Legalizing marijuana would decrease or increase complications?

[IgnoranceKills]

The government, if you all have not noticed absolutely loves to tax, regulate and control every aspect of our lives, including what we put into our own bodies. I do agree that narcotics should never be legal, but a little weed never hurt anyone. With the rise in the american drug cartel, we can only wonder if the government plays a bigger role than know in the smuggling scene. I believe that if the government didn't want drugs coming into and leaving this country, THEY WOULDNT! The government is involved with most likely over 50% of the "unknown" operations because they make money first selling, then busting. If you think I'm crazy when I say the government contributes to the cartel, you are an idiot who knows nothing. Anywho, would it be less complicated if weed were legal, or is there hidden reasoning as to why it is kept on the no-no list.

[Lethalfind]

The BIG drug companies will never allow it too be made legal...firstly they make a pill that has THC in it that doctors can perscribe...NO ONE would every buy that one again...

Not too mention any number of other drugs, no need for Xanax, Valium and alot of sleep aids and pain relievers..I speak from experience, I had a back injury, could'nt sleep for the pain, smoked pot for it, it worked wonders and didn't cut my stomach up like the non steriodal anti inflammatory drugs the docter wanted to give me.

The government likes to think they are in the drivers seat, but its really the Drug companies and the FDA.

 

I'd have a stash if it were legal AND I would be sleeping alot better AND not screwing around on this website in the middle of the god damned night.

[eddo]

funny, I don't smoke pot and I sleep just fine...

[ToriAllen]

I believe that if the government didn't want drugs coming into and leaving this country, THEY WOULDNT!

Yeah, and if they didn't want illegal aliens coming in, they wouldn't...And if they didn't want child porn to be traded over the internet, it wouldn't be...And, if they didn't want murder/rape/assault/theft to happen, it wouldn't... The Government is just that powerful, and has unlimited resources and man power to devote to all the problems they have to deal with. This is further proven by how organized the government is, and the effortlessness by which the different departments cooperate with each other.

[Lethalfind]

I think too much prison space and money to take care of them is wasted on SOME criminals who are involved in drugs. I am not saying some don't deserve to be there but come on, someone who has a little too much pot on them?? Exactly who is he a danger too?

 

Compare your states sentencing...drug related crimes to violent crimes. Its often rediculous.

[ToriAllen]

Compare your states sentencing...drug related crimes to violent crimes. Its often rediculous.

It's often linked...

[Outlaw2747]

Is this going to have a poll or not?

[snafu]

Yeah, and if they didn't want illegal aliens coming in, they wouldn't...And if they didn't want child porn to be traded over the internet, it wouldn't be...And, if they didn't want murder/rape/assault/theft to happen, it wouldn't... The Government is just that powerful, and has unlimited resources and man power to devote to all the problems they have to deal with. This is further proven by how organized the government is, and the effortlessness by which the different departments cooperate with each other.

Yeap! Yet another governmental conspiracy to undermined and control the public. First it was 9-11 then spinach and now all this has come to light.

[Jhony5]

Originally Posted by Lethalfind:

 

Compare your states sentencing...drug related crimes to violent crimes. Its often ridiculous.

 

"Drug related crimes" is a very generic descriptive. Are we, as a society, really going to allow the powers that be to continue to teach us that all "illegal drugs" belong in the same category? That they all have the same violence inducing side-effects?

 

Posted by ToriAllen:

It's often linked...

 

Again this is terribly misleading, exactly what the Pharmaceutical manufacturers want. The fact is, Alcohol causes as much or more of a tendency towards violence then many illegal street drugs.

 

Lets just be honest here. I imagine most of us have smoked marijuana on several occasions. Now, aside form the rampant paranoia and grueling hunger for salty snacks, I seriously doubt any of you experienced an increased adrenal flow or loss of temperament leading to a violent outburst.

 

Now the angle of anti-marijuana lobbyist is to portray it as a substance that will cause you to become lazy and waste your life on the couch while your 'drug-free' neighbors are enjoying life, perhaps kayaking or hiking in the wilderness. YA RIGHT! Americans have become lazy fucking fat internet surfing bloging sitabouts, whom prefer posing themselves in front of their new $2,500 HD TV's as opposed to going outside and "enjoying life". These are the same fuckers that will happily perpetuate the rumor that weed makes you lazy and listless.

