[merican]

We'll just go around and around on this if we continue. Let's just say you have a lot more faith in a prison solution to the drug problem than I have. From what I've seen we've tried long sentences and it hasn't worked. I think much more than long sentences would be required to make a real dent in the problem. It would require more of a Chairman Mao style total war, a totalitarian solution the people in this country would never go for. I wish we could just waive our magic wands and make drugs disappear, but we don't have a magic wand, and long prison sentences are no magic wand either. As long as there are a few willing to take the risks, drugs will always be available to those who want them. Longer sentences might make it such that fewer people would be willing to take the risks, but that would also increase the potential income for those willing to take the risks because fewer would be sharing the profits to be made satisfying the demand. Locking up dealers does not reduce the demand for drugs. As long as there is demand and lots of money to be made meeting that demand, people will step up to make that money, and at the retail level it's going to be mostly addicts who will just push their fears out of their minds because the most important thing to them is getting high and selling a little dope is about the easiest way to keep themselves supplied. Make the mandatory minimum sentence life without parole and a lot of them will still do it.

You're mind is made up though. You believe that the problem is that we aren't locking these people up long enough and that if we increased the sentences dramatically most all of them would be too afraid to sell drugs so we'd have far less drugs out there. Obviously I disagree but I guess it really doesn't matter what either of us think. We don't make the laws. We're spectators, like a couple of guys watching a football game arguing over whether our team should run or pass.

[Cedar]

They’ve done a brilliant job of getting millions of people used to taking illegal drugs. Notice before the 1960’s or I’ll even give you before the ‘50’s, there was not a major demand for illegal drugs here in the U.S. Far from it in fact.

I agree there is a huge demand now....as I said, they used a brilliant strategy. Flood the country with pot, cocaine, LSD, heroin, etc., and make it easy to get in the streets. Also, make the laws not severe enough (and what I call severe is what I posted earlier) to put an immediate stop to any dealers (back when the drugs just started coming in quantities—the strict laws were needed then and would have stopped it).

Also, for decades keep the borders easy enough to get through.

All in all, it’s been worked to perfection. America is floating in drugs.

I’m just glad there’s a God in heaven Who will render the final judgment of it all in due time. And no one will be able to stop His judgment of it.

You say my mind won’t be changed. I don’t think yours will be either. As you said, we’ll just keep going around and around...