Baucus vows spirited fight against drugs

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., told law enforcement officials Friday in Billings that he will continue to use "mongooselike tenacity" to secure funding for drug enforcement in Montana.

Baucus, who was honored at a luncheon attended by about 30 area drug enforcement officers and agents, said he heard their message that they need more personnel and continued full federal funding.

The tenacity, Baucus said, requires him to keep after leaders of various federal agencies and "just grab ahold of 'em until they say, 'Hey, let's do it and get this guy off our back.' "

“No flawed reasoning, just cold, hard facts. The tack the libertines take that somehow doing illegal and harmful substances doesn’t HURT anyone or is some Constitutional right is beyond ignorant, it’s anarchic. I will fight like hell against ever seeing these substances legalized.”

I’m going to skip your initial response to me since UnknownPundit did a fine job - I’ve been busy.

However, I’m not clear on what you’re talking about here. Alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal, and both widely recognized as more harmful than marijuana. Recent research shows smoking pot does not cause lung cancer - in fact it appears to have a preventative effect. Contrast that with cigarettes. Marijuana has never been shown to have any toxic effect whatever on the human body. If you’re still worried about health effects from smoking, it may be eaten.

Alcohol causes numerous fatalities each year, both on the road and during other activities. It also causes serious health problems since it is quite toxic. Liver failure is most common, but it can also contribute to a host of other health problems such as brain damage, heart disease and so on.

BOTH alcohol and tobacco have considerable halo effects in terms of affecting family members and others in the vicinity.

So, just to be clear, I’d like your assurance that you use neither of these substances (after all you’d be a huge hypocrite if you do), and that you’re equally committed to alcohol and tobacco prohibition. That way you at least have an ethically defensible position - however laughable.

I feel it’s a rather pointless exercise debating libertines on the subject, as pro/anti-WOD threads pop up all the time on FR, and they just tend to serve the purpose of clogging up JimRob’s bandwith, and nobody ever changes their mind.

You view it in terms of personal liberty, I view it in terms of public safety. It does not serve the purpose of the general public to start down the slippery slope of full abolition of laws that are specifically designed to protect the citizenry against harmful and deadly substances.

And for the record, I do not smoke, nor do I drink.

“I feel it’s a rather pointless exercise debating libertines on the subject, as pro/anti-WOD threads pop up all the time on FR, and they just tend to serve the purpose of clogging up JimRob’s bandwith, and nobody ever changes their mind.”

There are those who’re committed to their position, and those who’re open to persuasion. I’m quite sure the clarity, correctness and intellectual honesty (or lack thereof) of our positions are obvious to those reading.

Anyone who’s a fan of “limited government” must see the WoD as a slippery slope to a police state that could make the old Soviet Union look mild by comparison - technology you know. Already, in the name of the WoD, we have confiscation of personal property, dog searches on traffic stops, “no knock” raids in the wee hours by paramilitary units, mandatory testing for much of the population and widespread surveillance of American citizens who may or may not be involved. And of course all of this enforcement leads to the high profits associated with successfully selling illegal drugs.

The fact is that the War on Some Drugs’ bad effects on society far outweigh the good, particularly in the case of marijuana “enforcement”.

“And for the record, I do not smoke, nor do I drink.”

Color me unsurprised. For the record, do you favor abolition of tobacco and alcohol?

I’m always curious why those who don’t do something feel the need to coerce others into making the same decision.

Me, I still think we need to ban sailboats. They’re dangerous, expensive, cause the Coast Guard no end of grief, and there’s a nasty halo effect on the family in many cases.

“You view it in terms of personal liberty, I view it in terms of public safety. It does not serve the purpose of the general public to start down the slippery slope of full abolition of laws that are specifically designed to protect the citizenry against harmful and deadly substances.”

I didn’t respond to this earlier, but I see I missed one point. It would not be “abolition” of these ill-considered laws, it would be “repeal”. The country got along quite nicely without them for over 100 years.

No flawed reasoning, just cold, hard facts.

The cold, hard facts are that your friends are dead. They are dead because they abused drugs in some way that caused their death. The illegality of the drug(s) did not deter them. The WOD did not save them. They would be just as dead if the drugs they abused had been deemed legal. They are just as dead even though the drugs in question were deemed illegal. These are the cold, hard facts.

You point to your dead friends as a reason to continue the WOD, but the WOD didn't save them, they are dead in spite of the fact of the WOD's existence. The fact that you can't see the flaws in your logic are your problem, not mine.