 

Lethal says:

The BIG drug companies will never allow it too be made legal...

You said it right. If it was legal they would lose billions of dollars in prescription revenue, and they know it. They've done studies on it, and recognize it as a threat.

Not too mention any number of other drugs, no need for Xanax, Valium and alot of sleep aids and pain relievers..

...Halcion...Vicodin...Oxycontin....Lodine..Placidil...the list goes on and on. What is it that these highly addictive and destructive narcotics have in common? They are all unnatural, laboratory manufactured chemical concoctions. They all provide the user with a euphoric feeling. They all have highly recognized dependency issues. They all are manufactured by Eli Lillys and other billion dollar corporations. And they are all street drugs!! Am I the only one that this strikes as obscene? Is it a coincidence that the drug companies truly can't control their so-called 'prescription medicines' that are sold as street drugs for junkies, millions of them nationwide? Or is this what they want? I suggest that, no I insist that the drug companies get rich of the street level dealings of their own products, these so-called medicines.

[ToriAllen]

Posted by ToriAllen:

Again this is terribly misleading, exactly what the Pharmaceutical manufacturers want. The fact is, Alcohol causes as much or more of a tendency towards violence then many illegal street drugs.

Lets just be honest here. I imagine most of us have smoked marijuana on several occasions. Now, aside form the rampant paranoia and grueling hunger for salty snacks, I seriously doubt any of you experienced an increased adrenal flow or loss of temperament leading to a violent outburst.

My comment to Lethal was in reference to the fact that she asked us to compare sentencing of drug crimes to violent crimes. Drug crimes include such a wide range of drugs, and violent crimes often involve at least one of these different types of drugs. I thought you understood this when you pointed out to her that the term drug related crime was too general. Then you went on to make the same mistake she did. You assumed the term ‘drug related crime’ pertained to weed. You are arguing that drugs don’t lead to violent crime, using only marijuana as an example. Although it may be involved in more violent crimes than marijuana, alcohol is not involved in more violent crimes than drugs.

[hugo]

The greatest living American's thoughts on this issue.

 

Interview with Milton Friedman on the Drug War

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Paige: Let us deal first with the issue of legalization of drugs. How do you see America changing for the better under that system?

 

Friedman: I see America with half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, ten thousand fewer homicides a year, inner cities in which there's a chance for these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they're sure of the quality. You know, the same thing happened under prohibition of alcohol as is happening now.

 

Under prohibition of alcohol, deaths from alcohol poisoning, from poisoning by things that were mixed in with the bootleg alcohol, went up sharply. Similarly, under drug prohibition, deaths from overdose, from adulterations, from adulterated substances have gone up.

 

 

 

 

Paige: Let us turn to the early genesis of your belief that the drug laws may not be working the way the nation would hope them to. Tell me about the elements that you saw early on that changed your mind or changed your way of thinking.

 

Friedman: Well, I'm not saying "changed." I would rather say "formed" my way of thinking, because I do not recall at any time that I was ever in favor of prohibition of either alcohol or drugs. I grew up--I'm old enough to have lived through some part of the Prohibition era.

 

 

Prohibition was repealed in 1933 when I was 21 years old, so was a teenager during most of Prohibition. Alcohol was readily available. Bootlegging was common. Any idea that alcohol prohibition was keeping people from drinking was absurd. There were speakeasies all over the place. But more than that. We had this spectacle of Al Capone, of the hijackings, of the gang wars...

 

Anybody with two eyes could see that this was a bad deal, that you were doing more harm than good. In addition, I became an economist. And as an economist, I came to recognize the importance of markets and of free choice and of consumer sovereignty and came to discover the harm that was done when you interfered with them. The laws against drugs were passed in 1914, but there was no very great enforcement of it.

 

 

Friedman: So far as drugs itself is concerned, some years ago, Alaska legalized marijuana. Consumption of marijuana among high school students in Alaska went DOWN. The Dutch, in Holland, do not prosecute soft drugs, like marijuana, and they would prefer not to prosecute hard drugs, but they feel impelled by the international obligations they've entered into, and consumption of marijuana by young people has gone down. And, equally more interesting, the average age of the users of hard drugs has gone up, which means they're not getting any more new recruits.

