Does Anybody Argue That Drug Use Isn't Bad For You

[GIThruster]

. . .a very few people will become addicted to and destroy themselves with drugs.

"a very few people"? You must be joking. What planet do you live on?

This is the problem with Libertarians. They have no conception of reality and are isolated from it in order to support their dopey ideals. Go spend some time at the local soup kitchen. You'll be much better off for it.

[paperburn1]

. . .a very few people will become addicted to and destroy themselves with drugs.

"a very few people"? You must be joking. What planet do you live on?

This is the problem with Libertarians. They have no conception of reality and are isolated from it in order to support their dopey ideals. Go spend some time at the local soup kitchen. You'll be much better off for it.

with free drug usage it does become a self correcting problem. Those with the problem are usually dead. Went thought this in the seventys, so we just can see it again now.
""All this has happened before. All this will happen again."" BSG

[GIThruster]

I dunno what you think is different now from the 70's, but the main differences concern how we treat dealers and drug pipelines. The "war" on drugs is merely that we provide serious resources for stopping drug trafficking. They're not applied to users. You can note what percentage of criminals are users, but that is still a tiny percentage of how many are caught with a bag of grass. The war is not on users. Meth was very new in the 70's so that is a difference between then and now. In the 70's only very hard core users would touch speed. For most users, the war on drugs does not affect them at all. Users are never concerned the way simon is. The fact simon is so resentful of prohibition leads one to postulate he's not merely a user but a dealer--though let me hasten to add I am not accusing him of this and there is no evidence, nor claims on his part that he sells drugs.

And really, your solution is wait for the people kill themselves? How is that a sane response?

Again, Libertarian idealistic craziness.

[paperburn1]

I did not say it was sane or even moral, just one that works.

[GIThruster]

I'm sure the Sudanese government thinks genocide in Darfur "works". That doesn't make it a legitimate option. In the same way morally responsible people ought to be opposed to genocide in Darfur, they ought to be opposed to drug use and enabling drug use through legalization.

[paperburn1]

I did not say it was sane or even moral, just one that works.

And by the way I do not use drugs besides OTC and rarely touch alcohol anymore. But if this is truly a war on drugs we must be willing to take acceptable losses to win. To win a war your goal is to break things and kill people until the other side gives up. This means some people will die. You can not legislation a morality.

[ladajo]

"it has nothing to do with your empty argument on drugs where you want to play absolutist, while those you attempt to reach with your weak attempt at Indoctrination do not."

The person thinking prohibition is a good response to the fact a very few people will become addicted to and destroy themselves with drugs, that person is the absolutist.

I am really getting tired of saying that "prohibition" is not working. If you want to comment on my position, take the time to understand it.

In some things I am an absolutist, in others I am not.

I also think you are completely niave if you really think:

the fact a very few people will become addicted to and destroy themselves with drugs,

I guarantee that I can addict you to any of the aforementioned drugs, and to do so would not take so much time nor effort. That is the entire point.
The people that market these things do so targeting the weak, on purpose.
It is like giving a child a loaded gun and no supervision.

[paperburn1]

I'm sure the Sudanese government thinks genocide in Darfur "works". That doesn't make it a legitimate option. In the same way morally responsible people ought to be opposed to genocide in Darfur, they ought to be opposed to drug use and enabling drug use through legalization.

At the current rate of murder in Darfur their "problem will be solved in less than ten years unless of course the muslin's that are killing the other Muslims start killing the next group of muslims. Your right its not moral Its not legitimate and its its repugnant. But it is working for the government in power.

[GIThruster]

. . .if this is truly a war on drugs we must be willing to take acceptable losses to win. To win a war your goal is to break things and kill people until the other side gives up. This means some people will die. You can not legislation a morality.

I disagree. I think Diogenes has hit the nail on the head here--the goal is not to win a war but rather to fight a mitigating action. I don't think anyone ever believed we could win the war in Afghanistan in any conventional sense, and this is one of the reasons Bush pushed to go to war in Iraq as well--there was a sense in which one could win. In Afghanistan, the war is one of attrition. A "win" there would mean we have removed enough Taliban leadership and sufficiently altered the culture at large that it would grow into a peaceful place over time. Projections for an outcome like that are much more than a decade's work, and necessarily include removing the poppies. All by itself, removing the poppies and replacing them with food crops the people can then live off, must take more than a generation. We'll probably quit before we can win such a war.

