Using that same logic... If it's the gov's job to make sure we're safe, then shouldn't drugs be LEGAL? I mean - prohibition creates a black market, which brings violent crime. Innocent people get harmed all the time, due to this black market. If drugs were fully legal, the black market wouldn't be there (they'd basically be put outta business by the legitimate drug dispensaries). ALSO - People would be getting CLEAN drugs, administered in a SAFE environment, by PROFESSIONALS... Not shitty (and potentially lethal) street drugs of unknown origin, that are cooked up by people who don't know what they're doing (and are only trying to make a quick buck). So by your logic, the gov't is seriously fucking up by keeping drugs illegal. But I do agree that drugs should be regulated (sorta like alcohol is). But prohibition doesn't work.
they keep the masses safe at what cost to the individual? i agree with Ben Franklin, who said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I don't know. What happens now when that happens? We still have a court system and laws right? Ben Franklin had it right.
We managed to establish human civilization while all drugs were legal and widely available (with the exception of some limited religious prohibitions). So drugs were not an issue from oh, 9831 BC to 1938 AD, why should they suddenly become a problem at that point? Let people take whatever they want to. Humans haven't changed-the majority of them will self regulate their drug use and be productive members of society, a small minority will have difficulty. A small minority have difficulty now.
It would make the h and crack user safer since what he/she is consuming is coming from a legitimate source as opposed to a black marketeer just wanting to make a buck. Use may increase, but not to a significant degree IMO. After all, 99% of people polled would still say "no."
PCP has medical value...in the veterinarian field.i think it was use to put animals to sleep for surgery.And for Heroin,i think the fact that marijuana kills pain also and is hella alot safer then Opium poppy plant base drugs and less additive,there might be some type of boycott and media storm on the subject.And for crack/coke i don't know how there going to handle that.I don't see much medical value with that.i guess the best they can do is treat it as alcohol, as with all the other drugs they sell.and for meth..w8, why do they care what we do to other bodies again???
it's absurd to make something illegal just because some people can't use it responsibly. many people can use mildly addictive drugs like ketamine and cocaine without getting addicted. and even more people can use non-addictive drugs like weed, lsd, and mushrooms without it interfering with their lives. so just like driving, the fact that some people can't do it responsibily doesn't mean no one should be allowed to do it. it just needs regulation and a support network. but for addictive drugs, like meth or crack or heroin, the government shouldn't legalize (and thereby passively encourage the use of) them unless it's willing to provide clinics and treatment for addicts who want to get better. like, it's irresponsible to say "ok, you can do heroin now" if there is no way people who try it and get addicted can get over their addiction, or if the treatment is too expensive. so it might be more expensive to legalize addictive, destructive drugs since the cost of taking care of the addict population might be more than the cost of that section of the war on drugs. aren't about half of all drug related arrests in the u.s. regarding one drug (mj)? throwing out coke, ecstasy, the designer drugs, etc, the dea's entire function would be to keep heroin out of the country and busting meth labs. which would be more expensive, that, or paying for rehab for every person who tries and gets addicted to one of those drugs (keep in mind that people might be willing to try them if they know the treatment will be paid for) and if the government won't pay to treat addicts, then those drugs should remain illegal. at a certain point in the addiction process, the person loses their free will, and the decision to continue using the drug is no longer their decision. it ruins lives and people will continue to use such drugs, legal or not. i don't know why people think making heroin cheaper and more widely available is going to decrease usage of it. if any given drug was made legal tomorrow, use of the drug would increase dramatically for a short time and then fizzle out to lower levels than when it was illegal, since people want to try it once or twice and then lose interest. also, fewer teens will use a substance if it's legal because part of the appeal of drugs is the sense of rebellion and defiance they offer to adolescents, so over time usage of the substance will decline. but if the given substance is addictive, then all of those people who try it once when it becomes legal may become addictive and not stop, leading to increased usage over time. and yes, as thers have said, addicts will be more willing to seek treatment if they know they will not be punished for thier drug use. but who will pay for their treatment? if the government won't pay for it (which would be insanely expensive) then i can't imagine it being very useful. how many people could afford a month of rehab at a private clinic, even before they became addicted and presumably spent a great deal of money on drugs? and the treatment would probably take longer than a month. will these people have jobs when they get back from treatment? it might be more financially appealing to continue using the drug if it was cheap and legal. in conclusion, i think certain drugs should be legal and certain drugs should remain illegal, depending on how addictive they are and how destructive they are (nicotine, while addictive, is not terribly destructive). that way the dea could actually focus on getting dangerous drugs off the streets and people could freely use relatively safe drugs. additionally, drug policy should change towards punishment for dealers and rehabilitation for users. source - out of 5 at the moment
