Our Attorney General is the biggest dumbass on the planet

He makes some good points. He does however, seems to think that regulating drugs will reduce the amount of overuse or limit the access to children. How has that worked with alcohol? Kids are overdosing on prescription meds at overwhelming numbers and it's on par with illicit overdose deaths.

Banning cigarettes....he said we don't do that anywhere and cancer related illnesses are down as a result. But it's not true really, that cigarettes aren't banned. In essence they are in MANY places. You can still buy them but out here in CA, you can pretty smoke in your home or car and that's it. The state of CA is doing the same thing you are advocating against, which is trying to control personal behavior, by adding on ridiculous taxes on cigarettes. The last election, CA had Prop 56 on the ballot...

A "yes" vote favored increasing the cigarette tax by $2.00 per pack, with equivalent increases on other tobacco products and electronic cigarettes.
A "no" vote opposed increasing the cigarette tax by $2.00 per pack, with equivalent increases on other tobacco products and electronic cigarettes.

The outcome? It passed 64 to 36. Yeah, the hypocrites out here who want to have the freedom to do whatever they want, when they want, with whomever they want, apparently don't think the standard applies to smokers. I voted no BTW because I don't want the government making social policy at the individual taxpayer expense.

For me, if you want to drink, smoke, eat, drug yourself to death....go ahead. When your behavior and choices start to impact other people and involve law-breaking, I have an issue. I am not convinced that a "war" on drugs is the right answer but I'm also not convinced that all out legalization is either.

You want to see how drug use becomes a societal issue and not just a personal one?
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/1...cyclists-fear-homeless-give-up-outdoor-jewel/
These people are homeless almost exclusively due to their drug use.

 

I don't think meth, crack, cocaine, and the like should be legal for anybody. But, as a functioning society, we shouldn't want that anyway. Sure some people can hit a pipe and not end up spiraling out of control, but I'm guessing there are many that can't stop themselves. As a society, we don't really need that. And I get the opinion that law enforcement shouldn't enforce morality, but in a sense, it does. I'm not going to compare and contrast the different things, but society does need some rules.
@LaSalleAve we all know you want legal weed. Jesus do we know. But, you really cool with meth heads and people jacked up on LSD and PCP anytime because it isn't illegal anymore? I mean... it still will cost money for 8th grade chemists to buy the supplies and all.

 

That face has the look of a herion meth user hardly the face you want spouting legalization of drugs.

 

Back to @LaSalleAve condemnation of Civil Asset Seizure....he's exactly right. That is nothing but theft writ large. It was one of the complaints made in the Declaration of Independence. You know LaSalle who the biggest opponent of CAS on the Supreme Court is???? Your buddy Clarence Thomas. He has been outspoken in his attack both in written opinions and public speech. Strange bedfellows eh?http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/20/clarence-thomas-vs-jeff-sessions-on-civi Asset forfeiture has "led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses," Thomas writes

 

I look at other countries where they have started to legalize and regulate other drugs and see their addiction rates and crime rates decrease. I mean I thought we were Americans, thought we were better than everyone else and could do anything.

 

We are not other countries. They are not the US. We cannot continue to compare things that are not alike. We can still be better and yet have our own unique problems. Nobody said the US is perfect but I don't aspire to be a euro.

 

No we can't. If we can't do things they can we aren't better. We are too fat and lazy. We are the silk slipper version of America.

 

LaSalle, I am certain you will disagree, and probably have a shit fit, but here is my experience.

I graduated from high school in 1970. During the last semester I remember hearing whispers/rumors about some of the most suspect guys in my class might be using marijuana, but since they were on the extreme fringe, no one paid any anntention.

I graduated, and almost immediately went off to USNA, where I was, isolated until Christmas leave, December 1970. Upon returning home for the first time, since June, I was astounded THAT ALL OF MY FRIENDS WERE SMOKING DOPE. All of them. From zero to 60 in six months.

I never did, I was too chicken about being caught, not a moral stance, just not compatible with my life. I still hung out with my guys, but was uneasy about them getting busted and being with them. Again, no moral judgement.

While I am sure there is evidence that dope does not lead to other dope use, I watched my friends, in the two or three times a year I saw them, go from dope, to hash, to pisilocybin, to qualudes to acid, to coke. This progression affected way more than 1/2 of them. Almost all of them. I eventually just had to cut ties with practically all my childhood friends.

Two died in college, my best friend died in his 20s, several more in their 30s. Now, only a couple of the guys I hung out with in high school are alive, and one looks and acts like a zombie. Yeah, he was a very heavy user.

I have no moral, religious, or health posture about drugs, any drugs. But I do feel like "drugs" took all my childhood friends from me, and, I will never be convinced that all of this sadness and pain did not start off with simply a few, harmless tokes.

 

Let's flip that paradigm. Given the same circumstances as America has, could they do as well as we are? No, and it's not close because we have a different mentality and approach.

But I might challenge your idea that countries with legalization programs result in amazing outcomes. The psychology of addiction would dictate that you are wrong. Great Britain tried clinical availability in 1964 with heroin. They eventually switched to methadone because the number of addicts increased 100% between 1970 and 1980 and a disproportionate number of these new addicts were between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. Eventually the number of participants dwindled because they either died or got arrested for crimes.

Let's consider the crown jewel of doper countries, the Netherlands. 80% of the crime is committed by one specific group. Who is it? Addicts, of course. Because not everyone who sits down to toke up is peaceful and well off enough to financially support their habbit. They actually need more police per person to deal with the crimes being committed by addicts. So they leave addicts alone if they aren't doing anything but that's not what goes on. Half of the prison population there are addicts.

A similar result happened in Zurich where people could just sit in the park all day and get fucked up while the police simply looked on until a crime occurred. And crimes did occur! I think this is the issue here. You want pot legalized and a decent argument can be made but it can't be made for all other drugs because they dramatically change a person's behavior and ultimately end up resulting in catastrophic life circumstances where crimes become a means to an end. People who take oxy can't do it just recreationally. Same goes for coke, heroin, any opioid really. Society cannot co-exist with addicts and the number of them will not decrease if you make THOSE drugs legal.