Hippiekinkster
Posts: 5512
Joined: 11/20/2007
From: Liechtenstein
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
quote:
What do you think is wrong with what I am proposing? Again…no incarceration...fines...and mandatory treatment with a mental health evaluation?
For mine, you are trying to solve the wrong problem. The problem as I see it is not the consumption of drugs per se.
The biggest problems are the social effects of prohibiting drugs - grossly inflated markets creating crime, gangsterism, black markets, adverse health outcomes, deaths, incarceration, squandering of public money on a hopeless cause, waste of public resources, bringing the law into disrepute, public corruption even low scale wars.
It doesn't matter which health initiative is adopted, as long as drugs remain illegal (and therefore expensive and subject to punitive policing), all of the above adverse effects of prohibition can be expected to remain with us to one extent or another.
Just for you, Tweaky, from Bear (Owsley), who was an AU citizen (fled from the US), and who just died back in March on his way to his home in Mareeba, QNS.
"In the effort to "control" drug use, the approach taken on an international scale has been to prohibit even the use and possession of many materials. This model is the "American" one. That this approach is a failure has been widely noted by many prominent and even conservative commentators. The use of substances which alter in various ways the conciousness of man, is an extremely ancient and established practice, in spite of the belief of those who feel their moral views are the ones which should be imposed on all humanity. The use of draconian legal laws as deterrents, to attempt to eliminate ("control") drug use has already led to the widespread development of a powerful and dangerous black market, and in fact, any further movement in this direction will have the following inevitable results:
1. The use and distribution of drugs of all kinds will increase in direct relation to the increase in penalties. The penalties represent the "degree of risk" to the supplier.
2. The price on the street will also increase, removing ever larger amounts of money from the legitimate economy.
3. The number of dealers on the street will increase, especially those targeting the most vulnerable of our society- in particular, children.
4. Dangerous infectious diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis will increase, perhaps to epidemic proportions. At the same time, many more users will die of overdoses and blood infections due to the unknown purity and concentration of the drugs as furnished.
5. Crimes will increase, especially property crimes like burglary and armed robbery.
6. The increased flow of money into the criminal element will increase the likelihood of police corruption to the point where it will become the norm.
7. All political systems will be placed under great corrupting influence as the elements profiting from the money-for--nothing drug trade use their funds to buy influence to maintain the level of prohibition.
8. Our systems of taxation, already stretched to the limit to provide services will be threatened with collapse in the attempt to imprison all the people who will be convicted and require incarceration.
9. The lure of "easy money" will entice many perfectly ordinary citizens to become criminal cultivators in order to make ends meet (interested persons are urged to examine the American Broadcast Company News Special "Pot of Gold", Peter Jennings, reporter, on marijuana cultivation in the USA. Aired on 13 March 1997. and available on video from the ABC).
10. The money paid for drugs is not based on the real value of the drugs themselves, but is based on the risk of delivery, which in turn is the result only of the law. This presents us with an economic crisis of enormous impact, wherein a person with no skills, experience or education can have an income (tax-exempt), greater than the highest paid individual in the entire industrial world. Such a situation destroys the mutually agreed upon basis of modern society, which is the assumption that a person is rewarded, or remunerated in direct relation to their contribution to the economic whole."
http://www.thebear.org/essays.html#anchor433446
That's only part of the essay.
BTW, Tweaky, I really enjoy my exchanges with you. Even though we have disagreed on one particular issue, and even that not very much, I have still learned something from you. That's always a good thing, and it forces me to keep examining my own beliefs, and not to think that I know everything.
I hope that the research that I do benefits you. I know it is completely wasted on most, busy as they are at flinging shit at each other, or coming up with really clever snarky pithy shit that shows everyone how hip they are. I know it was pointless doing the math on the drugs/welfare thread for others, but I personally learned something, which helped to bolster my beliefs about the topic. That's why I generally reserve my better efforts for a couple of the politics groups on FL. On those the discussion is on a higher level than here. This very much reminds me of the Politics and Such forum on B.com. Almost all of the more thoughtful posters have fled there, and what remains are the dregs who think that starting thread after thread about Sarah Palin or the Weiner affair constitutes dialog. It's pretty much at the level of
"See Spot run!"
"No! Spot walk! You dumb!"
"Me dumb! You dumber!"
"Oh look! Dumb call Dumber dumb! How dumb!"
"All you do is call Dumber dumb! You dumb too!"
(I actually had particular people in mind when I wrote the above.)
Contrast the moronic shit here (from all across the policial spectrum) with the postings of SexyLoaf (who did 2 tours in Iraq) and Qtip (quit taking it personally) and AsianDream (the gay guy from Hong Kong who is now also an Australian national) and Viktor (the Historian from the UK) and Demi (who really rubs me the wrong way, but who has actually lived in Dubai, Syria, the UAE, and a couple other ME countries), and MasterGeorge (who is absolutely brilliant at challenging Theists, religion, and belief itself. He has influenced me).
Maybe this topic deserves a thread of its own (compare and contrast)...
I frequently hear that people on other forums (I think the noun is Dative case, and should be "Fori", but I'm not sure) are "afraid" or turned off by the Politic forum here. I think a "Why Is That?" survey/poll would be illuminating.
Anyway, I really enjoy your intellect.
< Message edited by Hippiekinkster -- 6/9/2011 10:15:26 PM >
_____________________________
"We are convinced that freedom w/o Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism w/o freedom is slavery and brutality." Bakunin
“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” Reinhold Ne
|
RE: Global leaders call for a major shift to decriminal... - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread