Libertine *IS* misuse.

[randomencounter]

They had the poppies, they invented the technique, as a society they were not crushed by it.

What were they crushed by? What explains how backward they are in general?

Well, they weren't crushed by centuries of European crusades against them during the time period at issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

They were later conquered by several empires in succession, but over a time period of centuries everyone has their down periods. Some societies never have anything else.

[GIThruster]

You're making a host of completely unfounded assertions for which you have no evidence. You're saying drug use didn't injure arab culture and people. I'm saying it did. You don't have reason the arab peoples are so backward. I do. You sound like someone who will maintain their position no matter how desperate and out of touch with the facts it is.

[randomencounter]

You're making a host of completely unfounded assertions for which you have no evidence. You're saying drug use didn't injure arab culture and people. I'm saying it did. You don't have reason the arab peoples are so backward. I do. You sound like someone who will maintain their position no matter how desperate and out of touch with the facts it is.

Doesn't matter. I'm not arguing with you anyway, I'm arguing with Diogenes' assertion that allowing drug use will precipitate a police state in the absence of other factors, when there is clearly scant historical evidence for such an assumption.

You asked a question, I gave you what I consider a fair answer to that question. If you think that means I'm agreeing to debate you on the more general case you are sadly mistaken.

[Diogenes]

And despite the problems the legalization did not lead to a police state.

It most certainly did! Confined of course to the narrow area where it was tried.













The police now have a Zero Tolerance policy towards drug addicts in the park.



Apart from that, you have got some gall to equate a small little experiment (which was a complete failure) with a nationwide legalization. I actually consider it a display of dishonesty for you to attempt to pull off such an assertion of equality.

You are trying to wriggle out from your initial assertion here.

Not at all. You are attempting to equate a kitten to a lion. China demonstrates that nationwide legalization is a horrible idea, and Platzspitz demonstrates that localized legalization is also a horrible idea.

You just don't want to face the fact that experiments at legalization fail every objective test, and the only people who consider them to not be complete and total failures are the legalization proponents.

[Diogenes]

You're making a host of completely unfounded assertions for which you have no evidence. You're saying drug use didn't injure arab culture and people. I'm saying it did. You don't have reason the arab peoples are so backward. I do. You sound like someone who will maintain their position no matter how desperate and out of touch with the facts it is.

Doesn't matter. I'm not arguing with you anyway, I'm arguing with Diogenes' assertion that allowing drug use will precipitate a police state in the absence of other factors, when there is clearly scant historical evidence for such an assumption.

There is more evidence for it than the converse.

We must both argue from the same set of facts. I point out that China is the only known example in History of a nation making drug use legal nationwide. Platzspitz in Zurich is the only example of which I am currently aware where a similar attempt was made on a small scale. It too was a disaster.

Now you must use those two examples to demonstrate that legalizing drugs was a GOOD idea.

[randomencounter]

You are clearly cherrypicking.

Amsterdam has liberal drug laws (not "anything goes", but a lot of stuff that's banned elsewhere is legal there). No police state.

The US didn't have notable prohibitory drug laws until the 20th century, and the history of intrusive policing in the US has been entirely contained within that period. Funny how people with no respect for the fundamental freedom of what people choose to put in their bodies have little trouble stomping on other freedoms.

England lacked any major prohibitions until the late 19th century as well and did not devolve into a police state because of it.

http://www.legalanswers.sl.nsw.gov.au/g ... story.html

The notion of making drug use illegal did not really emerge in western societies until the late nineteenth century. Before that, in Australia, Britain, Europe, and the United States, whether people used drugs was considered a personal decision - subject to social disapproval, but not illegal. Alcohol was of course the most widely used psychoactive substance.

The presence and use of drugs is therefore not a deciding factor in the formation of a police state.

On the gripping hand, the attempt to stop people from doing something that can be easily hidden, and for which the detection of the crime requires access to private property, and for which mere possession of a substance more readily available to police than to the average citizen is proof of the crime, is more than sufficient to create a police state.

In fact, it can be argued that the presence of such laws is a defining characteristic of police states.

[Diogenes]

You are clearly cherrypicking.

Amsterdam has liberal drug laws (not "anything goes", but a lot of stuff that's banned elsewhere is legal there). No police state.

