Legalize drugs

[Nicola]

This is a good opportunity to address the war on drugs.

[Roscoe_Beedle]

Ok. Make all illegal drugs legal and free and dispensed through a type of pharmacy. Add that with a death penalty to anyone selling drugs to children. And finally, make drug rehab centers available to any druggie who will need that help.

[Nicola]

Ok. Make all illegal drugs legal and free and dispensed through a type of pharmacy. Add that with a death penalty to anyone selling drugs to children. And finally, make drug rehab centers available to any druggie who will need that help.

Hey we agree. Well 'cept the death penalty. But I get your point about kids. That should carry a heavy penalty. We'll have plenty of room in the jails once we release all those pot heads.

[Roscoe_Beedle]

Don't get me wrong, druggies are the worst people you can meet. Absolute bottom. But if they want to drug themselves to death I could not care less. Let 'em.

If you don't have a death penalty for selling to children then you are wasting your time legalizing drugs. I am serious. The predator instinct is to break the law and give drugs to kids. These same predators would not go there if they would be put to death. Once we take the profit out of it, why would they risk death to give a kid a drug?

Well, it's all a pipe dream.

[doawnhog]

Roscoe,

Good point about loss of profit motive. With the current scheme (prohibition), kids have more access to illegal drugs than they have to booze. Prohibition does not protect kids; it presents MORE danger to them than were all drugs sold in a liquor-store environ.

-mark

[cynthialstern]

I feel that allowing legal access to drugs is preferable to having a huge percentage of our population in jail for mere possession.

Maybe a better way to cut down on drug-related crime would be to add a "special circumstances" ramp-up to any criminal charges that are drug-related in any way. Kill someone over drug distribution territory? Special circumstances. Commit a misdemeanor or a felony while "under the influence"? Special circumstances. Doing this will put the REAL "bad guys 'n' gals" away while saving overall jail space, prison, court, and police expenses, etc.

Given that some drugs can be almost-instantly addictive (psychologically if not physically), we'll need a lot of "abstinence education" for the entire population so that people don't get all caught up in something without knowing that it's too difficult to break away from it. --And we'll need good, realistic, factual abstinence education, not the laughable, loose-with-the-facts anti-drug propaganda that I got in the 60s in high school. --And certainly none of that Nancy Reagan-style, "Just say no!" blather, either. Respect people enough to tell them the pros and cons of every recreational drug, and let them make their own decisions (they'll decide anyway, whether they get good information or not). Also, restrict the use of rec. drugs in the same manner that alcohol and tobacco are currently restricted.

The hysteria has gotten pretty-ridiculous lately. There are some really, really bad things on the streets that are being cooked up right here, such as methamphetamines. Given that there are only 24 hours in a day, and given that some people feel that they "need" a 36-hour day to get everything done, it's way too-tempting for too many people to try this poison. But banning OTC drugs and herbs like Ma Huang is just a bunch of reactionary silliness. Other people react to the stress of "too much to do and too little time to do it" by taking the opposite tactic: They look for depressant and/or euphoric drugs to slow themselves down and help them to care less about the stress. Marijuana and alcohol are some sub-optimal "solutions" that people often choose to help themselves cope.

What it all comes down to is that people need better coping skills, and--whenever possible--people need to be free to say, "No thanks!" to putting too much on their plates (something that's difficult to do if you're alone and have three kids to support, or if you're in a competitive corporate environment, but I digress...). But throwing folks in jail merely for making bad self-medication choices is not ever a good solution.

[silverfarb]

I agree Cynthia. It's all about putting people in jail. The California Department of Corrections is the biggest lobbying group in Sacramento. Arnold is proposing building more prisons with bond money. I think the state's prison system is in shambles but lets hope by building more prisons we don't intend to fill them with people who were busted on minor drug offenses.