When do we stop f**king around, and declare thsis to be a war?

[n8tive97]

Oh, to that: 100% agree. Its technically an act of war - tho I am fairly sure it would never get to that when push came to shove.

The problem from the Mexican side of things is that they have about as much control over the border as the Pakis have over their's, ie, none really. Legalizing drugs would be a good first strike against the orgs that do the most damage in that sense. Yes, hard drugs too. They are nasty things but prohibiting them only puts money into the pockets of extremely evil men.

Prohibition doesn't work and its a violation of the rights of Americans to boot. Yes, if you want to go shooting up speed every night, you're an idiot and you have a problem. However, making it illegal doesn't solve the actual cause, ie, the idiot sitting there willing to shoot up speed every night, and involves channeling money from legitimate businesses whose motivation is to make a buck and whose methods are free market competition into the hands of cartel bosses whose motivation is power over defenseless peoples and whose methods are murder.

There's really no upside to it.

So if I understand you correctly, your approach is to legalize it, tax the sh*t out of it and get out of debt? Thats your solution? Really?

[spyder]

So what all of you are saying is it is worth endangering more lives by legalizing drugs than to make punishments worse to get it to stop? Seriously? That is just kind of idiotic thinking to me.... Let the bad guys off the hook, and put unlimited access and easy to get hard drugs out the streets... Ya, well thought through plan, and while this genius plan rids us of all of the stupid people who abuse the drugs, and the innoscents who get taken out through crime or by accident by the spiked number of crack & meth heads ect, you guys are going to be hoping with the rest of us that we don't have to put a bullet through one of these newly found addicts heads to protect ourselves and families and hope they don't do anything else to endanger our lives? Have you guys ever been around someone who was actually jacked up on that shit? I really have to question it because while on those drugs, it really does alter the persons ability to think correctly. Most of the newly found legal drugs would be "tested" by most of the same people who try pot and drinking too. I'm glad you guys think that the majority of americans are smart enough not to do this, but you're wrong. It's proven that americans (most, not all) are some of the dumbest fucking people there are and if you defend the other side of the statement, you are either blind to statistics, or just going to argue for the sake of arguing. You are not thinking realistically at all. You would have the women that want to get skinny quick, oh look meth! The college, hell, high school parties with drinking and weed (which I do think they should legalize, weed that is) and then you throw in what was recently unaccessible hard drugs into the mix and get even more people addicted that are going to act like retards and endanger the people around them..... The many new ways all of these hard drugs are going to affect the population once made legal by either peer pressure, experimentation, or bordom I guess has just passed you guys by.

Everybody is saying that the drug prohibition has failed and I will agree. That however doesn't mean to give up and give in. That is the equivalent of giving up on punishing your child for repetedly doing the same bad thing and just telling them it is ok to do whatever bad thing they were doing so you don't have to come up with a worse punishment. So you start off slapping your childs hand when they are bad, and instead of making the punishment worse for their actions, you give in and say it's ok? Eventually you have to get worse with the punishment or the child doesn't care and will do whatever in the hell they want knowing what the max punishment already is and not caring abou it. So, are you just going to let your kids ack like little shits or do you step up the punishment? You're own little government is ran inside your own house, how do you deal with it? Do you still treat your child like it's two no matter what its age is? I'm guessing your punishments get worse so your kids don't look at you like your a retard when you slap their hands as they get older. So, how about taking the punishment a step further right now for drug producers, distributors, and users? Remember the pusification of america? Well how we punish our criminals falls right under that whole attitude and you guys are just helping it along I see. No one who does drugs and wants, needs them gives a fuck about our punishments because they are so pathetic, which is why they keep using them.

You guys say that people won't get stupid with the hard drugs because the general american public knows their limits? That is just a stupid arguement for many reasons one being because they are serious mind altering drugs that don't let you think correctly and do change the way you act, think, and percieve things while on the drug and over time on a permanent basis. We have all ran into people that were past hard core drug users that for lack of being able to describe how they act and talk, we describe them as crack heads. The hard drugs are not like alcohol which someone argued earlier about how horrible it was because it can kill you along with oxycotton ect., yet they still made it legal bla bla bla. Just because it can kill you doesn't make it all that horrible, hell drinking too much water can kill you (hyponatremia). What makes the other drugs dangerous, is the, let me say this again, "mind altering" abilities of it. You can come off being a hard core alcoholic with the only long lasting difference being a new state of awareness to the affects of alcohol. In pretty much all aspects the "hard" drugs are not comparable to alcohol so don't fucking try to give some stupid shit arguement about how they are. When was the last time you heard of someone giving head or sleeping with someone for a shot of alcohol? When was the last time a drunk guy jumped off a building thinking he could fly, drown thinking they were a fish, fought someone thinking they were a demon, bled out because they were clawing at their own flesh thinking there were bugs in or on it? Anyway the list can go on and on about how much worse the affects of hard drugs are in comparison, so don't compare them. You can compare MJ to alcohol all day long and alcohol is the worse one, but alcohol to the hard drugs is not a good comparison in the least bit.

