Posted on 08/26/2011 10:37:32 PM PDT by newzjunkey
I agree with you that meth dealers are scum. I don’t think that we should be executing meth dealers when they wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a demand for their services. Meth, like heroin and crack, is one of those drugs where it is pretty much impossible to use it responsibly. I’ve never met a frequent heroin or meth user who wasn’t an addict. This is why marijuana is a good starting point, to show the puic that there are alternatives to the WOD.
Marijuana is quite different and should be treated differently, at least initially. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves at the thought of many modern aspects of American society, but the idea of the government criminalizing marijuana use and possession would have
horrified them, even though prohibition is constitutional at the state level. From my experience, most people use it responsibly, but even the irresponsible users are little threat to society. The drug is impossible to overdose on, unlike alcohol and virtually any other drug on the planet. because it’s a plant. Many users of it hold down jobs even in highly demanding fields like corporate law and finance. At least 75% of cartel profits come from marijuana simply because there are ten times as many users of it as there are of all other illegal drugs combined. Legalizing that drives a stake through the heart of cartels, and also makes it basically impossible for dealers to get marijuana users hooked on other, more dangerous substances. Ron Paul does have it right on this issue. Very few people would go out and use heroin tomorrow if it were legal. Very few people would use meth.
Let me also make clear that I don’t use marijuana. Though I used it a few times in college, with the line of work I’m in now, I can’t afford to get a drug arrest or conviction. I also used it on my 2010 trip to Amsterdam, where it is decriminalized. Interestingly, the Dutch use marijuana at lower rates than Americans do.
The founders of this country would be more appalled at the degraded animal-like immorality and irresponsibility of the general population.
I smoked mj and hashish for a few years but it was in the late 60s, stuff now is stronger. I also was an alcoholic as a teenager, and used a lot of LSD. A lot. Didn’t mess with other drugs other than by accident a couple of times.
I know first hand what drug use does to the mind and character, and have since known various drug users including daily mj users. Mj is of course not as physically or mentally damaging as for instance heroin or meth or cocaine, but it is still very damaging for regular users, and most people who use, wind up regular users. Drugs or alcohol abuse become the Master of a person’s life.
I have stated before and will again - I am in favor people being allowed to grow mj and poppies for personal use only. NO SELLING which includes no giving away which would be just a cover for selling.
Execute drug dealers, after one public caning, maybe.
Purchasers - public caning.
If people can’t grow it because they’re idiots - boo hoo. There are NO guarantees in life.
Drugs render people emotional idiots and they do indeed become damaged, whether they are CEOs or homeless street people. They become distant emotionally and daily drug use ruins their personal lives, sooner or later. Mj is not harmless as it is very bad for the lungs and the liver and messes up the mind and brain, no doubt about it.
THe entire Justice system is totally screwed up. Long prison sentences are also a very bad thing - capital crimes need to be increased and executions need to happen much sooner, no gazillions of appeals based on tricksterism. Most other crimes should be punished with public caning or heavy fines.
Major money saved from tax payers, and criminals will see th light. Public pain and public shame will do wonders and reduce recidivism like no one’s business.
A county DA agreed with me 10 years ago after I served on a grand jury for a few months. He said public canings would be the only thing that would change the revolving door criminals. It makes total sense.
Would you be ok with a few retroactive canings for your own admittedly excessive LSD use? If you ever gave it to friends back then, does that not make you a dealer, even if no remuneration was offered? You escaped punishment for it back in the 60s. If you were willing to take a couple of hundred lashes for your repeated violations then I would be impressed. :)
You’re nuts, right? You think drug users should be punished for events that happened more than 40 years ago? Perhaps if such punishments had been on the books in those days, those days would have been a lot different.
You just don’t like the idea of any restrictions on drugs. I trotted out my history so you would know that I have personal experience with some drugs, as well as knowing many others with personal experience, many of who were not so fortunate as to give it all up. I also know three people with Hep C from shooting up, one died so far, one has cancer from it, and one has slowly failing health. And at this point in my life I don’t even meet drug users; these are all people who gave up drugs 2 or more decades ago.
