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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (17982)	2/3/2002 8:42:16 PM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 281500

ALL public paid commercials have positive effects, they feed those getting paid for airing them, just like campaign financing. No wonder third parties and Nader, at the moment, are saying all those things at CSPAN, just hoping for a defensive tactic until some 2-party miracle might happen, against all odds, foreign affairs and all.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (17982)	2/3/2002 10:18:58 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Volstead act is the model. Its effects were not uniformly good as you know but neither were the conditions it was supposed to eliminate. I think someone called it a noble experiment - it turned out to be foolish and the US repealed it. Humans have evolved to use a huge spectrum of psycho active substances to fulfill needs - some serious, some recreational - and it does seem futile to push against this to such a degree that we grow large criminal groups who are very prosperous. Criminals cause even more damage when they're prosperous. And, as you know, drug laws create criminals who didn't exist before. Alchohol and other drugs are often socially destructive when their use is too widespread in a community and it pays to ask what conditions gave rise to such heavy use and to ask what eventually curbed it. For instance booze was a real problem in late 19th early 20th century north america. There was a great crusade against it culminating in the Volstead Act which eventually was repealed and during that time or after, (I don't know exactly when), booze became a less serious problem. I don't know why it became a lesser problem and I think it might be pertinent to our present outrageous drug difficulty to find out. Industrialized world's use of illicit drugs is having a terrible effect on less developed places - inflation, violence, corruption. It would be worth while to curb demand or to lower the price just for the sake of those folk. I don't know why I've got all this weird alliteration. Going to have a drug free nap.