 

The Child who's shot in a slum in a pass-by-shooting, in a random shooting, is an innocent victim in every respect of the term. The person who decides to take drugs for himself is not an innocent victim. He has chosen himself to be a victim. And I must say I have very much less sympathy for him. I do not think it is moral to impose such heavy costs on other people to protect people from their own choices.

 

Friedman: The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in "On Liberty." The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Govern- ment, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.

 

The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?

 

Friedman: It does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug wars. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible.

 

Friedman: And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs. You wouldn't have Colombia in the state it's in.

 

Friedman: That's not a theory, and there's nobody who will deny it. Is there anybody who will deny that you can expect every person to pursue his own personal interests? Now those personal interests don't have to be narrow. Mother Theresa is pursuing her own personal interest just as much as Donald Trump is pursuing his. But they're both pursuing the personal interest.

 

Paige: Some would say that that notion--that personal interest is what propels societies as well as people--is a heartless philosophy and that the underclass would not fare well under that kind of a notion. You've heard that before.

 

Friedman: Yes, of course. But the evidence is so overwhelming. The only countries in the world in which low income people have managed to get a halfway decent level of living are those which rely on capitalist markets. Just compare the quality of life, the level of living of the ordinary people in Russia and ordinary people in, I won't say the U.S., but in France, in Italy, in Germany, in England, or in Hong Kong. Compare Hong Kong with mainland China.

 

Every society is driven by personal interest. Mainland China is driven by personal interest. The question is: How is personal interest disciplined? If the only way you can satisfy your personal interest is by getting something that other people want to pay for. You've got to...

 

And one of the reasons I object to so many of the things that government has gotten into is that it prevents government from performing its proper role. A basic role of government is to keep you from having our house burgled, to keep you from being hit over the head. And because the larger fraction of our law enforcement machinery is devoted to the war on drugs, you haven't got that kind of safety.

Paige: But, of course, there is clearly the argument that if the police come and pick up a person who is addicted to a drug and does not have the money to buy those drugs, then they're also taking a potential burglar off the street who's going to come and get my house, right? Friedman: They are, but they'll be more of them coming on, as we know, and besides what are you going to do with them. Are you going to house them? A majority of those people who are arrested are simply arrested for possession, they're casual users.

 

Paige: However, the sixty-five, seventy-five-year-old woman who looks out her window and sees drug dealers out in the street and she sees them carrying guns and selling drugs thirty feet from her front door has a right to call police and say, "I want these people off the street."

 

Friedman: Absolutely.

 

Paige: And police should take them off the street. Correct?

 

Friedman: Absolutely. But it's a mistake to have a law which makes that the main function of the police. I don't blame the police. I don't blame that woman. I don't blame the drug dealers.

 

Friedman: We put them in a position where that's the thing to do. When we say to a young man in the ghetto, "Look, you get a reasonable job at McDonald's or anyplace else, you'll make five, six, seven dollars an hour. But on the other hand, here's this opportunity to peddle drugs in the street." Why does the juvenile have the opportunity? Because the law is easier on juveniles than it is on adults. Friedman: I would legalize drugs by subjecting them to exactly the same rules that alcohol and cigarettes are subjected to now. Alcohol and cigar- ettes cause more deaths than drugs do, by far, from use, but many fewer innocent victims. And the major innocent victims, in that case, are the people who are killed by drunk drivers. And we ought to enforce the law against drunk driving, just as we ought to enforce the law against driving under the influence of marijuana, or cocaine, or anything else.

 

But I would, as a first step at least, treat the drugs exactly the same way we now treat alcohol and tobacco, no different.

 

 

Friedman: What scares me is the notion of continuing on the path we're on now, which will destroy our free society, making it an uncivilized place. There's only one way you can really enforce the drug laws currently. The only way to do that is to adopt the policies of Saudi Arabia, Singa- pore, which some other countries adopt, in which a drug addict is subject to capital punishment or, at the very least, having his hand chopped off. If we were willing to have penalties like that--but would that be a society you'd want to live in?