The bottom line is that drugs are not useful, not beneficial and not harmless. Of course there are legitimate uses for various derivatives, such as opiate pain killers. But I’m referring to recreational use. I am opposed to how the WOD is currently - should not be fedgov, and it’s all makeshow (up at the top, I’m sure many of the people doing the hard work are trying their best to do the job they were hired to do). But it’s patently obvious that those at the top do not want to eliminate drugs coming in over the borders, nor do they want drugs really eliminated.
It would ruin their cash cow and since banksters and the politicians they pay are ruling what goes on, the nasty charade continues.
One thing that is vital is the gov needs to stop paying people to be idle parasites.
New tagline ...
Unfortunately your new tagline is absolutely true.
I feel a great hot outrage in my heart.
Bumpy ride ahead.
Oh, check this out, I just pinged the list, and my question is “why did the Repubs as the majority in Congress not DEFUND the repeal of DADT????”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2771107/posts?page=17
Not very fair at all, obviously. What right do politicians have to expose the citizenry to an increased risk of being raped and murdered? The risk doesn't just come from those paroled early from prison, but if I don't live in a great neighborhood, I run the risk of being gunned down in a drive-by shooting. The media would undoubtedly consider me to be a tragic victim and would blame the incident on drugs.
I'd just like you to see that I and many others view it as a little bit hypocritical. I've criticized Obama before for doing enough cocaine in his youth to kill a small horse yet advocating jail for cocaine users. Here's a couple of on-point quotes from a Guardian article:
"Barack Obama, is characteristically less convoluted: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
"Also among the US contingent are the firebrand Republican Newt Gingrich, who reportedly said: 'When I smoked pot it was illegal but not immoral. Now it is illegal and immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality. That's why you get to go to jail and I don't.' "
How can this examples be construed as anything other than blatant hypocrisy?
The least we could do is distinguish between drug users and drug dealers. Drug dealers, except those that just grow a little marijuana on the side with no connections to Mexican cartels or terrorist groups, are scumbags. Drug users, if they are addicts, are to be pitied and helped with private charity, not imprisoned. If they are not addicts, they should be left alone to go about their lives without fear of having a career ruined because they chose to smoke a joint after they got home. I fully support abolishing the welfare state so that people who are drug addicts cannot freeload off the system. Too many conservatives, however, say that abolishing the welfare state is a prerequisite to drug legalization, when they, in fact, have no intention of ever agreeing to the latter.
I do support restrictions on drugs. Thomas Sowell makes that point in his article, put into video form here:
Sowell correctly makes the point that drugs can be regulated for content, age required for purchasing, driving under the influence, etc. Teenagers can get marijuana easier than they can get alcohol in many places.
I have a couple of major problems with your plan. First, you don't distinguish between drugs. You advocate letting people grow poppies, when can be used to make morphine, obviously the primary ingredient in heroin. Yet you say that you would execute someone for dealing drugs, presumably including marijuana. If someone grows marijuana in their backyard (assuming it is legal), and they sell some to their neighbor who doesn't have the time to grow it himself, that person should be executed? I think approximately 95-98% of Americans would have a real problem with that, considering 35% of Americans oppose the death penalty in principle, and probably another 35-40% only support it for murder.
The primary problem with your plan, however, is that you don't eliminate the black markets. If possessing anything but homegrown marijuana or opiates and opiate derivatives with every other currently illicit drug remaining illegal (punishable by caning), then you still get the thousands of murders a year that are directly attributable to the drug war, because cartels will still import tons of marijuana to sell to those who don't have the time to grow it themselves. You still get the innocent victims of drive-by shootings and SWAT raids by overmilitarized police forces.
In all honesty, however, certainly you must know that this is a moot point. I'm guessing from your posts that you're in your late 50s or early 60s. As I've said on here before, marijuana legalization is going to happen in the next 15 years. The senior citizens are going to die off from natural causes (unless ObamaCare gets them first), and the majority of voters will be in favor of legalizing it. Nationwide polls show that 70% of Americans under 30 support legalizing it, and around 55% oppose the current War on Drugs. Look how close California came to doing exactly that last year. Proposition 19 won 46.5% of the vote, in a year in which youth turnout was down and older people turned out in great numbers to vote for the Tea Party. And it still got 46.5% of the vote.
