So let me get this straight. In order to prevent people from harming themselves we are killing people who have harmed no one. Collateral damage I believe it is called. You can add Mexico to the list.
Veronica Bowers 35 years old Charity Bowers
7 months old
In the air over Peru
April, 2001
As part of a long-standing arrangement to stop drug shipments, U.S. government tracking provided the information for the Peruvian Air Force to mistakenly shoot down a Cessna plane carrying missionaries. Killed in the incident were Roni Bowers, a missionary with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and her daughter, Charity. In 2008, a new report surfaced indicating widespread problems with the shoot-down program that had been withheld from Congress by the CIA.
Rudolfo “Rudy” Cardenas 43 years old
San Jose, California
February, 2004
Rudy was a father of five who was passing by a house targeted by narcotics officers attempting to serve a parole violation warrant and the police mistakenly thought he was the one they were there to arrest. They chased Cardenas, and he fled, apparently afraid of them (they were not uniformed). Cardenas was shot multiple times in the back. Dorothy Duckett, 78, told the Mercury News she looked out her fifth-floor window after hearing one gunshot and saw Cardenas pleading for his life. “I watched him running with his hands in the air. He kept saying, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot,’” Duckett said. “He had absolutely nothing in his hands.”
Willie Heard 46 years old
Osawatomie, Kansas
February, 1999
SWAT conducted a no-knock drug raid, complete with flash-bang grenades. Heard was shot to death in front of his wife and 16-year-old daughter who had cried for help. Fearing home invasion, he was holding an empty rifle. The raid was at the wrong house.
Kathyrn Johnston 88 years old
Atlanta, Georgia
November, 2006
Kathryn lived in a rough neighborhood and a relative gave her a gun for protection. When she noticed men breaking through her security bars into her house she fired a shot into the ceiling. They were narcotics officers and fired 39 shots back, killing her. The police had falsified information in order to obtain a no-knock search warrant based on incorrect information from a dealer they had framed. After killing Johnson and realizing that she was completely innocent, they planted some marijuana in the basement. Eventually their stories fell apart federal and state investigations learned the truth. Additional facts have come to light that this was not an isolated incident in the Atlanta police department.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
KitemanSA wrote:To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime.
Claims that people get 'forced' into drugs is one more of the shibboleths of the ignorant antidrug gestapo. "Peer pressure" isn't force, either, any more than society made you spend too much money on your car or house.
I do not believe I stated or implied that people get "forced" into drugs. I do know that some people get defrauded into trying them. Fraud is also a crime. My statement stands.
KitemanSA wrote: To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime.
OK. Now suppose we change the premise to one more in accordance with facts. Addiction is a deficiency disease.
Addiction to drugs is almost always an INDUCED deficiency disease. To the degree that a "pusher" is party to inducing said disease without the victim's volunteering for it, that pusher is a criminal and should be prosecuted appropriately. Please note that I have tried to distinguish between a "pusher" and something seldom spoken of, a "retailer".
Someone who sells to a user when said user initiates the sale is a retailer. Someone who introduces a non-user into usage is a pusher. Again, this subject is so charged with confusing terminology I have to select terms for specific meanings and try to stick with them. "Pusher" and "retailer" are different concepts and I try to reliably use the words as stated above.
KitemanSA wrote: To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime.
OK. Now suppose we change the premise to one more in accordance with facts. Addiction is a deficiency disease.
Addiction to drugs is almost always an INDUCED deficiency disease. To the degree that a "pusher" is party to inducing said disease without the victim's volunteering for it, that pusher is a criminal and should be prosecuted appropriately. Please note that I have tried to distinguish between a "pusher" and something seldom spoken of, a "retailer".
Someone who sells to a user when said user initiates the sale is a retailer. Someone who introduces a non-user into usage is a pusher. Again, this subject is so charged with confusing terminology I have to select terms for specific meanings and try to stick with them. "Pusher" and "retailer" are different concepts and I try to reliably use the words as stated above.
Look. I have evidence for everything I have posted. Where in the h3ll is your evidence for the bolded statement?
BTW if we are going after "pusher" that would mainly be friends. So are you willing to put some 17 year old away for a LONG time for "pushing drugs" on a 16 year old friend?
