Do you support the War on Drugs?

[Desert_Eagle]

Well if you support the war on drugs... [EDIT]. It has been a tremendous failure in terms of improving life in this country and it simply does not work. It sends thousands upon thousands of people to jail and prison for no reason and is the primary reason for overcrowding. It expands police and government power and encourages them to violate our rights. It encourages the government to take on a nanny role and use indoctrination and propaganda to further it's goals. It forces us to meddle in the affairs of other countries.

[B.A.Baracus]

[EDIT]
First I just wana say 2 of the three options on your poll are "Im ignorant"
However I do happen to agree with your opinion though, the drug laws and police forces target the little guys, like small street dealers and buyers, when it should be targeting people like the drug trafficers. Busting the same man every week for selling weed out his back window aint gonna stop anything.

[EDIT: Create a new thread for that if you wish]

[Mtank]

Yes, I am pretty ignorant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

It seems to me that you're poisoning the well.

You don't need to tell me how unbiased your opinions are, but I would humbly request some form of data, say, statistics, figures, articles, etc. that back up your claims.

[Neo]

You could always check it for yourself; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs

Although, I think its basically a given. I mean most people realize that the war on drugs isn't working like it ought to be.

Didn't someone in the Government tell the coast gaurd something like "if they wrapped it in marijuana it would get through..." talking about how terrorists could get a nuke into the us.

Its a joke, personally I don't think they really try all that hard... or rather try hard enough.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/12/24/Worldandnation/GAO__Data_too_fuzzy_t.shtml

-Neo

[pixels]

not only is it a failure but yeah its also a retarded principle

and theres a dude that works for the govt that gets medicinal weed anyway.

[Neo]

Medicinal weed is supplied to, I believe, like 8 people total by the government itself.

They were on oprah or something.

There a few states (not that I remember them off the top of my head) that allow medicinal weed as well, that is, allow you to grow it.

-Neo

[Kazeofwinds]

Personally, I think the effort to eridicate drugs is a waste of money and slightly hypocritical.

The way I see it, if drugs were legalized they would become inhenrently less dangerous. Legalization allows for government regulation to assure a consistent level of quailty and will decrease the number of people dying from OD's,as well as making it possible the feds to tax them, thus netting more government revenue, that combined with the money saved by not having to send agents all over to hunt out crack dealers and potheads. The money saved can be invested into some more productive part of society, or simply rehab for the druggies.

Part of the attraction to <drugnamehere> is that its illegal, and carries some feeling of rebelling against the system (the same reasons for underage smoking/boozing, aside from getting shitfaced). Once the drug is legal, the rebellion factor is gone, and all the drug dealing gangs and such are out of business, leading to a theoretical drop in gang crime.

This is couple with my personal belief that it isn't the government's job to tell people how to live, nor is it anyone else's, and that people should be allowed to whatever they damn well please providing they aren't killing eachother and generally messing up society as a whole.

So yeah, that's my opinion, not airtight by any means, but that is what I think.

[Mtank]

You could always check it for yourself; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs


If he's the one who initiated the discussion, it's obligatory on him to make some effort to produce backup for his claims. I'm not about to go hunting around from them, and certainly not from Wikipedia.

Now, there's a difference between supporting the war on drugs in principle and supporting the past or current measures that it employs. I do feel that drug abuse is a problem that needs to be tackled, but not like it's being done now.

Also, I'm more concerned about the drug situation in my own country, rather than in the USA.

[Neo]

If he's the one who initiated the discussion, it's obligatory on him to make some effort to produce backup for his claims. I'm not about to go hunting around from them, and certainly not from Wikipedia.

Now, there's a difference between supporting the war on drugs in principle and supporting the past or current measures that it employs. I do feel that drug abuse is a problem that needs to be tackled, but not like it's being done now.

Also, I'm more concerned about the drug situation in my own country, rather than in the USA.
Then by all means, feel free to discuss the war on drugs, but stop attacking DE. All this crap stops now, and I will edit and/or delete and/or fix any and all of it in IR from now on.

The War on Drugs is a joke in the US, and has been for a long while. Hell, I can point you to aplace here where the cops sit and watch drug dealers work (I mean actually passing drugs off, accepting money, etc... its pretty fucked up).

-Neo

[TheBB]

Well, I voted yes, but I don't think I was aware of what you were really talking about.

If you mean the "war on drugs" as in precisely what the US government implies then I really don't know anything about it, but based on the replies here it sounds like a retarded concept.

If you mean something more general, as in an abstract movement against drugs, then obviously I am for it. Drugs and narcotics or whatever you want to call it, all have a firmly documented exclusively bad effect on every test subject. Clearly we should get rid of it! And perhaps just as clearly, at least in my opinion, legalising it is not the way to do it.

