Tom Tancredo, whom I once thought was a decent politician, is now suggesting that he’s got a bizarre double-standard (Hat tip: Hot Air):…

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm

According to the Department of Justice:

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

Today?

http://web.archive.org/web/20050204051018/http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

Well, once again according to Justice Department

There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999

http://web.archive.org/web/20050204124554/http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm

And also from DOJ

Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year

So, there were, at least in 1999-2000, 4.6 million people addicted to heroin or cocaine, out of 300 million, which amounts to an addiction rate of 1 in 65.

So, tell us turtler, why is the addiction rate 3x as high today as it was in 1900, before prohibition.

Yes. Do illegal drug cartels have contacts with the drug stores and bars that would be selling drugs if they were legal?

A. Probably not the types they need, but experience says they can find them, given their penachent for doing so in the Netherlands and here pre-ban.

Except drugs aren’t legal in the Netherlands. Clearly you don’t know what you are talking about.

And you wonder WHY? Because goons, cartels, juntas, and enemies tended to USE their sales in the West to cause trouble abroad.

Except you ignore the fact that, as Consumers Union reports

Most of the opium consumed in the United States during the nineteenth century was legally imported. Morphine was legally manufactured here from the imported opium. But opium poppies were also legally grown within the United States.

So, most of the drug traffic was above board, not funding underworld revolutions that I still think are in your imagination.

Right now, drug money is financing Hugo and his proxies, the Taliban, various Asiantic Triads and the Yakuza, Mexican drug cartels, Latin American warloards, and your garden variety criminal gangs.

They have had the market cornered well before legalization, and as things stand now, legal competition will probably be pushed to the side or run out of business.

No. The cartels have the black market cornered. Where legitimate firms produce opiates, they buy their opium from legitimate sources in Australia, Turkey, and India, not from mafias. Where legitimate firms produce cocaine (in the US, a monopoly held by Mallinckrodt Corp), they buy their coca from legitimate sources, not from mafias. If you have evidence to the contrary, please give a citation.

Make the entire market legitimate, as opposed to just the medical market, and legitimate firms will crowd out the mafias, because they simply are better at what they do. Just like after the end of alcohol prohibition.

So, how does denying a criminal organization markets and forcing it UNDERGROUND make it “stronger and deadlier?”

Once again, your economic ignorance rears its ugly head.

prohibition doesn’t deny criminal organizations markets… it denies legitimate organizations markets. This severely drives Supply (as opposed to quantity supplied) down, which in turn drives equilibrium price up. That’s what is known as a price support. Same thing happens when tariffs are imposed, except this is like a tariff on steroids, since it wipes out all legitimate Supply.

Do your homework.

Perhaps the most deadly operation by a drug cartel was the 1925 attempted coup by the “Poppy Cartel” of Colombia, which was so powerful that we actually had to send the Air Force in to work with the Federales to disperse the revolt, and for a while it looked like even THAT wouldn’t be enough.

And the Poppy Cartel got its money from LEGAL sales throughout the West.

Please give a link to this coup attempt, or admit that you cannot.

However, that will be cold comfort to the Mexicans or those living in the Southwest when the Cartels are STRENGTHENED by an influx of drug money.

Except the cartels would experience a decrease in drug money, not an influx.

As I have pointed out to you on the mexican cartel thread, William F. Buckley estimated the legitimate price of hard drugs to be 2% of their street value, and that estimate is backed up by The Economist.

Now, if we were to allow for your idiotic claim that the cartels would beat out American firms for drug business, that means they would have to lower their prices by 1/50th to be price competitive. That means even if we allow for a doubling of use of drugs after legalization, the revenues going to cartels would be 4% of what they are today.

The POPULATION of the planet was hardly 1/3 of what it is now in 1900, and this was before the advent of the automobile, mass-transit, reliable aircraft, or the internet.

Which means you are using a straw argument: more people= more drug users= (given the flawed methodologies of studies) a higher rate of use.

What you SHOULD be looking at is PER CAPITA use.

Uh, that’s what I was looking at.

Department of Justice

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

According to the National institute on Drug Abuse

In 2002, an estimated 1.5 million Americans could be classified as dependent on or abusing cocaine

Also according to the NIDA

In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse.

So, approximately 1.8 million people in the US were cocaine or heroin addicts, which gives us an addiction rate of 1 in 166. Of course, NIDA also notes that their numbers probably underestimate heroin addiction, which only serves to increase the addiction rate today.