And it is as I suspected. You have read exactly none of the evidence I presented. You know. Research. Some of it published in actual medical journals.
Tell you what though. Just read this and get back to me.
I swear. You seem to have gotten your drug education from Reefer Madness .
The movie features this in the opening:
The Incidents and Characters portrayed in this film are purely fictional and any similarity to actual occurrences and living or deceased persons is coincidental.
Take it to heart.
And a final note for my conservative friends - "The Drug War is the Global Warming of the Right."
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
If drugs where legalized, they would have to be regulated. The current drug dealers would switch to sell drugs outside of those regulations so they can still have a market, when large drug companies take over. So once again, they will be criminals and the same thing will keep going on, even worse...
That is the exact thing we have seen in America with the end of alcohol prohibition. Criminals can be found all over the country selling alcohol in competition with Walgreens. The government set taxes so high that moonshiners are back in business. - Of course I'm telling a story. The criminals are out of business. The profits are too meager.
The criminals are always looking for better profit opportunities and it is up to government to see that they get them. Think of it as price supports for criminals.
Economist Milton Friedman wrote a nice piece on socialism for criminals:
If we want to make sure we always have enough criminals it is important to turn as many vices into crimes as possible.
The Opium Trade
"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us."
-- Directors of Jardine-Matheson
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
The text of Shirley Dorsey's suicide note follows:
"They want to take our property, security and herbal medicine from us, even though we have not caused harm to anyone.
"It is not fair or in the best interest of the people of society.
"I will never testify against you or our right to our home. I will not live in the streets without security and a place to sleep.
"I am old, tired and ill, and I see no end to the harassment and pressures until they destroy us."
She committed suicide to keep her boyfriend from prison and to try and save his retirement funds. They put him in prison, took his domicile, and all his retirement funds. All because he was her supplier. And therefore a notorious danger to the community. See link on previous page. Or Google her name.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Again, all I can say is viagra. It is legal, it is regulated, yet the black market for cheap, often dangerous knock offs is booming. This black market is run by- of course- criminals!
So why would it be different with drugs.
Skipjack wrote:Again, all I can say is viagra. It is legal, it is regulated, yet the black market for cheap, often dangerous knock offs is booming. This black market is run by- of course- criminals!
So why would it be different with drugs.
Price my man. Price.
Explain why criminals don't deal wheat. Or tap water.
====
Let me explain it to you: there is a thriving black market in cigarettes in America. Why? The taxes are now so high in some places that smuggling pays.
You really want to put the criminals out of business? Set the vice taxes low enough that criminals can't compete. In fact don't tax vices any more heavily than other activities would be the best.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
This is a perfect example of my thesis: when it comes to their favorite government objective righties get all stupid about economics. Of course the left is no different. They just have different objectives.
I find it especially true of the drug war. You want an exquisite economic analysis? Ask a leftie. The right gets suddenly stupid. And when it comes to the rest of economics the left gets stupid and the right gets smart. You would observe generally that people can't think past their own prejudices.
Unfortunately for me I am incapable of that kind of blinkered thinking. If I got into the habit it would ruin my value as an engineer.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
IntLibber wrote:
Actually, syphillis is native to native americans, the european explorers brought it back to europe from the Americas. And they had fun stuff like marijuana, peyote, coca, guarana, and psilocibin mushrooms for a pharmacoepaeia. So your premise is false.
We were talking about the inuit. How is my premise false in context?
Inuit are native americans. Amanita muscaria is and has historically been used by them in their shamanistic practices pretty commonly.
Yes, Inuit fall into the subcatagory of "Native Americans" but it is inaccurate to portray them as typical "Native Americans". Their way of life and their customs are quite different from most Indian tribes
A few quick checks on the internet reveals that usage of hallucinogenic mushrooms were restricted to rituals involving Shamen, and was intended as a religious experience. Widespread usage of the drug for recreational purposes is not indicated, and this only makes sense, because a hunter doped up on psychedelic mushrooms, wouldn't be able to feed himself, let alone anyone else.
Diogenes wrote: And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well?
I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here. I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.
I suspect that if the result of coming "out" concerning their drug addiction weren't so heinous due to the drug war, this type of lawsuit might actually happen with some regularity. Indeed, a criminal case for fraud (aside from enslavement) MAY be made against the drug pusher if that person were not up front about the dangers.