Smoking is legal, and the health hazard is just as well documented, although not quite as destructive, yet these are still ignored by smokers. In Norway, law requires smoke packages to be sold with health hazard warnings. On every single smoke package in the store, a fairly large black-on-white sign states something like "Smoking kills" or other less dramatic but equally true slogans. Still people buy this, even though they can't avoid reading this fact every time they do it!

Is there any reason to assume we can turn the drug tide by legalising and then push the propaganda button, when it failed with smoking? Drugs are substantially more addictive. I don't think it would work, so I'm against legalisation.

[Desert_Eagle]

And perhaps just as clearly, at least in my opinion, legalising it is not the way to do it.
Is there any reason to assume we can turn the drug tide by legalising and then push the propaganda button, when it failed with smoking? Drugs are substantially more addictive. I don't think it would work, so I'm against legalisation.

That is not the argument for legalization, it's a straw man. When the US prohibition on alcohol was removed, nobody argued that alcohol would go away. They simply realized that the prohibition wasn't working. You know, like how if you can't win a war it's pointless to fight.

Drugs should be legalized for the simple fact that making them illegal doesn't solve anything. It would be like making religion illegal but people still go to church and we overcrowd all of our prisons and waste billions of dollars trying to crackdown on religion which only makes them more extreme and creates more martyrs and followers. A pointless endeavour.

[TheBB]

Well, how many options do we have?

1. Do nothing. I don't think I need to explain why this is out of the question. People's lives are being ruined and bad guys get lots of money.

2. Legalise and do nothing. This is option 1 in different clothes. People's lives would still be ruined, and bad guys would still get lots of money. Of course, this time they are acting in accordance with the law and not "bad" - but if they were bad in #1, they sure as hell are bad here too. Society makes millions in taxes, so we're pretty much bad guys too!

3. Legalise and act on it. This is a truly bad way to patch up the problems we have in option 2. Here we try to combat the problem with different means. Public information campaigns, advertising, etc. As I have already stated before this hardly works. In fact, the amount of acting you can do in this regard is limited by the fact that, at the very bottom of it, the people who sell the drugs are actually allowed to do it.

4. Keep it illegal and act on it. This appears to me to be the best alternative, but the acting needs to be targeted, forceful and effective. Of course, this is a formidable challenge, but we did land on the moon and defeat Hitler also. If we put our collective minds to something we're halfway there already. Besides, mafia boss Provenzano was caught in Siciliy recently after some 40 years in hiding, and he had a supporting organization much more sophisticated than your average drug mastermind....

[Dark_Magneto]

Anybody that supports the war on drugs would have to be ignorant to the fact that the CIA runs those very same illegal drugs (http://gnn.tv/videos/viewer.php?id=1&n=1) into the country.

[Desert_Eagle]

1. Do nothing. I don't think I need to explain why this is out of the question. People's lives are being ruined and bad guys get lots of money.

Which is not solved by making them illegal, by the way.

Also, "bad guys" don't make money because it is no longer a black market. Economics 101.

2. Legalise and do nothing. This is option 1 in different clothes. People's lives would still be ruined, and bad guys would still get lots of money. Of course, this time they are acting in accordance with the law and not "bad" - but if they were bad in #1, they sure as hell are bad here too. Society makes millions in taxes, so we're pretty much bad guys too!

Like all the mafia "bad guys" still making money off of alcohol?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition

Some Prohibition agents took bribes to overlook the illegal brewing activities of gangsters. Many problems arose. It had been estimated that six million dollars would be needed to enforce prohibition laws. Over time, however, more people drank illegally and money ended up in gangsters' pockets. Gangsters would then bribe officials to ignore their illegal activities. The cost of enforcing prohibition laws thus increased. In some cases, the money likely ended up in corrupt Prohibition agencies.

Prohibition also presented lucrative opportunities for organized crime to take over the importation ("bootlegging"), manufacture, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. Al Capone, one of the most infamous bootleggers of them all, built his criminal empire largely on profits from illegal alcohol.

With alcohol production largely in the hands of criminals and unregulated clandestine home manufacturers, the quality of the product varied widely. There were many cases of people going blind or suffering from brain damage after drinking "bathtub gin" made with industrial alcohol or various poisonous chemicals. One particular notorious incident involved the patent medicine Jamaica ginger, known by its users as "Jake." It had a very high alcohol content and was known to be consumed by those desiring to circumvent the ban on alcohol. The Treasury Department mandated changes in the formulation to make it undrinkable. Unscrupulous vendors then adulterated their Jake with an industrial plasticizer in an attempt to fool government testing. As a result, tens of thousands of victims suffered paralysis of their feet and hands—usually, this paralysis was permanent. Some amateur distillers used old automobile radiators to distill liquor, and the subsequent product was dangerously high in lead salts--which usually led to fatal lead poisoning. Amateur distillation of liquor could be dangerous to the producer as well, since poorly built stills sometimes exploded in flames.


