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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (218615)	9/5/2007 7:33:32 PM
From: Geoff Altman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793742

If drugs are made legal, who is going to pay for the robberies, damages, rape and murder committed by the folks who used the drugs? KLP, you're acting like these things don't happen now. Fact is people that are going to do drugs will do them regardless if it's legal or not. What legalization will do is to remove to gangster class that is already established. Look at it this way, if you're a user which would you rather do, go to some sleazebag dealer in the hood where you don't know what you're buying or to a dispensary where at least you know what you're getting. BTW, prohibition is the reason that the price of drugs is so high once prohibition is lifted the price would drop like a rock and then we could start to stem the billions of dollars that are flowing out of our country. Billions that have virtually turned Central and South America into one big narco state. Go into any highschool in the country and ask a student which is easier to get, drugs or beer. They'll tell you drugs 99% of the time. You want to get drugs away from students? Legalize it and dispense them through a clinic where users will have access to treatment and help if they want it. Please, do yourself a favor, visit this site and do some reading after that we'll talk. leap.cc

To: KLP who wrote (218615)	9/5/2007 8:29:17 PM
From: alanrs	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793742

I know this is only anecdotal, but if you will bear with me for a moment..... I am an ex-heroin addict. I'm actually coming up on my 20th anniversary clean and sober(an AA thing), although I last did heroin on May 1st, 1984. I have met thousands and thousands of addicts (and alcoholics are addicts too). I have heard thousands of life stories, in settings where there is little to be gained by prevaricating. Never have I heard "I really liked x drug, but it is illegal, or I was underage, so I stopped". Never. Ask your kids. The good ones who don't do drugs. Ask them if they know where to go IF they wanted drugs. If they are honest, the will tell you of course they do. Legal or illegal does not affect the availability of drugs. If anything, the illegality is a draw (living life on the edge, being hip, sh*t like that) to the user and it makes the business obscenely profitable to the supplier. Someone cited 6% of the WORLDS (hat tip to JDN) GDP. I had no idea. I'm guessing that all the food for all the people in the world (and probably their pets) commands a similar number. While I am sure that there are various synthetic drugs around (PCP comes to mind, as do glue, paint, elephant tranquilizers) that lead to anti-social behavior, it has been my observation that alcohol leads the others as a contributing cause of rapes, murders and mayhem by a large margin. There would probably be a lot of those activities absent all enabling substances, human nature being what it apparently is. Property crimes seem to be mostly drug related, although a lot of that is because of the relatively high price of the drugs due to them being illegal. As far as who pays, you do. You do now every time your homeowners insurance or car insurance bill comes in the mail. You do now when some portion of your taxes go to build and maintain a vast prison system, or subsidize your local SWAT team. You do when someone mistakes your house for a crack house and you get shot in the head. You do. You do now. Legal or illegal, you do. Even if no one you know is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up dead on the side walk or in their bed, you do. I'm really a bad typist and my three fingers are getting tired. There's a lot more I meant to say. Hopefully you get the idea. If only 'just say no' worked. If only 'pass a law' worked. As a disclaimer, I have no idea how any of the people attending AA meetings anywhere feel about this. I have never asked any of them, not even in casual conversation. The drug and alcohol industry does not impact my life any more than it does any other law abiding, tax and insurance paying citizen. It is just my observation that what we are doing really, Really, REALLY does not work. There's always the old saw about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results being a good working definition of insanity. Anything would be better than what's going on now. Hopefully some of this made some sense. ARS