To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime. The psuher should be dealt with appropriately for those real crimes. Since one of the characteristics of being a child (in law and by social norm) is that the child is not competent to volunteer for such things, this would mean that the pusher has de-facto perpetrated a fraud against that child and should be prosecuted. The difficulty arises when the pusher is a child too. However, surely in that case "Faginy" charges should apply to the adult trafficker.
What I am proposing is to regard drug dealers and pimps (almost the same thing anyways) as equally bad, and suggesting that if execution is the answer to the white slave trade, then it ought to be the answer for the drug pusher as well. ( Seriously, the two vocations are virtually identical for all intents and purposes. Prostitution drives the drug trade in many cases.)
KitemanSA wrote: Addiction to drugs is almost always an INDUCED deficiency disease.
Look. I have evidence for everything I have posted. Where in the h3ll is your evidence for the bolded statement?
Sorry, I didn't realize it was in question. My statement is predicated on the understanding, obtained over years of reading about, watching shows on, discussing the issue, etc. that people are seldom, if ever, addicted by the first drug usage. It takes several uses, differing numbers for different people, to suppress the body's natural supply of the chemical which is replaced by the drug.
And if all your links were intended to counter that, sorry, you get so voluminous in your ejecta that I often stop reading after your initial statement.
No, I have neither the time nor inclination to go and find a kazillion sources on the issue. As I said, I didn't think it was in question.
KitemanSA wrote: Why is your government so lax wrt hideous crime? Personally, I suspect it is because their sense of right and wrong has been so perverted by years of "felonization" of vice that they can't distinguish vice from crime. This appears, from discussions herein, to be a common malady.
Trying to create boundaries between levels with no defining characteristics separating the two except degree, is the real malady, not just here, but everywhere else as well.
Either you are too dense to get it or you are willfully misrepresenting the situation. I have provided "defining characteristics seperating the two" perhaps a dozen times in this thread alone. Specific, definate, exact and unambiguous characteristics. So either quit lying (stop your willful misrepresentation) or admit you are too dense and just go away. Please?
I agree that there is a problem with someone "getting it." You are the one defining the "boundaries". (Subjectively I might add.) I am the one pointing out that there are no clear delineations. "Lawyer Chess" with words is what you are doing, because you want to believe your position has some objective truth in it.
Diogenes wrote: And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well?
I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here. I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.
I suspect that if the result of coming "out" concerning their drug addiction weren't so heinous due to the drug war, this type of lawsuit might actually happen with some regularity. Indeed, a criminal case for fraud (aside from enslavement) MAY be made against the drug pusher if that person were not up front about the dangers.
To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime. The psuher should be dealt with appropriately for those real crimes. Since one of the characteristics of being a child (in law and by social norm) is that the child is not competent to volunteer for such things, this would mean that the pusher has de-facto perpetrated a fraud against that child and should be prosecuted. The difficulty arises when the pusher is a child too. However, surely in that case "Faginy" charges should apply to the adult trafficker.
Claims that people get 'forced' into drugs is one more of the shibboleths of the ignorant antidrug gestapo. "Peer pressure" isn't force, either, any more than society made you spend too much money on your car or house.
Nobody was forced into voting for Obama. (Except perhaps dead people.) They were mislead by people they had no business trusting. (The Media People.)
Dirty deeds do not always require force. Often subtlety and guile work better. This does not make the offense less deadly.
KitemanSA wrote: To the degree that a "pusher" is party to inducing said disease without the victim's volunteering for it, that pusher is a criminal and should be prosecuted appropriately.
BTW if we are going after "pusher" that would mainly be friends. So are you willing to put some 17 year old away for a LONG time for "pushing drugs" on a 16 year old friend?
I would prosecute that 17 year old "friend" for defrauding someone regarding drug use as much as I would for any other comparable fraud by that 17 year old friend. If he sold his friend a car he knew to be a lemon while pretending it was running perfectly, wouldn't you think he should be prosecuted? I do. Similarly, if he defrauds a friend wrt drugs, he should be prosecuted for that too. Not for providing drugs as in some "drug war" horror scenario, but for fraud. You don't support fraud, do you?