Further, this doesn’t include methamphetamine use. Once again, according to NIDA

In 2006, there were an estimated 731,000 current users of methamphetamine aged 12 or older (0.3 percent of the population)

That raises our addiction numbers to 2.5 million addicts in the US, or a rate of 1 in 120.

So, we can clearly see that addiction rates are higher today than in 1900, before prohibition.

Turtler on May 23, 2009 at 3:52 AM

I see Dostoyevsky has made an appearance here too.

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Uh, no. Phillip Morris would kick their ass for the same reason they will kick their ass if they are ever allowed to grow cannabis. They would kick their ass because they have world-class botanists, marketing specialists, managers, logistics specialists, and every other skill modern industry needs. The cartels employ people who are good at avoiding the law and willing to use violence. Forced to compete against legitimate business, and they would fail, epically.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Nice to see the value you place on honesty. Typical prohibitionist.

Turtler on May 23, 2009 at 3:52 AM

I see Dostoyevsky has made an appearance here too.

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Uh, no. Phillip Morris would kick their ass for the same reason they will kick their ass if they are ever allowed to grow cannabis. They would kick their ass because they have world-class botanists, marketing specialists, managers, logistics specialists, and every other skill modern industry needs. The cartels employ people who are good at avoiding the law and willing to use violence. Forced to compete against legitimate business, and they would fail, epically.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Nice to see the value you place on honesty. Typical prohibitionist.

The POPULATION of the planet was hardly 1/3 of what it is now in 1900, and this was before the advent of the automobile, mass-transit, reliable aircraft, or the internet.

Which means you are using a straw argument: more people= more drug users= (given the flawed methodologies of studies) a higher rate of use.

What you SHOULD be looking at is PER CAPITA use.

Uh, that’s what I was looking at.

Department of Justice

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

According to the National institute on Drug Abuse

In 2002, an estimated 1.5 million Americans could be classified as dependent on or abusing cocaine

Also according to the NIDA

In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse.

So, approximately 1.8 million people in the US were cocaine or heroin addicts, which gives us an addiction rate of 1 in 166. Of course, NIDA also notes that their numbers probably underestimate heroin addiction, which only serves to increase the addiction rate today.

Further, this doesn’t include methamphetamine use. Once again, according to NIDA

In 2006, there were an estimated 731,000 current users of methamphetamine aged 12 or older (0.3 percent of the population)

That raises our addiction numbers to 2.5 million addicts in the US, or a rate of 1 in 120.

So, we can clearly see that addiction rates are higher today than in 1900, before prohibition.

And you wonder WHY? Because goons, cartels, juntas, and enemies tended to USE their sales in the West to cause trouble abroad.

Except you ignore the fact that, as Consumers Union reports

Most of the opium consumed in the United States during the nineteenth century was legally imported. Morphine was legally manufactured here from the imported opium. But opium poppies were also legally grown within the United States.

So, most of the drug traffic was above board, not funding underworld revolutions that I still think are in your imagination.

Right now, drug money is financing Hugo and his proxies, the Taliban, various Asiantic Triads and the Yakuza, Mexican drug cartels, Latin American warloards, and your garden variety criminal gangs.

They have had the market cornered well before legalization, and as things stand now, legal competition will probably be pushed to the side or run out of business.

No. The cartels have the black market cornered. Where legitimate firms produce opiates, they buy their opium from legitimate sources in Australia, Turkey, and India, not from mafias. Where legitimate firms produce cocaine (in the US, a monopoly held by Mallinckrodt Corp), they buy their coca from legitimate sources, not from mafias. If you have evidence to the contrary, please give a citation.

Make the entire market legitimate, as opposed to just the medical market, and legitimate firms will crowd out the mafias, because they simply are better at what they do. Just like after the end of alcohol prohibition.

So, how does denying a criminal organization markets and forcing it UNDERGROUND make it “stronger and deadlier?”

Once again, your economic ignorance rears its ugly head.

prohibition doesn’t deny criminal organizations markets… it denies legitimate organizations markets. This severely drives Supply (as opposed to quantity supplied) down, which in turn drives equilibrium price up. That’s what is known as a price support. Same thing happens when tariffs are imposed, except this is like a tariff on steroids, since it wipes out all legitimate Supply.

Do your homework.

Perhaps the most deadly operation by a drug cartel was the 1925 attempted coup by the “Poppy Cartel” of Colombia, which was so powerful that we actually had to send the Air Force in to work with the Federales to disperse the revolt, and for a while it looked like even THAT wouldn’t be enough.

