Latest drug addict loons.

[Diogenes]

You have more patience than I. When I see that same ole spiel, I just skip over it.


I think the best way of dealing with irrational assumptions is to refuse to acknowledge them as worthy of consideration.

[Diogenes]

As a matter of fact, noticing that there are four more threads posted by MSimon, and presuming that they are all about drugs or something related to it, i'm thinking of just skipping looking at this forum anymore.


It looking to me like it's just not worth wading through all the crap to find anything worth looking at.


Shout it to the walls. Actual people aren't interested in being preached at.

[GIThruster]

Well you can do like I do and just not bother to open any thread simon starts. They're all the same. I can't imagine why anyone would read them.

[williatw]

Too bad the young you didn't get stopped & frisked during your youthful drug escapades....might have give you a different perspective on "rhetorical" vs "rational".

I doubt it. I didn't have any critical thinking courses until after my dalliance with drugs. It is the 100 level, critical thinking classes anyone can find in community college or high school that make clear the simple distinctions between real reasoning and the awful deceitful rhetoric philosophers are so urgently warned against. Whenever you make an argument that only pretends to come to the issue, you are involved in a logical fallacy of distraction, and that's something we philosophers take a very jaded view toward.

What I meant is if the young you had been stopped, frisked drugs found arrested, tried, convicted sent to prison. Where you would have experienced the gentle tutelage of your fellow prisoners as to what being young and male and being sent to adult prison means...while the guards looked the other way. When you got out no college (community or otherwise), no engineering degree, no aerospace career just a succession of menial low paying jobs. No right to vote; after all we don't want "druggies" voting; they might decide to vote out the people who sent them to prison to be brutalized, can't have that. To bad you, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, Obama, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sarah Palin and the rest of you hypocritical ex-drug using drug warriors didn't get a heaping helping in your youth of the "help" you support giving to 100's of thousands a year of mostly minority males; it might have helped the evolution of your critical thinking skills. There wouldn't be a WOD if people like that and you were incarcerated the same way; damage to society caused by drugs or not, other solutions like treatment would have been developed instead. That's why thousands of white upper-middle class college kids are allowed to damage their brains and lower their precious IQ's smoking pot; not many "drug warriors" proposed massive incarceration (of them) to save them from the society damaging scourge of pot smoking.

[GIThruster]

What I meant is if the young you had been stopped, frisked drugs found arrested, tried, convicted sent to prison. Where you would have experienced the. . .

I understand exactly what you meant. Do you understand your argument does not come to the issue? It is an argument to reform prisons, or to crack down on how law enforcement does their job. It is not an argument against WoD, or the general concept of punishing crime, as you pretend. And no, I can thankfully report there has never been a time in my life when I would justify a stupid position because of an injustice I suffered. I have certainly suffered all manner of injustice, but incessant whining doesn't help, and blaming one thing like the WoD for things only tangentially related is not the act of a rational man.

[MSimon]

Well sure. Freedom has to be limited so people can be free. So why not start with outlawing plants? That could work.

Well in fact it does work quite well. You keep pretending it doesn't, but when you look at the kinds of problems people face in those parts of the world were drugs go completely sans prohibition, like in China a century ago, you can see that in fact prohibition does work.

Lets turn it around. How does this guy's supposed "right" to use PCP, justify how he acts while he's using it?

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/02/241579- ... aign=Crime

How do all the people who get violent on alcohol justify their use?

Just because some people can't handle their drugs is no reason I should want the mafia distributing them. I thought alcohol Prohibition taught us that lesson. Evidently there are some who didn't get the word.

With China there is no way to tell if it is working or not. They are notorious for cooking the books. And the plants are not gone. Mexico is growing a bumper crop of opium to supply the American market - or hadn't you heard?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/0 ... 01296.html

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb ... supply-us/

And of course Newt Gingrich campaigned in favor of heroin decrim in California. It won. Pot was decrimed as well. I think they will vote in favor of legalization in 2016. There are already plans underway to put it on the ballot. And in at least 5 more states.

And in Illinois there is already a move underway in the legislature:

http://www.thedailychronic.net/2015/404 ... -illinois/

It still wonders me that so many conservatives still want drug distribution handled by criminals. But it is nothing new. They sided with the criminals in 1932 when it came to alcohol. An inability to learn from history is not the sole province of the left.

[GIThruster]

Just because some people can't handle their drugs is no reason I should want the mafia distributing them. . .

It still wonders me that so many conservatives still want drug distribution handled by criminals.

How is it you haven't noticed all your arguments are old and stale? All these rhetorical abuses have been answered and yet you trot them out like someone who doesn't know he makes no sense, again, and again, and again. There's no one who wants drugs handled by crooks. That's why we put the crooks in prison. What an absolutely idiotic argument. The fact is, <9% use Cannabis and that number is going to climb dramatically in those places where it it now legal. It is as if the government has said Cannabis is safe and it is nothing like safe. The consequences will be obvious within a decade and it will again be illegal. The issue is that some people just won't listen and learn. You're one of them.

Hey, you don't work. Why don't you move to CO where you will no longer be a criminal? Why do you choose instead to regularly conduct criminal activities?

[MSimon]

You have more patience than I. When I see that same ole spiel, I just skip over it.

I think the best way of dealing with irrational assumptions is to refuse to acknowledge them as worthy of consideration.

