America Is A Terrible Country

[Bells]

Decriminalization is NOT the same thing as LEGALIZATION.

Decriminalization is ok if DONE RIGHT not just some lazy ass excuse of "it's all good now". This is just shallow thinking. And has a lot of risks that not a single soul here seems to even acknowledge...

Legalization is wrong - right now in our time - because it's also lazy, shallow and proper thought form that belongs to people who have no fucking clue what they are actually advocating.

Yeah... Drugs are completely harmless, right? Any harm it causes, it's you doing to your own body... it's the principle of freedom right? Nobody's business...

...sure... they just come out of thin air right? You just wish them into existence... no no no... you are certainly not giving your money to Drug Cartels and funneling cash into other bigger and much more dangerous criminal activities... of course not! That would be silly to even presume... surely all drugs come from hippies that plant and brew on their own happy little backyards. Y'know... drug user are famously known to be industrious and diligent with their production and supply... You would surely break the legs of all the drug lords and gangs that provide as suppliers if you simply let people do it for themselves... overnight! Might even balance the state budget if you tax it! People love diluted shit at high markup prices... that would totally not ever feed an alternative market.

Of course a drug dealer would NEVER exploit the limits of the law around decriminalization to distribute drugs locally without ever being caught. Criminals never exploit the fine print and limits of the law to build their commerce...

Of course you don't have to look beyond your borders... why bother with an Entire country in Africa whose government is completely comprised and run by South American drug cartels?! Silly to even worry about it... if you simply legalize it you will be taking the cash out of these bad people!! Of course!! There is no way the people who already master and control all the supply and logistics of Drugs from light to heavy could ever use that opening to legally laundry their drug money to funnel it to other stuff... that just never happens!

Sure!! let's give the government control and responsibility to oversee this entire system, cause they sure as fuck do a fantastic job on all that other stuff they do.. right?! Sure there won't be any lobbies trying to get their hands in that... and how much money do drug cartels have really? A couple of million? A couple dozen million? per year? Pocket change! it could never influence and distort such a fine system...

And of course... pricing. The Market for it!! I'm sure the Tobacco industry who at one point was such an unstoppable legal force that would outweigh local government with legal muscle and has been shrunken and been squeezed over the years would NEVER have any sort of interest in working with other legalized narcotics... i mean, people just walk around all day long prancing about the medical wonders and betterment and how safe and harmless most of them are and can be... it's totally not the same as when the tobacco industry would pour loads of cash to promote Cigarrettes as "good for your throat"... i mean, people are doing it for free for them now! where is the fun in that right?

I mean... regulate it, dillute it, mix with other shit approved by the government, tax it... the price will go up sure. But people will go for it... right?

We don't have to worry about it... just legalize it and it will be fine. No need to think about the fine print... let's just stomp our ground and demand what we want, let those who actually do it worry about the details...

I mean, it's not like you can actually focus your money and willpower into improving the safety nets and regulations and prying the industrial interest out of the control over sick people and provide better and more appealing and plentiful facilities to take care of those who actually suffer from their addiction instead of... you know... legalizing shit and hoping it all fits tetris-style. Probably would improve your tax rate though... but who wouldn't want to pay more for that delicious piece of bureaucracy?

But hey... no need for bureaucracy right? You can just copy another country... surely doing the exact same thing a country with a different legal system, different laws, different culture, different individual values, different commerce, different geo-political standings and situations, different global interests, different budget, different political system, different tax code, surrounded by completely different neighbors is going to wield the exact same results... i just know it.

Seriously... All you guys have are a bunch of T-shirt logos. Or you just really care about your own backyard and refuse to acknowledge that the things you want have real problems that no fix was presented for yet... at least not one that can actually work in the real world where everybody actually lives in...

[Jagos]

Bells, the talk about decriminalization in Portugal is about helping people.

Your entire tirade ignores the Netherlands entirely where its legalized.

I want to make this absolutely clear here.

