Marijuana.com

rick

This is a bit of a followup to our previous poll, "How have you helped to end the Drug War this year?. It's obvious by the results that over 60% of the visitors of this site have done nothing to help end the War on Drugs. However, that means that 40% of the visitors of this site HAVE done something to help end the Drug War.

Lets phrase this post a bit differently and see what comes out of it...

__________________

 

mindraver

absolutely! it is way past time for these draconian laws to be done away with.

__________________
Cannabis is my anti-drug.
- the mindraver

JTP

I think I would have liked this question phrased so as to specify the war on marijuana. I do believe that some drugs deserve to be illegal. Not because I care if people overdose and die, but that if EVERY drug was legal someone would suggest that the rest of us pay to support the problems other drugs cause in one way or another. Marijuana- yes; Crack, coke, heroin, meth, etc. - no.

Yana Usdi

The whole war on drugs has failed, not just a part of it. When legislation was passed in 1906 that mandated proper labeling the "tonics" which contained opiates, they were then marked and opiate use dropped from about 3-5% to about 1% on its own.

The main problem we have now is that drugs are associated with rebellion and youth culture instead of treated as a health issue, more of the same isn't going to solve it. Legalize or decriminalize all of them and take a health based approach to them. The more moderate ones we distribute like we do alcohol and such now, and the more dangerous ones maybe we could at least decriminalize and treat the users more like in the article listed here tried to before it was shut down. http://www.dpft.org/mikegray.html

Once we separate youth culture and rebellion from drugs, which should be in reach once we stop the lies and start treating it as a health issue, there's no more reason to think people are going to have overwhelming compulsions to abuse than we do with pot, or than they did in 1906 when use dropped by 66% or better on the simple news of what they were taking. Most do fine or have the sense to not get involved in the first place. The ones that do have a problem need help, not threats, punishment, and being made into an outcast.

JTP

I see your point concerning youth culture and rebellion and drug use. However, merely legalizing these drugs will not change that, just as legal booze doesn't prevent under-age drinking.

You also made the statement "there's no more reason to think people are going to have overwhelming compulsions to abuse than we do with pot" - I flatly disagree and would point out that most of the other illegal drugs have a drastically higher rate of addiction and are also dramatically more physically harmful. I do not care to have those drugs legal.

While I feel that many people do need rehab and counseling, I also don't feel that that fact is a reason to legalize all drugs.

 

Yana Usdi

Don't mistake my position. I'm not pro drugs, I'm anti stupidity I'm 40 now, when I was a kid I did anything I could get my hands on, that all ended about 20 to 24 years ago. I don't do them because for the most part I agree, we don't need to mess with some things.

Fact is though that some do, and we've already proven for 70 years with pot and longer with some other drugs that this method is an abject and total failure. I haven't checked it myself but I'd bet between legal prescribed use and illegal use opiate use is about as high now as it was after the drop due to the 1906 laws. If that's accurate, we haven't gained an inch for any of it. Nothing.

It's a health issue, we need to stop asking cops to enforce health problems and we need to stop allowing politicians to play doctor. As long as it's us against them, it'll be us against our own kids. We don't stop because drugs are good, we stop because this method doesn't work.

JTP

i just don't want to pay for any of that medical treatment. People choose to use any drug. If they want to die of their choices I am fine with that - they should have that freedom. Just don't cost me any money.

The lady in your linked article is a perfect example of what I don't want to pay for.

Just my opinion.

Yana Usdi

That I have no problem with, but I don't see how it would cost a dime. What costs money is these drug task forces, Columbian aid packages so we can use roundup on their crops and train their people, prisons, broken families, and so on. That costs us money. The drug war is expensive.

A treatment program or even a maintenance program that doesn't even try to treat them costs next to nothing, and we've got good examples in Britain and elsewhere that it works. Why practice harm maximization when we can practice harm reduction?

That stuff was all legal for hundreds of years without society falling apart or even having dramatic problems that weren't self inflicted such as addiction in wounded war vets, if we'd try thinking about it nothing has changed except our attitudes and those just cause of the laws. I don't do it because I don't want to, with an educated view of drugs we don't need this expensive drug war. We didn't before.

bocephus

I also believe in the decriminalization of marijuana only. I agree that people will obtain whatever it is they wish to injest but to make these substances available to the public would be setting the stage for social chaos. There are people out there that use drugs as a catalyst to criminal behavior. I would feel safer with an education policy that addresses addiction and abuse. That is where the war should have started to begin with. Scare tactics never work and the end result is disillusionment and anger. If stricter guidelines were adopted for the obtaining of the chemicals used to manufacture some of them then we wouldn't have the problems we have now. The redirection of funds to 'harder drugs' would also be evident within the first year of implementation. The saving to the taxpayer would be astronomical but the downside is that instead of the money going to the education of our children it would probably end up in the tank of the war machine.

Yana Usdi

This being primarily a marijuana board I'll make this my last post in this thread unless there's a specific question that needs answered or something, but...

It amazes me that while we ask those who see no use in what we do to just take a rational look and try to understand that even if they don't like what we do prohibition does more harm than good, but when asked to look at the same question about something we don't ingest the same equation doesn't make sense to us?

With the very rare exception of drugs like PCP, drugs are rarely a catalyst to criminal behavior. Prohibition is. Al Capone didn't order the Valentines day massacre because he was drunk, he ordered it because he thought it was good business. We don't have violent gangs now because they are stoned, we have them because when we create a black market for something large portions of the public want someone is going to fill it. Where the rule of law is banned, you have the rule of the streets.

All we've managed to do is to finance terrorism and organized crime, and "the land of the free" now has about 25% of the worlds inmate population with just about 4.5% of the population, making us the most imprisoned nation in the world. And for what? We've got a worse drug problem than about any civilized nation you could name.

We all love to point at the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and say what great guys they are, but did you ever actually listen to them? Against prohibition, not against marijuana prohibition. As Jack Cole says in his cultural baggage interview, drugs are too dangerous to leave in the hands of criminals, better for us to regulate and control them instead. If you've never listened to it, you should, he's a retired narcotics cop and makes a lot of sense.