Storm swirls around drug sweep

Charleston Post & Courier ^ | 11/11/03 | STEVE REEVES AND ALLISON L. BRUCE

[Gargantua]

As the Feds (should have!) learned back during Prohibition, you'll never stop people who want to from buying inebriants. You never have, and you never will.

However, money for whiskey no longer goes to the Black Market because the Government made it legal. The exact same dynamic applies to "illegal" drugs.

But for the badly failed War On Drugs, the money spent on drugs would not be going to the terrorists. And that is just a tiny fraction of the monetary cost to society of the badly failed WOD, and the most severe cost to our society is not measured in mere dollars. Read on....

It would be another matter if the WOD were in any measure successful, but it isn't. Every angle you look at it from, it's a complete disaster.

We incarcerate non-violent drug offenders in cells with violent thugs, giving these drug perps a criminal record and a criminal education which combine, at huge taxpayer expense, to almost guarantee that this will now be a lifelong criminal wth no way out of the loser-cycle.

We spend million$ keeping mandatory drug sentence perps behind bars, forcing our overcrowded jails to turn rapists and muggers and worse back out on the streets early to make room for the druggies. This has a devastating effect on our society.

Within hours of having been arrested, the drug user or dealer is replaced with another, making the exercise even more meaningless.

And now we are told, by the very people who errantly insist on making it so, that illegal drug dollars are financing the biggest single threat to our National Security—terrorism.

Too difficult a concept?

;-/

[robertpaulsen]

"you'll never stop people who want to from buying inebriants."

Of course not. But you can try to minimize it. You can use the laws to send a message, especially to teens, that drug use is unacceptable in our society.

As an example, teens say that marijuana is easier to obtain than alcohol. Yet twice as many teens use alcohol as marijuana. Why? Because society says alcohol is OK.

Not convinced? In Alaska, marijuana is legal (for adults, at home, under 4oz.). Teen use of marijuana in Alaska rose to twice the national average. The citizens of Alaska were so outraged that they drafted and passed a referendum to re-criminalize possession.

"It would be another matter if the WOD were in any measure successful, but it isn't. Every angle you look at it from, it's a complete disaster."

What a bunch of crap! Drug use is down from the 70's, and has been flat for the last 15 years. The chart below is for marijuana, the most popular recreational drug. Go to the (anti-WOD, btw) website on the chart to see that the trends for other drugs look the same.

What? Confused by the facts? I guess that since drug use isn't zero, the WOD is a failure "from every angle", huh?

But legalizing alcohol use was a roaring success? 100,000 people dying every year (not including traffic deaths) from alcohol related problems is a success? 14 million alcoholics is a success? Arresting 1.5 million people each year for DUI because they might commit a crime is a success?

How many people died from alcohol during prohibition? How many broken homes and broken lives were caused by alcoholism during prohibition? How many DUI arrests during prohibition?

You have a very strange way of defining "success".

[headsonpikes]

...nothing but a self-inflicted wound.

In medicine, they call this an iatrogenic illness - one caused by the treatment itself.

[Major_Risktaker]

I had seen the same interview with Chester Floyd on TV and Chester appeared to really get into the police action. Now Chester is back peddling fast.

Police have a tough job when politicians don't enforce laws on the books and judges release felons back on the streets again, it's like full employment for criminal lawyers.

Our police are being conditioned and used by policies created from judges and politicians with end results like Goose Step Creek.

Police get photographed using unprofessional behavior and a little bullying workplace aggression as in the picture below.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Printing one side of a story, while making accusations is wrong. The wronged person does not get any chance to defend himself and gets smeared in the newspaper. In our particular incident, the officer was getting threats from as far away as Moscow. And the story in the paper was not true.

And in this particular case, these cops were doing their job. They were brought into the school at the request of the school, regardless if they found something or not. If they were told there were weapons and drugs in the school they did what they were supposed to do.

People don't like it but the people are barking up the wrong tree in my opinion.

[Gargantua]

"But legalizing alcohol use was a roaring success? 100,000 people dying every year (not including traffic deaths) from alcohol related problems is a success? 14 million alcoholics is a success? Arresting 1.5 million people each year for DUI because they might commit a crime is a success?

You have a very strange way of defining "success"."

Excuse me, but these are your words, not mine. I never said that legalizing alchohol was a "success." I said that legalizing alchohol took the money people spent on booze out of the Black Market. Which it did, by the way.

Your need to erect and then topple otherwise nonexistent straw men does not enhance your argument, and only paints you as a deceptive extremist who is willing to deceive in order to further his lacking agenda.

You make a good point, though, in that your comparison points out that drugs are drugs, and that it is indefensibly hypocritical in the extreme to legalize deadly booze and make illegal something as relatively harmless as pot.

Go peddle your illogical, deceitful, reactionary phlegm on someone gullible enough to take the hook.

;-/

[Gargantua]

"But legalizing alcohol use was a roaring success? 100,000 people dying every year (not including traffic deaths) from alcohol related problems is a success? 14 million alcoholics is a success? Arresting 1.5 million people each year for DUI because they might commit a crime is a success?

You have a very strange way of defining "success"."

Excuse me, but these are your words, not mine. I never said that legalizing alchohol was a "success." I said that legalizing alchohol took the money people spent on booze out of the Black Market. Which it did, by the way.

Your need to erect and then topple otherwise nonexistent straw men does not enhance your argument, and implies strongly that, absent the deceit, you have no other way of advancing your lacking agenda.

You unintentionally make a good point, though, in that your comparison points out that drugs are drugs, and that it is indefensibly hypocritical in the extreme to legalize deadly booze and make illegal something as relatively harmless as pot.

You would do far better to go and peddle your illogical, deceitful, reactionary phlegm on someone gullible enough to take the hook.

;-/

[eno_]

You are conflating a litany of errors: Alcohol has always been 90% of addiction and death due to use of intoxicants. This is true, with small variations, throughout the world and throughout history, no matter what other drugs are legal. And, if you think about it, this is also obvious: Hard drug use is such a minority pursuit, and it is self limiting, and hardcore addicts don't pay attention to laws, so laws are utterly doomed to make little if any difference in hard drug use. Ironically, your marijuana graph shows "success" in supressing what would be a more benign intoxicant.

[halfdome]

Uh, the armed thugs in this scenario were the police, not the students.

[robertpaulsen]

"Ironically, your marijuana graph shows "success" in supressing what would be a more benign intoxicant."

I just picked the most popular (at 5%). "Benign" had nothing to do with it.

The graphs for hallucinogens, cocaine, inhalents, and heroin are similar.

[Legerdemain]

I do not think it will be a civil war, I do not think we will be people fighting people. It will be a revolution overthowing an unconstitutional government. something to think about

[Protagoras]

Uh, the armed thugs in this scenario were the police, not the students.

Uh, no kiddin.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Oh, I think about it quite often. I'm ready.