http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
To whose benefit?
People who benefit from the war on drugs:
-The military complex, weapon producers. Terrorist need drug money to fight wars. Weapon producers need wars to make money.
-Pharmaceutical companies.
-Alcohol producers.
-Drug-lords/Cartels
-Anti drug agency personnel, cops.
-For profit jails.
The list goes on...
Time to end the war on drugs
111–120 of 217 posts
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's simply a matter of education, access to knowledge. It's a slow process. Organised religion fizzled away when faced with widespread access to the facts (though two world wars surely helped).
Portugal is hardly the beacon of education and knowledge of the world, and yet they managed it. This is not a solution, it's giving up and saying "let's wait for it to happen by itself".
Exactly how is educating people and giving them facts "giving up"? Equipping people to make rational decisions based on evidence and giving them the confidence to make changes - that's a slow process.
There seems to be a trend for humans becoming brighter and more socially connected. (See Pinker's decline of violence work.)
I'm making the assumption that those trends will also stamp out boneheadedness with regards to prohibition.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to further suggest we end the use of the word "war" in contexts that do not involve mandatory conscription and the deaths of large numbers of combatants until one side totally surrenders. I'd like to upvote that a hundred times.
I'd like to upvote condemnation of misuse of the word war too, however note real war frequently does not involve mandatory conscription, deaths of large numbers of combatants, or one side totally surrendering.
As a corollary, I'd like to add this as a rule:
If you are engaged in a mass bombing of civilians and military targets or committing ground forces to combative action for a period of longer than a week or two, that is a war, not a "police action" or other euphemism meant to get around (American) Constitutional requirements.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea of "drug tourists" is absurd. The worst of the illicit drug addicts can barely take care of themselves. They choose drugs over food and showers. They can't hold jobs and resort to crime to feed their habits. Access to drugs isn't their problem else they wouldn't have become addicts in the first place. They aren't going to spend their money to travel to Portugal even if they can afford it.
Have you been to Amsterdam? It's not the poor addicts who travel, it's the rowdy 16-25 crowd. It must bring in a ton of tourism revenue, but I know the Dutch aren't thrilled about a ton of Brits, Aussies, and Americans wandering about their city stoned out of their minds all the time.
I haven't been there because there's no point; I can literally do the same things here with no consequences. Stoners are far less annoying than drunks. There's a good chance they won't even make it out of the house, but many people smoke daily and go about their business no matter where you live. No one notices or cares. And if there are people stoned every day then there are people people driving around you are stoned every day. These people are a threat to no one because they are practically unimpaired. It's not even comparable to driving drunk unless you're on edibles or are very unexperienced, so they go unnoticed as well. It's just not a big deal anymore.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you been to Amsterdam? It's not the poor addicts who travel, it's the rowdy 16-25 crowd. It must bring in a ton of tourism revenue, but I know the Dutch aren't thrilled about a ton of Brits, Aussies, and Americans wandering about their city stoned out of their minds all the time.
That's a plausible concern to me, but I wonder if it's practically any worse than other party destinations. E.g., New Orleans during Mardi Gras or parts of Florida during spring break. Here in San Francisco marijuana is effectively legal; friends tell of walking past cops smoking joints. I'd much rather deal with a thoroughly stoned stranger than a thoroughly drunk one. I think the weed vs booze distinction is really…
That's the biggest difference between cali and most other medicinal states at this point. Most have semi-legal dispensaries and collective-scale grows, but public smoking is usually prohibited. It's one of those unnecessary clauses put in the laws because the writers think it won't pass without it. I will say that I enjoy Michigan's new no-smoking law, which makes it far less conspicuous to smoke weed outside. I can, however, use my vaporizer legally anywhere except schools and public parks.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#116I have the karma to burn to come out and say this should be on another site. Not only has it already been discussed all over the internet, it's been discussed here to death, and in any event, yet another drugs debate here isn't going to accomplish anything.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Adderall/Desoxyn/Methamphetamine/"Speed" are a great example Small clarification: Adderall isn't methamphetamine, it's amphetamine. When discussing street drugs, for some value of safe, it is a considerably safer substance. (Real, lab-made methamphetamine, even abused, is naturally much less bad for you than the typical battery acid sold on the street, too.)
I should have been clearer - I was just trying to be concise to prove a point. And I'm making the assumption that we're comparing drugs of high quality in either category (because obviously drugs that are mixed with adulterants are going to have other problems). You seem to understand what's going on, but for anybody else who's curious: Adderall isn't methamphetamine. However, the methyl group doesn't change the way…
Thanks for your explanation. I know I like knowing /how/ drugs / medical treatments actually work, and I think many of the people on here also appreciate this.
Doctors, in the US at least, are a bit less than helpful when you ask about this kind of stuff, and I've had more than one actually act offended when asked about how/why what they're prescribing works. I know that in IT, if a client asks us how something works, I'm more than happy to explain, or at least point them in the right direction and link them to some documentation and/or how-to articles. With doctors, I typically get more of a "it just does" / "it's complicated and you wouldn't understand" / [very technical explanation, not even trying to make it make sense to laypersons].
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#118Without the war on drugs this would happen: 1. Half the law enforcement, out of the job. 2. Half the lawyers and the judges, out of the job. 3. Half the privatized prison system, out of the job. 4. A few million other jobs that support and/or depend on the above, done away with. It's pointless to even try this in the USA... No one is going to be willing to give up the ongoing and ever-giving spoils of the war on drug…
Replace "out of the job" with "back on jobs that actually further the best interests of the public", and your post starts to make sense.
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#119I have the karma to burn to come out and say this should be on another site. Not only has it already been discussed all over the internet, it's been discussed here to death, and in any event, yet another drugs debate here isn't going to accomplish anything.
Yeah, it's like SOPA 2.0. Where are my funny cat pictures?
Re: Time to end the war on drugs
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Drug use is a health-related issue, whether it is a doctor prescribing medications, a patient taking meds off-label, a person self-medicating, an addict, or some kind experimentation > We have a caricatured view of the drug addict -- the unwashed, illiterate, toothless junkie hiding out in a crack house. Yes, addiction ends up that way for some, but by and large addicts are middle-class, educated, and live in house…
> The drugs that you are prescribed and the drugs people consume recreationally are not fundamentally different. That is not true. > In fact, in many cases, they're essentially interchangeable from a chemical perspective This is true. In a sane society, both would be true. But they are not. The "war on drugs" is not an innocent mistake. It is calculated and it is doing precisely what it was designed to do. Its purpos…
Maybe. I think that you're at least partially right, but I also think it has a lot to do with the Christian values that affect our laws way more than they should (see also: abortion laws in USA.)
>Its purpose it to line the pockets of the politicians who support it. I would say that it's more for the large pharmaceutical companies. Politicians are cheap these days, and the profits from the "war on drugs" are orders of magnitude larger than the money given to politicians to support it. The ATT/T-Mo merger "only" had $9 million in lobbying support -- an order of magnitude less than they stand/stood to lose if the deal fell through REF: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/12/09/attmay.have.tr... .