There should be no tolerance for thuggery in government by either party. These people work for us. Congressman Reyes should be finding another job in November.

My guess is that the BATF union is supporting Congressman Reyes, cynic that I am.

I learned from somebody when I was in my teens, when you hear, "It's not the money, it's the principle," that it's always the money.

It's still the money when they don't say that. Follow the money.

Until drug users form a lobbying group that can lavish money on those who legislate, the drug war will go on.

> Society shouldn't be run based on a few
> people's problems with addiction.

It's more than a few people; mere access to bad stuff will cause problems for many.

That's not to say you're wrong. You're not wrong. But this problem developed because thoughtful people were wanted to diminish a very real hazard.

Drugs can fuck you up... Almost as much as bad policy can fuck you up.

But not as bad as a no-knock raid at the wrong house.

I agree with David Pearlman. The bigger an organization gets, the more people are on the payroll. Of course they don't want it to end.

It's the fear of change. (And I don't mean the coins under the couch cushions.)

Fighting drug importation and use is now largely a rice bowl issue. There are too many people employed in the business of the enforcement (and garnering revenue for the government unit via enforcement) for it to end without a big political fight, with legalization supporters accused of supporting child prostitution and Satanic murder.

The alternative is the slow, incremental legalization we see with the medical marijuana trend, that eventually will morph into it becoming alcohol-like status. Once the baby boomers start to die out, perhaps the US can get some more speed towards a full legalization of a pretty harmless plant.

Spartee that is the problem the Baby Boomers are not dieing out they keep living and voting! I sure as heck do not think we should wait another 20 years for them to go away!

I could understand a defense for the drug war if it actually worked. I can easily buy whatever drugs I want whenever I want.

Until drug users form a lobbying group that can lavish money on those who legislate, the drug war will go on.

They were going to, but...dude...Cheetos....

Yay, I can haz heroin? Or is this just about pot again? What about peyote, or tranqs? I'm tired of having to go through my doctor for stuff.

In a truly free country, we could get Coke with cocaine again.

Spartee and John, bite me. A lot of us living and voting boomers have been trying to end this "war" for years.

Unfortunately a lot of boomers and post-boomers have been fighting hard, and with more money, to keep it going.

From the late Peter McWilliams' book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do," Part V (you can read the whole book online):

"Because there is such formidable opposition, those of us who believe that the laws against consensual activities should be repealed have our work cut out for us. Saying that people should be permitted to do with their person and property what they choose as long as they don't physically harm the person or property of another is not perceived by the religious right as a political statement, but as an attack on God. Those who are not willing to take the heat of the emotional outburst that will inevitably follow will soon leave the kitchen.

"Then there are those who want to keep the laws against consensual activities in place due to greed. Lots of people are making lots of money because certain consensual activities are illegal. Naturally, they do not want to lose any meal tickets.

"Those who want personal freedom in this country, then, have such interesting and diverse opponents as organized crime on one hand, and law enforcement on the other. Organized crime would practically go out of business if all consensual activities were legal. The politicians and media that organized crime already owns (or has a few favors coming from) will be opposed to legalizing consensual activities—but will oppose it with the highest moral, legal, social, and even scientific justifications. Law enforcement would (a) lose funding (the tens of billions being thrown at it to fight the war on drugs plus all that assets forfeiture money), and (b) have to catch real criminals (who have guns). The big businesses that currently make a fortune on legal (including prescription) drugs don't want any of the currently illegal drugs cluttering up the marketplace. This is a spectrum that has tobacco and alcohol companies at one end and the AMA and pharmaceutical companies at the other.......

"Drugs are cancer. Trembling crack babies. Sound like some of George Bush's comments? Pat Robertson's? Pat Buchanan's? Rush Limbaugh's? No, these words come from a person some consider to be the prototypical liberal, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York. There is no guarantee that a liberal's bleeding heart is going to bleed for the cause of repealing the laws against consensual activities. (What about all the prisoners, Mario? What about the prisoners' families?)

"Dave Barry made these astute observations:

" 'The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and time again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.'"

(snip)

Elsewhere in the book (I wish I could remember the right keywords), McWilliams says that whenever you hear a news story saying that the Mob is seriously weakening in one way or another, that's just the Mob telling the media what to say so that there will be less social pressure to legalize drugs - or something else.

Great book. I need to go through and mark pages,like people do with their bibles.

Okay, where, again, are the definitions?

For "legalization"? Of which drugs? How will increasing the supply reduce abuse? Do you actually insist that the public will forgo consumer protections?

