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#442996 - 10/18/05 09:16 PM ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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the op-ed

Grist for the mill.

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#442997 - 10/18/05 09:21 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
RandomName Offline
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Ted Kennedy can legalize gay morning-after birth control drugs smuggled in by illegal immigrants from Islamic countries when he pries them out of my cold dead hand!

Thought I'd hit all of the hot buttons at once.

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#442998 - 10/18/05 09:30 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
rainman Offline
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You left out a couple - I think you meant:

Ted Kennedy can legalize gay morning-after birth control drugs authorized by Harriet Miers and smuggled in by fur coat wearing illegal immigrants from Islamic countries with nuclear weapons when he pries them out of my cold dead hand!
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#442999 - 10/18/05 09:42 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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Quote:

It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?




No one has an opinion?

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#443000 - 10/18/05 09:45 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
MB Guy Offline
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To a certain extent, I agree with him. The drug war is lost, we need to face it. I would rather try to control it as I think that is the wiser approach.
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#443001 - 10/18/05 09:49 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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Quote:

To a certain extent, I agree with him.




Does your support fade when he starts talking about the hard drugs?

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#443002 - 10/18/05 09:55 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
RandomName Offline
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With the caveat that this opinion is strictly my own and in no way should be contrued as that of my employers, I would at least legalize marijuana. But I'd have a license system for buying it. You'd have to sign a waiver saying "I acknowledge that smoking marijuana might be bad for me in any number of ways and I surrender my right to sue anyone, having decided to buy and use this product with full knowledge that there could be bad side effects." And the same laws against drunk driving and stuff would apply to stoned driving.

Then we could get tax revenue off the dope AND stop spending money trying to prevent people from smoking a comparatively innocuous drug. And by legalizing it, we could slightly reduce the power of the narco-mobs in Latin America, although they're really making their money off the hard stuff these days.

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#443003 - 10/18/05 11:16 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
rainman Offline
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I do have a few comments.

Quote:

It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery.




I think it's a huge stretch to conclude this. Our current policy may be wrongheaded (I'm not conceding that), but punishing people for engaging in behavior they know is criminal is a far far far cry from permitting people to own other people.

Quote:

We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?




Lies, d#!n lies, and statistics! Of course we're making more arrests for drug offenses . . . more people do drugs than kill, rape, or assault people.

I'm not saying that our current policy is great, but I also don't buy the legalization argument. Medicinal marijuana maybe, but not medicinal heroin.

This deserves a longer response, but my job deserves my attention, too!!
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#443004 - 10/19/05 04:45 AM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Blade Scrapper Offline
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Quote:

I do have a few comments.

Quote:

but not medicinal heroin.




....like dilaudid?
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#443005 - 10/19/05 12:38 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Anonymous
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I agree with legalizing drugs - regulate it, tax it, and set up clinics for people that can't handle it. Even if they were legal, I don't think I'd go out and start using them.

We're way too repressed as a nation anyway - we should loosen up a bit. Despite our claim to the birth of Freedom, we have rampant censorship on tv, radio and the arts. The great thing about freedom is the ability to make choices for oneself - not have morality legislated by the government.

Just because something is legal it doesn't mean you have to do it. If you disgree with it - don't use, watch, engage in the activity. Speak out against it, but I don't need another law telling me what is and isn't good for me!

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#443006 - 10/19/05 01:08 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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My support does fade when harder drugs are involved, yes. Harder drugs require resources for treatment and the "negative" resources of lost productivity for people that are cracked out and unable to hold a job. The big fear in this whole debate is over pot and lets just get that in the open. One side will say that ALL drugs are a scourge and invariably the other counters with articles like this. Most of the fear to legalizing pot is that it will create some sort of slippery slope where the harder drugs will be the next to be legalized. As it is most of the fears of pot when compared with cigs and booze are AT WORST no worse. In fact when pressed, the biggest REASON pot is bad is because it is illegal. Quite a tautology.

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#443007 - 10/19/05 01:28 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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Quote:

We're way too repressed as a nation anyway - we should loosen up a bit. Despite our claim to the birth of Freedom, we have rampant censorship on tv, radio and the arts. The great thing about freedom is the ability to make choices for oneself - not have morality legislated by the government.




This, of course, should be the subject of a new thread, but when you start it, I'd like an example of censorship in non-government funded art, or in audio or visual recordings that aren't broadcast on public airwaves...

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#443008 - 10/19/05 01:32 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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No J, I think it is very relevant as a supporting argument. (Ex are selected curse words on radio and tv, tv delay after the whole Janet thing that was way too overblown)

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#443009 - 10/19/05 01:35 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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It is no more relevant than speed limits on public highways.

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#443010 - 10/19/05 01:42 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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Let's not change the issue from what you originally posted. I meant that his argument was relevant in the sense this is an issue where a civil liberty is being quashed in favor of government telling people what they can and can't do. Much like speed limits, the loss of freedom must be tempered again the harm to the community. The article suggested that the harm against society was largely a creation of the government. I disagree with a carte blanche approach to drug legalization because, much like speed limits, there are drugs which are damaging to society. There are drug laws which are draconian though and the bablance between civil liberties and government supervision is flat out wrong.

