The Democrat's 2012 Victory Plan

[krenshala]

Absolutely right. The Libertarian philosophy is so simpleminded it can fit on a bumper sticker.



The glaring fallacy in this concept is that only obvious or immediate physical harm is the threshold of prohibition. No thought is given to later occurring consequences to individuals or their kith and kin.

Actually, if you follow the Wiccan Rede, then you should be considering not just physical harm, but mental and emotional harm, and all three both immediately and in future. It is a much harder path than most folks realize.

[Skipjack]

Tobacco being more addictive than Heroin.

That is of course BS.
That said, I am for a controlled liberation of marijuana and a de- criminalization of addicts of hard drugs. I am not for a legalization of hard drugs. Herion turns people into zombies. The fully functional heroin addict is an exception, not the rule.
But I do believe that these people are ill and need treatment. Just leaving them to self medication is wrong though. You would not self administer radiotherapy against cancer. You should not self administer "psycho pharmaca" either.
Marijuana needs to be controlled also. I am not sure about the best way to do that. I guess that taxation, like they do with cigarettes here is one way. That would also help paying for treating the resulting issues.
Of course driving under the influence should never be allowed.

[MSimon]

Choff,

Tobacco is an appetite suppressant. So get the kids started early. It reduces the whining.

[MSimon]

Interdisciplinary research in pharmacology, psychology, physiology and neurobiology is just beginning to shed light on the incredible hold that tobacco has on people. Scientists have found, for instance, that nicotine is as addictive as heroin, cocaine or amphetamines, and for most people more addictive than alcohol.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magaz ... eroin.html

I would like to thank this nations leading expert on addiction, Jack Henningfield for pointing out that nicotine is more addictive than heroin, alcohol, or cocaine. A true voice uncorrupted by tobacco money. I would also add that tobacco has a far higher death rate (33%?) than either heroin, alcohol, or cocaine. Yet, addiction criteria alone does not determine the nicotine (or illicit drug) health threat.

http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/hening.html

By Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994

Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use. Experts say the definition of addiction is evolving.

WASHINGTON - When heavily dependent users of cocaine are asked to compare the urge to take cocaine with the urge to smoke cigarettes, about 45 percent say the urge to smoke is as strong or stronger than that for cocaine.

Among heroin' addicts, about 3 percent rank the urge to smoke as equal to or stronger than the urge to take heroin. Among those addicted to alcohol, about 50 percent say the urge to smoke is at least as strong as the urge to drink.

http://www.tfy.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm

Evidently skipjack you have been misinformed.

[Skipjack]

Sorry, but having an addict describe his addiction is not the kind of science I was looking for.
I have known many, many smokers and used to be a smoker myself. Most of us quit and provided the will was there, quitting was actually quite easy. There are very few physical withdrawal symptoms. In contrast a heroin addict gets cramps that can even lead to cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest. No smoker that I have known, or even heard off has ever described anything like that. Why do you think they give heroid addicts that are on withdrawal drugs to ease the symptoms (at least they do here)?
Of course nicotine is more addictive than alcohol. Most people that get addicted to alcohol, do so because they lack the gene that allows them to produce the enyzme alcohol dehydrogenase (German word), which means that it stays longer in their system. In the US these are mostly native americans and their descendents, though there may be other people with this genetic difference.

The research you quoted here is all a bit dubious. There have been no double blind studies done on the matter that I know off.
Nikotine is highly addictive, but the addicts are highly functional and nobody of the many smokers that I know ever even considered prostituting themselves for a cigarette. I do know quite a few poor souls that did so for heroin though.
Sure that is purely annectodal evidence, but considering how many people here smoke (much higher percentage than in the US) and how many have quit successfully once the prices went up... None of them had to refer to prostitution to keep financing their habbit. They much rather simply quit instead. Driving up the taxes on cigarettes to increase the price to a point that they were almost more expensive than marijuana, did successfully, what decades of education programmes, films and add campaings could not do.
Something to think about...

[choff]

Choff,

Tobacco is an appetite suppressant. So get the kids started early. It reduces the whining.

When the parents are also alcoholics and the are kids starving depression era style, and there's no money left over for the most basic things, tobacco doesn't help much, especially when the parents keep most of it for themselves. Makes you wonder where the rabid prohibitionists get their ideas from growing up.