And how will responsible behavior miraculously appear on the part of a class of people who now merely say, "screw the law, I want to get high"?

Elsewhere in the book (I wish I could remember the right keywords), Peter McWilliams says that
________________________

Found it. From Part II (the book was published in 1993):

The organized crime of today is nothing like the organized crime of yesterday—it's much better organized, therefore much worse for the rest of us. Organized crime competes with IBM, GM, and Sears for law school and MBA graduates. (Based on results, IBM, GM, and Sears have not gotten the cream of the crop.) Organized crime's boats outrun the Coast Guard, their planes outfly the Air Force, their soldiers outshoot the Army, and their intelligence is smarter than the CIA's.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt observed,

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.

In addition to police, judges, prosecutors, and politicians, organized crime also has on its payroll doctors, scientists, and journalists in all media whose job it is to predict and report how terrible life would be if consensual crimes were legalized. (Organized crime's very existence depends on consensual crimes remaining illegal.) The media people on the payroll are also to report that organized crime is on the decrease, that its influence is minimal, and that the government is doing an absolutely crackerjack job of rounding up the few minor hoodlums that remain. ("No one is beyond the reach of the federal authorities. Well, just look at Noriega.")

Unlike in the old days, organized crime is hardly homegrown. Consensual crimes (especially drugs) have international investors. Most of the ill-gotten gain leaves our shores, never to return. (Well, SOME of it returns—when the cartel buys an American bank, high-rise office building, or other legitimate business.)

The heavy-handed tactics and enforcement by violence continue, of course. Some things are traditional. Organized crime doesn't differentiate between crimes with genuine victims and crimes without. The well-oiled, well-run, well-connected machine runs just as well whether promoting a crooked investment scheme (bilking thousands out of retirement money) or importing cocaine (for obviously willing consumers). The criterion is never "Is it right?" only "Is it profitable?" The reason organized crime has stayed primarily with consensual crimes is that, due to the artificially inflated prices, consensual crimes are the most profitable.

(end)

To Radwaste: Right now, it's easier for kids to buy pot (and, presumably, worse drugs) than it is for them to buy alcohol. With any luck, at least THAT would change.

"How will increasing the supply reduce abuse? Do you actually insist that the public will forgo consumer protections?

And how will responsible behavior miraculously appear on the part of a class of people who now merely say, "screw the law, I want to get high"?"

1. Your flippant dismissal of the civilly disobedient shows a shocking state bias. The government works for the people, remember? "The law" has value only inasmuch as it reflects actual justice and morality. Morality as in "it's wrong to cause harm to others," not as in "my god tells me I get to kill you" or "I want to steal your money and give it to charitable causes of my choosing."

2. People who abuse (note the difference between use and abuse) drugs are also less likely to care about whether the drug they're using is legal or not.

3. The burden is on YOU, as a supporter of laws that authorize hunting people down and locking them up in prison, to justify why those laws are good. So spare us the questions, and spend some more time telling us why the drug war is such a good idea.

CB, you're new here, so I'll give you a break.

As you excuse the irresponsible behavior of those who break the law - as opposed to the demonstrably responsible tactic of actually reforming it - you ignore the critical nature of multiple industries, from which you must show the public is still protected. Look up the term, "Hazmat" if you want to be unpleasantly surprised by how much WMD moves through your own vicinity, daily.

For alcohol, a breathalyzer test and impairment standards, however contestable due to individual capability, is in place. No such thing exists for the next dozen drugs you want.

Name the standards. "Shocking state bias"? Bullshit on your stick. My handle is what I do for a living. Tell me how high you want the guys in the control rooms at Savannah River Site to be when they come in.

You know, people with jobs of great responsibility, especially the types that don't brook any foolishness, somehow do without drugs when off work.

Feel free to out the airline pilots, nuclear plant operators and military who spend the day high.

Feel free to tell me that if you're out in public under the influence of alcohol, cocaine, heroin, PCP, you name it, you're not a risk to others.

I can use the laugh.

Also, tell me these things:

1) You'll do without consumer protections on a commercially available product.
2) You'll show the level of impairment for each currently controlled substance you want decriminalized/legalized, and show industry how to test objectively for that.
3) You'll clarify the position you have, and use logical argument to permit the substance(s) you wish to be legally available while excluding others (I know pot is less a burden than meth, for instance). No, "legalize everything" is NOT an answer.
4) You'll show how illegal drug trafficking halts as a result of your plan - how they go meekly out of business now that you can get your favorite stuff at Walgreen's.

