Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Say tomorrow we stopped putting people with drugs in jail/prison and stopped actively trying to stop dealing with people that do/deal drugs wholesale, what do you think would happen?
Pushing highly addictive drugs would become big business and a lot of people would suffer a miserable existence as a dope dependent slave as a result. Remember what society was like before the Surgeon-General declared tobacco as an addictive, cancerous scourge whos use resulted in the premature deaths of millions? Remember how the tobacco lobby used their extensive income streams to lobby against regulation of their products? Now imagine what kind of world we'd have if the industry is completely unregulated, was run by the Sinaloa and Cali drug cartels with the bankroll of El Chapo, and the products are heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine - freely available to children in every corner store.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,480,204 times
Reputation: 12187
Not only does the war on drugs hurt Americans it hurts many people in Third World Countries. How many homicides in Latin America are related to supplying the USA with illegal drugs? Much of our illegal immigration problem is people fleeing violence in their home countries that is at least partially caused by the WOD
why dont we just double the war on drugs, execute everyone that get caught selling drug or transportion drugs. why do the people that dont use any drugs have to put up with those that are high in society, why should we worry if that over the road trucker is stone out of his mind. I beleive if you get caught smoking weed you should get twenty years
Pushing highly addictive drugs would become big business and a lot of people would suffer a miserable existence as a dope dependent slave as a result. Remember what society was like before the Surgeon-General declared tobacco as an addictive, cancerous scourge whos use resulted in the premature deaths of millions? Remember how the tobacco lobby used their extensive income streams to lobby against regulation of their products? Now imagine what kind of world we'd have if the industry is completely unregulated, was run by the Sinaloa and Cali drug cartels with the bankroll of El Chapo, and the products are heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine - freely available to children in every corner store.
I agree. I remember when tobacco was all over the place and people were addicted, both physically and psychologically. It took a great amount of education by doctors and by ads on tv to get people to the point where they decided to stop smoking.
The argument about legalizing drugs because we legalized alcohol doesn't make sense because alcohol WAS legal before Prohibition. People were drinking, drinking was a normal part of life. Then, while the men were away fighting WWI, some of the women decided to get laws passed that would making drinking illegal. That was the trouble--it went from being perfectly fine, within limits, to being illegal.
How did so many people give up smoking? There were all sorts of groups to help people stop--help was everywhere. We were bombarded with anti smoking information in the media. It became taboo to smoke--smoking became an embarrassing habit. People didn't even want to be around smokers anymore.
How do alcoholics give up alcohol? Groups like AA mostly. Again, education, pressure from society, and lots of help and support.
If somebody gets into drugs, they need a lot of help, probably for a long time. The drug dealers themselves, need to be locked up. This whole country needs to wise up and stop taking drugs. (I'm not talking about marijuana, I mean DRUGS.) We have a program here that allows the police to revive the drug abusers by sort of medicine--I don't know what it's called. Some towns don't put them in jail anymore; they try to educate them and offer support to help them get better. The worst thing is to put them in jail, do nothing, and then let them back out again, still having done nothing. There needs to be A LOT of help available, not legalization, but HELP for them. Then maybe they can go out and talk to kids about how to get off drugs, that there is life beyond drugs.
It's like people can't think past their own idea of how the world works.
Scenario 1:
Guy gets caught with a medium amount of personal marijuana, or even an entire plant he's growing in his house, and goes to jail. YOU pay for his entire existence while he's in jail. You, the taxpayer, pay for his food, clothing, medical care, very expensive housing, and a very expensive security force to protect him.
Scenario 2:
Guy is under extreme stress because of work problems/marital problems/medical problems/financial problems/whatever. He is scared of branDcalf's wrath, so he doesn't relieve stress using currently illegal drugs. He has a mental breakdown, defaults on his debts (including massive hospital bills that get passed on to you), and gets admitted to a mental hospital.
Scenario 3:
Guy is under extreme stress because of work problems/marital problems/medical problems/financial problems/whatever. But he's able to relax at home by smoking a joint a day and continue to function.
Yes, it's true that a very small percentage of the population will turn into dysfunctional stoners, but how is this different from currently legal alcohol abuse?
Scene 2 he can go to a mental health doctor and be helped...Does everyone HAVE to smoke weed?
Say tomorrow we stopped putting people with drugs in jail/prison and stopped actively trying to stop dealing with people that do/deal drugs wholesale, what do you think would happen?
Drug prices will go down as prices are kept up by making them "illegal" and "hard to find'. But this will not happen as 3rd world largest market is actually narcotics. It's slowly taking over the 2nd position, that being arms.
BREAKING NEWS: Crime in Mexico down to lowest levels since 2005, Chicago records two-week stretch without a homicide, gap between white and black arrests at the lowest number in history, country economy at the healthiest it's been since the 1990s
Legalizing everything makes too much sense. That's why it's likely to never happen. Politicians and dirty cops would lose a ton of money that way. Plus, the prison industrial complex would lose out on a ton of its funding. Nope, we can't have that!
This question has been kicked around for years and in the US, it's no closer to an answer. Whether or not the war on drugs is effective, the policy is unlikely to change. It boils down to nothing more than following the money. Tens if not hundreds of billions goes to a multitude of agencies to "fight" the criminal aspects, that has created huge infrastructure that is one of the hogs feeding at the trough. The resulting arrests has flooded the states capability to incarcerate convicted violators to the point where third party prisons spawned a private sector industry in incarceration, another hog. Public resources from police to the judicial system are consumed with prosecuting suspects, and straining the system to keep up with many other criminal issues that effect the public more severely, another hog. The costs for treatment vary, the government spends only a small part of the war on drugs budget on treating the disease vs. fighting it, so only a small hog. On the supply side, billions more dollars are being made to feed the habit, keeping it illegal sustains an underground supply chain operated by gangs or cartels all over the world, and they have become extremely wealthy and are probably using that wealth to influence public policy.
Many other countries have figured out that this is a public health issue and not a criminal issue, far cheaper to treat it that way. Of the countries who have decriminalized drugs, and are working examples for what to expect, the policy clearly demonstrates decriminalization has more benefits than drawbacks. Crime goes down, drug related homicides go down, police can re-direct resources to go after the supply side. It's appalling that in this country, possession of a small amount of drugs, clearly for personal use, can result in a longer prison sentence than murdering someone, that's a very messed up system. Unfortunately money drives the policy, and it's not likely to change.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