The "irrational assumptions" are beating you where it counts. In the realm of politics.

The Republicans of 1932 made similar assumptions and got FDR for their troubles.

======================

I use this place to sharpen my arguments and then take them to the wider public. And guess what? The wider public agrees with me. More every year.

Prohibition can't work. The incentives are wrong. And conservatives - who are usually so good at estimating incentives - believe that in this realm they don't count.

The more effective prohibition is the higher the profits for criminals and the more supply that is attracted to the market. Fighting drugs makes them more plentiful.

In this realm the conservatives have adopted communism. Real world results don't count. All that counts is how they believe things should work. Milton Friedman noticed this in 1972. And wrote a bit in the WSJ about it. Wm. Buckley wrote about it. But as you well know - for many people - faith is stronger than evidence. Which got Max Planck to thinking.

“Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. Thus, Science advances one funeral at a time” Max Planck

[paperburn1]

I am surprised Simon did not mention that Illinois is now issuing grow permits. And one of the applicants is just up highway 20 from him at the Freeport business park.
the article was in the Rockford times and Freeport journal standard
http://www.journalstandard.com/article/ ... /1994/NEWS

[Diogenes]

Welfare cash paying for marijuana a reality in Colorado

DENVER — Public tax money very likely paid for welfare recipients to smoke the equivalent of about 17 pounds of weed (or approximately 9,000 joints) in 2014. Compared with what the rest of Colorado ingested, that’s a small percentage, but controversial none the less.

Only FOX31 Denver’s investigative team took the time to analyze every ATM cash transaction between Colorado marijuana dispensaries and welfare recipients in the first year of legal pot sales.

http://kdvr.com/2015/02/04/welfare-cash ... -colorado/




Awwwwww... now who coulda seen that coming?

[williatw]

Compared with what the rest of Colorado ingested, that’s a small percentage, but controversial none the less.

Awwwwww... now who coulda seen that coming?

So that's the reason you support the WOD? The idea of those lazy welfare sods getting high on your dime? Makes your blood boil does it? Of course when pot was illegal they could still get high on your dime (to say nothing of legal booze); but when you had them "stopped & frisked" for acting "suspiciously" you had the satisfaction of being able to arrest/convict/jail them; which of course costs much more of your precious money but the difference is that feeling of satisfaction that doubtlessly gives you.

[williatw]

..And of course if enough people have that much of an issue with food stamps being used to pay for pot, you could always change the law and make it illegal to use foods stamps to buy pot. A law that a legal licensed provider would be obliged to follow; unlike an illegal drug pusher who would of course completely ignore it.

[MSimon]

I am surprised Simon did not mention that Illinois is now issuing grow permits. And one of the applicants is just up highway 20 from him at the Freeport business park.
the article was in the Rockford times and Freeport journal standard
http://www.journalstandard.com/article/ ... /1994/NEWS

Yes. The fact that the Republican Governor (Rauner) approved it when the previous Governor - a Democrat was having the hesitations was a surprise. It surprised me. I thought he would stall since he claims to be disapproving.

But it is looking more and more like good politics. He keeps his base (the disapprovers) while also getting the approvers (about 60%) on his side. It also makes the libertarians of his own party happy. Clever politician.

[MSimon]

Awwwwww... now who coulda seen that coming?

Anyone who knows that money is fungible. Evidently Republicans no longer know that. But all is not lost. The State recouped some of the money in taxes. So it was not a total loss for the State.

Of course if the State wants to lose less it should do everything in its power to help reduce the cost of cannabis. When it costs no more than tomatoes the losses will be very minor. At a few dollars a pound, $5 or $10 would be a years supply for one person. A person on welfare could easily raise that by panhandling without resort to the state at all.

And if the person was switching from alcohol and tobacco the gains to the state in lower medical costs would be significant.

http://www.goldjournal.net/article/S009 ... 0/abstract
Conclusion

Although a cause and effect relationship has not been established, cannabis use may be inversely associated with bladder cancer risk in this population.
==============

Donlald Tashkin also found an inverse relationship with respect to lung cancer.

==============

But I think williatw http://talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.p ... 05#p119605 is correct. The costs don't matter to Prohibitionists as long as someone is getting punished for things they disapprove of. The costs only matter to them when the punishment stops.

You know. People are starting to notice these things. And it makes Prohibitionists look bad.

"Distrust anyone in whom the desire to punish is powerful" Friedrich Nietzsche - but it doesn't have to be an exhortation. It is a natural human inclination.

[MSimon]

We have some outstanding loons here:

Garcia pleaded guilty in July, 2013 to distribution of heroin, conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery, attempted robbery, and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. Joanis pleaded guilty in February, 2014 to conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery, attempted robbery, and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

The two officers repeatedly robbed drug dealers while working as police officers in the 17th District, between December 2009 and June 19, 2012.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/loc ... 72271.html

How you gonna make Prohibition work when the police are distributing the drugs? And of course how much more of this is going on where the police just steal the stashes? Or reduce their size. What dealer is going to complain about getting charged with half as much drugs? Or less? "Judge, I had ten pounds and only got charged with eight ounces."

But it is nothing new. Alcohol Prohibition had a similar effect on police. Evidently there are political parties out there that are incapable of learning from history.