[Diogenes]

But D if you hate drugs so much you ought to favor the end of prohibition.

This police chief says prohibition is a vector for the INCREASE of drug use.

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

I also liked his statement that the Drug War is a "self perpetuating and constantly expanding policy disaster".

I thought you were against drug use and big government yet you support a policy that increases both. Weird.

And yeah. The Libertarian philosophy can fit on a bumper sticker.

Small Government. Liberty.

No wonder you think libertarians don't get it. Of course neither do the TEAs.

I don't hate drugs, nor do I think a Chief of Police is likely to be the most knowledgeable authority on this issue. The problem with drugs is the same problem with EVERY Libertarian issue. Short sightedness. A Fiasco always lurks ten or twenty years down the road when people follow Libertarian ideas.

I keep bringing up China, because it is real world experimental proof of what happens when drugs are freely available. It destroys a nation and results in a dictator. I cannot fathom how you can possibly see any other eventual result.

[Diogenes]

If I'm right, it may take a second court case by another group of cops, after statistics are gathered that definitively prove the wealthy are not being prosecuted for drug crimes. You have to keep chipping away at the stone.

I would point out that the wealthy routinely get away with committing all sorts of crimes, (not just drug crimes) relative to the poor that is. I have always felt that the legal system needs to be socialized, because our Constitution does now claim that everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the law. What better way to make the law "equal" than by requiring EVERYONE to use a court appointed attorney?

Sometimes the cigarettes would be used more as currency during the war. Though there was during the depression years a saying amoung poor families of, 'we may not eat but tobacco we'll have,' usually said to starving children by addicted parents. Tobacco being more addictive than Heroin.

Just another thing that would have been a boon to mankind had it never been discovered.

[Diogenes]

Absolutely right. The Libertarian philosophy is so simpleminded it can fit on a bumper sticker.



The glaring fallacy in this concept is that only obvious or immediate physical harm is the threshold of prohibition. No thought is given to later occurring consequences to individuals or their kith and kin.

Actually, if you follow the Wiccan Rede, then you should be considering not just physical harm, but mental and emotional harm, and all three both immediately and in future. It is a much harder path than most folks realize.

If future and indirect harm is taken into account, it is a worthy philosophy. Libertarians however, can't seem to see any distance into the future.

Drugs often injure those people who are introduced to them. The Injury is subtle and is often only manifested over the long term. Some people are not adversely affected by their experience with drugs, but for others it is down right deadly.

Inducing people to try drugs is a harm.

[Diogenes]

Sorry, but having an addict describe his addiction is not the kind of science I was looking for.
I have known many, many smokers and used to be a smoker myself. Most of us quit and provided the will was there, quitting was actually quite easy. There are very few physical withdrawal symptoms. In contrast a heroin addict gets cramps that can even lead to cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest. No smoker that I have known, or even heard off has ever described anything like that. Why do you think they give heroid addicts that are on withdrawal drugs to ease the symptoms (at least they do here)?
Of course nicotine is more addictive than alcohol. Most people that get addicted to alcohol, do so because they lack the gene that allows them to produce the enyzme alcohol dehydrogenase (German word), which means that it stays longer in their system. In the US these are mostly native americans and their descendents, though there may be other people with this genetic difference.

The research you quoted here is all a bit dubious. There have been no double blind studies done on the matter that I know off.
Nikotine is highly addictive, but the addicts are highly functional and nobody of the many smokers that I know ever even considered prostituting themselves for a cigarette. I do know quite a few poor souls that did so for heroin though.
Sure that is purely annectodal evidence, but considering how many people here smoke (much higher percentage than in the US) and how many have quit successfully once the prices went up... None of them had to refer to prostitution to keep financing their habbit. They much rather simply quit instead. Driving up the taxes on cigarettes to increase the price to a point that they were almost more expensive than marijuana, did successfully, what decades of education programmes, films and add campaings could not do.
Something to think about...

And you touch on a point that I have speculated about many times. MSimon is constantly asserting that it is impossible for a Prohibition to work. I have always questioned this conclusion. That America's experiment with prohibition failed is indisputable, but does that mean that prohibition is impossible? Not necessarily.

What is happening to cigarettes will tell us whether a "prohibition" can be accomplished or not. Cigarettes are slowly being choked to death with regulation and taxes (Which will kill anything. ) and the indications are that it is working. Cigarette use is declining.

