On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:11:06 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

>>   * "Product" quality increases and you end up with fewer accidental
>> overdoses (which can happen when one batch is really weak and the next
>> is overly strong - IOW, no consistent quality control).
> Uh.. Sorry, but this is total bull. **Most** drugs need to stay illegal.

I agree that some do, and I mentioned a couple in another thread.

> They have no medical use, their effects require you keep taking higher
> doses to get the same effect, due to how they mangle your brain
> chemistry, they often do serious long term damage, and they create a
> danger to the public that, even more than alcohol, which you need to
> drink a fair amount of first, even a single dose causes for the drug.

PMFA, but where did you get your medical degree from?  If you're going to 
make assertions like that, I'd like to see them backed up by some sort of 
credentials that show you have some expertise in the field.  (And before 
you ask, no, I don't have such expertise).  Or a cite from a reputable 
source would suffice as well.

> More to the point, overdose is caused as much by the need to keep
> increasing dosage as it is by the effects of addins. A consistent dose,
> with purity control, simply won't help *at all*. You would still need to
> take more and more of it, to get the same result, and, in many cases,
> its the impurities that keeps it from killing you dead the first time
> you take it.

That depends, I imagine, on the individual and their own sense of self-
control.  To wit, not everyone who takes crack ends up dead of it.

> I seriously hope you where just failing to make a proper distinction
> here.

Perhaps.

>>   * You have fewer people being locked up for non-violent offenses
>>   (such
>> as possession or possession with intent to use/intent to distribute).
> The problem is, we are willing, based on moralizing, and "they are not
> victims, it was a choice", bullshit logic, to lock up *everyone*, from
> the dealers, to the guy that had a small back of the cheapest weed
> possible in his car. We make no distinction between which drug it was,
> whether they are a dealer or a user, and we spend probably less than 1%
> what we do to arrest people to **treat** them, so they don't use in
> jail, or keep using, after they get out. 

Totally agreed.  We have a serious meth problem here in Utah (the court 
case I was on the jury for was about that, actually).

> Worse, more than half of the
> "treatment" we respect in this country isn't medical, but bullshit like
> AA for druggies, which **doesn't work**, because it doesn't stop them
> wanting the drug, or even accept that it *is* medical, not religious, or
> cultural, or 100% about whether someone "chose" to do it. Imho, the
> idiots, like the moron pushing his, "Read the Bible and you will be
> cured of everything! Addictions have nothing to do with biology or
> science, or medicine!", types should be the ones in fracking jail.

"Frakking".  Derived from "Frak".  We've been over that before. <scnr>

Seriously, though, I would tend to agree up to the "put the religion 
pushers in jail" bit.

>>   * Those who are distributing have to be licensed to do so - so you
>>   know
>> most of who is distributing them and you know they have met some
>> standard of knowledge in order to legally distribute.
> For the sane drugs, definitely. Same can be said for more than a few
> other things, including prostitution, which we have never gotten rid of,
> but *have* turned into something where you can't get police protection,
> health care, or a safe work environment, but *may* instead get arrested,
> killed, hooked on drugs by the pimp, or even sold from one pimp to the
> next. All hail our, "moral" solution to the problem.

Agreed as well.

>>   * You will have created a market that you can collect taxes from
>>   where
>> money is currently changing hands and nothing goes to pay for services
>> that those users consume as a result of their use (just like smoking/
>> drinking)

Maybe where you are, not in Utah.  Tax dollars fund the police 
department, who get called out when a druggie is whacked out and acting 
out.

>>   * Prices can be standardized and normalized, potentially reducing
>> violent crime from people who can't afford to get their 'fix' today
>>
> No it won't. As I already said, 90% of the drugs out there make the
> person need more, and more, and more, the longer they use them, its the
> nature of the chemical process they work by. This, short of a treatment
> like Ibogaine appears to provide, is **permanent** and **cumulative**.

Depends on the drug.

> The guy breaking into someone's house to steal their TV, sell it for
> $10, and then break into 2-3 other places, to make up the remaining
> amount needed to buy their "fix", isn't some guy smoking pot, and they
> are not someone that is going to a) be off the drug when at work or b)
> smoking pot. They are going to be someone taking crack, who paid $2 for
> their first hit, $5 for the next one, $10 for the next, $20 for the
> next, and now, at this point, is robbing 4-5 people a day, so they can
> get 3-4 hits a day, because one hit won't do it any more. Purer product,
> as you suggest earlier, does nothing but make the initial hit worse, and
> escalate this process **faster**.

And you arrest the guy breaking into someone's house to steal their TV 
for burglary/larceny.  Lock 'em up, put 'em in jail.  They've done 
something that actually affects someone else.  Same for the guy tweaking 
out who assaults someone.  The guy sitting in his home stoned off his ass 
on LSD, mushrooms, or pot isn't.  Hell, even the guy doing crack who 
isn't out committing crimes against other people isn't harming anyone but 
himself - until he needs to get his fix and he can't afford it so he 
steals a car.  Then you book him on grand theft auto.  Simple.

Jim

Post a reply to this message