The war on drugs is not even a war of attrition, but rather a mitigating action--it holds back the flood waters that would otherwise engulf our society. If one looks at the results of Meth, and the function of cannabis as a gateway to things like Meth, it is obvious the problems we have with drugs would be magnified many times were there no war on drugs. So it's not a case of losing a battle to win a war. Letting people who would otherwise be functioning citizens who would contribute to society, live off the backs of others because of their addictions (people like simon) is not an answer. It is fuel for the fire. It is the parasites like simon who are pushing our republic toward the end of its days because we simply cannot carry such a large portion of the populous on the backs of those who work. We agree we need to carry the elderly, the disabled, those going through temporary hardship, etc. We do not need to carry tens of millions of people who would be working like the rest of us were they not druggies--people like simon

These people need to be freed from drugs just the same as women need to be freed from Sharia law and abandoned kids beed to be freed from the sex trade. Treating drug use as a victimless crime ignores all the vast plethora of its consequences. I'm sure people like simon would love us all to ignore the fact he's living off our hard work, but that is the truth and there is no reason for it, except that he's made himself a worthless druggie.

[paperburn1]

Well stated, but I feel we are going to reach a point where mitigation will not be enough because we did not apply it soon enough to the problem. At that point what will we do? As you so clearly stated we do not have the resources as a nation to support a large drug culture. So what do we do? Drug testing to receive aid? Did not prove effective in Florida.
I do not have all the answers but what we are doing now does not seem to be effective.

[ladajo]

I do not have all the answers but what we are doing now does not seem to be effective.

As I have said a number of times. As well as that going "wild west" with drugs would be worse than what we are doing. We need to change, but free access is not the answer.

Maybe China's method of automatic execution...afterall, getting someone hooked on drugs is a form of murder. They just end up paying you to kill them, and you seek to take all the money you can from them while doing it. And it matters not to you that society carries their load while they fail and then die. All the better, frees up more money for them to pay you.

[GIThruster]

I think first off we need to see the backlash of these states that have legalized cannabis. Could be ten years before the hard data starts to come in what such a thing is doing to society. From that we'll see the prohibitions reenabled. We'll likely see a martial action in Mexico, helping that government secure itself and routing the cartels. For as long as Mexico is the source it is of cannabis, it will continue to flow freely inside the US.

Eventually, one hopes there will be a public service campaign that is as effective as that against tobacco, and smoking grass will no longer be socially acceptable the way tobacco is not. Right now, Hollywood is still supporting drug use. No Hollywood star would dare support tobacco use but Brad Pitt has no problem supporting cannabis. The fact this is the current state of affairs illustrates how we as a nation have not got our shit together. There are too many sick voices like simon's out there, screwing with our society for their own, criminal reasons.

And too, I would not say that the war on drugs has been ineffective. We make bigger busts every year. We close more and more tunnels. We incarcerate more criminals and take them out of the populous. And criminals like simon are obviously living in some fear. So obviously the war is working to some degree. I'd say one remedy is to fund it much better. We need a lot more security along our boarders.

[Stubby]

I had to laugh at your last sentence too.
Even digot agrees that the 'uniforms are getting darker', and you want to spend more money and hire more police/DEA/ etc.

The tightest border in recent history in Berlin could not stop things from crossing against the wall builders will. Concrete walls, kill zones, barbed wire, land mines and guns did not stop the leaks.

A tighter border will only make the smuggling of drugs, guns and people even more lucrative than it is now. And knowing that the example above is your end game, why do you want to go there? East Germany was such wonderful country.

People with nothing more than a desire to be free escaped over the Berlin wall. Cartels in a trillion dollar industry are not going to even blink if you try the same.

[GIThruster]

That's all nonsense. Almost nothing crossed in Berlin for decades except in movies, and nothing crosses in Korea. You don't know what you're talking about.

[choff]

It was one thing to sneak across the E/W German border, it was another thing to go back and forth undetected.