Posted on 07/30/2002 5:59:48 AM PDT by WindMinstrel
This would, supposedly, lower the cost of crime, turning a $1000/week cocaine habit into a $20/week cocaine habit (they won't have to steal as much)
That's not the point. The point is, he won't have to steal at all.
He expects society to step in with community discipline, yet look at the communities where drugs are prevalent -- see any discipline?
Screw-ups are screw-ups wether their poison is legal or not. How is this actually an argument against legalization? What changes? Oh, only the Unconstitutional "war" against a mostly law abiding citizenry.
Legalization is a concept; 20 dopers have 20 different definitions.
And 20 different Woddies have 20 different definition and ideas for enforcement and control. Does this somehow make the idea any less? If so, then your position is just as tenuous.
It is not an argument against legalization to say that there are several approaches to it, and not everyone agrees on one approach.
And so the arguments go. This is why proponents of drug legalization can't be specific
It's called debate. Exchange of ideas. Trying different approaches to see which one works, something that is impossible with the feds calling all the shots and applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
It's telling that you see such as a weakness, instead of a strength...
... but those of us who live in the real world have better things to do than argue with people who want to legalize addiction.
I've asked this question on other threads, but no one with your ideas has bothered to answer it. Perhaps you'll be braver.
Exactly what is it about "illegal" drugs that makes them so bad?
Worse substances - alcohol and tobacco - are already legal, as is addiction to them. Thus, without further explanation your comments make no sense and are awfully hypocritical. Do you have any further info (as in facts) to support your ideas?
And it is almost funny that he rails against the debate of different approaches in this article as proof of the failure of legalization, approaches that have hardly if ever been tried yet, as he clings to the approach that has failed for eighty years...
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Within these words lies wisdom. Within the concept of power is the reason for the war on drugs.
Same here. We got high whenever we wanted, but if we wanted some beer - fuhggedaboutit! We had a hard time obtaining alcohol, why? Because it was sold in centralized locations by licsenced individuals and stores who checked ID for age. Of course there are always ways around this, but it was still harder than getting illegal drugs.
Try debating the points presented in the article smart guy . . .
Most (the GREAT majority) at this forum do not wish to stay in a perpetual circle jerk wasting time with such a SILLY argument as legalizing drugs
Geez, what a quiter.
You didn't even have the guts to throw a punch before you surrendered.
The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal government must be delegated a power in order to act, otherwise it is reserved to the States.
Can you point out where the Constitution delegates this power to the Feds?
Maybe the search and seizure clause, where the feds search for some kind of penumbra and then seize the power...
Are you proposing free drugs? A person currently spending $1000/week on cocaine can, under this plan, get them for free? I didn't read free, I read $20. And where does this former criminal get the 20 bucks?
Well, according to the drug warriors, drugs were a threat to your future, so if you had been caught with drugs, you should get a felony conviction on your record that would mess up your future. /head scratch...
And so the arguments go. This is why proponents of drug legalization can't be specific. When you get down to, "Just how will you implement legalization?", the real stupidity emerges. Legalization is a concept; 20 dopers have 20 different definitions.
Remove the federal government from the equation, and allow the individual states to be “the crucibles of democracy” that the founding fathers intended.
That's a specific as you need to be.
I think your making the faulty assumption that all cocaine users are jobless criminals. It's rather the opposite cocaine is a working man's high, being that it costs so much, and most people who use cocaine are law abiding working citizens. Instead of breaking the bank, it would be like buying a 6-pack on friday at the end of a long week. No one would have to steal they'd be able to afford it.
Funny thing is, When the war with Iraq gets going a lot of that money is going to have to be diverted, Then what?
Where did all the criminals that were buying overpriced swill at speakeasys get the money to buy legal beer when prohibition was repealed?
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.