And the Poppy Cartel got its money from LEGAL sales throughout the West.

Please give a link to this coup attempt, or admit that you cannot.

However, that will be cold comfort to the Mexicans or those living in the Southwest when the Cartels are STRENGTHENED by an influx of drug money.

Except the cartels would experience a decrease in drug money, not an influx.

As I have pointed out to you on the mexican cartel thread, William F. Buckley estimated the legitimate price of hard drugs to be 2% of their street value, and that estimate is backed up by The Economist.

Now, if we were to allow for your idiotic claim that the cartels would beat out American firms for drug business, that means they would have to lower their prices by 1/50th to be price competitive. That means even if we allow for a doubling of use of drugs after legalization, the revenues going to cartels would be 4% of what they are today.

You seem to base your entire argument on legalization being a boon to drug cartels, of which you seem pretty confident.

The end of prohibition was a massive boon to the newly-reopened legal ventures, who had superior quality and experience to the illegal ad-hoc breweries, right?

Yes. Do illegal drug cartels have contacts with the drug stores and bars that would be selling drugs if they were legal?

A. Probably not the types they need, but experience says they can find them, given their penachent for doing so in the Netherlands and here pre-ban.

B. who is to say we don’t see some of the old contacts emerge from the shadows and suddenly become “legit” while remaining tied to them?

C. If those two fail, there is always the potential of slipping them directly into the general market, which has proven quite difficult to counter (the Dutch themselves admitted that itt was almost impossible to filter what drugs were legit and what were illegally grown once they hit the market, which has partially paralyzed their reaction).

Can you point out to me the great land that drug producers currently use

Yes indeed. First, you have the Amazonian basin, where the topsoil is usually thicker than it is here, the locations are out of sight, the crews are experirenced, and the location has already been altered for growing.

Than we have South-East Asia, which , save for the topsoil, is roughly the same, with the added perk of being considerably easier to get up the rivers to the coast, and from their to the market.

Central Asia is perhaps the weak link in that assertation, but they HAVE cultivated Opium production into a rather fine art. The main Achilles’ heel is market transport, but they have been able to solve that in the past, though they do it mainly to Europe or “Western Asia” (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, as opposed to Pakistan or Sri Lanka).

and tell me how it compares to the vast swaths of farmland across America that aren’t currently used to grow drugs because it’s illegal and the owners don’t want to go to jail?

Depends on the circumstances and the crop you are talking about. However, the main points that spring up to me in general is that:

A. Much of the usable soil is actually not unused, simply put to other uses (herding/ grazing, etc).

B. Would these independent growers be able to withstand the shock of a sudden “business offer” by strange and vaguely threatening individuals who are trying to make “an offer he can’t refuse?”

Those who could survive legally would probably be a hardy bunch, and withing a few decades might even be able to crowd the cartels out of their own market.

However, that would be after several long years of building the infastructure, getting overseas and domestic contacts, and generally making the trains run on time.

And in the interlude, charmers like the Mexican warlords and FARC would be counting their money and possibly doing damage with it that would take decades to reverse, if it is even possible at all.

Do you really think it’s that hard to grow drugs,

As I mentioned: much depends on the type of drugs, and in some such as Cocaine, what quality/purity they are.

and that if there was any expertise that cartels have, it couldn’t be quickly surpassed by scientists and farmers here who would actually be able to research the subject without fear of going to jail?

Perhaps, but again: would these scientists and farmers be able to wistand intimidation and the threat of armed force? And how long would it take for the survivors to eventually crowd the market out?

It seems to me most of the cartels’ expertise is on how to grow and distribute an illegal product, not a product in particular.

Well, that depends. The Minor Latin American syndicates? Yes, since the expertise of the Poppy Cartel has probably long fallen from grace.

However, the major syndicates or the Asian/Middle Eastern ones, who largely deal with more socially Liberal Europe (the Netherlands in particular), where there are fewer if any laws against them probably have some chops in competing on a level market.

Can we agree that profit margins on growing drugs would be vastly lower than they are now if drugs were made legal?

Depends on the level of competition. I would probaby have to agree with you in general, though.

Do you think that might make it less desirable for for cartels and gangs to be in the business of selling drugs?

And that is one major point against my “Cartelcentric” argument. However, the question becomes how long that will take, what degree of legal competition will it require, and will the cartels be able to circumvent either?

