Scott_in_WVA
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Shhhhh.Now you are on me........darn.
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Drug Legalization
- Thread starter RoyJackson
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Anonymous Poster
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While some of your observations are interesting, VietFNam being a whole different thread, I find your concept of a state of emergency odious. In my area, Rochester, NY, the Mayor has just held a press conference where he has stated he is P1$$ed about all the viloence caused by drugs, and intends torun all the drug dealers and violent folk out of town, to Utica or Syracuse. This is the same Mayor who thru his minions managed to so totally screw up "Project Exile" where illegal firearms posession sent the offender toa far off Fed prison, that the Feds pulled out. He's also the Mayor who's Soninlaw, the Jamacan exchange student (read that attending GED classes) / drug dealer was shot right infront of a cop who actually managed to arrest the shooter, even though the same cop wasn't allowed to bust the Mayor's drug dealing eschange student Soninlaw.
The reality is that it's all about BULLSNOT. Politicians don't give a flat dam about drug use, many of them recreationally use themselves. The more BULLSNOT the politicians spread in front of the cameras, the more money that flows.
Were the US serious about ending the use of illegal drugs, we could simply fence large already federally owned areas of New Mexico, so what if they are radioactive, and send the junkies there for rehabilitation. Lets even be generous, to the junkies, and give each of them a claw hammer as we shove them thru the gate, so they can avail themselves of the abundant pile of scrap pallets we'd provide so they could build housing. We could also in the building process, install sallyports thru which food water and of course FREE DRUGS could be delivered, to sustain the incarcerated. Frankly, I don't give a rusty rats a$$ if any of them survive or not.
I'm beyond tired of junkies, including my stepson, who I'd personally deliver to the entrance. Junkies are not productive citizens. By deleting them from the general population the nation would be better served. For those who survive, after an a8 month period of proving themselves drug free they could be paroled to an outer ring where they could be employed as service providers to the addicted. It would be a workable system.
Oh sure, there would be those, like my wife, who would maintain it was cruel, and possibly even inhumane, but there will always be malcontents in any society.
Rehabilitation hasn't worked so far, actually I contend that it is impossible to rehabilitate anyone who never had a lick of ability to begin with, so why not give my Social Garbage Disposal System a test run?
The reality is that it's all about BULLSNOT. Politicians don't give a flat dam about drug use, many of them recreationally use themselves. The more BULLSNOT the politicians spread in front of the cameras, the more money that flows.
Were the US serious about ending the use of illegal drugs, we could simply fence large already federally owned areas of New Mexico, so what if they are radioactive, and send the junkies there for rehabilitation. Lets even be generous, to the junkies, and give each of them a claw hammer as we shove them thru the gate, so they can avail themselves of the abundant pile of scrap pallets we'd provide so they could build housing. We could also in the building process, install sallyports thru which food water and of course FREE DRUGS could be delivered, to sustain the incarcerated. Frankly, I don't give a rusty rats a$$ if any of them survive or not.
I'm beyond tired of junkies, including my stepson, who I'd personally deliver to the entrance. Junkies are not productive citizens. By deleting them from the general population the nation would be better served. For those who survive, after an a8 month period of proving themselves drug free they could be paroled to an outer ring where they could be employed as service providers to the addicted. It would be a workable system.
Oh sure, there would be those, like my wife, who would maintain it was cruel, and possibly even inhumane, but there will always be malcontents in any society.
Rehabilitation hasn't worked so far, actually I contend that it is impossible to rehabilitate anyone who never had a lick of ability to begin with, so why not give my Social Garbage Disposal System a test run?
EdKing
Platinum Member
I watched a program on the History Chanel about illeagel drugs. It is interesting to note, the reasons for making marijuana illeagel were purely political/economic. Texas lobbied heavily for it because the Mexican immagrants used it, and they wanted to keep them out of the country. The government didn't like the fact that it can be grown easily almost any where in the country, making collecting tax revenues on it very difficult.
patrickg
Veteran Member
Franz, Back in school, did you ever hear of something referred to as a "Modest Proposal?" Don't take everything at face value, allow for a litle alegorical excess in support of a general contention.
A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, First Published in 1729.
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN OF POOR PEOPLE IN IRELAND FROM
BEING A BURDEN TO THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE
PUBLIC.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316ktexts/swift.html (If this URL doesn't work for you, just about any search engine will get multiple hits on "a modest proposal")
Some might find this treatise to be offensive, some definitely find it of extreme sarcastic wit employing virtually unbridled excess for the purpose of enlightenment.