The United States has criminalized ALL drugs for 40 years. We have locked up 2.2 million people for it. Black people have an unemployment rate of 14% because of the War on Drugs. We have over 4 million people that can't vote to change the system.

WE. AS. A. NATION. CAN. NOT. CONTINUE. THE. DRUG. WAR.

We have not stopped the supply nor the demand. We've given grandmas 50 years in prison for their first offense.

Decriminalization is just one path, but it's had great results for that nation. Legalization would eliminate our OD problem and its a reason that I support LEAP.

But saying that the drug war shouldn't be stopped? Read those statistics, then tell me you still support it.

[shiney]

Originally Posted by Jagos

Bells,

Welp...

Originally Posted by Jagos

Read those statistics

about that...

Originally Posted by Jagos

then tell me you still support it.

[Kim]

In this thread, Robin confuses anecdote with data to defend systems of oppression while Bells ignores all data that says we should treat people like human beings.

Such wonderful people.

[Grimpond]

robin is the only creature capable of banding the awful together against the greater foe

[Betty Elms]

Originally Posted by Bells

Yeah... Drugs are completely harmless, right? Any harm it causes, it's you doing to your own body... it's the principle of freedom right? Nobody's business...

Nobody here thinks that and the implying that they do because you don't feel like engaging in meaningful discussion is insulting. You're losing an argument against somebody who doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Bells

...sure... they just come out of thin air right? You just wish them into existence... no no no... you are certainly not giving your money to Drug Cartels and funneling cash into other bigger and much more dangerous criminal activities... of course not! That would be silly to even presume... surely all drugs come from hippies that plant and brew on their own happy little backyards. Y'know... drug user are famously known to be industrious and diligent with their production and supply... You would surely break the legs of all the drug lords and gangs that provide as suppliers if you simply let people do it for themselves... overnight! Might even balance the state budget if you tax it! People love diluted shit at high markup prices... that would totally not ever feed an alternative market.

Why the hell would legalized drugs be diluted and more expensive? Everybody knows that you'd have to sell significantly beneath the street price so as to drive criminal dealers out of business. The majority of your hypothetical you engage in after making this point depends on a nonsensical understanding of the economics of legalization and how preexisting gangs would be dealt with, with an overestimation of the stupidity of US senators and representatives (which is apparently a thing that can be done!) tossed in for good measure. But I dunno you seem to pretty strongly believe I don't know what I'm talking about so maybe I should leave this discussion and head on over to the speakeasy.

Originally Posted by Bells

And of course... pricing. The Market for it!! I'm sure the Tobacco industry who at one point was such an unstoppable legal force that would outweigh local government with legal muscle and has been shrunken and been squeezed over the years would NEVER have any sort of interest in working with other legalized narcotics... i mean, people just walk around all day long prancing about the medical wonders and betterment and how safe and harmless most of them are and can be... it's totally not the same as when the tobacco industry would pour loads of cash to promote Cigarrettes as "good for your throat"...

See, what you're doing here is not quiiiite a straw man argument, since you seem to sincerely believe that arguments in favor of drug legalization are actually a proposal for how exactly in every little minutia drug legalization should work. This is a recurring element to your post, a sort of giddy and overzealous "aha here's something i bet you didn't think of, a great big hole in your argument!" like when I was eight and I thought "wait, why don't we just make one gigantic subway train that has no walls and never stops and you have to jump on, that way nobody would have to wait for the train!"

No shit there would be stringent measures regarding advertising. Do you think drug legalization would get through congress without that? There probably wouldn't even be any traditional wide platform advertising. The reason nobody has really brought this up is because people tend to assume it goes without saying.

edit- some advertising, mostly in the form of pro-drug rhetoric would admittedly get through, 'cause money. It should however be noted that tobacco advertising has very consistently declined since we came to an understanding of the medical effects of the product. To think that entering a host of products we understand very well into the market would be like tobacco in the 1950s would be absurd. Besides, more addiction is absolutely worth the extraordinary increase in efficiency we would have in treatment and the general decrease in the risks of drug use.