I hope they won’t, but the threat of them doing it on the side (which, even in a diminished market, isn’t something I would scoff at, given the money involved) while “expanding into new business opperunities” is something we would have to keep an eye on.

What’s the difference?

While that was mainly a rehtorical rebut, I would have to say the difference lies in what rights we genuinely need to mantain our individual soveriegnty in a Democratic/Republican society, versus wha are largely unnecessary.

Perfect definition? No. But it works well enough for me, and while some degree of liscence is, of course, necessary to prevent infringement of more fundamental rights, (there is no law against one eating one’s, um, number two, to use a rather out-there example, and rightfully so), not all things we can do are necessary to live free lives. Perhaps the BANNING of a particular type of liscence may impinge on one’s freedom by the methods used (for instance, alcohol standards enforced via intruding and unstoppable searches of all residences and properties one owns), but on average the liscence itself does not.

Yes, that is an ackward definition, but it’s honestly the best I can come up with, given history and the intent of the foudners.

Also, I don’t know where the 1/3 of the rate of addiction stat another commenter wrote of comes from, but I’m pretty sure that by saying rate, that refers to percentage, or per capita. I could be wrong, though.

That was a possibility I was considering, but the considerable growth in population in the meantime coupled with the addiction rate at the turn of the century probably invalidated that (or at least was an exagerration), and the methods of surveys probably means it was a comparison in raw numbers as opposed to per capita (which is unbelievably hard to determine from your average survey).

Sorry for the rant, and pleasure meeting you.

I await a response.

You say in response to someone wondering how a Mexican drug cartel can compete with Phillip Morris:

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Any more questions?

Yes. Do illegal drug cartels have contacts with the drug stores and bars that would be selling drugs if they were legal?

Can you point out to me the great land that drug producers currently use, and tell me how it compares to the vast swaths of farmland across America that aren’t currently used to grow drugs because it’s illegal and the owners don’t want to go to jail?

Do you really think it’s that hard to grow drugs, and that if there was any expertise that cartels have, it couldn’t be quickly surpassed by scientists and farmers here who would actually be able to research the subject without fear of going to jail? It seems to me most of the cartels’ expertise is on how to grow and distribute an illegal product, not a product in particular.

Can we agree that profit margins on growing drugs would be vastly lower than they are now if drugs were made legal? Do you think that might make it less desirable for for cartels and gangs to be in the business of selling drugs?

There is a difference between Freedom and Liscense, knave

What’s the difference?

Also, I don’t know where the 1/3 of the rate of addiction stat another commenter wrote of comes from, but I’m pretty sure that by saying rate, that refers to percentage, or per capita. I could be wrong, though.

For somebody who enjoys pulling Prohibition comparisons out of their butt, you certainly can’t grasp much of the underlying factors.

I agree. We proved this once, check out the 18th and 21st amendments to the Constitution. Prohibition NEVER works. The only thing it does is enrich organized crime, making them stronger and deadlier.

So, how does denying a criminal organization markets and forcing it UNDERGROUND make it “stronger and deadlier?”

Perhaps the most deadly operation by a drug cartel was the 1925 attempted coup by the “Poppy Cartel” of Colombia, which was so powerful that we actually had to send the Air Force in to work with the Federales to disperse the revolt, and for a while it looked like even THAT wouldn’t be enough.

And the Poppy Cartel got its money from LEGAL sales throughout the West.

You were saying?

Meanwhile, we piss 460 billion a year into a black hole.

If we’re going to do it, we might as well do it while pissing billions of nacro dollars down the tube as WELL.

That way, at least while we are getting screwed, so are the tthugs (as opposed to social pyramid schemes that only weaken us).

The temperance fanatics, like many libturds today, screamed to the rafters that we would destroy ourselves if liquor was legalized.

And they were wrong back then, and they are probably wrong now.

However, that will be cold comfort to the Mexicans or those living in the Southwest when the Cartels are STRENGTHENED by an influx of drug money.

Did their predictions come true? No, No they did not. A few people drink to excess and wreck their lives. We cant stop that.

True, but what about those living abroad who had their lives WRECKED FOR THEM by goons pumped up with drug money from abroad?

If drugs are legalized, the same thing will happen. The same people determined to destroy themselves will do so.Those who use casually will not be criminals

In this much, you are correct.

and the criminals making millions will be out of business, just like what happened after prohibition.

BZZZZTTTTT!!!

Wrong.

