the already considerable effects of ongoing racial discrimination.

[TDPerk]

"I've known a couple "recovering drug addicts" that literally praise the lord that drugs no longer control their lives."

Since the drugs were never in control of their lives, but they were, sounds like they haven't taken responsibility yet for any misbehavior they indulged in while intoxicated. They are displacing it onto the inanimate substance.

A convenient scapegoat.

[TDPerk]

"You just don't get it. Pot makes people nuts. It destroys ambition. It destroys memory. It causes hallucinations and delusions. It causes people to throw away their lives every day. It causes them to skip school. It causes them to quit school. It causes them to call in sick from work. It causes them to get fired from work. It causes them to carry illegal weapons, and to use them on others who also carry illegal weapons."

Absolutely none of which is different from how alcohol affects people susceptible to alcoholism, except that now it is legal, there is no black market to speak of in it's production or distribution.

"Someone who has never been part of the drug culture and left it behind, cannot understand, that all drug users are liars and corrupt to the core."

Yes I seem to remember you having the zealotry of the converted, and your saying you once took drugs recreationally (and unlike most, unwisely). You also seem to prepared even now to scapegoat an innocent substance with no will of it's own for your mistakes and failings--more proof of your emotional infancy.

You are corrupt to the core. The failing is yours, the drugs have nothing to do with it.

Now your corruption is supporting a tyrannous policy which cannot be justly executed, and should never be attempted.

[TDPerk]

"It is made with among other things - paint thinner and gasoline - the obvious answer is to make them controlled substances. Evidently controlling codeine isn't enough."

This should be sarcasm effective to explode every grotesque pretension of those supporting any drug prohibition, but it won't.

They aren't bright enough to see their stupidity.

As I have said before, there is no harm done by the existence of now illegal or legal recreational drugs, which prohibition makes better in sum and the costs are drastically high.

We are far better off solely making/keeping misbehavior towards persons and property illegal, and prosecuting it when it happens.

Who knows, we might then have the better concentrated resources to keep a self-centered beast like GIThruster off the streets.

If we weren't hassling the harmless and supporting the drug gangs.

[MSimon]

But the government does endorse marijuana:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/ ... onal/page4

http://search.nih.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9 ... ommit.y=10

http://search.nih.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9 ... mit=Search

That is what is so amusing about the current situation.

[paperburn1]

The government also endorses Oxycontin but does not recommend it for recreational useage

[ladajo]

Misuse of word definitions is what propagandists do. For example, "endorse".

[GIThruster]

Since the drugs were never in control of their lives, but they were, sounds like they haven't taken responsibility yet for any misbehavior they indulged in while intoxicated. They are displacing it onto the inanimate substance.

A convenient scapegoat.

The law clearly draws a distinction that is beyond you, that though a person experiences "diminished capacity" while intoxicated, they are responsible for the choice to become intoxicated, unless they are drugged without their knowledge and consent. The law does not find people responsible for their actions while in diminished capacity, who did not make a choice to become so drugged.

You should not voice such ignorance in such tone. Your analysis is childish, uninformed, abrasive and abusive.

[ladajo]

Dude,
Perk said they are blaming the drugs when they chose to take them. You misunderstood.

Involuntary is a whole 'nother thing that he was not talking about.

[GIThruster]

Not at all. Read above more carefully. Perky is justifying both his abusive nature and his childish thinking based upon the very misapprehension I have identified.

[ladajo]

I see him saying drop the drug war current focus and ramp up a war on enforcing personal responsibility.

As I see it, he is saying that right now the system supports users in not holding them accountable for personal actions. They can lay blame elsewhere, like dealers, the drugs themselves, etc.

At some level I agree with what I think he is saying. But I am thinking it should be on both counts. Hammer the users for responsibility lapses, just like a drunk driving style heavy handed approach, along with a heavy hammering of the distribution networks.

People choose to use drugs because our society tells them it is okay to do so. Or maybe more appropriately, that our society does not clearly or well educate them to the full implications of initiation of use. Getting them young and in schools with better efforts would pay more in the long run. That is where they are introduced to the drugs to begin with, and it remains more or less unchallenged. And where an effort is made, it is weak and without structure or consistency.

I say being a dealer is a death sentance.
I say educate the young on risks and hazards before they get introduced is key. Also, attempt to educate the old, but the young are critical. That is where the pro-drug crowd has made its gains. Those kids are now voters.
I also say that users should be held just as accountable for actions under the influence that harm others as drinkers do, maybe both need to be even harder.

Maybe we should think about doper rehab prisons. Seperate institutions from the regular ones. Dunno, just a thought. Maybe we do it as a "substance abuse" prison. Focused on rehab, and of course penalty. That would be a potentially cheaper "socialized" solution than the medical and benefits based social system we have now for addict society leachs.