The tack the libertines take that somehow doing illegal and harmful substances doesn’t HURT anyone or is some Constitutional right is beyond ignorant, it’s anarchic.

Please don't put words in people's mouths. I don't think anyone here has ever made the case that drug usage is risk free. We regularly make the case that shows folks like you typically over-estimating the risks of drug usage, especially with pot. As for the "anarchic" charge, the WOD causes more anarchy than legalization ever could. The WOD has led to violent black markets here and around the world, curruption of govt officials, has led the way in eroding constitutional protections, given criminal records to millions of non-violent citizens, increased the size and scope of the government, no-knock or knock and enter raids leading to death and/or injury to innocent citizens, affected banking privacy.... nice job....

I’m sorry, you did indeed misunderstand me. Allow me to explain... My former classmate and his wife didn’t die from OD’ing. His wife did not do drugs. You see, they had two young children.

The young man had become well-known to the local police because of his problems, yet inexplicably, thanks to our local liberal judiciary, he never was incarcerated as he SHOULD’VE been and gotten the treatment to break his habit.

Understand that one night several years ago, he, his wife, and a few other people were over at his house, with his 2 young children sleeping in their room. High and out of his mind, he pulled out a gun and blasted his wife’s brains against a table at point blank range and nearly killed the other guests. With the cops enroute, he ran outside and ate his gun.

With that, 2 little children, in the span of a few minutes, were orphaned. The parents of the wife forgave the young man for what he did because they, and I, knew that the person he was in reality and who he was when he was on those “substances” were as different as night and day.

I don’t EVER want to see those substances legalized, period. How many other lives will be similarly destroyed if the “illegal” stigma is removed, which does, believe it or not, prevent some from becoming addicts. Like I said, the failure to more aggressively step up WOD failed this young man, his wife, his children, and a plethora of others whose lives they touched.

Too much the example of “people are going to do it anyway (so why not legalize ?)” is the argument of the libertine. As I said, by that reckoning, there is no need for ANY laws, or any government whatsoever. The name for that is simple. Anarchy. Civilized societies cease to be without basic laws defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior. That will never be an acceptable behavior.

I've been reading the responses on this thread with great interest, and I would like to respectfully pose the following questions to FMDJ:

What drug was your former classmate under the influence of when he killed his wife and himself?

Do you believe that all psychotropic drugs are the same, or are some more dangerous than others?

And with that said, should we subject 'offenders' of the less dangerous drugs (ie. marijuana) to the same harsh punishments (ie. prison time) that hard drug 'offenders' are subject to?

“Understand that one night several years ago, he, his wife, and a few other people were over at his house, with his 2 young children sleeping in their room. High and out of his mind, he pulled out a gun and blasted his wife’s brains against a table at point blank range and nearly killed the other guests. With the cops enroute, he ran outside and ate his gun.”

That is a sad story. However, it needs to be pointed out that people do similar things on a regular basis without drug involvement, and many people use drugs (and even abuse them) without ever doing anything remotely like that. It seems you have fixated on the drugs rather than your classmate’s character.

Almost everything in life can be used for good or evil, and either responsibly or irresponsibly. Drugs are like that too. In my mind, the key is education and taking personal responsibility.

How many other lives will be similarly destroyed if the "illegal' stigma is removed, which does, believe it or not, prevent some from becoming addicts.

I wonder why the US, Singapore, and Iran have such a severe heroin problem when compared to the Netherlands:

"Iran has executed more than 10,000 narcotics traffickers in the last decade;"

--www.payvand.com/news/04/mar/1012.htm

"Iran has the highest proportion of heroin addicts in the world and a growing Aids problem."

--news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3791889.stm

"The GOS [Government of Singapore] nonetheless is concerned about the increase in addiction rates and recidivism among drug offenders who have undergone treatment. There are currently about 9,000 addicts undergoing rehabilitation in Singapore treatment centers, the same number as in 1995."

--http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html

"The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs and lowthreshold medical services for addicts, who are also offered drug rehabilitation programs. Authorities believe such programs reach about 7080 percent of the country's 25,000 harddrug users." [my note: in a total population of 15.1 million]

--http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html

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Using a population of 3 million for Singapore in 1996, that works out to an addiction rate of about 0.30%. Using the State Dept. figures for the Netherlands, and a population of 15.1 million, the addiction rate was about 0.17%.

Also note that the Singapore figure only takes into account the addicts under treatment, whereas the figure for Holland is the estimate of the total number of addicts.

"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992." [980,000 is about 0.33% of the population]

--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

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What is your evidence that the WOD reduces addiction?

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