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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (478884)	10/20/2003 6:58:50 PM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I suppose it's a matter of degree for each person much less a whole society. Some folks seem to be able to function well while using drugs. Rush apparently was using for a long time, years? He likely damaged his hearing using OxyContin. Others tend to exhibit destructive behavior and it can effect personal productivity. I think that the government should regulate certain drugs. OxyContin is a drug that is regulated. Other drugs maybe don't need to be regulated as much as they are? Even alcohol is regulated. I think our laws are unevenly applied. Obviously in the case of Crack Versus Cocaine the sentencing is way out of whack, penalizing poorer black crack users while white users of cocaine get a lighter sentence. I think we need a rational approach to drug regulation. This is not the case today, where alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. Clearly both drugs can have deleterious effects on health, but clearly marijuana is on a par with alcohol in terms of it's danger to society. One has to ask why is marijuana is illegal, while alcohol is not? I think it comes down to one critical thing...money. Alcohol is more easily regulated and taxed. Marijuana can simply be grown, for free. You can't tax it or regulate it, and it takes potential revenue away from the alcohol industry. Do you think that the alcohol lobby has anything to do with keeping marijuana illegal? Another interesting thing about marijuana, is that if it was made legal, the value would go to zero. Right now marijuana is the leading agricultural cash crop in California. I don't know what impact on the local economy legalization would have, but I think it could be devastating to certain areas. Hence this is a motivation to keep it illegal. I think I prefer a general decriminalization for almost all drugs. I believe that we should have more education about drugs too. I think there needs to be some regulation for drugs that are clearly dangerous, especially in the hands of children. I don't think that we are doing the tax payers any good by putting thousands in prison for drugs. A large portion of our prison population are there on drug charges. By decriminalizing drugs, you tend to make the retail price plummet, thus taking out the incentive for organized crime to get involved, and thus reducing drug related violence. It's a tricky issue, but generally I prefer decriminalization. Except in the case of Rush. I think he should get the sentence that he has been advocating for others. Let him have a taste of his own medicine. Orca