Posted on 08/21/2009 2:53:19 AM PDT by SolidWood
They do in a sufficiently slavish population.
I suppose your $5000 lobotomy was cheaper than my university education, but still....
It's bigger than all of us.
While the social libertarians and social conservatives battle it out over legalizing/decriminalizing drug use, government has figured out a way to profit from the drug issue either way it goes.
Currently, they've got the War on Drugs that allows them to expand, support an enormous bureaucracy of fat cats, with some honest and decent soldiers on the front lines risking and losing their lives just to support the jobs of the bureaucrats. Yet it's a war that can never really be won and the politicians and bureaucrats know that. But the politicians and bureaucrats will keep asking for more money and resources to fight it so that they can keep "the game" going as long as possible.
Think about it: if a government bureaucracy ever actually solved a problem -- like illegal drug use -- there would be no reason for that government program's continued existence. So why would government bureaucrats cut their own throat and send themselves to the unemployment line by actually succeeding at their mandate? They wouldn't and they won't-- ever. They are just keeping the game going as long as they can, until enough of us agree that the jig is up, and we say, "We know what you are doing and are sick of you feeding us BS & stealing our money!"
When that day comes, politicians and bureaucrats already have a back-up plan: "Legalize and Tax Drugs" -- supposedly to "provide treatment plans for addicts" but it is really to perpetuate their old bureaucracy and feed recycled fat cats now running nationwide "drug treatment facilities", with big Pharma supplying the support meds for "treatment".
Proponents of reduced drug penalties will be so happy with the new legalization that they will put up with the taxation on it, considering the legislation "a win" for their side. But it won't be a "win", because the same people who once outlawed it, have now successfully extorted money from you just to leave you alone. And if they want more money, they will gripe about how "current taxation isn't enough to cover all the necessary treatment". They will raise the taxes as high as possible on those who buy drugs until they have squeezed the last drop of blood out of that stone.
Then they will start demanding more taxes from ordinary citizen non-drug buyers to "cover treatment". Then non-drug buyers will eventually get fed up and will demand a reinstatement of "the War on Drugs".
And the same recycled game, with the same major players, will start all over again!
I don't think it has ever been all that commonly used, many people are scared off by the exaggerated horror stories, but there have always been small pockets of concentration.
In my experimenting days (30-some years ago) I used the stuff maybe 3 or 4 times. I'd have to say out of all the things I tried, which included nothing narcotic or addicting, that was the most pleasurable. I think it's main appeal to me was it had no noticeable physical effects. I was always a lightweight when it came to the irritating qualities of so many of those things, and LSD just didn't have any of that. Just 3 or 4 hours of abject hilarity followed by a complete and uneventful return to the natural world.
I don't think it's something people ought to use every day, but I don't think people should get drunk every day either, and certainly we have no shortage of such folks and huge numbers of them go on to slow and painful deaths because of it. Meantime where are all the fried for life zombies from LSD use? In fiction, that's where.
It is a reality. I have dealt with it many times.
I have also dealt with women selling their children to support their habits.
Children engaging in prostitution for a $2.00 hit of crack.
Murder to keep turff’s up of innocent people who have nothing to do with any of it.
I dont give a crap what you have read or implied that is not real. It is. I have personally had to deal with the remains.
If you support this then I have absolutely nothing to say to you.
the only people who profit from these types of crimes are the drug dealers.
Marijuana vs. Crack, heroine, lsd, meth are very different things and do not belong in teh same discussion.
If you think I am just supporting a war on drugs because I was brainwashed then you have no clue what is really happening on our streets.
If drugs were legal, all those things would stop tomorrow.
just like it stopped all over the world where it has been done? Oh wait, It hasn’t! Human trafficking is at an all time high now!
By who? the same people who sell drugs that’s who. They use the same corridors that drug traffickers use and are directly in business with them.
Sorry, the facts don’t support your delusions.
My last post, im done with your suppositions.
I think we have a winner!
It worked great about 90 odd years ago in the US.
It has never been tried recently, so I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
LOL. Apropos to the subject!
Such is the society that substitutes State coercive restraint for voluntary individual self-restraint.
Our whole society?
Do you really think that the only thing keeping most people from frying their brains on drugs is the threat of arrest?
I don't even drink alcohol anymore, and it didn't take corrupt jackbooted police threatening my freedom to make me stop, just a good serious talk with my doctors about some compelling test results.
Here's the thing - our society is already eaten through with rampant addiction. Addiction to alcohol, tobacco, and any number of other dangerous drugs. Drunk driving is involved in some 40,000 traffic deaths a year - nearly half of them - and tens of thousands more acute and long-term poisonings. Effects of tobacco addition kill nearly half a million people in the US each year. And high school students surveyed reported that it's much easier to get illegal drugs than alcohol or tobacco.
So I really don't see why you think that things would be so much worse if we dismantled the police- and prison-state and the enormous profits that accrue to violent criminals from trying to eliminate certain kinds of drugs.
Sure, we'd still have addicts, drunks, and people with smelly clothes, but we wouldn't have police kicking down doors in the middle of the night or drug gang turf wars, and I think that's a fair trade.
There were no drug laws in THIS nation prior to 1914, with the Harrison act. HOWEVER did we manage to get that far without big brother watching our every move and jailing us for using substances then available over the counter at ANY pharmacy in the country????
And the first drug laws were put in place explicitly to control certain elements of the population. Opium in smokable form was associated with the Chinese immigrants. It was their form of relaxation after a LONG hard day. Yet, they were demonized (right out of the predecessor of Alinsky’s playbook) and the notion was sold as “Let’s outlaw this because smoking opium makes white women have sex with Chinese men.”
No, the drugs were NEVER the problem. The problem has always been CONTROL OVER OTHERS, pure and simple- well, simple but much more evil than pure.
This is too good to be true...I don’t believe it!
YOUR problem is that you don’t see people, especially in this country, as grownups, capable of making their own decisions on what to put into their own bodies. YOU want to treat them (well, all of us but you, I guess) like the Rats treat black folks and other minorities: as too damned dumb and helpless to make it without YOUR guidance. Thanks, but no thanks.
I doubt if you have either...were you born before the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act became federal law on Dec. 17, 1914? Or the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.