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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (5741)	1/14/2004 11:24:44 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Interesting post - I've often thought that the billions that have been spent on the war on drugs, added to the cost of incarceration, have been extremely disruptive to our society in so many ways. I've read that over half of the federal and state inmates are in because of drugs. Are you suggesting that Europe treats drug dealing differently. It is not something that I know much about. I've been warned all my life about traveling with drugs and never really thought much about it (not that I would even remotely think of using drugs or doing any approaching illegality, imorality or ilicitness <grammar> <gggg>). What's the comparable treatment of low level drug dealers in Europe and Asia? Is there an effort made to interdict drugs that is comparable? The demographics and border of the US and Europe probably make a real comparison difficult. I've got a very close friend and former business associate who is in for 15 years, purely for dealing weed, albeit a lot of weed. I consider him a low level drug dealer but I guess law enforcement felt differently. Because of minimum mandatory sentences and guidelines, he will serve most of his sentence, a sentence which is greater than the average rapist and even murderer in California. This discussion, raised by the issues in your post, could go on all sorts of tangents from here and it really is a shame that none of this ever comes up in political campaigns. If it doesn't hit YOU, people tend not to think about these things. The immigration issue is really a sticky one. I see the points that Tsigprofit makes and I also see the contra arguments. I hate to see citizens deprived of services and jobs, but the reality is that many jobs would go unfilled and enforcement is, as you suggest, uneconomical at best. Have a good night!