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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
And citing that something exists de facto is not always a good argument for assigning it legitimacy. How about children using these drugs? That exists. Would you legalize that as well? If not, and I suspect not, then surely you draw some lines somewhere on the use and abuse of these drugs. |
Certainly minors let alone children should not be allowed to acquire even marijuana. I was 16 when I first did marijuana. I was 17 when I drank alcohol. Marijuana was simply more accessible. I was never stupid enough to smoke more than one cigarette in any given week. Perhaps this might clarify my position a little.
I think the most important step for any given substance is decriminalization. There is nothing more outrageous in the US criminal law system than the fact that users could get jail time. I define users as people who know the penalties for drug trafficking and refuse to do it but yet still consume. These people may need help and treatment, but certainly not incarceration.
I think it is a civil rights issue. I think users; not dealers, not manufacturers, not profiteers, have a right to consume what they do responsibly and see a doctor when something goes wrong. I think eventually the Supreme Court needs to uphold the right not to be incarcerated for abusing drugs in your own home.
As for hard drugs, well, I pretty much agree that they are addictive and terribly unhealthy. I do not think drug smuggling will be eradicated even should the US radically change its drug policy. However, drugs in an unregulated environment are more dangerous than those in a regulated one. |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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Again its optics. But that was not my main point against drug prohibtion.
1. It doesn't work. We are only continuing it to please conservatives and special interest groups i.e Cops, Prosecutors, Drug Companies
2. Its racist. The initial laws were racist in origin and the current prosecution is racist. Bush snorts blow and becomes president, a Black guy in Baltimore smokes a joint and get 2-5.
3. It's harming people. Not spending money on drug prevenftion and rehab is hurting millions (not to mention those in jail).
BTW thanks for admiting the US sold dope, now those who accuse me of just spouting BS anti-americianisms can shutup on that one. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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| If you intend to challenge this, please cite specifics and cite your sources so that we might all evaluate this claim. |
Indeed:
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But that is the way it is: American accept smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol but not illegal drugs, and especially not "hard" drugs like angel dust. |
And what definition of "hard" drugs are you using here?
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Octavius Hite wrote:
Maybe so, but we know that Air America was running smack out of southeast asia to fund anti-communist movements.
Yes they were. Absolutely. But they did not create said drug trade.
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Who said they created this drug trade? Are you suggesting that it mitigates running smack out of SEA because the CIA didn't create said drug trade?
So they were running heroin out of SEA but weren't running drugs out of Latin America? That's interesting. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| ...special interest groups i.e Cops, Prosecutors... |
I would delete "drug companies" from this as I do not know what you refer to here. I also disagree with you that these policies are "racist." (Everything that liberals do not like is always "racist," Octavius; the word has lost its meaning and credibility with me.)
That being said, I agree with you where I cite you, above: there is an entrenched antidrug bureaucracy that has an interest in perpetuating the so-called drug war (hazardous pay and bonuses for getting assigned to Colombia, for example). And legalizing the drug trade would solve this problem.
But I still disagree that legalizing drugs, particularly the "hard" drugs we have mentioned several times above, will solve anything at all. I would vote to legalize marijuana tomorrow and without hesitation.
The other ones, though...never.
| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| ...thanks for admiting the US sold dope, now those who accuse me of just spouting BS anti-americianisms can shutup on that one. |
But this is not news (regards the Vietnam War), Octavius. |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I would delete "drug companies" from this as I do not know what you refer to here. I also disagree with you that these policies are "racist." (Everything that liberals do not like is always "racist," Octavius; the word has lost its meaning and credibility with me.) |
By drug companies I mean Pfizer, Merck, Bayer, etc. If pot, MDMA, mushrooms, etc were legal their profits would plummet.. A parallel is this, why did ExxonMobil buy a battery company that made batteries for the GM electric car EV1? They don't like compettion. Big pharma is as evile as conglomerates get.
Racist. I know that us Liberals throw it out there but in this case its true. Anti-pot laws were created to imprison Mexicans. There were no laws to arrest them so the government created anti-drug laws to punish them for smoking the traditional herb. The government also helped create the myth of marijuana being dangerous see Reefer Madness.
In Canada our drug laws are a form of discrimination against Chinese labourers who rioted to protest unfair labour laws at the turn of the century. William Lyon Mackenzie setup a commision to figure out what the hell happened and they decided it was opium that caused the riots. The discrimintion against the Chinese continued. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:58 pm Post subject: |
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If I didn't know better, I'd swear my thread's been hijacked.
Pray tell, what does this have to do with my original bone of contention concerning Hugo Chavez and his traveling circus act? |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:37 am Post subject: |
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Well the article was about Venezuala backsliding on its "commitments" to control narcotics.
So I would say that Chavez also sees the drug war for what it is: a giant sham designed to keep DEA agents employed, Merck profits up and the US war machine churning out parts for 3rd world weapons systems. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 1:26 am Post subject: |
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This sums it up http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/11/opinion/edbaez.php
Also, I agree about the Pinocchio like snorting nose of hypocricy vis a vis drugs. Not because I am a lefty but because I just think it is for people themselves to control their actions, in these things. Govt , to support them in this process and not prohibit. Now time to get me a beer and put my feet up, free as I can seemingly be at this moment of time, space and waste.
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On the road with Bush and Ch�vez
Fernando B�ez Published: March 11, 2007
CARACAS: When I was a little boy in San F�lix de Guayana, a Venezuelan village on the banks of the Orinoco, the doctors who worked in the poorest communities were from the United States.
My father, an honest lawyer who was unemployed his entire life, felt a genuine sense of pride in the United States, and in time, he transmitted this pride to me. One of the first books he ever gave me, covered in an olive-green dust jacket and stamped with gold- foil letters, was an illustrated biography of John F. Kennedy, his personal hero.
All of this feels like nostalgia now. Today, the doctors in my hometown are Cuban.
Anti-American sentiment, always strong in Latin America, has only grown more acute in recent times, largely because Washington has treated us with indifference and disrespect since 9/11. Money once spent on foreign aid programs that not only fought drug trafficking but also supported education and social justice has been diverted to the war on terrorism.
Bush has arrived in a region with some 570 million inhabitants, of whom at least 40 percent are living in poverty and 50 million subsist on less than a dollar a day. There are more than 30 million indigenous people, a forgotten population that represents perhaps 80 percent of the most desperately impoverished even though many of them are members of tribes and residents of villages that share their lands with oil and mining companies.
Will Bush help to change this? Poor people believe that someone who builds a wall along the border with Mexico is not the kind of person who has faith in the benefits of free trade agreements.
For this, and for so many other reasons, I count myself among those who have resigned themselves to another lost opportunity, another failure to effect real change.
Fernando B�ez is the author of the forthcoming book "A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq." This article was translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish. |
DD |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:26 am Post subject: ... |
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| particularly the "hard" drugs we have mentioned several times above |
Which are defined as what?
Oh, and are you saying that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons? |
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