What happened when Prohibition ended was that the pre-existing networks of legal breweries were opened back up and put back in business. The superior experience, contacts,and ability of these legal brews literally washed away the market for “hooch” made by inept, inexperienced, and disorganized criminals due to the superior quality and marketing of the legal brands.

This is not the case here.

In this case, the CROOKS have the high ground on the issue, and given their noted habits, it is probable they would merely wash away any inexperienced legal upstart or simply intimidate them out of the market.

And that is inexcusable.

If you wish to piss your life away, that is your right and business.

But what ISN’T your right is to piss away some poor Mexican or Guatamalan’s life because your drug habit puts bullets in the chamber of the AK-47 the Cartel will use to blow that poor individual’s brains out.

Don’t like it? Tough. Deal with the Cartels, and THEN we will talk.

And we will stop spending money to defend prohibition II.

And we will open the floodgates to a deluge of black marketeers with AKs who will use the funds they get here to murder, rape, and oppress closer to home.

I do not think society would be better off with legalization, but reasonable people can make that argument.

JohnGalt23:

Please explain why it is your view that drug cartels would have a competitive advantage over Phillip-Morris.

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Any more questions?

So, if times haven’t changed, would you explain why before drugs were illegal, the rate of addiction was 1/3 as high as it is today, after nearly a century of prohibition?

Easy.

Because rough numbers are a rather inaccurate and foolish way of measuring ANYTHING.

The POPULATION of the planet was hardly 1/3 of what it is now in 1900, and this was before the advent of the automobile, mass-transit, reliable aircraft, or the internet.

Which means you are using a straw argument: more people= more drug users= (given the flawed methodologies of studies) a higher rate of use.

What you SHOULD be looking at is PER CAPITA use.

And keep in mind that even in 1900, this was STILL a problem.

The first drug laws didn’t exist until the 20th century, and heroin use was acceptable enough it was sold over the counter in pharmacies, and syringes were sold in the Sears-Roebuck catalog.

And you wonder WHY? Because goons, cartels, juntas, and enemies tended to USE their sales in the West to cause trouble abroad. Hell, we actually had to dispatch the USAAC to Colombia to prevent one particularly potent group from overthrowing the government, and for a time it looked like we would actually have to go in and fight a full-dress war.

This is what you are not noticing, and this is why NO blanket legalization can take place UNTIL THE CARTELS ARE REDUCED TO IMPOTENCE!

Free Constitution:

Funny how a lot of conservatives are all for liberty and individual sovereignty, except when, you know, they’re not.

There is a difference between Freedom and Liscense, knave.

PARTICULARLY when that Liscence helps finance the scum of the world.

ajacksonian:

THANK YOU!!!!!

THIS is what I have been saying all along: the main threat from legalization does not come from the damages it does to those who use it, it comes from WHO MAKES AND SELLS THE PRODUCT.

Right now, drug money is financing Hugo and his proxies, the Taliban, various Asiantic Triads and the Yakuza, Mexican drug cartels, Latin American warloards, and your garden variety criminal gangs.

They have had the market cornered well before legalization, and as things stand now, legal competition will probably be pushed to the side or run out of business.

AFTER they are gone or reduced to impotence, THEN we can talk about legalization.

But not until then.

Lest the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents be on our hands.

It is the minorities and poor that will suffer. There is a beer keg in every low class neighborhood. But, we think we know what we are doing. Why, would this be different.

We would just give minorities another reason not to pursue their life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness.

Sometime winning just means fighting the war.

tomas on May 22, 2009 at 7:26 AM

.
Actually they are pursuing life, liberty, and happiness.
They are not pursuing achievement, and wealth.

Also, I believe booze is the most dangerous drug of all. It costs us plenty in prisons, hospitals, lost work, broken families. If legalizing drugs increases crimes, we now have conceiled handgun permits so junkies better watch out who they target for crime.

As of now, I lean toward legalizing pot because when you run out, you don’t self distruct like with H or coke. Stoned people are usually more docile and better drivers than drunks. ?But, when theese fools get drunk and stoned at the same time, things could get ugly.

And if half of America really thought MJ should be legal, it would be reflected in it’s state laws, which have the power to minimize the penalties for possession.

It has been, which is why Marijuana has been de facto legalized in places like L.A. and Denver. If you live in LA, you can be a perscription for “insomnia,” walk over to your local dispensery, pick up your pot, and smoke up completely legally in your home.

But, yeah, it’s the libertarians or those who pretend they are not libertarians who go on and on about legalizing drugs. It’s not going to happen.