Read the piece. Then note, except for the stilted linguistic style of the period that we now find entertaining or quaint or both, how very little would be required to be changed in a word processor, substituting doper for beggar and the like to bring it right up to date with our modern condition.
Oh by the way, I don't disagree with all of your "flight of fancy" either.
Perhaps, a variation on the "friends, Romans, countrymen theme" would have been less transparent.
AND YES, many threads have been themed by Viet Nam and many more will be. My reference was to illustrate the simple point that if you are going to do something, do it well, not like we prosecuted the Viet Nam fiasco. Don't be like the timid pet owner who not wanting to cause his puppy great distress over losing his tail, decided it best to cut it off a quarter inch each week.
And Franz, note that I have been long a proponent of making prisons essentially self sustaining sustenance farms where in general prisoners must grow what they eat and weave and sew what they wear with a pretty strict, no work no eat policy. Strict but not cruel discipline with both negative and positive reinforcement. Work hard and follow the rules and you get some entertainment, dessert with supper, approved magazines. Act up and you get a nourishing healthy diet that is perhaps a tad bland & boring, no tokens for the treat vendor. Of course this would not be PC, tooooo cruel and inhuman. Bullsnot! I wouldn't ask the prisoners to do much my mom didn't do as a kid growing up in a family of 5 children of a sharecropper who never owned an internal combustion engine or had a phone in his entire life. If there were truly redeemable qualities in an inmate I would permit the prisoner to choose the "education track" rather than the agricultural track and allow them a 1/2 time for work and 1/2 for classes that would either make them employable if released in the world or a better contributor to their prison society if not releaseable. Same incentive sustem. Good honest hard scholarship gets you perks, malingering gets you the boot back to the fields or the clothing mill or whatever.
Perhaps a bit more complex than your suggested solution but not all that different on the botom line. Identify your self through your actions as someone who needs to be removed from society and you are removed. It is likely that having to work hard to eat and wear clothes is as good a deterrent as capitol punishment but I am not making a case for its abolisment. Our prison systems are NOT working any better than our war on drugs. If we could deal effectively but humanely with the problem and not let PC keep us in our current quagmire, society would be all the better for it.
I also happen to believe that it IS possible to stem the flow of drugs into prisons and would be in the self sustaining sustenance farming prison I envision. I also believe that violent acts inside prison should be dealt with humanely but with strict measures relating to discipline and no work no eat. I see no reason why repetitive violent acts shouldn't qualify for capitol punishment. Why feed and clothe anyone who will not cooperate in feeding and clothing themselves?
You can't maintain a civilization by constantly, though incrementally, decriminalizing acts. Yes, you can stop crime entirely, just revoke all criminal statutes. Now nothing is illegal so there are no crimes or criminals. Is that the world you want to live in? As soon as a hard decision has to be made, where some group or voting block will be displeased no matter which way we go, the weak willed among us decide not to decide. This is a large part of the drug decriminalization rationale. The war on drugs isn't really being waged well, and prisons aren't really working so rather than do the unpopular thing and MAKE THEM WORK, lets all pretend they aren't needed and just make everything legal. If it is hard and complicated and difficult to get concensus, lets just change it so we don't have to make hard decisions. Make it legal and pretend life is scripted by Disney and everything will be OK. Why not stop all wars that the US might ever get into and save a lot of money at the same time. Disband all US miltary forces at home and abroad and dismantle all our military hardware. Look at the $ saved, AND no soldier, sailor, airman, or marine will ever be sent into harms way. Ahh, a perfect world, at peace, no drug problems, lots of revenue to spend on welfare and entitlement programs...
Patrick
A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, First Published in 1729.
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN OF POOR PEOPLE IN IRELAND FROM
BEING A BURDEN TO THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE
PUBLIC.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316ktexts/swift.html (If this URL doesn't work for you, just about any search engine will get multiple hits on "a modest proposal")
Some might find this treatise to be offensive, some definitely find it of extreme sarcastic wit employing virtually unbridled excess for the purpose of enlightenment.
Read the piece. Then note, except for the stilted linguistic style of the period that we now find entertaining or quaint or both, how very little would be required to be changed in a word processor, substituting doper for beggar and the like to bring it right up to date with our modern condition.
Oh by the way, I don't disagree with all of your "flight of fancy" either.
Perhaps, a variation on the "friends, Romans, countrymen theme" would have been less transparent.