Why do you insist on keeping certain drugs illegal? Keeping drugs illegal benefits the drug dealers the most. They get to make money tax-free and the addicts keep coming back for more drugs because they have nowhere else to turn since they're criminals, too. The laws making the drugs illegal only increase the price of the drugs, which makes the selling of said drugs more profitable. LOL @ cigarettes not being destructive. Cigarettes kill ~400,000 people in this country every year. If that's not destructive, I don't know what is. The DEA is unconstitutional and shouldn't even exist in a free society like the one our founding fathers had in mind. Let's also put people in jail for making a quick buck. Those dealers and their evil schemes to sell drugs and make money. I wonder how we could put those evil dealers out of business? Hmmm... The fact is that legalization isn't a perfect solution, but it is the best solution.
The war on drugs is our governments last attempt of controlling society, heaven forbid if people were actually individuals and thought for themselves instead of this mass population of walking robots. Drugs being legal would sort things out and take away the dealers on the street. Cops care more about dealers than the drug themselves, problem solved.
you're literally ignoring everything else in my post. i agree with pretty much everything you're saying about how prohibition benefits dealers and criminals and hurts users, but which is worse, that or what would happen to the country if we made highly addictive substances cheap and widely available? drug addictions would go through the roof and unless the government spends massive amounts of money, few of the addicts get treatment. i knew someone would complain about the "cigarettes aren't destructive" line but i didn't think it would be someone who wanted all drugs legal. how many nicotine addicts do you know? how amny of them are broke because of their addiction? how many of them are dying right now because of their addiction? how many people have died of a nicotine overdose? heroin is very different from nicotine in that it cannot be used responsibly. and yeah, i think it should be a crime to sell such drugs if the drugs are illegal, because you are making a quick buck off of someone else's suffering. you're making the country a worse place for money. again, distinguish between weed and coke, and heroin and crack. and, though i primarily consider myself a libertarian, you can't base everything we do today off of exactly what the founding fathers wanted because the world was different when they were around. george washington warned against "entangiling alliances". do you really think we could withdraw from all of our alliances right now? it was fine to be neutral when america was a brand new nation with no money, but now we're the single global superpower. similarly, they wouldn't want a dea but then again, what did they know about drugs? as long as the dea opperates within the boundaries of the consitution (and i know they haven't been, i mean if they did) there's nothing unconstitutional about having a law enforcement agency. and the law they're enforcing is constitutional as long as it applies to drugs that people cannot quit using themselves under ordinary circumstances. sorry for writing so much again. still high.
I didn't want to respond to every point you made in your post as it was very long and I didn't really feel like spending the time to do it. As for your "if drugs are legalized everyone is going to become addicted" argument, it's just plain false. There's no data to support that theory. Heroin was legal back in the 20s and 30s and I bet we have a hell of a lot more addicts now than we did back then. I know quite a few nicotine addicts. I don't think any of them are broke because of that addiction as cigarettes aren't really expensive enough to force you to go broke. They're all dying because of their addiction; albeit slowly, but still dying. My grandmother has smoked a pack a day since she was 14 years old. She's now 82. She doesn't have cancer (yet), but she can barely do anything besides sit in bed without an oxygen machine. She's always short of breath and the damage she's done to her respiratory system is apparent. Ah, but the legal drugs are fine even though they're still making a quick buck off someone's suffering. I'm actually an anarchist and I don't base everything we do off what the founding fathers wanted; however, I do think Ben Franklin was an intellectual and I think his opinion deserves some respect considering all his accomplishments. As for alliances, fuck 'em. We don't need to be allies in order to be friendly with them. We don't need to be a superpower. The world would be fine without us policing it. As for what they knew about drugs, I don't see how that's relevant. The government shouldn't have any say in what we put in our bodies. The DEA is unconstitutional institution. Everything they do is unconstitutional. The federal government is not supposed to have police working for them.