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#443011 - 10/19/05 01:53 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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Quote:

Let's not change the issue from what you originally posted.




Exactly.

Quote:

I meant that his argument was relevant in the sense this is an issue where a civil liberty is being quashed in favor of government telling people what they can and can't do. Much like speed limits, the loss of freedom must be tempered again the harm to the community. The article suggested that the harm against society was largely a creation of the government. I disagree with a carte blanche approach to drug legalization because, much like speed limits, there are drugs which are damaging to society.




Speed limits are damaging to society? I guess your larger point is that drug use is damaging to society. Maybe. Is tobacco use not? Is alcohol use not?

Quote:

There are drug laws which are draconian though and the bablance between civil liberties and government supervision is flat out wrong.




It's wrong to balance them, or the balance is incorrect?

The better question, in my opinion, is, are the federal drug laws constitutional? Obviously, the feds should have the ability to limit interstate commerce in drugs, as well as importing them. But do the feds really have an interest (look, Ron, I'm about to criticize the Bush administration) in prohibiting a Californian from growing and using their own pot for medical reasons?

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#443012 - 10/19/05 02:03 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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No speed limits aren't bad (although they should be inapplicable to me). I probably didn't construct my analogy as well as I should have but I hope you can see what I meant.
Tobacco use and alcohol use can be bad for society but the the they are acceptable harms as we can't protect everyone from everything and freedom must be preserved if the interest is not compelling.
Constitutional: that's a big bite to chew off. I'd rather go politically. In fact I would rather talk about the issue itself rather than the framework it fits in. But at least we are on the right track....

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#443013 - 10/19/05 02:15 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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I guess the crux of my thought for legalizing drugs is that you can rarely protect people from themselves if they intend to harm themselves. The costs to society of hard core drugs (police to fight usage (both monetary and lives), attorneys to prosecute and defend, crime by the users against innocent persons to obtain money to buy drugs, etc.) are so high, I don't know if it would be less expensive to try to regulate even hard core drugs and treat/wean people off of them, instead of just trying to prevent them from getting them (which obviously does not work).
Last edited by MarkinFlorida; 10/19/05 02:50 PM.
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#443014 - 10/19/05 02:25 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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instead of just trying to prevent them from getting them (which obviously does not work).

Good point. We need to be smarter in "fighting" the "war" on drugs.

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#443015 - 10/19/05 03:06 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
grmasterb Offline
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Quote:

We need to be smarter in "fighting" the "war" on drugs.




In other words, let's expend more effort towards reducing the demand rather than the supply, correct? A business with no market for it's product eventually goes under.

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#443016 - 10/19/05 03:12 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
rainman Offline
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Quote:

In other words, let's expend more effort towards reducing the demand rather than the supply, correct? A business with no market for it's product eventually goes under.





That's a good idea. But it doesn't make legalizing drugs a good idea.

Jokerman, I do think your questions are more for a "federalism" thread. I agree the commerce clause is an ill constructed fig-leaf. It's pretty tough to say that the feds should be able to regulate the Cal. guy growing his own in order to ease the pain of his [ name the disease ] or cut down on bad effects of chemo.

Fine . . . but that doesn't say whether the same regulation at the state level would be a good or a bad thing.
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#443017 - 10/19/05 03:14 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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Actually grmasterb, I think the demand is the constant in the equation. And further is the demand for certain things necessarily a bad thing? How about if certain things are debateably less harmful, all things considered, than things already a part of our culture? I was going for the angle that if the demand is going to be there, instead of using resources (even if they are created out of thin air ) why can't we create revenue?

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#443018 - 10/19/05 03:29 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
RandomName Offline
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I don't think we can dramatically reduce the demand for drugs. If marijuana was legal, some of the teenage zeal for the forbidden might be cut back, but in general there's a pretty high appetite for drugs that I don't think will go away. All of the exhortations over the past decades to "just say no" and "only losers use drugs" haven't really done much to scale back demand. There will always be a certain percentage of people that want to get high, and as long as they keep their activities to sparking a blunt, I say let 'em do it. Let's make some tax revenue off of it and stop throwing small-time users into prison.

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#443019 - 10/19/05 03:32 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
Jokerman Offline
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Quote:

that doesn't say whether the same regulation at the state level would be a good or a bad thing.




Maybe it would be a good thing in some states and a bad thing in other states.

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#443020 - 10/19/05 03:47 PM Re: ex-top cop from Seattle favors legalizing drugs
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Quote:

I don't think we can dramatically reduce the demand for drugs. If marijuana was legal, some of the teenage zeal for the forbidden might be cut back, but in general there's a pretty high appetite for drugs that I don't think will go away. All of the exhortations over the past decades to "just say no" and "only losers use drugs" haven't really done much to scale back demand. There will always be a certain percentage of people that want to get high, and as long as they keep their activities to sparking a blunt, I say let 'em do it. Let's make some tax revenue off of it and stop throwing small-time users into prison.




I believe that one of the reasons why the government won't make marij. legal is b/c how would you tax it, who would grow it, who would profit off the sale, and would it be breaking the law if you grew it yourself, plus they would have to deal with the loop holes, if someone grows it and sells it they are "evading" paying taxes, so they would have to think up something pretty good to cover all the loop holes
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