Okay, you aren't going to even try to be honest in discussing this, so I think it is a waste of time to reason with you. I'm going to knock down the silly sh*t you've spouted this time, then i'm going ditch this conversation.

For intentionally misrepresenting what has happened and is happening in Amsterdam, I am now going to regard you as a partisan liar.

The Dutch tolerate WEED. They do not, nor have they ever tolerated hard drugs.

The Dutch have divided drugs into two groups, depending on their influence on human health – soft drugs and hard drugs. Hard drugs as cocaine, LSD, morphine, heroin are forbidden in the Netherlands as in any other country.

Soft drugs as cannabis in all its forms (marijuana, hashish, hash oil) and hallucinogenic mushrooms (so called magic mushrooms or paddos – from Dutch: paddestoel - mushroom) are legal under condition of so called “personal use”. As a result smoking of cannabis even in public, is not prosecuted as well as selling it although technically illegal under still valid Opium Act (dating from 1919, cannabis added as drug in 1950), is widely tolerated provided that it happens in a limited, controlled way (in a coffee shop, small portions, 5 grams maximum transaction, not many portions on stock, sale only to adults, no minors on the premises, no advertisement of drugs, the local municipality did not give the order to close the coffee shop).

Subsequent Dutch laws have outlawed the use of Hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The sale of most of hallucinogenic mushrooms (also known as magic mushrooms or paddos), has been forbidden starting November 1, 2008. More than 200 different mushrooms were put on the ban list and are presently regarded by the Dutch drug law (so called Opiumwet – Opium Act) as dangerous as cocaine or heroine. Never really considered as drugs before, the paddos were previously sold by the so called smart shops along with popular natural medicines as Ginkgo Biloba, Guarana, Cola, some herbs, food additives and vitamins. The decision to stop their sale has been taken after almost a hundred cases were recorded each year, when the medical help has been required linked to the consumption of paddos in Amsterdam only, involving mainly foreign tourists. Tragically, three of these cases ended as serious accidents, one of them in the tragic death of the 17-year old French girl. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Amsterdam against the ban, before it had been introduced. Today, the hallucinogenic mushrooms are forbidden in the Netherlands, along with the hard drugs.
While several sorts of mushrooms were probably by omission not placed on the ban list, smart shops continue now and then to sell them. Also the fungus of some paddos is sometimes on sale.

And nowadays they are even outlawing WEED. (For Foreigners.)

Enforcement of a new law banning all but Dutch residents from pot “coffee shops” started in southern cities in the Netherlands, where drug-related organized crime became one of the main drivers of the new regulations. Roadside signs put up by authorities across the south now bluntly warn visitors, “New Rules, No Drugs,” with at least one cafe shut down by police for serving foreigners and several others closing voluntarily in protest of the tourist ban.

Apparently even WEED is too much to put up with without causing so much trouble that even the Liberal Dutch can't stand it.


So basically you are absolutely lying when you try to compare what happened in China to what happened in Amsterdam. Wow. Just Wow. You thought you could pull this off? Like you were arguing with a toker or something?

The US didn't have notable prohibitory drug laws until the 20th century, and the history of intrusive policing in the US has been entirely contained within that period.

And now we are shifting into second gear bullsh*t. As has been explained to Simon and others, time and time and time again, they started passing drug laws because people were wrecking their lives and dying because of an upswing in narcotic addiction. Most of the patent medicines from the era were chock full of cocaine, or laudanum, or some other narcotic.

Funny how people with no respect for the fundamental freedom of what people choose to put in their bodies have little trouble stomping on other freedoms.

You don't have, and never did have, the "freedom" to bring a dangerous poison amongst the other members of society such that it presents a risk to their life. You want this kind of "freedom", go find yourself an Island where you either have like-minded people, or where it is so vacant you can't hurt anyone else.

England lacked any major prohibitions until the late 19th century as well and did not devolve into a police state because of it.

http://www.legalanswers.sl.nsw.gov.au/g ... story.html

The notion of making drug use illegal did not really emerge in western societies until the late nineteenth century. Before that, in Australia, Britain, Europe, and the United States, whether people used drugs was considered a personal decision - subject to social disapproval, but not illegal. Alcohol was of course the most widely used psychoactive substance.

