(10 votes, average: 4.3 out of 5)
Loading ...The war on drugs needs to end.
While we’re at it, let’s end the war on smoking, sex, alcohol, caffeine, and people who don’t wear their seat belts, too. If I […]
Original post: The War on Drugs is Bullshit
The war on drugs needs to end.
While we’re at it, let’s end the war on smoking, sex, alcohol, caffeine, and people who don’t wear their seat belts, too. If I […]
Original post: The War on Drugs is Bullshit
How about taking it a step further, and instead of trying to abolish it, legalize it and regulate it. Once you make it legal and start regulating it, you get rid of a lot of the problems that are associated with drugs, like having even more dangerous stuff mixed in with them. In addition to making the drugs safer, you can also tax the shit out of them. I don’t use drugs, so I could use the tax break in other aspects of my life.
The drug industry is such a big one, there’s so much money the government is missing out on, all because they have a stick shoved too far up their ass to be a bit progressive.
I’m gonna go out a limb here and say I thought everybody knew the war on drugs was a worldwide money laundering operation. I just thought it was common knowledge. Not to mention all the cheap prison labor from non-violent drug offenders. Seems pretty obvious to me.
Agreed: legalize, regulate and tax. The Roman\s did so with their sex industry and it worked beautifully. Instead of the false posturing and pouring billions into efforts which simply do not work, leaglize, regulate and tax.
Aside from the jobs it would create in the federal govt, it would legitimize the efforts of the poor bastard farmers in Pakistan and other places: the US comes in and destorys their poppy fields and they have no other means of income so they start growing poppies again… they should have the right to do that legally and without US interference, shouldn’t they?
So very, very agreed.
This comes up nightly at our house as we watch on the news how the baby rapers walk out of jail to re-offend practically every 3 months and yet we insist on imprisoning people calmly enjoying a bong and some good music with friends and several bags of Cheetos if they happen to have too much in their pockets (the green stuff, not the Cheetos). Why is that?
Now, if someone is drunk/high while driving and endangering the rest of us - off to jail. Ditto if you break into my house or steel guard rails to sell the metal for meth money. Meth might be one I’d still like to see banned because the meth turds do historically and habitually screw with other people - that pisses me off. Pot smokers don’t tend to be like that - if anything there’s likely to be less of any kind of a reaction. If they thought about robbing your house, they might giggle a little, forget what they were thinking, remember, giggle some more, eat another fistful of Cheetos, take another hit, hang out, maybe fall asleep or just feel really, really mellow, man.
In any case, V’s right on this one. The government has way more important things to do than to care about what we do to ourselves when it’s not harming anyone else.
And I’m all about what rbf2000 had to say, too. Even better.
I couldn’t agree more with this post. Unfortunately it’s all about the money and nothing to do with our safety. Years of propaganda (aka, war on drugs) have convinced people that drugs are evil and that people who use them are criminals. I would wager that the tobacco and alcohol industries had a hand in that to reduce competition. The funny thing is, it would probably be harder to get drugs if they were available in a store and required ID. I mean, who didn’t know someone growing up who could score for them, I never had a problem getting drugs when I wanted.
The war on drugs is a big mistake. Prohibition never works. If people want something bad enough, they’ll get it. You’d have thought people learned that back in the 20s. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States )
But seat belt and helmet laws I can sorta see the point to. If I didn’t have to pay for it, I wouldn’t care. But I -do- pay for it, in the form of higher insurance premiums and government medical payments because you snapped your spinal cord and need to pay someone to wipe your ass for the rest of your life. They could put a rider on the policy saying that they won’t pay for anything if you’re not wearing seat belts/helmets, but that’s wide open for abuse by the insurance companies.
Same thing with smoking. I don’t care if you light up. They’re your lungs, not mine. But the no smoking laws are not for the benefit of the smoker - they’re for the benefit of the non-smoker who has no choice about breathing in the second-hand smoke. And get rid of the tobacco subsidies. The tobacco farmers can charge more to make up for it, and they’ll get it. Their customer base is addicted.
I agree with #6. What pisses me off is that I do have to pay for other people’s decisions. If you want the right to not wear a seatbelt… go for it, but I want the option of not buying the $800 worth or exploding airbag crap that the government has mandated because of you. I want to be able to buy a cheaper insurance policy that explicitly states I’m not covered in the even of an accident and I’m not belted in. You want to ride motorcycle in nothing but a thong bikini and sandals…. go for it but don’t expect any insurance coverage or disability welfare. You want to kill yourself…. that’s your choice… including the baby still inside you.
It’s time people were treated like adults able to make their own decisions and forced to deal with the consequence of them.
Some of you are missing the point that while you may not care if a guy wants to ride his motorcycle 90 mph w/o a helmet - when he crahses you pay for it in many ways. Your taxes pay for the ambulance services - he will then tie up medical resources that could be used for other things, will get state disabilty, etc.
so while I do not really care if that idiot wants to kill himself, I do not want to pay for it and if his wearing a helmet saves the community some $ - then I am all for it.
@8 ANY person who crashes a motorcycle is going to use up medical resources. An ambulance will have to come whether he was wearing a helmet or not. Sure, it’s more likely that the non-helmet user will die, but that doesn’t negate the fact the the one with the helmet will still cost the community money.