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Contempt for illegal drug use blinds American public to alternatives
Coach is Right ^ | 8/25/13 | Bruce Karlson

Posted on 08/25/2013 8:46:19 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax

Please do not be guilty of the above when considering the legalization of all recreational drugs. Anyone is legally permitted to kill himself slowly with tobacco, once addicted. Equally, a person may legally drink himself to death and/or wreck the lives of those around him with a bottle a day. For such people we have compassion. But for the users of illegal drugs, most of us have only contempt.

It is difficult (impossible, actually) to understand the logic of making certain drugs illegal. Apart from legality, what is the difference between smoking a “joint” and having a beer? Further, doing a “line” of cocaine makes for an apt comparison with having a dry martini. Oh, the “gateway” routine? Well, weed may be a “gateway” drug but Budweiser and nicotine are the “gateways” to weed. Shall we continue this line of reasoning??

Society is visited with problems from both legal and illegal drugs but the illegal ones support a criminal culture that is bankrupting...

(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Health/Medicine; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: drugarrests; drugs; drugusers; libertarians; medicalmarijuana; prescriptiondrug; randsconcerntrolls
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To: JRandomFreeper

Paying what I pay in taxes is more than a pet peeve. Maybe I was typing to fast and my idea got muddled.

There are so many issues a conservative Congress needs to address: Taxes, laissez-faire economy, eliminating alphabet programs/agencies, foreign aid billions, subsidies subsidies subsidies, War on Terror, “phony scandals” along with who (both Rs and Ds) are involved in them, etc. I don’t think eliminating the unconstitutional war on drugs is necessarily at the top of that list. Does it need eliminated? Of course. However, our country is in such a mess right now that this is not going to be a priority.


81 posted on 08/25/2013 10:53:13 AM PDT by goodwithagun (My gun has killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car.)
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To: FatherofFive

Sigmund Freud — Cocaine
Francis Crick — LSD
Thomas Edison — Cocaine Elixirs
Paul Erdös — Amphetamines
Steve Jobs — LSD
Bill Gates — LSD
John C. Lilly — LSD, Ketamine
Richard Feynman — LSD, Marijuana, Ketamine
Kary Mullis — LSD
Carl Sagan — Marijuana

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/16/10_famous_geniuses_who_used_drugs_and_were_better_off_for_it_partner/


82 posted on 08/25/2013 10:54:15 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
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To: wintertime

The reason I don’t believe there were all those maladies in the 19th and early 20th century is because of the societal institutions from family to churches to community, which were strong. Today’s society is far different, constituted of vastly larger percentages of feral, amoral, deviant scum, cultivated by a combination of massive government dependence and a grotesquely vile culture.


83 posted on 08/25/2013 10:57:03 AM PDT by greene66
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To: goodwithagun
There is a push, mainly from the left, over this issue.

We should take wins where we can get them. The usupation happened piecemeal, the rollback will happen the same way.

/johnny

84 posted on 08/25/2013 10:59:03 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: greene66
The breakdown of 'of the societal institutions from family to churches to community' started in the early 1900s, when drug laws were enacted, along with a plethora of other unconstitutional b.s.

/johnny

85 posted on 08/25/2013 11:00:57 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: JRandomFreeper

It will almost have to happen piecemeal. Can you imagine the riots from the gibsmedats if not? I can already hear a certain “reverend” through a bullhorn.

How frightening is this: I waddled my pregnant a$$ into Walmart last night because we ran out of bananas and almonds. Those are my kids’ staple snacks. At the checkout was a woman in a homemade obama 2016 t-shirt paying for all her items with EBT. The events along the way to taking our country back are going to be violent I’m afraid.


86 posted on 08/25/2013 11:05:01 AM PDT by goodwithagun (My gun has killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car.)
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To: JRandomFreeper

And liberal states full of druggie scum are what put bastards like Obama in office. If all dopeheads would just overdose, the country would be a hell of a better place.


87 posted on 08/25/2013 11:05:49 AM PDT by greene66
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To: greene66
They aren't going to, and wishful thinking and police state tactics aren't going to help.

Rolling the federal government back into the constitutional box will help.

/johnny

88 posted on 08/25/2013 11:07:50 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: Viennacon
Yeah, good thing none of that happens over here, right?

So how many no-knock raids by guys with body armor and sub machine guns happen during the course of a year in those police states? I'm guessing it's a couple less than in this police state.

89 posted on 08/25/2013 11:12:06 AM PDT by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: goodwithagun
We see everyday, first hand, the drug use in the “urban culture.” legalizing will make the problem worse and bring it out into the public even more. So until some of those people literally die in the gutter because my tax dollars aren’t going to their treatments and od hospital stays, I don’t think this plan will work. If the government safety net still exists, expect very bad problems from legalization.

