Thanks for assuming that I'm "far left." I don't think gun manufacturers should be held responsible. That's absurd.

There was a case here on Long Island where two guys were drag racing. One car gets into a headon collision. The driver dies. The other car that he hits, everybody inside that car dies.

The surviving guy in the other drag racing car, who didn't actually touch any other car got convicted for Manslaughter. He didn't do anything besides speed or drive recklessly. That's a load of crap. The bartender shouldn't be responsible either.

I can't see how you think that courts would be more cluttered if people didn't have to go to court for simple possession. If what you had just got confiscated and you paid a fine it would be so much better...so many less people in court and in prison and less cost on the taxpayer. Or perhaps I'm wrong...

Actually, no. Euro colleges really aren't better. The American university system is certainly tops. France's university education is quite pitiful actually. Highly underfunded, terribly furnished, no good computer equipment. I would never do that.

The point is that people whose only crime is possession should not ever be in prison, so they shouldn't have to go in 10 times. Even people who deal, provided they are not dealing to kids or on school property, should not go to jail.



and by the way, thanks for these comments.

Not enough.

I want to see all of you behind bars. Except for certain portions of celebrities.

Even those who actively set out to hook kids, who patrol schoolyards, who pimp out women in lieu of payment, who resort to violence when their stuff isn't paid for, etc. etc, ?

Lots of dealers aren't just businessmen. They're thugs.

well if the drugs were legal then they wouldnt attract the same sort of people into dealing them

You can apply this to alcoholics. Do they get arrested for destroying their liver? No, they get arrested for driving drunk, for causing damage, for beating up their wives/kids ....

They don't get arrested for possesing the alcohol, do they? And what about the 90% of us that can drink without any problems?

True, yeah. Certainly not an easy topic.

Um, it was dripping in buckets of sarcasm.

If drug dealing isn't bad then why isn't it okay for one to open up shop next to your mother? I mean they gotta make a living right?

There are so many other problems wrapped up in this drugs question, it is almost unfair...it is also littered with assumptions and half truths that one would have thought went out teh window hundreds of years ago. Most of it has to do with race.
White kids, selling pot, or e, or acid, mostly to their friends, to maybe make some cash and get fucked up, do they deserve time in federal pound you in the ass prison? Probably not, but their % of this .7% is miniscule. Mandatory minimums snare some of them, but not as many as drug legalizers would like you to think.

Then you have the "they have to make a living/just a part of the environment" crowd, which sounds to me like another way of saying that THEY are all noble savages. The system is fucked up. As oldbul says, their ain't much of a prison industrial complex down here, and they have set up a second pardon and parole board just to let more people out of jail. What do those peopel do? Go back to the same lifestyle and end up back where they were.

The solution on the front end is prevention, and on the back end is real parole and probation, but that shit has been farmed out to companies that are a fucking joke.

I don't have the answers, but I can guarantee you that they ain't black and white, no pun intended

There's not enough black kids in my area to constitute a stereotype demographic. So, the white farm kids huffing stuff and splitting open meds have to fill in. Plenty of native american addicts, though.

And we're working on getting the Pakistani doctors' kids hooked, for variety.

Stat #1: Should be many more, at least in LA

Stat #2: Should be many more, at least in LA

About one-third of our public housing should be with bars. Between the thugs, meth cookers, thieves (for drugs), and sex offenders (behind closed doors), I think it's about right.

DEM upstandings.

If the governemnt took control of the sale of drugs, then pushers wouldnt be necessary, you get better uncut stuff from an agency drug store. Gauranteed safe, and the gov't would be making revenue that it coudl put into rehab, and drug education. Kinda like what their making big tabacco pretend to do now.

imagine how much more interesting this is gonna get when all illegal immigrants and those helping them are felons.

Even if true, this still doesn't deal with Gauchebag's problem of "gotta make a living." There's a hundred reasons but the bottomline is we've created a society that is leading a large percentage of poor black males to a life of crime. It's not like if we remove the drug dealing possiblity that they are suddenly going to start enrolling in Harvard.

Yeah, they totally will. All black people are awesome, and Whitey is Scum. Keep that in mind always.

