Posted on 01/28/2015 10:52:45 AM PST by balch3
President Barack Obama continues to speak out against mass incarceration, the devastating impact of our drug policies on communities of color and his expectation that marijuana legalization will continue to spread.
Obama's comments came today during his YouTube interviews with YouTube bloggers, Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green.
Some Obama nuggets from today's interview include this on marijuana:
"What you're seeing now is Colorado, Washington through state referenda, they're experimenting with legal marijuana," the president said in response to a question from host Hank Green.
"The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as an illegal substance, but we're not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue. My suspicion is that you're gonna see other states start looking at this."
Obama also addressed how we should treat people who are not violent drug offenders.
"What I am doing at the federal level," Obama responded, "is asking my Department of Justice just to examine generally how we are treating nonviolent drug offenders, because I think you're right."
"What we have done is instead of focusing on treatment -- the same way we focused, say, with tobacco or drunk driving or other problems where we treat it as public health problem -- we've treated this exclusively as a criminal problem," the president said. "I think that it's been counterproductive, and it's been devastating in a lot of minority communities. It presents the possibility at least of unequal application of the law, and that has to be changed."
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Well to quote Bhagat Singh, "I am a man and all that affects mankind concerns me."
It *IS* my business when troublemakers are spreading poison through my community.
I don’t concern myself with what other people do with their personal lives, as long as it doesn’t affect me or my family.
You may not mind paying bills for drug addled indolents, but I don't want to do it. I am harmed by government guns forcing me to pay bills for people.
If one of my children is induced to try drugs, I am harmed, as is my child. There is no spread of addiction without harm.
It’s actually a biblical position that a problem with people abusing something is best addressed directly at the attitudes and acts of abuse, not the thing abused. Vice (as virtue) is spiritual. Alcoholics Anonymous and its follow-on groups demonstrated that to people who had forgotten to take the bible seriously.
Why are you not concerned about the problem of self-poisoners, who if they cannot find poison A, will then go to poison B?
Of course.
Probably MOST of the “drug problem” is the fact that drugs are illegal, creating a black market that generates most of the crime, much of which is violent. Everything from people stealing things, breaking into homes, home invasions, gang battles, and even corrupt cops. The list goes on and on.
This isn’t even considering the billions spent by governments at all levels to manage the largely self inflicted problem. An entire ‘industry’, bureaucracies, and livelihoods have grown around it. Police, lawyers, prisons, government agencies, and it has been used as a vehicle to shred many of our Constitutional rights.
How in the hell could any “Conservative” possibly support this?
Back in the Jimmy years, his Surgeon General maintained that cocaine was a great recreational drug, no addiction, no side effects, lots of benefits! Whoopee!
The pro-cocaine policy didn't last long.
Pointing out that a two data point projection (with one number made up) is childish constitutes an ad hominem?
Well do you have anything nice to say about someone who tries to draw conclusions from two data points with one of them "estimated"? You're supposed to be HiTech, presumably you know something about math and plotting data points?
Do you really think a function describing drug usage is going to be linear with a downward slope? If you do, then the problem is solved, because based on that two point projection it would have reached zero after 108 years, which would have been ~2008. Did we eliminate drugs and nobody told me?
Any rational person will recognize that it won't be linear, and it won't have a negative slope. I am not arguing that he is wrong because he is a bad person, I am arguing that he is wrong because his methodology is fundamentally flawed as if a child would have proposed it.
Seriously, I can't think of anyone but a child who would assert such a thing. It is simpleminded.
You’re basically a ‘busy-body’, but you do a good job of justifying it to yourself.
We don't. It's one big straw man based on a whole bunch of faulty assumptions and conclusions. We aren't using your faulty assumptions, we are using real world examples in history, and they do not conform to what you wish to believe.
You might as well be trying to claim that autism is caused by vaccines. (Though there seems to be a much stronger linkage to pot.)
A nation with legalized drugs is far worse than a nation that bans them.
I suspect most drug convictions are plea bargains down from other charges.
Easier to prove than going to court over and over again until one day someone is late or doesn’t show up, so the case gets dismissed, as happened tp my cousin after his home was robbed.
If you want an answer to that question you are going to have to provide a better context. It sounds like an assumption coupled with undefined terms.
How about we just get rid of as many poisons as we can? How about we kill people who bring poison to us?
So, how long do you think your child should be locked up for trying drugs?
This is what all poison spreading libertarians say to people who want them to stop spreading poison.
I'm sure rapists and murderers don't like being interfered with either.
Drugs are not victimless crimes. I have known and seen far too many people hurt by that sh*t.
so, you’re admitting that under drug prohibition too many people are getting hurt?
And what leads you to believe this? I would suggest it is the endless stream of libertarians saying so, and not any real world concrete data.
The example of the Sitzplatz in Zurich doesn't support such a conclusion. The experience with China and Opium does not support such a conclusion. Where in history do you know of a place that legalization worked?
I've said in the past that if we were serious, we would have "fought it like we were gonna win it". Instead, we essentially "skirmish" and make no progress. Essentially a battle of attrition. But the fallout from this are innumerable "reasons" why LE needs more toys and powers.
At the same time though, I can't support unfettered access to some of these drugs.
Thus my "arguments" about health effects and the subsequent impact on society as a result of those effects.
I believe there has to be some kind of middle ground, but I haven't arrived at any conclusion as to what that might be.
Look how you twist my words in an attempt to get your conclusions.
I am admitting that the small percentage of drugs that get through the system hurt the small percentage of people with whom they come into contact.
I am admitting that a larger percentage of drugs getting through the system will hurt a larger percentage of people with whom they come into contact.
I am admitting that we are suffering a small loss of people due to drugs that get through. Let's call this the "frying pan."
I am admitting that the frying pan is better than the fire.
How long do you think a woman should be locked up for hitting a rapist?
Why do you think it's appropriate to use such ASININE statements such as that? Anybody who is induced to using drugs is a victim. The criminal is the person who supplied and/or induced them to try it.
I think drug suppliers ought to be killed. Make the price of doing business too high for them to keep doing it. It works in Singapore.
I am done with this stupid topic for today.
The issue is that all the problems you cite and more are happening now. How much longer do you want to support failed laws and expenditures in the billions for the same bad results?
Here’s a hint. Prohibition does not stop people from using drugs, it makes gangsters rich, and it wastes law enforcement time and money.
While your sad stories about people being hurt by drugs are compelling, it is illogical to say that those stories justify the war on drugs.
No it doesn't, despite your assertions to the contrary.
Yes it does.
Your two data point extrapolation with one number made up is childish.
Those 2 numbers come from your heroic Drug Warriors.
That you expect it to be accepted and "prove" something is even more childish.
It demonstrates that the numbers from the people running the WOD say you are FOS.
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