You have made a very insightful point that is often lost in this debate. Although drug legalization is often a part of a larger libertarian ideology, it would be a disaster if it were implemented on its own apart from the other components of the libertarian program.

As long as welfare and food assistance programs are in place, new addicts who divert their money and labors to their drug use will force taxpayers to pay for more of the food and housing costs for them and their children. Without first making real reforms to how we support those who refuse to work or can't support their families, drug legalization risks dramatically increasing this burden on those that do work.

Unless hospital emergency rooms are closed to the indigent and those who can't pay for medical care are left to die, the added cost of dealing with mass addiction and its consequences will be left to the taxpayers. The first debate has to be whether we want to live in a world without universal medical care before we risk increasing its cost.

If the criminal justice system is still publicly funded and criminals are housed in prisons rather than executed or exiled, taxpayers will have to cover the added burden of convicting and housing those who commit crimes in drug altered states or the crimes they commit to fund their addictions. Taxpayers will also have to deal with the extra burdens placed on law enforcement as well as the terrible consequences of the crimes themselves.

Drug legalization on its own would ultimately increase the role and scope of government in all aspects of our lives. I think that this may be why it is generally the political left that supports drug legalization as it furthers the rest of their agenda. No legislative changes which would increase the availability of addictive and mind altering drugs should happen before significant contractions of the welfare state are made.

90 posted on 08/25/2013 11:21:21 AM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: goodwithagun
Those figures will not go down with legalization under the current one party, bleeding heart system that we have. If anything the costs will rise.

Then keep paying your taxes.

91 posted on 08/25/2013 11:25:21 AM PDT by TigersEye ("No man left behind" is more than an Army Ranger credo it's the character of America.)
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To: Oldpuppymax

I don’t make the “gateway” argument. Once you start smoking pot, you’re already way past the gate. Pot is in and of itself totally destructive.

Unlike someone who has a martini on the weekend, pot users are demonstrably impaired the rest of the week. Ever work with a pot smoker? Whatever their job, they suck at it. They’re slow of speech because they’re slow of thought. They literally stink, even if they bathe.

Reputable doctors recognize the “medical pot” argument is completely bogus. Pot for cancer is like giving a shot of whiskey to a gunshot victim — sure, if that’s all you got. But modern painkillers are 10,000 times more effective than pot.

Schizophrenia and pot are linked. That’s reason enough to ban it.

Pot is evil, evil, evil, and no decent society should permit it — just like no decent society permits suicide.


92 posted on 08/25/2013 11:26:54 AM PDT by Blue Ink
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To: greene66

Coincidentally all those societal changes began almost exactly when the Federal government decided to enact laws to tax us and control us with punitive criminal laws.


93 posted on 08/25/2013 11:29:26 AM PDT by TigersEye ("No man left behind" is more than an Army Ranger credo it's the character of America.)
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To: Blue Ink
Pot is evil, evil, evil, and no decent society should permit it —

Are you willing to trash the Constitution to have the Feds involved in that?

/johnny

94 posted on 08/25/2013 11:29:38 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: TigersEye
The Constitution mentions very few federal police powers. Gun laws aren't in there, nor are drug laws.

/johnny

95 posted on 08/25/2013 11:31:06 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: JRandomFreeper

It just seems like there are a thousand more important areas to start hacking away at in terms of federal government overreach. Especially when any results of legalization are more apt to benefit a culture of “dependence.” Government dependence, dope dependence. Growing an ever-larger population of compliant serfs, just like in those Obama-voting blue states and their dopehead populations, who are the very ones always at the forefront pushing things like gun control, sanctuary cities, and fag marriage. Things that have already turned most of America into such a putrid sewer. Thanks to druggie scum.


96 posted on 08/25/2013 11:33:21 AM PDT by greene66
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To: Orangedog

This is a country with some good people left who stand in defiance of the federal government. The Scandinavian population are 99% brainwashed docile drones.


97 posted on 08/25/2013 11:36:20 AM PDT by Viennacon
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To: G Larry
This isn’t some libertarian, individual “right”, as the impacts to society are long term and severe.

So the US was just millions of drug crazed maniacs until the early 1900's? Too stoned for the industrial revelation, intercontinental railroads, harnessing electricity, the telegraph, telephone, airplane. None of that happened until drugs were made illegal?

98 posted on 08/25/2013 11:44:00 AM PDT by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: Viennacon
This is a country with some good people left who stand in defiance of the federal government.

Pffft...Color me un-impressed. They aren't even an effective speed bump, let alone defiant.

99 posted on 08/25/2013 11:46:31 AM PDT by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: G Larry

For Libertarian ideas to work, one must be free to succeed or fail. Perhaps all drugs could be legalized, if we were capable of standing idlely by and to witness the self destruction. Much of what claims to Libertarian is really the pursuit of consequence free self indulgence.


100 posted on 08/25/2013 11:47:09 AM PDT by Red Dog #1
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