[alabamajim1000]

Can pot be put in the same group as drugs? i believe pot laws will change soon,look at Willie,found 1 1/2 lbs and all he got was a fine and let go..to me, pot should be legal,it helps me with my back pain,and makes me feel more relaxed,plus just think of the jobs and taxes that pot would bring if it was legal..

[eddo]

plus just think of the jobs and taxes that pot would bring if it was legal..

 

What jobs would it bring to make marijuana legal? Pot Inspectors? The Hippie Police? a special branch of the FDA for munchies?

[Komrade Vostok Hazard]

What jobs would it bring to make marijuana legal?

 

 

Farmers who grow it

 

Outlets that sell it

[Komrade Vostok Hazard]

Legalize it, grow it sell it and advertise it. Just another working class vise that they will convince themselves is good for them, push for the legalization of it, justify it and vaunt it

[lilmizztemper]

Compare your states sentencing...drug related crimes to violent crimes. Its often rediculous.

 

many voilent crimes are caused while one is under the influence of some kind of drug. Drugs are no good...but what can we all do about it? Just worry about what drugged out piece of shit is gonna go nuts on some high school or what have ya!

[lilmizztemper]

Farmers who grow it

 

Outlets that sell it

 

those who grow it are NOT farmers...just junkies!!!

[Jhony5]

Posted by Toriallen:

alcohol is not involved in more violent crimes than drugs.

I beg to differ.

 

I've run with the police many times in a run down area of Indy known as Fountain Square. 80% of the calls were alcohol related and many of them were violent. Only a select handful involved street drugs. NONE of them involved pot. Not one of the dozens of runs I've been on involved pot and violence. NOT ONE. There were these kids that were driving by as the police were interviewing a woman who's boyfriend beat her, while he was drunk I might add, and they smelled pot smoke coming from the car. Gave them a ticket and confiscated their dope, sent them on their way. Marijuana suppresses aggressive behavior. Thats science, not opinion.

 

Posted by Lillmizzinformation:

those who grow it are NOT farmers...just junkies!!!

 

By definition...they are cultivist/farmers. Your injection of the term "junkies" is a poor attempt to maintain your own personal opinion that your ex-husband fell victim to the dreaded marijuana menace. I talked to you about this before. He was a fucking asshole. When he smoked weed, he was a fucking asshole that was high. When he was out of weed, he was a fucking asshole that was sober. Either way, HE WAS A FUCKING ASSHOLE!!

 

Pot gives pleasure to those whom choose to smoke it. In this ugly world, with so many lives torn apart by disease and war, is it really that big a fucking deal that some choose to stay home and smoke a plant that makes them giggle? I mean honestly? Thats what we're talking about when you boil it down to Its base. I don't sit in a dark room by myself for days shooting weed into my veins until the supply runs out and my panicked brain succumbs to the horror of detoxification. Thusly thrusting my body to take action, resorting to whatever violent means necessary to replenish my emptied stash.

[ToriAllen]

Posted by Toriallen:

I beg to differ.

 

I've run with the police many times in a run down area of Indy known as Fountain Square. 80% of the calls were alcohol related and many of them were violent. Only a select handful involved street drugs.

Wow. I have to admit, your personal experience is a very scientific way to determine whether drugs are involved more in violence or alcohol. The fact is, alcohol is involved in more domestic violence, while drugs are involved in non-domestic violent crimes. It would probably depend on the area as well. All these bad stats about alcohol

[snafu]

Let me burn one and I'll get back to you guys on this.

[smutt butt]

many voilent crimes are caused while one is under the influence of some kind of drug. Drugs are no good...but what can we all do about it? Just worry about what drugged out piece of shit is gonna go nuts on some high school or what have ya!

Obviously you have never enjoyed a big fat joint. I enjoyed every drug i could find when i was younger. I think pot, acid and shrooms should be legal.

[smutt butt]

I will never understand why it is illegal to have some plants in your house for personal use but i can go to the abc store and buy a fifth. Too bad congress is full of alcoholics instead of potheads.

 

I wish there was a way to force feed the muslim shitheads some pot so they would chill the fuck out. Just think, if everyone in the world would get high every day there wouldn't be any more wars.

 

I wouldn't drink again if it wasn't for DOT drug tests. Had my last toke in nov. of 91