Main > Everything Else
YAY! TODAY SUCKED!!!
fredster:
Shmokes,
I got my info from a government source also:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/09so.htm
I don't think that people who do drugs should go to jail either. I don't think people should get into drugs at all. It didn't help anybody I ever knew. It's taking my 19 year old nephew with Floyd's attitude now. He seems to think that it's pretty cool and has dropped out of college. He was an A student and captain of his football team before he found dope. Now he's just a stoner.
I'm for stopping supply. I'm for busting people for selling it, hard. I'm not in favor of busting people like Floyd. It doesn't make sense to do that unless they keep on and become part of the problem by selling.
There is nothing free about being able to do drugs. Nothing. There is no upside. Where is the upside boys? Where?
Danny, you can't make this relative to other problems. Comparing one problem to an unrelated problem. It's a sad story you write about this 16 year old. I've seen that too. You didn't mention if the father was an addict. Drugs could have been the cause for a lot of this over and over. Drugs or drinking. Intoxicants in general.
Another good reason to keep new intoxicants out of the public domain. We can't control what we have that's already legal.
The only thing I hear from the other side in this issue is - well if you want to screw up your own life, go right ahead. Life sucks then you die. Be free to kill yourself. What does it matter?
Come on. It does matter. It matters to people around you who care for you. We have to something. Doing nothing is not an option. There is no future or upside to it.
locash:
--- Quote from: fredster on November 16, 2004, 12:35:22 pm ---The only thing I hear from the other side in this issue is - well if you want to screw up your own life, go right ahead. Life sucks then you die. Be free to kill yourself. What does it matter?
--- End quote ---
If this is what you heard, you haven't been listening. No one said life sucks or it doesn't matter. And I would discourage anyone from screwing up their lives or killing themselves. However, it is not the job of government to tell people they can't do these things if they choose. Government should not be some sort of surrogate parent telling people how to live their lives.
fredster:
--- Quote ---If this is what you heard, you haven't been listening.
--- End quote ---
I always have been know for listening pretty well.
I now understand why I should be like John Lennon. I'm sure that he started out doing LSD. They wrote a classic album about yellow submarines. John Lennon was such a socially adjusted guy. Just like Jannis Joplin, she was a real winner and real happy. Jimmi Hendrix, and Kurt Kobane, he made grunge mainstream, and what a fun guy. Great roll models all! I can't wait to get the posters.
I thnk I heard this:
--- Quote ---The drug war hurts more people than it saves.
--- End quote ---
- So that means, give up on it. Stop fighting drugs. Don't stop drugs, make no effort. After all it comes down to you and me. Why spend the effort to stop all that nasty business? After all, it's fruitless. We can never ever win. So why even try?
And this:
--- Quote ---Because without the ability to live our lives as we choose we are not truly free.
--- End quote ---
So it's a good idea to add yet another way to fail to an already difficult life. Great. We can all decide to just destroy ourselves with even more stuff! What can we choose???
--- Quote ---How many people die of heart disease each year? But do we hear a shout for banning fast food?
--- End quote ---
That means since we are screwing up here, we can just go ahead and screw this up too! Wow! that's a great idea.
I hear:
--- Quote ---Theres no use saying only one thing to kids, that drugs kill, when chances are they see their friends/older siblings doing them and staying very much alive.
--- End quote ---
So everybody does it and LOOK how successful they are! They are alive after that! Wow, so it can't be bad.
I hear that we should just allow a new intoxicant to be allowed and social acceptable. It's okay. People, or "most people" get over it. You should be able to screw yourself up, that's what I get from most of this.
Now using the logic I've seen here, I have changed on more than one issue.
We can now say that suicide is an appropriate response to life's troubles. Hey, it's okay. It only hurts one person. It's your only choice to be truly free. Let's make it socially acceptable to do that. After all, we shouldn't try to prevent that as it impinges on one's freedom!!!
Ok! I understand.
locash:
--- Quote from: fredster on November 16, 2004, 02:50:09 pm ---Now using the logic I've seen here...
--- End quote ---
Is this an invitation to question your sight as well? :)
But seriously, your logic is flawed. You are equating legalizing pot with advocating it and no one is doing this. Just because something is legal doesn't mean you are encouraged to do it. After all drinking and smoking are legal and yet not everyone participates. Why would pot be any different.
And why are you bringing up suicide? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
patrickl:
--- Quote from: fredster on November 15, 2004, 05:36:24 pm ---Ok, here's more:
However, what CATO refuses to publicly acknowledge are the devastating
results of legalization-decriminalization policy, as evidenced in the
Netherlands, where such a policy has been in place since the early
1980's. The president of the Dutch National Committee on Drug Prevention,
K.F. Gunning, M.D., reports that crime and drug use have skyrocketed
since the implementation of legalization in the Netherlands. According to
the Dutch Government, their legalization-decriminalization has resulted
in: A 250-percent increase in drug use since 1993; a doubling of
marijuana use by students since 1988; armed robberies up by 70
percent; shootings up by 40 percent; car thefts up by 60 percent.
The number of registered addicts in the Netherlands has risen 22 percent
in the past 5 years, and there were 25,000 new addicts in 1993 alone. In
addition, the number of organized crime groups in the Netherlands has
increased from 3 in 1988 to 93 in 1993. For good reason, the American
public has zero tolerance for legalization schemes.
--- End quote ---
I guess it's just how you read the figures. You can do it like your source does (and claim that things are running out of control in the Netherlands) or you can compare the figures for the Netherlands to the figures of our neighbours (or to the US). I'm afraid your source is out to prove a case for the hard line approach and only shows the data that can prove that claim. It grossly exaggerates things that are not an issue and ignores the points that are. The "report" fails to put things in perspective.
For instance, the biggest power of our soft drugs legalization is in preventing people from coming in contact with hard drugs. So when your source claims the Dutch are becoming hugely addicted to heroin (tripled or maybe even quadrupled since 1976) that sure doesn't sound good. But if you look at the stats and see that the Netherlands is one of the European countries with the lowest number of opiate addicts (2.6 in 1000 while it's up to 10 per 1000 in countries like Italy and the UK) then I'd say that apparently we are still doing it better than the other countries.
I also don't see the relation to other forms of crimes. What could be the relation between armed robberies and drugs use? There are more dutch producers of drugs yes, but these people don't steal cars, rob banks or whatever.
The truth is that the Netherlands overall has far less drugs related problems than the US even though you can of course find some individual figures that will prove otherwise. The figures I have seen are far less shocking tahan your source makes it look (2003 ANNUAL REPORT ON THE DRUG SITUATION ).
For what it's worth, I used soft drugs quite often and even though I build up a reasonably succesful business for myself. It's not the soft drugs that stop people from being succesful, it's the fact that they were losers to begin with that makes them losers.
Indeed "losers" tend to resort to alcohol and/or drugs abuse, but that's does not mean it's always true the other way around. Claiming that soft drugs "break" peoples lives is just as silly as claiming that beer would do that.
Personally, I dislike drunk people a lot more than drugged people. Drunks tend to get agressive while "druggers" go mellow. Actually, it's my experience that women get really horny when they smoke some stuff ;D
Perhaps in an ideal world people wouldn't drink alcohol or do drugs, but then I don't think I'd like to live in that ideal world.