Really? Can you remember the last time we got reports of congrssmen, assemblymen, and Governers all addressing the issue seriously?

And let me remind you we currently have our THRID PRESIDENT IN A ROW who smoked pot in his youth, and yet the American Public didn’t seem to care any of those elections. And he’s the FIRST who openly admitted it without trying to dodge the question. (Don’t take this as an Obama endosement, just a sociological overservation)

We’ve reached a tipping point, mostly because so many boomers and younger people have tried it at least once or twice, and older voters who are more hostile to drugs are slowly dying off. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if at least handful of states don’t have it legal by 2020.

The costs will transfer…they wont go down.

Its absolutely insane its taken this long for people to realize that. CATO’s got some numbers on the portugese experiment with decriminalization and while some of the more fanciful “benefits”

I agree. We proved this once, check out the 18th and 21st amendments to the Constitution. Prohibition NEVER works. The only thing it does is enrich organized crime, making them stronger and deadlier.

Meanwhile, we piss 460 billion a year into a black hole.

The temperance fanatics, like many libturds today, screamed to the rafters that we would destroy ourselves if liquor was legalized.

Did their predictions come true? No, No they did not. A few people drink to excess and wreck their lives. We cant stop that.

If drugs are legalized, the same thing will happen. The same people determined to destroy themselves will do so. Those who use casually will not be criminals and the criminals making millions will be out of business, just like what happened after prohibition.

And we will stop spending money to defend prohibition II.

Not because I think people should do drugs but because “the dope game” has been glamorized by the money involved and that is what draws many into drugs which once they start it, a known cycle results even thou no one admits it applies to them until they reach the latter stages.

1)Try it, 2)occasional user, 3)weekend warrior, 4)every time go out required to party/have fun, 5)every night, 6)some during day to help the day, 7)all day all the time, 8)have to have it, 9)jail/death.

Their is no glamor in drugs contrary to current Hollywood impression. Drugs used to be legal back in the cowboy days and if you notice the midget that always lived under the local pubs porch and cleaned for the tender. In reality that midget was a normal person but a dope head, and because of that he couldn’t get up past the point of living under the pub porch doing this or that sh*ty job for the coins to get into the poppy tent.

When the only people the children see using/associated with drugs is the users & addicts drug use will collapse. The addicts don’t have fine ho’s and pimp rides, they just have ate up junky/ho’s & worn out off brand nikes.

Legalizing would take the money away which would also have the other benefits of:
-taxable (the sin tax could be heavy 50% easily and the final product would still be far cheaper than the street version, that tax could be put directly into drug rehab/treatment/anti-drug education efforts to further drop the use numbers)
-legit business people making the money, (no more cartels, farc, on international scale and local dealers terrorizing urban neighborhoods into silence or even anti-police attitudes).
-gutting the gangs revenue stream (a huge crime drop will be seen with their financial collapse ho’s, robbing, and strong arm, just don’t bring in the bacon)
-gutting the many illicit international groups FARC, AQ (partially), Cartels, Cuba, Narco terrorist, etc…
-violent crime drop off substantially(a surprising percentage of armed robbery, shootings, etc… especially the home invasion type are a direct result of dealers being robbed, disputing, or attempting to collect drug debts)
-Massive drop in Prison population

In the first generation their probably will be an uptick in use but the following generations seeing the results and nothing but the users and “the man” CVC, Eckerd, Wallmart, etc… making the money, then will begin the long tick down in use.

Our modo for everything should be simple:
“America is founded on FREEDOM, Every American has the Freedom to succeed &/or Freedom to Fail, it is YOUR responsibility to choose your path”

I’m not a libertarian. and considering that libertarians only comprise a tiny percentage of the electorate yet around half of American’s think MJ should be legal to one degree or another, the premise that it’s only supported by libertarians is demonstrably false.

FloatingRock on May 22, 2009 at 3:18 AM

Well, what ever you are, you are a nutter. And if half of America really thought MJ should be legal, it would be reflected in it’s state laws, which have the power to minimize the penalties for possession. But, yeah, it’s the libertarians or those who pretend they are not libertarians who go on and on about legalizing drugs. It’s not going to happen.

They are unsafe because of drinking too much to and guns. Things being legal didn’t stop crime from happening.

Both those things should be legal…maybe, all. But, things won’t be better that is for sure.

That arguement is one for quitters.

tomas on May 22, 2009 at 8:42 AM

The federal government should quit a lot of things it is engaged in. It is too big and consumes too much of GDP.