This generation doesn't want to replace it with something like your plan, they want to eliminate it. Those of us under 30 don't buy the government's lies and fear-mongering about how marijuana is 10 times stronger than it was when you used it. First of all, even if it was true, that would be a good thing. For those who smoke it, higher concentrations mean that they have to inhale less frequently, which results in less lung damage. Simple demographics will overwhelm any opposition on the part of WODers, as well as constitutional conservatives like yourself. If we succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade, I think that abortion will be made illegal in at least 35 states, with exceptions for cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
My generation seems to be much more pro-life than the baby boomers are, from talking to them. It's also a much more pro-homosexual generation, obviously, but you take the good with the bad. Getting back to the actual topic of this thread for a minute, what people your age should understand is that people my age (late 20s) have never known an America in which homosexuality wasn't at least accepted by a plurality of Americans in vast swaths of the country. Indeed, while I don't approve of the lifestyle, I have no problem being friends with them, because I can accept the sin while loving the sinner. And I'm actually in the 90th percentile for conservatism when it comes to my generation, a generation that voted 2 to 1 in favor of Obama. I think that 75% of my generation actually supports homosexual marriage. That's going to be a very hard thing to overcome, because of the demographic trends that I already mentioned. I hope they change their mind, because we don't have much time to clean up the messes made by the baby boomer politicians.
By the way, the reason that the Republicans in the House of Representatives have not defunded the DADT repeal is that they are trying to play both sides. They vote against it so they can claim they’re really against it, but when it comes to putting up or shutting up by defunding DADT, they could care less. Actions speak louder than words.
Also, the DEA rank and file should not be respected, any more than the FBI agents or BATFags should be. They work for unconstitutional agencies. How can I respect someone who knowingly works for an unconstitutional agency that subverts the Second Amendment and Tenth Amendment rights of its citizens? You can throw them all in the same boat. Don't you remember Ruby Ridge and Waco? The DEA has killed innocent people as well but the media keeps a real tight lid on that.
There are honest people in government agencies, I’m not going to tar them all with the same brush. Individuals are individuals. It’s not like working at Auschwitz.
Didn’t I acknowledge many thought it was a lifestyle choice? Didn’t I say it was a states’ rights issue for me? That’s not enough?
No wonder that poor girl was so scared to say anything modestly pro gay. I get somebody quoting something I’ve never said, and more replies than I’ve gotten to my best posts! Over that little nothing I wrote?!
Well, I may not bring it up again, but it’s not because a bunch of orangutans in costumes went postal on a message board. It’s because I don’t have time to teach such basic ——.
Well I know that wasn't me because I cut and pasted a quote directly from your Post 22.
Have a nice day.
Oh wait, you might want to lay off calling people names. On the posting page it says:Please: NO profanity, NO personal attacks, NO racism or violence in posts.
I don’t know who the poor girl is, but conservatives position on gay is that it is a choosen activity just like drinking and doing drugs and other forms of sexual addiction.
1. We don’t hate gays — we aren’t going to hunt you down and hang you from a tree — absolutely Democratic BS, that is what they do
2. We don’t want special rights for gays - i.e. marriage
3. We don’t want restrictions on gays except where it impacts another’s rights — for example, we don’t want the government to tell you that you can’t smoke in your own apartment -—///-— correction -—///-— we don’t want the government to tell you that you can’t gay in your own apartment
4. Gay activities are a spiritual sin
5. Hermaphrodites and people that have real born birth defects that have caused hormone imbalances aren’t grouped together with other gays. These people need to get medically fixed but for them to engage in any kind of relationship would be a lie unless mentally they have decided what sex they are.
“Life Styles ... that is an activity that a person engages with ... just like any orgy”
All that being said, I hope you think about this....Just because we aren’t FOR something, doesn’t mean we are AGAINST something. We are certainly not going to promote sin
Trickamsterdam, are you a retread by any remote possibility?
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