Originally Posted by Bells

I mean, it's not like you can actually focus your money and willpower into improving the safety nets and regulations and prying the industrial interest out of the control over sick people and provide better and more appealing and plentiful facilities to take care of those who actually suffer from their addiction instead of... you know... legalizing shit and hoping it all fits tetris-style. Probably would improve your tax rate though... but who wouldn't want to pay more for that delicious piece of bureaucracy?

The criminalization of drugs results in those suffering from addiction being treated as criminals, and accordingly they do not receive proper rehabilitation. More money should be spent on the facilities and services you refer to, but the amount of good that can be done for addicts is inherently and severely restricted by prohibition.

Originally Posted by Bells

But hey... no need for bureaucracy right? You can just copy another country... surely doing the exact same thing a country with a different legal system, different laws, different culture, different individual values, different commerce, different geo-political standings and situations, different global interests, different budget, different political system, different tax code, surrounded by completely different neighbors is going to wield the exact same results... i just know it.

See what's most immediately amusing there is that our "neighbors" make drug legalization an even more pressing. Support for prohibition is support for the Mexican Drug War. This is not debatable, the United States is the primary market for Mexican cartels, a market that depends entirely and absolutely upon the prohibition. Our drug laws are the source of their money, their weapons, all of their power, every means by which they were able to cause the deaths of well over 60,000 people in the past six years.

That aside all the "well we can't do that because we're a different country" arguments are just every lazy arbitrary argument ever used to claim that a country shouldn't adopt policies that have been repeatedly proven to work.

But really the fact that you seem to think this is a matter of personal liberty and not a matter of helping addicts in a meaningful way, closing down a violent and tragic route that our society has reserved almost exclusively for the underprivileged, stopping the system that's turned our law enforcement into a tool used primarily to crush lower class communities, and taking responsibility to the destruction the United States has brought to Mexico... really speaks... to the fact... that you.. kind of... sort of... have no idea what you're talking about.

[Betty Elms]

i'm gonna admit right now before it bites me in the ass that i read nothing of this thread other than this page. i'm just presuming that bells hasn't posted before in this thread because i can not possibly fathom how he would be able to maintain his perception of the reasonings behind legalization if he was engaging in an actual back and forth. that would demand a tremendous and embarrassing failure on either his part or the part of everybody he might have argued with, so i'll maintain my respect for all of you by just figuring he popped in here right now having read literally nothing anybody's said.

this is called faith. i learned how to do it by watching life of pi which is just magical guys there's a tiger and its in 3D so its like the tiger jumps out and its all whooosh like im really there in the boat!!

[Sifright]

I'd just like to say, I am Portuguese and can talk about the effects of how decriminalization effected a distant member of my family directly.

He had been suffering from heroin addiction most of life from his teenage years on, there was literally no legal avenue he could get help with out being thrown in jail for a long ass time so he didn't try to. Given that most of my family are also dirt poor we couldn't afford to help him go to any rehab centers that did exist either. Once the Laws were changed portugal started pumping money into rehab centers for people who are *not* just rich millionaires and can get away with breaking the law with out any problems any way.

I'm not going to say it was all sunshine and rainbows for my family member afterwards because it wasn't but he's been clean for over a few years now and before hand he was a pretty heavy user.


See before decriminalization took place in Portugal drugs were a pretty huge problem,Heroin usage and addiction was massive part of this is due to proximity to morocco where the stuff is grown and because of how cheap it was get from there this lead to all kinds of horrible shit like a massive spread in AIDS from used needles.

Since decriminalization has taken place the drug problem has been reduced very significantly in Portugal.

All this is of course anecdotal. On the other hand the stats also favor the position that decriminalization is the best way to deal with the drug problem.

Prohibition doesn't work well sadly, heavy handed regulation would be a better way to go about it.

Edit: fucked up my post, fixed it.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I hate Betty because she likes terrible films (ironically?) like life of pi but I'm glad people are willing to write shit out to take down the dicks posting. Cause I can only think 2 sentences at a time.

[Osterbaum]

And I just don't even know where to start with countering this stuff.