The presence and use of drugs is therefore not a deciding factor in the formation of a police state.

Not initially, but eventually. Do you not grasp that it is an exponential function?

On the gripping hand, the attempt to stop people from doing something that can be easily hidden, and for which the detection of the crime requires access to private property,.

Such as hiding stolen goods? Funny, we don't respect their privacy to hide stolen goods on their private property. We also don't respect thier private property rights when it comes to making explosives or anthrax. I dare say there are a host of activities which we will not, and ought not tolerate merely because they occur on private property.

and for which mere possession of a substance more readily available to police than to the average citizen is proof of the crime, is more than sufficient to create a police state.

Yes, I can't understand why anyone should object to possession of explosives, or burglary tools, or murder weapons, cyanide, Anthrax germs, or never gas. After all, why should they think you will do anything wrong merely because you might have such a thing in your possession?

In fact, it can be argued that the presence of such laws is a defining characteristic of police states.

Not at all. All countries have laws against the possession of illegal material/substances.

What causes a police state is constantly expanding government. One of the things DRIVING the expansion of the police forces is the insistence by some people on using illegal substances, and the crimes associated with getting money to pay for them.

Drug addicts don't care that their activities will eventually result in a police state. They are too interested in getting high to care about stuff like that.

[MSimon]

They had the poppies, they invented the technique, as a society they were not crushed by it.

What were they crushed by? What explains how backward they are in general?

Islam. At least according to G. Patton of the US Army.

[MSimon]

What causes a police state is constantly expanding government. One of the things DRIVING the expansion of the police forces is the insistence by some people on using illegal substances, and the crimes associated with getting money to pay for them.

Drug addicts don't care that their activities will eventually result in a police state. They are too interested in getting high to care about stuff like that.

So explain why we didn't have a police state (not even a whisper of one) in America when those drugs were totally legal - over the counter - and a bottle of heroin pills cost as much as a bottle of aspirin pills.

And explain why a $3 a day heroin habit is going to cause robberies and theft when a few minutes of pan handling will do. The very thing you complain about is caused by prohibition. A singular method for turning a pile of vegetables into a pile of gold.

The people agitating for a police state are those living in fear of those drugs. But not to worry. As people have been violating the prohibition laws en mass for over 40 years now the enthusiasm is waning. At this point 56% of Americans say legalize pot. In Colorado the number is 61%.

People living in fear want a nanny state.

BTW I WAS amused by your opening. Good job even if I don't agree with the sentiment.

I also wonder if you are expressing yourself here or just taking a position for the fun of it. People who do that regularly (as opposed to doing it as a method of sarcasm) lose the trust of others after a while.

====

Sometimes I get the impression you are working for the NWO since one of their chief tools is drug prohibition and the slush funds it creates. Not to mention the mooting of police states.

http://classicalvalues.com/2012/07/mone ... g-cartels/

You do know that the SWAT team epidemic now being repurposed to other uses was originally rolled out en mass in the name of fighting drugs.

And you do know that Drug Prohibition was originally rolled out by a coalition of secular and Christian Progressives.

Lovely to see so many "conservatives" still supporting a Progressive program. What would they do without your help?

And the funniest thing is that I have a whole gang of progs helping me to return to the pre-Progressive era on this issue. The ironies are most amusing.

I also count a former detective as a friend and he hates the police state the Drug War has given us. He is helping to end it. Doing a pretty good job I might add.

[randomencounter]

The US didn't have notable prohibitory drug laws until the 20th century, and the history of intrusive policing in the US has been entirely contained within that period.

And now we are shifting into second gear bullsh*t. As has been explained to Simon and others, time and time and time again, they started passing drug laws because people were wrecking their lives and dying because of an upswing in narcotic addiction. Most of the patent medicines from the era were chock full of cocaine, or laudanum, or some other narcotic.

It's this nanny-state insistence on protecting people from themselves that causes the expansion of the government. The government should have an advisory role at most, and should definitely have a role in ensuring that commercial speech about such products doesn't contain misrepresentations.

Funny how people with no respect for the fundamental freedom of what people choose to put in their bodies have little trouble stomping on other freedoms.

You don't have, and never did have, the "freedom" to bring a dangerous poison amongst the other members of society such that it presents a risk to their life. You want this kind of "freedom", go find yourself an Island where you either have like-minded people, or where it is so vacant you can't hurt anyone else.