I think my issue with the legalization is that drugs, in relation to recreational use, have no helpful qualities. Only harmful. And no, I do not count, "man, we sure got wasted and laughed a lot and don't really remember what we did last night" as a "helpful" qualification of recreational drug use. They only cause problems. Yes, in the right dosage and proper supervision, drugs can be used to curb severe pain, etc. However, I think legalization is never going to happen because most people in government and in the general public would agree that pot, coke, heroin, etc do not have any redeeming social qualities. I think that's why prohibition took place. I think it was recognized that "man booze causes a lot of problems", but making something illegal that had been legal for so long was a huge mistake and caused more problems. However, the solution is not to just make everything legal.

Legalizing drugs could be a slippery slope. After all, if the simplified argument for it is, "it's my fault if I die from drugs. I am a free human being. What happens to me is my fault and the government shouldn't tell me what I should and shouldn't do" then what's to say that murder isnt the next thing? I understand that murder implies the destruction and breach of rights upon another human being, but I think that is what some people are saying here. That is taking place on a large scale with drug users, i.e. abuse, theft, etc.

I have a handful of experience with drug users and their jail time. I can't think of a single person I worked with or have met that spent time in an actual prison for simple possession. 100% of the time there were multiple charges. Possession AND GTA, or possession AND assault, or possession AND theft. Intent to sell is a drastically different charge and I think that people that do sell should be taken off the streets. They are 1.breaking the existing law 2. seeking out any and everyone that wants to use drugs, many of whom are noticeably addicted 3. perpetuating a cycle of life that is proven to lead to serious injury, death, theft, etc not just on and of themselves but on the general population.

I'm too annoyed with this argument to even start. but then what the hell.

the point is, though, is that PEOPLE DO DRUGS. No matter what happens, people will keep doing them. You'd think after the trillions of dollars we've pissed away on a drug war people could see that. Why not loosen up the laws, legalize pot and tax the hell out of it? As someone who smoked pot several times a day for over a decade, I can assure you that I've never hurt anyone, stolen anything, blah blah blah. The reason you've dealt with these people is because they're the ones who got caught or bottomed out, probably doing something stupid. The number of peaceful, rational americans is infinitely higher than I'm sure any study has shown in years.
One of the drawbacks of making drugs as illegal as they are is that you're going to make everything about them, from transporting them to buying them to doing them THAT much more illegal. You might as well break a few more laws once you've started that. It's a lot easier to shoot the dude on the corner that's not supposed to have the drugs anyway than shooting some guy in a state-run facility behing bulletproof glass. Sure, this wouldn't make drugs completely safe, but it would massively cut down on the violence and keep the shit away from kids.

MS-13

While I don't totally disagree with you, saying that people will do drugs is not an argument for legalization. I mean people will speed but that's not gonna stop from trying to enforce traffic laws. And Cotton they're are very few users like yourself who have ever been sent to prison or much alone prosecuted or targeted. But I think we need to rethink the drug war. Quit spending time on pot and really focus on cutting the supply side of the harder drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroine. And focus more money into drug prevention and have more capabilities to offer treatment.

I agree it's not so much a call for complete legalization as it is for unreasonable and impossible social upheaval, but a guy can try.

but yes, a war on pot is stupid and costly.

You could use that argument with anything that is against the law.

the point is, though, that PEOPLE RAPE CHILDREN. No matter what happens, people will keep doing them."

haha. I couldn't resist using that example.

I do agree though that trying to stop marijuana at all costs is a futile exercise, because they could spend more money on finding and destroying meth labs or the aforementioned child molesters. However, legalizing drugs, IMO, will not reduce crime it will just change what kind we see prominently.

JAIL4LIFE

sure. let them set up next door. anybody that can afford the house next door should be allowed to live there.

they are all commiting different crimes.

pimping out women is what they should be tried for.

patrolling schoolyards is fucked up and they should not be allowed to trespass there.

actively set out to hook kids? i don't see what's convictable about that...that's no different than what soda companies, fast food, or chapstick tries to do. we should outlaw them as well?

how about legal drug manufacturers who want children to beaddicted to Adderall and Ritalin so theyhave lifelong customers?

Or STarbucks for marketing candy-flavoured silly Frappaccino drinks to children so they get hooked on caffeine nice and early?

If we're going to make the one illegal, make them all illegal. Or just legalize themall.