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No, you're not. For me, it's exactly because governments have wanted to look as moral as the Pope that their drug policies have kept on failing.

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As for drugs, it is not the use that is even possibly immoral, it is the abuse and especially among legally prescribed drugs. Then one must consider the morality of 100,000 to 150,000 people (depending on who one reads) dying every year form mis-prescribed or conflict in pharmaceuticals.

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ORIGINAL: Lucylastic
Am I the only person who thought Aylees comment was sarcasm?

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
  

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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As for drugs, it is not the use that is even possibly immoral, it is the abuse and especially among legally prescribed drugs. Then one must consider the morality of 100,000 to 150,000 people (depending on who one reads) dying every year form mis-prescribed or conflict in pharmaceuticals.

You may know that Florida was for awhile the mecca of pill mills. I used to see people in line (as i drove by) early morning outside facilities wherein doctors prescribed Oxycontin for a hefty fee. Customers purchased loads of the stuff and transported it up to Kentucky to sell on the streets. It was known as 'hillbilly heroin' The pill mills were closed and doctors arrested/jailed. Now the elderly suffer. In my vicinity there is a shortage at the wholesale level. If you have a script and the clerk tells you they have none in stock you are required to shop around physically to all stores in the chain to inquire if the drug is in stock. They are not allowed to tell you by phone. This is true for any Class I drug. The DEA just classified MJ as a Class I drug again. To make matters worse, if you suffer from chronic pain here you are first required to attend a physical therapy facility before being allowed to go on to a "pain clinic" where after much paper work you may be given a script allowing you to hunt for the drug. You don't drive? You are legally blind? Oh, tough shit. Personally, i suspect the stories of abuse of prescription drugs are over-blown media fodder. Primary care physicians are carefully monitored and quite frightened so refer patients to physical therapy. Its all the piss!

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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No, you're not. For me, it's exactly because governments have wanted to look as moral as the Pope that their drug policies have kept on failing.

In the States a militarized, increasingly funded, politically perpetuated unit that has helped militarize local police forces as well. More than one thousand civilians were killed by cops in 2015. Twenty percent unarmed.

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ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

Am I the only person who thought Aylees comment was sarcasm?

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

I am not a member or adherent to any moral system that places itself above an individual's right to choose what drugs they ingest. The notion that the war on drugs or current drug policy is morally mandated or driven is as silly as the war on drugs itself.

If you see this issue in moral terms that's fine for you personally but please don't force your narrow ideas of morality on the rest of society. Many of us have very different understandings of 'morality'.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Adding to the mounting evidence of the failure of the so-called 'War on Drugs', a UK undercover cop's experiences infiltrating the drug scene persuaded him that it was all a tragic waste of time and resources, with very damaging consequences for drug users and no hope of success.

"[Woods] cites a global study, conducted by the coalition government, of the impact that punitive drug policies have had on drug use. Its unambiguous conclusion, he says, was that “however harsh your measures – the death penalty, 20 years in prison – they have no impact on drug use”. Instead of wasting our time trying to reduce drug use, argues Woods, “drug policy should be about reducing not drug use, but drug harm.

The drug policy Woods wants is both simple and radical. Heroin should be prescribed by doctors to addicts, and every other drug sold under strictly regulated conditions. Even crack? “I went into the police believing that message, ‘One smoke of crack and you’re addicted for life.’ I remember seeing Nancy Reagan on TV saying that, and it’s literally a load of crap. There is no evidential basis in that statement at all.” Contrary to drug war propaganda, he says, only a small minority of drug users ever develop a problem, regardless of which substance they take. Across the board, the figure is roughly 10% – the same percentage of gamblers who become problematic, interestingly – the only exception being heroin, where it is 25%.”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-woods-undercover-cop-who-abandoned-the-war-on-drugs

More and more enforcers of the redundant policy of prohibition are coming out against it, saying it has failed and failed irredeemably. Yet still our Govts who are perfectly aware of this, decline to act. It really is time to abandon the failed policy of prohibition and start regarding personal drug use as a personal health issue, not a criminal or legal problem.

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But let's face it, the war on drugs and alcohol in the US has always fallen under the moral argument.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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But let's face it, the war on drugs and alcohol in the US has always fallen under the moral argument.

Your comments are insightful and you make a good brief for your position. I would like to add that there is a Class issue involved as well. The propaganda against alcohol during the Progressive Era was aimed at closing the saloons so that immigrant laborers would not lose their (meager) wages but get home to their families. I recall one advert showing a waif tugging at her daddy's trouser leg begging him to leave the saloon. When Teddy Roosevelt was police commissioner of NYC, or maybe when he was Governor, I can't recall which, he shut down the Sunday sale of alcohol in the city. That was the only day immigrant laborers could send their kids to get a bucket of suds. There followed a pretty angry popular reaction to that ordinance.

Marijuana, crack, and heroin were often associated with black musicians far back in the day. Just recently the Governor of Maine railed against black drug dealers bringing their wares to Maine and getting the state's white girls pregnant. (in the news again last night) Methamphetamine addiction is associated with poor whites in the press, I think. So, yeah, also a class issue in a class free democracy.

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ORIGINAL: Bhruic

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ORIGINAL: Aylee

Ya see, drug and alcohol use is immoral.

Do you have a rational argument to support that? Besides "It just is".

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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

Most of the anti-drug hysteria over the last best part of a century is down to Feds who were doing well out of the Volstead Act looking for something else to secure their job over when prohibition was repealed after it emerged that banning booze was killing more people than selling it legally had ever managed.
(A lot of former bootleggers and rum runners moved into narcotics instead for much the same reason at much the same time, too.)

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Most of the anti-drug hysteria over the last best part of a century is down to Feds who were doing well out of the Volstead Act l

Our President Richard Nixon declared "The War on Drugs" during his brief tenure in the early 70s. The claim has been made (recently denied by his chief aide Erlichman) that Nixon (would you buy a used car from this man?) created the monster as a way to covertly attack his 'enemies' ~ blacks (reputed heroin and crack (?) users) and the anti-Vietnam war community (reputed users of marijuana and LSD)

Aylee should have used the sarcasm emot.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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As for drugs, it is not the use that is even possibly immoral, it is the abuse and especially among legally prescribed drugs. Then one must consider the morality of 100,000 to 150,000 people (depending on who one reads) dying every year form mis-prescribed or conflict in pharmaceuticals.

You may know that Florida was for awhile the mecca of pill mills. I used to see people in line (as i drove by) early morning outside facilities wherein doctors prescribed Oxycontin for a hefty fee. Customers purchased loads of the stuff and transported it up to Kentucky to sell on the streets. It was known as 'hillbilly heroin' The pill mills were closed and doctors arrested/jailed. Now the elderly suffer. In my vicinity there is a shortage at the wholesale level. If you have a script and the clerk tells you they have none in stock you are required to shop around physically to all stores in the chain to inquire if the drug is in stock. They are not allowed to tell you by phone. This is true for any Class I drug. The DEA just classified MJ as a Class I drug again. To make matters worse, if you suffer from chronic pain here you are first required to attend a physical therapy facility before being allowed to go on to a "pain clinic" where after much paper work you may be given a script allowing you to hunt for the drug. You don't drive? You are legally blind? Oh, tough shit. Personally, i suspect the stories of abuse of prescription drugs are over-blown media fodder. Primary care physicians are carefully monitored and quite frightened so refer patients to physical therapy. Its all the piss!