Drug "Warriors" Reap What They Sow

[Ky Larry]

"Why isn't there tons of speed back east???????"

Uhh,there are tons of speed in the eastern U.S.

"originally,the Hell's Angels had THE connection to Switzerland to get key ingredients for meth manufacture."

Uhh, cringe cookers get most of their ingredients at WalMart.

"the things are all way more organized than people think."

Uhh, I never met a tweeker who could organize a sock drawer.

Just my $0.02 worth. YMMV.

 

[Ivy Mike]

Because alcohol has deep roots in western civilization and can be used without being abused. This is not true of most illegal drugs. How many "social" heroine users are there?

I would say that you are a little off-base with this one. Illegal drugs only became that way because of racist laws. Nobody worried about pot until they noticed that Mexican migrants and Blacks smoked it. Now its bad and should be prohibited.
No one cared about opium except for the fact that the majority of people using and dealing with it were Chinese. The Chinese came to America and would do work for less money than other groups. The prohibitive laws against drugs aren't as noble as they are made out to sound in this thread. The war on drugs is about money for the gummit, not keeping drugs away from kids.

I'd be willing to bet that any Gen-X'er could probably tell you that drugs (usually pot) were easy to get when they were in high school. Polls of high school students have consistently shown that drugs are still easy to get and have been that way for quite some time.
I may not know any social heroin users, but I could grab my phone and talk to a few people who are social drinkers, pot smokers or ecstasy users. The laws don't slow them down much at all. All the laws do is make it harder to get and drive prices up. The demand is there and the supply always will be too. You can't really compare pot and alcohol and tell anyone that pot is so much worse.
You can't OD on pot (well, you can, but you'd have to use an astronomical amount) Pot doesn't cause cirrohsis nor does it cause heart disease as quickly. It isn't as addictive as alcohol and doesn't have the nasty after-effects of alcohol. I've never heard anyone complain about having a headache and nausea after sobering up from pot use.

The other thing I notice is that you seem to have an all or nothing mentality. You are eithe actively trying to eliminate drugs or they will be stocked in vending machines. This is where comparisons between drugs and guns can become valid.
A ban on something only works if you have widespread support for such a thing or if you can cut off supply 100%. Since the laws against drugs has neither, it is safe to say that the laws don't work. Instead of worrying about your children buying pot at 7-11, why not implement laws that have a chance at suceeding? Carding kids right now is one of the biggest obstacles between the kids and their booze or cigarettes. They need someone to buy "it" for them. While they can get around the laws, it just makes it that much more difficult to obtain.
Lets actually pass some regulations controlling drugs instead of trying to ban substances that people want.

Oh yeah, and who the hell are you to tell me what I can and cannot put in my own body? Just because I may decide to snort some coke, doesn't mean I'm going to be a psychotic looney.
Just because you buy a gun, doesn't mean you are going to go on a shooting spree at a school.
Innocent until proven guilty. Instead of having the government enforce responsibility, lets teach people to manufacture it for themselves. Personal Responsibility is the key here folks, not more govrnment involvment.

 

[cropcirclewalker]

Mr. PaulV, I see that you hold amendment 2

in high regard.

It looks like you don't feel the same about 9 and 10 or maybe you just forgot about them.

 

[glockman]

Another try

Itgoesboom, If I could expand a little on what ghost said. The 10th amendment I pasted, is generally understood by original intent constitututional scholars to prohibit the federal government, congress especially from acting in areas not enumerated. It is an astonishingly small list. I invite you to check it out for yourself. When you do you will better understand why many legal scholars estimate that as much as 90% of laws passed by congress and signed by the president today are unconstitutional. This is a movement that began immediately after the signing of the constitution and really took off during the civil war. Since banning an individual citizens action in a particular state is not an enumerated power, it is unconstitutional and therefore arguably illegal. Now do you understand why we have been arguing the drug war is unconstitutional?

 

[Art Eatman]

A little rap that was common back in the '60s:

You get drunker'n a rat, you're gonna have a heckuva hangover. You get stoned out of your gourd, you won't have a hangover.

Booze has a built-in punishment; grass doesn't.

Therefore booze is legal but grass ain't.

, Art

 

[The Real Hawkeye]

I agree with the author. What a man grows and consumes on his own property is not the government's business. It is certainly not the Federal Government's business, which is not authorized to regulate drugs or any sort of plants grown on people's property. And, no, I not only do not use recreational drugs, I have never even tried one. Tried a cigarette once when I was 16, and have smoked a few cigars from time to time since then. I come to this issue from the perspective of liberty. That's my only personal stake in issues such as this.

 

[Firethorn]

I must say that I am unaware of the exact details. Was the shooter a pot grower, a chop-shop operator, a child molester?

Lawdog, I'm sure you're aware that most of us who favor legalization of drugs draw a line between consenual and non-consensual crime*. Growing pot, selling pot, and using pot are all "crimes" that hurt nobody who's not consenting to the relationship. Running a chopshop, molesting a child both involve non-consenting persons, and thus are crimes. I pulled up a CNN article, and it did seem to emphasize the drug portion, as well as the "angry gun owner" part.

Regardless, the ambush and killing of four police officers means that if he had survived, that he be charged and tried for murder. Both the American and Canadian system has procedures in place to change law without having to restort to revolting, and I'm not ready to say that the drug war has reached the point that revolt is needed.

*Children are considered to be unable to consent in most things, so many things remain crimes against them, regardless.

 

[Byron Quick]

Personally, I don't care what you do with your body. But I find it amazing that people talk about using hobby or hard core drugs like it's a good thing. The damage caused by drugs is not due to social stigma or prohibition, it's due to the effects of the drug themselves. You can have the most loving supportive environment possible, and that drug addict in that utopian environment is still going to be screwed if asked to do anything but lie there and degenerate until they kick the habit.

So what? A drug is a drug is a drug. Compare the death rate of alcoholics trying to kick the alcohol habit with the death rate of addicts trying to kick any of the illegal drugs.

Most overdose deaths are not due to the illegal drug. Rather the deaths are due to adulterants in the drugs. Crap used to dilute the drug. Things that wouldn't be there if the drugs were legal.

And the charge that I haven't seen the damage addiction causes? I've seen more than most. In my own family and at work. I've worked in drug rehabilitation, in psychiatric facilities, and in emergency departments. I've seen people die from illegal drugs and I've seen people die from alcohol. More from alcohol.

The whole drug scene is about bureaucrats defending their turf. After the repeal of Prohibiition, there was a major problem for the feds. How to maintain what had been built up during Prohibition? How to expand it? Ways were found with the assistance of Congress. 1934 saw a lot more federal encroachment than just the National Firearms Act. Check the record.

I don't think the killing of the RCMP officers was in any way justified or even mitigated by the fact that the killer was growing pot. Nor would I think it mitigation if he had some beer in the fridge.

An earlier question was dodged by folk here. Instead of answering it they threw out smokescreens. Let's try again for I'm interested in the answer.

What the Naz government of Germany did to Jews, Poles, gypsies, homosexuals, and people with various physical and mental disabilities was legal under laws brought into existence by the Nazis. It was German law. Various police forces enforced those laws; including policemen who were not Germans nor members of the Nazi Party. These policemen did not make these laws but they did enforce them. Were they morally responsible for doing so? Or were they only doing their job? If the policemen were, in fact, morally responsible for enforcing immoral laws then another question presents itself for consideration: At what point, exactly , is a policeman to be held personally responsible for his actions in enforcing immoral laws?

My asking the foregoing questions is not to be construed as suggesting that I support the murders of the Canadian officers. These killings were murders.

 

[The Real Hawkeye]

At what point, exactly , is a policeman to be held personally responsible for his actions in enforcing immoral laws?

They may be rightfully held responsible whenever they violate a fundamental right of a human being. By that I mean that every human being has a right to do whatever is necessary to defend their rights, not excluding the taking of the violator's life on the spot if that is the only way to prevail (For example, every Jew in Germay, during Kristallnacht, had a right, if necessary, to take the lives of the brownshirts and policemen who were violating their rights). Now, to say that you have a right to do something is not to say that your actions will not ultimately get you killed. They may well. That is a decision, however, everyone needs to make on their own, i.e., at what point is defending my human rights worth the likely loss of my life? So the answer to your question depends on the choice of the individual whose rights are being trampled on.