An objective of yours is to eliminate the abuse of police powers. In that we agree wholly. But you must always, I mean always, admit that laws are passed as a reaction to a perceived problem. Those who wanted drugs - some of them, at least - dropped the ball, could not hold their argument up when these laws were initially passed. Though you have a better chance of gaining sympathy now in the face of obvious apathy and misbehavior of public officials, it remains that modifying law is the responsible path, and that you have to show logical gains to do that.

Once you recognize that the abuse of police power is NOT the same thing as a law against drug possession, you'll possess a key to this issue.

Go.

Your concern is duly noted, but I've been reading this board for long enough to know that you have no idea what you're talking about on this subject. In fact, I recall a post of yours just a few days ago, where you responded to Amy's posting of a John McWhorter article with the following idiocy:

"No again: the enforcement of a law is not the reason a law is broken. By this "reasoning", we can eliminate the overwhelming bias of black-on-white crimes of rape by making that legal."

You're the one with faulty reasoning, for equating rape (someone forcibly subjecting another person to harm, against the subject's will) with drug crimes (which involve making individual choices about substances to ingest and engaging in consensual transactions involving these substances). Do you see the problem between putting these two activities in the same legal category? If you consider drug laws to be legitimate, you've authorized virtually infinite government intrusion into private lives. The same logic could justify criminalizing fast food, video games, alcohol (in fact, it would HAVE to - alcohol is strongly associated with increased violence against others, second only to PCP) - even birth control. This isn't the kind of society you have the right to impose on your fellow citizens by force.

You do realize how ridiculous it is to argue for the drug war on the grounds that we don't want impaired people working with hazardous materials? I mean, you're right - we don't want impaired people working with hazardous materials, but that doesn't mean we outlaw impairment, it means we outlaw being impaired while working with hazardous materials. Do you and your coworkers constantly show up drunk to work, simply because alcohol is legal? Should I expect you all to be somnolent due to prescription sleep aids? I'm not ignoring anything, and you're not even making sense by trying to shift some incoherent burden of proof onto me. YOU'RE the one who wants to hunt people down and lock them up, YOU get to tell us why that's a good idea.

Airline pilots use drugs like everyone else - that is to say, some of them do, some of them don't. (And no one "spends the day high." Again, is there an epidemic of workplace drunkenness in this country?) That's why we have interesting data, like the fact that they (and other high risk, important jobs) tend to recover from addiction faster. http://www.tnr.com/book/review/addiction-and-freedom Addiction is choice-based, just in case you were thinking about arguing that drugs take away one's ability to be rational. Besides, one always has the choice of whether or not to use in the first place.

Sweetheart, you're still not understanding this burden of proof issue. You are the one arguing in favor of government action in a certain arena. As I've said before, the person seeking to justify sending armed men after his fellow citizens is the one who needs to be providing the evidence of why this action is good, moral, useful, etc. This nonsense about "well, if it wasn't a good law, it wouldn't have been passed!" is insultingly foolish. Do you agree with the Affordable Health Care Act and the new consumer finance reforms (like the SEC being exempt from FOIA)? Would you have subjected people to witchcraft laws, or the Fugitive Slave Act, or prosecuted them for using/prescribing birth control? I'm having a hard time understanding how so many people on a libertarian board are clinging to this "the government made the decision, so it must be good, and I don't have to bother thinking about it any more!"

In short, your claim that I "must" admit that laws are always passed for good reason is shockingly ignorant. I'll do no such thing, because I'm a moral human being who has no wish to use the "I was just following orders" defense. Do you generally think our legislators are smart and wise and concerned with the public good, rather than their own power? Do you really embrace every law just because it is a law? All I can say is that it's a good thing everyone isn't like you.

Drop the unwarranted arrogance - or at least try making one argument that makes sense first. The key to this issue is that enforcement of an unjust law is itself unjust, and an abuse of government power. Government power is an important and dangerous thing, and we must be careful with the way we deploy it against our fellow citizens.

Didnt alcohol comsumption decrease after prohbition was repealed?

Here is a reason I didn't notice as I scanned through the responses: The politicians (and most candidates running against them) don't have the balls to admit they have been wrong all these years.

I think this is true about many issues.

CB, just do the work: modify the law. That process will teach you the difference between your opinion on how things work and reality - as you continue to proceed with the cart before the horse and make noises carefully arranged to avoid offering solutions.