If tobacco use can slowly be choked to death over decades, and eventually be completely eliminated, then it stands to reason that Prohibition is not an impossibility, but that society is sensitive to the method by which it is achieved.


I have always thought that it is a prudent policy to make any social change slowly enough for people to become accustomed to it. If Tobacco use is eventually eliminated, it will be a benefit to billions of future generations.

[Diogenes]

Choff,

Tobacco is an appetite suppressant. So get the kids started early. It reduces the whining.

When the parents are also alcoholics and the are kids starving depression era style, and there's no money left over for the most basic things, tobacco doesn't help much, especially when the parents keep most of it for themselves. Makes you wonder where the rabid prohibitionists get their ideas from growing up.

The guy that was very instrumental in pushing the United States into adopting the 18th Amendment was motivated to ban alcohol because as a young boy he was stabbed with a pitchfork by a drunken neighbor.

http://www.wpl.lib.oh.us/AntiSaloon/lea ... e_wheeler/

[MSimon]

And Portugal is also a real world experience from what happens when all drug consumption is legal.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 46,00.html

That is not the only report. You can look for more.

BTW alcohol consumption in America was very high when we were a developing country. It has since tapered off some. So how about opium in China? I expect that their problems with drugs will taper off as they approach first world status.

"When we sold the Heathen nations rum and opium in rolls,
And the Missionaries went along to save their sinful souls."

The Old Clipper Days --Julian S. Cutler

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html

And who was doing the selling?

William H. Russell (Skull &Bones; co-founder-1833) cousin Samuel Russell formally established Russell & Co. on January 1, 1824 for the purpose of acquiring opium and smuggling it to China. Russell & Co. merged with the number one US trader, the J. & T.H. Perkins "Boston Concern" in 1829. By the mid-1830s the opium trade had become "the largest commerce of its time in any single commodity, anywhere in the world." Russell & Co. and the Scotch firm Jardine-Matheson, then the world's largest opium dealer working together were known as the "Combination."

[MSimon]

BTW D.

It is good to know that Police Chiefs are ignorant of how the drug trade works. No wonder why they can't stop it.

BTW 67% of police chiefs say end it:

http://blogs.mcall.com/bill_white/2011/ ... g-war.html

It is comforting to know that so many dummies are in charge of our police depts.

[djolds1]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/ ... _plan.html

Far, far too paranoid. The truth:

I PREDICT THIS APPROACH WILL GROW CONSIDERABLY MORE POPULAR: Manchin’s Strategy For Surviving 2012 In A Red State: Bash Obama. As Democrats begin to see President Messiah as President Millstone, “distancing” and “localization of races” will be the new watchwords for candidates in all but the bluest areas — and maybe, given NY-09, even in those.

Posted at 10:37 am by Glenn Reynolds

[Skipjack]

And Portugal is also a real world experience from what happens when all drug consumption is legal.

You have a very short term memory, right? We have talked about this before. This is not the way the law is in Portugal. Please read this up and adjust your argumentation.

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

In July 2001, Portugal a new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. The offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the possessing was no more than up to ten days' supply of that substance.[1] This was in line with the de facto Portuguese drug policy before the reform. Drug addicts were then to be aggressively targeted with therapy or community service rather than fines or waivers.[7] Even if there are no criminal penalties, these changes did not legalize drug use in Portugal. Possession has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers.[8][9]

Individuals found in possession of small quantities of drugs are issued summons. The drugs are confiscated, and the suspect is interviewed by a “Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction” (Comissões para a Dissuasão da Toxicodependência – CDT). These commissions are made up of three people: A social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney.[9][10] The dissuasion commission have powers comparable to an arbitration committee, but restricted to cases involving drug use or possession of small amounts of drugs. There is one CDT in each of Portugal’s 18 districts. Several options are available to the CDT when ruling on the drug use offence, including warnings, banning from certain places, banning from meeting certain people, obligation of periodic visits to a defined place, removal of professional licence or firearms licence. Sanctioning by fine, which may vary by drug involved, is an available option. If the person is addicted to drugs, he or she may be admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility or be given community service, if the dissuasion committee finds that this better serves the purpose of keeping the offender out of trouble. If the offender is not addicted to drugs, or unwilling to submit to treatment or community service, they may be given a fine

It is in many ways the kind of laws that I am considering to be a good approach.