idk, heroin was orignally invented as a substitute for morphine. they needed a substitute because so many people who used morphine for pain got addicted to it, and morhpine addiction is very similar to heroin addiction. and heroin was eventually made illegal because so many people got addicted to it, while morphine continues to be used in hospitals. i imagine rates of heroin addiction in the 20s and 30s were even higher than modern day oxycontin addictions. i never said it was harmless. marijuana isn't harmless either. but they're not destructive in the way crack, heroin, or crystal meth are. those drugs control your life and can kill you in relatively small doses compared to those necessary to get high. they also cause intense, lasting damage after a brief period of moderate usage. your grandmother smoked her whole life and it still hasn't killed her. my grandmother never smoked and had just as many health problems at 82 as yours. it's fine to seel legal drugs because in my hypothetical scenario, the drugs that are legal are the ones that don't cause suffering. hence, they're not profitting off of suffering. i'm not going into political issues. and i've never heard that the consitution forbade federal police, but if that's true i agree the dea should be abolished, and local and state police could handle drug busts. but again, i've never heard that federal police were against the constitution. wouldn't that include the fbi, the ins, and the border patrol?
I highly doubt that. I know plenty of people that are struggling with oxycodone addiction and I only know 1 person who is struggling with heroin addiction. Also, keep in mind they're both opiates and are both addictive. I bet my grandmother would still be able to do things if she hadn't smoked a pack a day for the last 60 years. Believe me, it's obvious when you see her that it's the cigarettes that ruined her respiratory system. When she's not on the oxygen machine, she's always coughing, wheezing and struggling for air. That isn't normal for an 82 year old. So illegal drugs cause suffering. Legal ones don't. The constitution doesn't forbid federal police, but it doesn't allow for them either. The Constitution was created in order to restrict the power of the federal government and because they didn't allow for federal police, the DEA, FBI, INS, and any other federal policing agency is unconstitutional.
The drugs that are LEGAL cause more suffering than illegal drugs. First off the prices are insane and the withdrawals are just as bad as illegal drugs or worse. What about the 150,000 people that died last year from prescription drugs? you think their families aren't suffering? Meanwhile there was less than 15,000 deaths last year from heroin and cocaine.
between the two of you guys, what exactly are you trying to prove? that cigarettes should be illegal because they're so harmful? that prescription drugs that could have negative side effects should be illegal? that heroin is harmless? i don't think anything i said was especially controversial and it feels like you're disagreeing with my points just because you disagree with my principle. i mentioned 3 specific drugs that i believe to be so addictive, so harmful, so potentially lethal by overdose, and so damaging to the personality and overall quality of social life of its users that i said they should be remain illegal in the event that the government legalizes all other drugs. heroin, crack, and crystal meth. also anything else that is analogous in terms of addiction and health risks. so, why do you think they should become legal? i have stated that making them legal, which would also make them cheaper and more easily available, would increase usage and therefore increase addiction. i think this would be alright if the government would be willing to pay for rehab and treatment for everyone, which i don't want because it would cost too much. what part of this do you disagree with?
No drug is inherently bad. All drugs can be used responsibly. Therefore, all drugs should be legal for adults to use. I understand the effects of those drugs; however, that doesn't give you the right to make them illegal. Who are you to judge what someone puts in their body? This is an opinion that is not backed up by the facts. The facts are that usage of most drugs increases when they're made illegal.