111–120 of 304 posts
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Planned Parenthood was the work of Margaret Sanger, who was a feminist who believed in reproductive choice and free speech; she was repeatedly arrested because distributing knowledge of contraception violated the Comstock Act.
Margret Sanger was a eugenicist.
Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act? I would have assumed that a majority of these states - and my home state of NJ - would be very anti-drug but these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized. If you had asked me a few years ag…
I suspect that a lot of people who on balance support legalisation, don’t feel so strongly about it that they won’t vote for someone that opposes it. Conversely I think a lot of people who oppose legalisation feel about it strongly enough that they just won’t vote for someone who supports it. Politicians are probably well aware of this.
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GP's comment can of course be read more correctly as "the purpose of existing drug laws (in the US) , ..."
Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.
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Canada had very harsh drug laws too (at least for hard drugs). And so did much of Europe. Did all those countries also create those laws to harass certain populations?
In many cases yes: European attitudes towards the lower classes are often similar to (though not as extreme as) racist attitudes in the US.
More or less everyone I know has tried drugs (MJ, magic mushrooms, LSD) or does them on a regular basis, but I don't know anyone who's ever been arrested over it. What I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be (much) of a stigma against drugs, neither with the population, nor with the cops. Nevertheless, MJ is illegal, and the protests for legalization started soon after the ones in the US.
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> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon So was Planned Parenthood. Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead. Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic. As su…
Planned Parenthood was the work of Margaret Sanger, who was a feminist who believed in reproductive choice and free speech; she was repeatedly arrested because distributing knowledge of contraception violated the Comstock Act.
I'm not sure why people aren't being just a little more cautious about ballot measures like in Oregon where even heroin and such hard drugs are now decriminalized. This deserves a little more consideration about the unintended side effects of this policy, don't you think? I look at the massive illegal drug manufacturing interests (countries, cartels) who spend vast sums on getting illegal drugs to our shores. It cann…
What makes you think the policy hasn't been fully considered over many decades?
Does a policy have to be pure good, or just better than the alternative?
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Margret Sanger was a eugenicist.
This is unfortunately true. Does not imply that the current organization is, though.
Whether we legalize or not, whether that helps minorities or not, i think we agree that constantly recriminating the past isn't helping.
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> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon So was Planned Parenthood. Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead. Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic. As su…
> So was Planned Parenthood. No it wasn't: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/nyregion/planned-parentho...
In her speech the morality of birth control, she openly advocated for preventing undesirables (todays' deplorables) from procreating.
Edit: NPR's cherry-picking nice sounding quotes doesn't describe the totality of the woman, her views or the organization- then, or now.
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> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances. I'd love to see this, but I doubt it. I've sat in on court sessions, and towns and cities pull in a lot of revenue through low-level drug offenses, and cops spend a significant amount of their time investigating and arresting kids for drug offenses. The criminalization of drugs, espec…
Instead of ruining people's lives, we could just raise taxes slightly, but I doubt that will fly.
Why would someone take a plea deal and agree to pay municipalities what often amounts to thousands of dollars in fees? Because students with drug offenses on their records can have their eligibility for student loans stripped, potentially ruining their chances at bettering their lives through education. A drug conviction will pop up on every background check if their records aren't expunged.
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> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances. I'd love to see this, but I doubt it. I've sat in on court sessions, and towns and cities pull in a lot of revenue through low-level drug offenses, and cops spend a significant amount of their time investigating and arresting kids for drug offenses. The criminalization of drugs, espec…
> There is a lot of money, and plenty of high-paying jobs with full pensions, that are kept afloat by the criminalization of drugs. This is the heart of it.