England lacked any major prohibitions until the late 19th century as well and did not devolve into a police state because of it.

http://www.legalanswers.sl.nsw.gov.au/g ... story.html

The notion of making drug use illegal did not really emerge in western societies until the late nineteenth century. Before that, in Australia, Britain, Europe, and the United States, whether people used drugs was considered a personal decision - subject to social disapproval, but not illegal. Alcohol was of course the most widely used psychoactive substance.

The presence and use of drugs is therefore not a deciding factor in the formation of a police state.

Not initially, but eventually. Do you not grasp that it is an exponential function?

Try a logical argument. Connect the dots with something more than pictures of cops beating up addicts for being addicts.

Centuries of precedent sit on my side, if you don't get all up in arms about people going on skid row there is no expansion of police powers due to drug use.

It isn't the people using the drugs that cause the expansion of police power, it is the people trying to stop them.

On the gripping hand, the attempt to stop people from doing something that can be easily hidden, and for which the detection of the crime requires access to private property,.

Such as hiding stolen goods? Funny, we don't respect their privacy to hide stolen goods on their private property. We also don't respect thier private property rights when it comes to making explosives or anthrax. I dare say there are a host of activities which we will not, and ought not tolerate merely because they occur on private property.

Theft is a crime of immediate and demonstrable impact to others.

Even at that, if something is reported stolen the cops have to have a plausible suspicion that you are in possession of it before they are entitled to search your property for it (in the US for sure, I don't know enough about the law in other countries to say about them).

and for which mere possession of a substance more readily available to police than to the average citizen is proof of the crime, is more than sufficient to create a police state.

Yes, I can't understand why anyone should object to possession of explosives, or burglary tools, or murder weapons, cyanide, Anthrax germs, or never gas. After all, why should they think you will do anything wrong merely because you might have such a thing in your possession?

Possession of "burglary tools" is a secondary offence where it is a crime at all. A crowbar is not illegal to own or most mechanics and construction workers could be arrested on "being rude to police".

Murder weapons likewise, in the US even implements designed specifically to kill people are legal to own.

Weaponized biological and chemical agents have been agreed on as illegal for most countries to own. Still, there has to be a suspicion that you might be in possession of such things before it is legal for the police to search your premises for them (and they are illegal for the police to have as well).

Nice emotive argument, shame it doesn't stand up to the facts.

In fact, it can be argued that the presence of such laws is a defining characteristic of police states.

Not at all. All countries have laws against the possession of illegal material/substances.

What causes a police state is constantly expanding government. One of the things DRIVING the expansion of the police forces is the insistence by some people on using illegal substances, and the crimes associated with getting money to pay for them.

Drug addicts don't care that their activities will eventually result in a police state. They are too interested in getting high to care about stuff like that.

What drives the expansion of police powers is meddling busybodies who can't stand that someone else might ruin their life. It's theirs to wreck, and they will find a way to manage it no matter how many laws are passed or doors are kicked down.

The simple fact is you just can't help some people, and it is a fool's errand to try.

[MSimon]

No D. According to this historian who gave his talk to Judges and the FBI the drug laws were conceived as straight up racism.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

The harming yourself was an after the fact rationalization after Tim Leary got the tax laws struck down.

The talk was given in Calif and his prediction at the end of his talk has nearly come true.

Let me conclude, and again this is my prediction -- I will tell you I don't think it is subject to opinion. Just look at it. Just take a look at what has happened now and what will happen. I will tell you how inexorable it is. If we get together here in the year 2005, I will bet you that it is as likely as not that the possession of marijuana may not be criminal in this state. But the manufacture, sale, and possession of tobacco will be, and why? Because we love this idea of prohibitions, we can't live without them. They are our very favorite thing because we know how to solve difficult, social, economic, and medical problems -- a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every category for everybody.

It all comes down to the fact that you don't trust the Maker to guide people to the right.

BTW blacks, hispanics, and whites use drugs about equally. Why are there so many more blacks in jail for such crimes? This former police officer who enforced the drug laws explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgeCeGk--I

Starting at about 1 minute into the video and continuing to about minute 3:30.

The enforcement is still racist.