AND YES, many threads have been themed by Viet Nam and many more will be. My reference was to illustrate the simple point that if you are going to do something, do it well, not like we prosecuted the Viet Nam fiasco. Don't be like the timid pet owner who not wanting to cause his puppy great distress over losing his tail, decided it best to cut it off a quarter inch each week.
And Franz, note that I have been long a proponent of making prisons essentially self sustaining sustenance farms where in general prisoners must grow what they eat and weave and sew what they wear with a pretty strict, no work no eat policy. Strict but not cruel discipline with both negative and positive reinforcement. Work hard and follow the rules and you get some entertainment, dessert with supper, approved magazines. Act up and you get a nourishing healthy diet that is perhaps a tad bland & boring, no tokens for the treat vendor. Of course this would not be PC, tooooo cruel and inhuman. Bullsnot! I wouldn't ask the prisoners to do much my mom didn't do as a kid growing up in a family of 5 children of a sharecropper who never owned an internal combustion engine or had a phone in his entire life. If there were truly redeemable qualities in an inmate I would permit the prisoner to choose the "education track" rather than the agricultural track and allow them a 1/2 time for work and 1/2 for classes that would either make them employable if released in the world or a better contributor to their prison society if not releaseable. Same incentive sustem. Good honest hard scholarship gets you perks, malingering gets you the boot back to the fields or the clothing mill or whatever.
Perhaps a bit more complex than your suggested solution but not all that different on the botom line. Identify your self through your actions as someone who needs to be removed from society and you are removed. It is likely that having to work hard to eat and wear clothes is as good a deterrent as capitol punishment but I am not making a case for its abolisment. Our prison systems are NOT working any better than our war on drugs. If we could deal effectively but humanely with the problem and not let PC keep us in our current quagmire, society would be all the better for it.
I also happen to believe that it IS possible to stem the flow of drugs into prisons and would be in the self sustaining sustenance farming prison I envision. I also believe that violent acts inside prison should be dealt with humanely but with strict measures relating to discipline and no work no eat. I see no reason why repetitive violent acts shouldn't qualify for capitol punishment. Why feed and clothe anyone who will not cooperate in feeding and clothing themselves?
You can't maintain a civilization by constantly, though incrementally, decriminalizing acts. Yes, you can stop crime entirely, just revoke all criminal statutes. Now nothing is illegal so there are no crimes or criminals. Is that the world you want to live in? As soon as a hard decision has to be made, where some group or voting block will be displeased no matter which way we go, the weak willed among us decide not to decide. This is a large part of the drug decriminalization rationale. The war on drugs isn't really being waged well, and prisons aren't really working so rather than do the unpopular thing and MAKE THEM WORK, lets all pretend they aren't needed and just make everything legal. If it is hard and complicated and difficult to get concensus, lets just change it so we don't have to make hard decisions. Make it legal and pretend life is scripted by Disney and everything will be OK. Why not stop all wars that the US might ever get into and save a lot of money at the same time. Disband all US miltary forces at home and abroad and dismantle all our military hardware. Look at the $ saved, AND no soldier, sailor, airman, or marine will ever be sent into harms way. Ahh, a perfect world, at peace, no drug problems, lots of revenue to spend on welfare and entitlement programs...
Patrick
knucklehead
Platinum Member
Never happen, and I'm afraid I have to stand against it, because we will have to take care of all the users, not let natural selection take it's course. And that hemp as a agricultural product theme plays real well with anyone who has seen or felt the sedative nature of THC on the body and mind. I just can't see old farmer John toiling in the field when there's a cool breeze blowing through the barn, and a big crop o' ganja hanging from the rafters. Yeah, I know, certain types are grown for the fiber and are not really smokable. Just how long do you think farmer John is gonna grow fiber at piddley cents per acre when he can grow buds for big bucks, either for the pharmaceutical companies, or for the natural users? Priced any lately? And how do you keep the neighbor kids outta the crop? Rock salt over a light load of powder, applied liberally to the assal region, is not the solution de riguer anymore.
Money? I'd think the associated taxes/ licensing/regulation, and subsequent growth of the ATF to the DAFT (hee hee hee) would be wildly popular on Capitol Hill.
Drugs similar to alcohol? Nope! It is intoxication that leads to problems, and it's mighty hard not to get intoxicated using drugs. So there is a difference between drugs and alcohol, regardless of the multitude of problems alcohol causes. The problems with alcohol abuse should actually be a reason NOT to legalize drugs, as they are more potent.