Many social problems have been attributed to the Prohibition era. A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Racketeering happened when powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies. Stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle. The cost of enforcing prohibition was high, and the lack of tax revenues on alcohol (some $500 million annually nationwide) affected government coffers. When repeal of prohibition occurred in 1933, following passage of the Twenty-first Amendment, organized crime lost nearly all of its black market alcohol profits, due to competition with low-priced alcohol sales at legal liquor stores. Organized crime later adjusted by selling illegal drugs instead. The black market thrives on the sale of any illegal product. On such points as these, the modern "War on Drugs" has been compared to Prohibition

3. Legalise and act on it. This is a truly bad way to patch up the problems we have in option 2. Here we try to combat the problem with different means. Public information campaigns, advertising, etc. As I have already stated before this hardly works. In fact, the amount of acting you can do in this regard is limited by the fact that, at the very bottom of it, the people who sell the drugs are actually allowed to do it.

Again, like I have adequately demonstrated, you have to be ignorant to take this position. Either you have absolutely no knowledge of economics or are unfamiliar with the drug warm or most likely both.

4. Keep it illegal and act on it. This appears to me to be the best alternative, but the acting needs to be targeted, forceful and effective. Of course, this is a formidable challenge, but we did land on the moon and defeat Hitler also. If we put our collective minds to something we're halfway there already. Besides, mafia boss Provenzano was caught in Siciliy recently after some 40 years in hiding, and he had a supporting organization much more sophisticated than your average drug mastermind....

More sophisiticated than the CIA?

By the way, when are you going to adress the fact that the drug war has done absolutely nothing to combat and prevent drug use in this country? More people use drugs now than they did before the drug war started. It doesn't work. That fact should be slamming you upside the head by now. According to the Drug Czar our efforts have had no measureable effect on either the availability or prevalance of drugs in the country, nor have they decreased the number of users measurably.

After all, we defeated Hitler, we can come up with a way to end democracy and find a truly benevolent dictator.

[Dark_Magneto]

The war on drugs actually makes drugs more lucrative because prohibitionism does nothing to destroy demand and forms well-paying underground black markets to traffic the stuff.

The best way to do away with the negative atmosphere of drugs funding terrorism, street violence, gang warfare, etc. is to legalize it and regulate it. That snuffs the underground black drug market right out, and by extention, all it's residual effects.

Nobody is going to buy some overpriced junk of questionable quality from some dealer off the street when they could go to a convenience store and get it clean and cheap.

[gatchaman]

The govt. is simply attempting to control the SACRAMENT. Sacraments are dangerous. They are dangerous because they work. Work? They WORK internally. They change your nervous system, and change your consciousness--they break the structure your life, this structure is a tool (used by the govt and you for order in your life).

War on drugs is propoganda.

What's external? why don't drugs effect things externally? Why aren't drugs externally dangerous?

The pollution of the air is dangerous externally. The drugs or sacraments physically effect nothing externally. Yet, they do strike fear in the people who do not take them...this is important. Because it is seen that the person who is into their sacraments, who is into the religions(it is a restructing of values and beliefs that's why i equate the used of drugs as religious), who has this strong drive BECOMES unresponsive to the common conditioning methods of pleasure/punishment...and this...this is scary...these people can no longer be controlled.

Control of drugs... CONTROL? govt has no right to control the inner workings, the internal effects, of the human.

The only sensible control of things of the inner workings of the body is self control. The only control is self control. Internally, what you feel and sense is your own business. Now, we truly cannot control anything. Yet we have this sense of control. And this sense of control is being reformated by the govt.. I would say the war on drugs is just part of this problem.

Well, how many options do we have?

1. Do nothing. I don't think I need to explain why this is out of the question. People's lives are being ruined and bad guys get lots of money.

2. Legalise and do nothing. This is option 1 in different clothes. People's lives would still be ruined, and bad guys would still get lots of money. Of course, this time they are acting in accordance with the law and not "bad" - but if they were bad in #1, they sure as hell are bad here too. Society makes millions in taxes, so we're pretty much bad guys too!


You're taking the third person. Take the first person. Tell me what you want. The only option is number one when you tell me what you want, from the heart.

Another thing.... what i mean by sacrament is something that is used to affirm belief...ie a jesus cross and star of david or a drug, etc etc.

To the public, religion is seen as a divine right of each person, not to be controlled. This is how drugs should be seen as.

fuck economics, bb, dm. think about this only concerning human nature and such.



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