I know a lot of you dislike the government for how it has its fingers in everything and I do to, but there are some things that they do for our own good. Yes, I know, you know not to use them, but I'm not talking about you personally, I'm talking about most of the general public which are a bunch of stupid ass morons. Like I said, instead of letting a bad problem get incredibly worse by turning it's nose at it, the government should for lack of better words "man up" and do something about the problem. The pusification of our government and the american people has reached an all time pathetic low and is just getting worse. Saying "it's ok" to do something doesn't get rid of the problem, it just makes it so it isn't "wrong", and when you say it is ok for people to do something they like, they do more of it. If you think they will know to limit their consumption of it, just remember, "mind fucking altering" and how much more addictive the hard drugs are than anything we have out there.

[n8tive97]

Spyder... RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!

That should put an end to this thread if anyone with any amount of common sense reads. I was banging my head on my desk in disbelief of what I was reading.

Spyder is a man of logic and massive amounts of common sense.

[Irving]

No one said anything about "taxing the shit" out of drugs. Only losers suggest that.

I just read Spyder's post. You guys are clinging to a fairy tale fantasy. The people who are prone to doing drugs, already do them. No law in the world will stop them. The people who already don't do drugs, won't start doing them just because the laws change. Everyone knows someone who doesn't drink at all, 10x more people who do drink, but don't abuse, and roughly the same amount of people whom are alcoholics as those who don't drink at all. How do the laws play into those numbers?

The fact is, you CANNOT legislate behavior.

I'm not even going to bother with comparing a government body trying to enforce laws to raising a child. This is silliness. It'd be nice if passing a law could effect people's behavior, but it is a pipe dream.

I could tear apart the rest of the post as well (no offense to you Spyder, of course), but I frankly don't see the point. We are standing across a gap that we just can't bridge and until you are willing to accept reality, argument is futile. No one is saying that those of us who feel the way we do, like that point, it's just that we've come to accept the reality that we live in.

[Fentonite]

All the arguments supporting drug prohibition were used, in some fashion, regarding alcohol prohibition. Hell, some of them are even used to support the prohibition of firearms. History has shown that prohibition of anything does not work, and usually benefits the bad guys. If firearms are banned, would there be no more gun ownership? Of course not, but there would no longer be firearms safety classes, safe ranges, competitions, forums like this, etc. Folks would still own guns, but would use them in a more dangerous fashion, and become a criminal by owning them.

Spyder's signature line says it well: "If you make something idiot proof, someone will make a better idiot." People will always figure out how to get what they want. Outlawing something will not make it unobtainable, it will only ensure that its possession requires criminal activity, which will likely cause harm at some level, in addition to the harm caused by the intrinsic danger of the banned item (gun, drug, booze, prostitute...).

(Hey Spyder - PM me your address, and I'll send you a copy of the book I mentioned earlier. It's a good read, even if you don't think you'll agree with it)

[flan7211]

Guys this is getting ridiculous. First off every law we have legislates behavior!!! You can't speed, you can't run a red light, you pay taxes for the general welfare, you shouldn't murder, etc. When I was in college smoking copious amounts of pot I was all for legalization of Marijuana. Out here in the real world though it is just ridiculous. You can't say to me that nice middle class neighborhoods will support this. It sounds fine to be against a prohibition on drugs, but we can't think libertarian idealism is equally just and rampant in the general populous as my friends on this forum. Yes reform is necessary but legalization is absurd.

[Irving]

The only reason people pay taxes is because it leaves your pay check before it gets to you.

[TDYRanger]

Hey look guys, I have a fool-proof plan that will kneecap the cartels.

Legalize drugs.

Wow, look, 98% of their funding just went away and Wal-Mart is declared the winner of the War on Drugs.

Sure was hard work, coming up with that solution. I'll take my payment in ammo.

100 years from now people will look back on this period like we look back on prohibition today. "Really? They tried to make what illegal? Were they retarded or something?"

You wan that in .223 or in 7.62x39?

[TDYRanger]

Just a couple of numbers to put into your brain...

Just for pot drug enforcement $160 billion last year
north of 1,000,000 in prison with pot related cases at an average of $32,000 per inmate. So say about $32 billion in prisoner housing. So roughly $190 billion per year just on pot enforcement. ($650 per american; every man woman and child)

The entire budget for the state of Colorado for 2010 was $28 billion

My issue is we have spent and spent and spent; and as of today the only thing we have done is made criminals rich and have driven our country closer to bankruptcy. Oh and by the way IT HASN'T WORKED FOR SHIT

Why is this? Just speaking about pot here; because; the tobacco, and petrol chemical, news paper, and burgeoning pharmaceutics industry had way better PR people (William Randolph Hearst) and better lobbyist's. Such a danger to America not criminalized until 1937.

I'll take the $200 billion per year back and maybe buy a new shotgun or save up a couple of years and go on that whitetail hunting trip


Give this a read it's pretty interesting: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/pot/blunderof37.html

Just so it's clear as well I don't smoke weed, tried it a couple of times and it was not my bag. I'm more of a Makers Mark guy. (thank you Irish ancestry)

[waxthis]

In his heyday, Bablo Escobar was worth over 25 BILLION prior to his death in 1993. Countless cartel members and even low level dealers within various organizations are currently worth tens if not hundreds of millions. No country can stop the will of easy money.

Spyder, I understand what you are trying to say, but it's not that easy, and believe me I have seen first hand the destruction of addiction in this country and abroad. As much as I hate to say it, legalize it. I would rather we gain a few more drug addicts "although I doubt it " rather then continue with billions in aid to a drug war the world has no chance of winning.

Lets Legalize it, tax it, and use the $$$$$ for awareness and addiction programs. Be a hell of a lot cheaper.