Found this article, don't agree with it. Interesting piece though.

Why Legalizing Drugs Is A Bad Idea - Ted Belling

* The great country of the United States of America is already losing its position in the world due to poor fiscal management, failing schools, over taxation and regulation, and too many people taking too much from the government and not contributing back. Now numbers of Americans are wanting to legalize the free use of many drugs deemed to have no or limited medical value; marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, etcetera. The wide spread ramifications of this could not be fully grasped by these people; otherwise they would never consider it. Either that or they just don’t care about what happens to all the Americans that will become victims of their selfish, drug craving desires.

* Why would many think legalizing drugs is a good idea? The answers are varied. It would legitimize the sale of drugs and end the criminal reign of drug dealers, smugglers, and traffickers. It would lead to the government oversight of the drugs to insure that the drugs are pure and high quality. This would lessen the chances of drug overdoses and poisonings due to the unscrupulous use of dangerous chemicals mixed with the drugs as cutting agentsi. The Government can tax the drugs and increase their cash strapped coffers. The drugs will be decriminalized so there will be a large reduction of the prison population, saving government costs, and making room for violent prisoners. The Libertarians have as part of their platform the following: “…We favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes.”ii The use of drugs is within the exercise of sole dominion over our own lives and the government has no right to legally prevent it. We already have legally used drugs of alcohol and tobacco in America and the country has not collapsed. The legalization of marijuana will make the drug available to sufferers of cancer, and glaucoma which helps relieve pain, nausea and increases appetite. The drug war is a failure. It needs to end and the police resources redirected to other crimes.
...
http://caselaw4cops.net/articles/legalizing_drugs.html

The article is basically entirely based on the assumption that the price point will be so high through government stupidity (because clearly alcohol and tobacco are unaffordable for that reason....), that nothing meaningful will change, then arguing how terrible legalization will be because... I dunno, since nothing will have changed.

Drugs are really awesome, and everyone who doesn't do them now will want to if they are legal, therefore we can not let them fall victims to themselves.

Who is pushing to make cocaine, heroin and LSD legal? What?

Who says the highest THC content is 13%?

Who says all marijuana strains make you lazy and supress your ambition?

Classic missinformation imho.

I am, for one..

You can't keep all the ants out of your house, but you can clean up your kitchen. What other 'lucrative enterprise' could possibly sustain all of these people when the billions and billions of dollars of the illegal drug trade is suddenly gone? The author makes it sound like all of the dealers are mobsters and gangsters. A large portion of dealers are nonviolent risk takers that like the easy money. They aren't suddenly going to become pimps and burglars and hitmen. Sure some will, but the market for all this is already pretty saturated.

The primary criminal activity most could gravitate toward would be robbery, and they will quickly find out that there's just not much money in it for the risk and time involved. Most people would earn more working at McDonalds.

This guy LOOOOOVES to assume his conclusions. Governmental taxes and regulations WILL be so high as to keep a thriving black market, and normal, hard working americans WOULD suddenly turn into a bunch of drugged out, jobless wife beaters. Pack your bags boys, argument's over.

So when they say that marijuana is a gateway drug, they mean it opens the door for legalizing harder drugs. That, cardio problems and the laziness factor are the only reason I've seen him give to keep MJ illegal. Two of the three also apply to Big Macs.


On the bright side, at least this guy does mention some of the arguments for legalization instead of pretending like no argument exists.

I am in the legalize camp as well, but there are obvious social problems that we rarely address.

One of the biggest motivating factors for immature people (teenagers) to experiment with drugs is because they are illegal.

Simply making them legal will not remove the stigma that the drugs have carried for a fairly long time now, and because of that, it becomes a lot more problematic to snap introduce drugs into a society where they were illegal and part of underground social scenes for so long.

I think full-legalization has to be done in some kind of gradual way, but it is a more interesting topic, that of "How to Legalize" and I haven't seen it done much.

SECOND!

In before Lirva.

Wow. Cocaine and heroin ruin lives and kill people (a freind of mine being one of the dead). Violent crimes are commited by cocaine/heroin addicts to get their fix.

However, I have never heard of a pothead killing anyone, robbing anyone, shooting anyone, robbing stores/banks or whatever in order to get their weed. As a matter of fact, of all the weed smokers I have ever met in the 27 years Ive been smoking, I would say <1% seem to have possible violent tendencies when high. Even then, I beleive that 1% were just bad apples to begin with imo.

I also do not think there is one recorded case of death due to marijuanna overdose. So yes, I am totally in favor of legalization of weed. The other ****? Not so much. I have to say I disagree with your opinion that the harder drugs should be legal.

Mary J I have no problem with being legal whatsoever.

Eyeroll. Here we go...


and a little bit later...

also..

and it becomes apparent that I'm actually spending my time reading this. Sigh.

his whole argument is predicated on fallacies.

1. he assumes that the dealers will continue to flourish. supply and demand. they have the resources that they do because there is a huge demand for what they provide - drugs. it's not like they can just go to some other area of crime after legalization and expect to see anything close to the same kind of demand.

2. the idea that gov would mismanage it so poorly that ppl would continue to buy from drug dealers is laughable. if you can buy pot at the store, how much cheaper would it have to be for you to buy it from some sketch guy? are drug dealers really going to be able to compete with big pharma?

3. all of his arguments about them being "bad" apply to alcohol, one of the worst drugs.

4. he acts as if the status quo is something other than a colossal failure. prohibition doesn't work. the demand for drugs isn't going anywhere.

Posting a full article and not even including a link to the source is way lame dude.

All you have to do in wondering if we should legalize it or not is to look at Portugal IMO.

/thread

* The great country of the United States of America is already losing its position in the world due to poor fiscal management, failing schools, over taxation and regulation, and too many people taking too much from the government and not contributing back. Now numbers of Americans are wanting to legalize the free use of many drugs deemed to have no or limited medical value; marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, etcetera. The wide spread ramifications of this could not be fully grasped by these people; otherwise they would never consider it. Either that or they just don’t care about what happens to all the Americans that will become victims of their selfish, drug craving desires.

Troll much?

Yeah, but you can't compare the United States to Portugal. Sure, this is the greatest country on earth with the greatest people on earth......until drugs enter the equation.....then we're the most weak-minded, weak-willed, drug-fiends-waiting-to-happen in the world. Drugs are our kryptonite.

Portugese people through genetics and culture are able to throw saving rolls vs. drug addiction. They have dwarven blood, some say.

For awhile now, I've held that a law does not prevent anyone from doing anything. Thinking about legalization of drugs with this in mind, it creates a conflict, if not an outright contradiction. I assume when and if drugs are legal, addiction will increase as there are no longer barriers for honest people who want to experiment.

Is it a logical expectation that recreation drug use and addiction will increase if drugs are decriminalized?

you cant keep drugs out of supermax prisons, if you made america a supermax prison there would still be drugs.

ah, found it

http://www.virgin.com/richard-branso...e-war-on-drugs

Depends on who you ask. Personally, I think that experimentation would almost have to increase some amount, but at the same time, if money saved on the drug war is put toward addiction treatment, long term addiction could very well decrease.

That's another thing that the article author didn't talk about. Very little effort and money is put toward treatment these days. Our idea of treatment right now is to throw someone in cells with lots of other people with psychological problems and say, "There ya go! Good luck !"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain...f-in-portugal/

How drug abuse fell by half through decriminalization and increased treatment in Portugal.

Btw, when was this article written? 16% THC content is considered to be schwag by todays standards. Good strains yeild mid 20% range. Some as high as mid 30%

Got this from Wiki.

And here I thought they were legal.