Given my beliefs about the limited role of government, and personal responsibility, I may agree on the surface. But that's being neglected by parents, teachers, the media, and the government, so I say NO. Plus, the government wants us to foot the bill for those who won't (won't, not can't) take care of themselves, and will simply extend the pleasure to drug users.
Until I see the country led by men who understand personal responsibility (we have one in the White House, and maybe this November will bring more), and the population starts to act as adults and not victims, I can't swing to the Libertarian view, even though it makes sense on some planes.
Money? I'd think the associated taxes/ licensing/regulation, and subsequent growth of the ATF to the DAFT (hee hee hee) would be wildly popular on Capitol Hill.
Drugs similar to alcohol? Nope! It is intoxication that leads to problems, and it's mighty hard not to get intoxicated using drugs. So there is a difference between drugs and alcohol, regardless of the multitude of problems alcohol causes. The problems with alcohol abuse should actually be a reason NOT to legalize drugs, as they are more potent.
Given my beliefs about the limited role of government, and personal responsibility, I may agree on the surface. But that's being neglected by parents, teachers, the media, and the government, so I say NO. Plus, the government wants us to foot the bill for those who won't (won't, not can't) take care of themselves, and will simply extend the pleasure to drug users.
Until I see the country led by men who understand personal responsibility (we have one in the White House, and maybe this November will bring more), and the population starts to act as adults and not victims, I can't swing to the Libertarian view, even though it makes sense on some planes.
Hemp is still a major cash crop in Europe and I don't see many problems associated with it. It was a major cash crop here from the beginning of the nation until it became "the devil's weed with roots in hell" in the 1930's. Canada grows hemp.
Do you have some evidence of the problems you associate with growing hemp or are you just speculating based on personal prejudges?
Do you have some evidence of the problems you associate with growing hemp or are you just speculating based on personal prejudges?
knucklehead
Platinum Member
I'm just speculating based on common sense. I'm actually interested in natural products such as hemp and biodiesel, but most of the time I can't get anyone to give me any info, because they don't know anything more than to parrot it's use as a fibre crop in their rush to get drugs legalized. And then they get testy when questioned.............can you give me some info?
I still stand by my original statement - who would grow fibre when buds are more lucrative?
I still stand by my original statement - who would grow fibre when buds are more lucrative?
Anonymous Poster
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<font color=blue>who would grow fibre when buds are more lucrative?</font color=blue>
Most everyone wears cotton, but a small percentage of those people (I hope) smoke weed. If the fibre could be made cheaper and with better quality as cotton (two big ifs), wouldn't the fibre aspect be just as profitable as the bud aspect? Also couldn't the fibre kind be legalized without the bud kind being legal? Sort of like non-alcohlic beer? Maybe the cotton industry is keeping weed down. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
Most everyone wears cotton, but a small percentage of those people (I hope) smoke weed. If the fibre could be made cheaper and with better quality as cotton (two big ifs), wouldn't the fibre aspect be just as profitable as the bud aspect? Also couldn't the fibre kind be legalized without the bud kind being legal? Sort of like non-alcohlic beer? Maybe the cotton industry is keeping weed down. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
knucklehead
Platinum Member
You're a silly man, Ben. Might be that Japanese wheeled chainsaw you're ridin'.
I think Ozarker needs a hug, too, Ben. You first - I wanna see if he bites.
I think Ozarker needs a hug, too, Ben. You first - I wanna see if he bites.
ptonline
New member
i am coming the other way on this. in the Netherlands,soft drugs(marijuana and derivatives) have been legal for over 30 years.the government collects taxes on it and uses the proceeds to fight hard drugs trafficking. the coffe shops(places where they sell the stuff) are mostly frequented by tourists and people from the neighbouring countries because drug use among Dutch youth has decreased over the years. you cited the example of Turkey,fine,but would you want to live in such a place. many countries ,mainly in europe,are now following the Dutch----Switzerland and Portugal have legalized weed for personnal use and others have decriminalized it(U.K.,Sweden,Denmark,etc). in my own country,Canada, pot use wont be a crime very soon,the laws have not been enforced for a long time anyway. if not for the pressure from big brother to the south,pot would already be legal up here. the U.S. government has its own agenda,the DEA is a lobbying group in itself.the drug laws in the USA are archaic and infringe on human rights . cannabis(i.e.-weed,pot,marihuana or whatever you wanna call it) is alot less harmful and addictive than your cigarettes or gin n tonic and is even beneficial to some people./w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif PTOnline