Drugs: A moral decision, a matter of choice, or a national health risk?

[ShaMan]

Stop hogging the smoke cochise. Puff puff - pass.

Cochise

A bit North of home, but it's all home anyway

I passed it to you an hour ago. You have been holding the pipe, frozen for 57 minutes

[The Grand Nudger]

I think you're forgetting that heroin is a morphine derivative. Opiates as a group are abused in many forms - some just don't seem to be killing people left right and center - even if they aren't doing them any favors. Codeine is a fan favorite, of course.

It hasn't always been socially acceptable to drink and socially unacceptable to do heroin (or any narcotic). Quite the opposite, in fact.

The only cheaper form is to buy less quantity? Jesus christ man.....never heard of crack? It's cokes cheaper and nastier cousin (it;s also an example of what happens to a drug trade when overwhelming competition arises - coke didn't really survive crack, in the same way that crack lost it's grip to meth).

Your level of trust in certifying agencies doesn't seem to stop you from eating.

Universal pricing? Fucking communists!
(over here, a guy can sell his smokes at a loss if he thinks it will bring in customers - and it will)

The point is that the face of that trafficking would likely to change into the face of your cigarette smugglers. A decided improvement. As a bonus, people won't be freebasing Raid thinking they bought some really good dro (and all of those budget options for the poorer addicts won't be cut with even nastier shit than the substances in question).

[psychoslice]

Street drugs are for losers, it does nothing good for our society, in fact it puts a big strain on everything, coasting billions of dollars to the ones who don't want anything to do with the crap.

[The Grand Nudger]

Billions of dollars-in poorly thought out (and ineffectual) enforcement, and draconian sentencing policies, yes. Don't even want to imagine how much it costs our economy, importing all that damned weed. Buy american y'all.

[Endo]

Street drugs are for losers, it does nothing good for our society, in fact it puts a big strain on everything, coasting billions of dollars to the ones who don't want anything to do with the crap.

And WHY is that the case? Because we (the ones who don't want anything to do with this crap) have to pay to keep enforcement of the illegality in effect. You would have an argument if we approached this from a healthcare and insurance issue, though.

[ShaMan]

Don't even want to imagine how much it costs our economy, importing all that damned weed. Buy american y'all.

OK, now this is some funny shit...

[psychoslice]

Billions of dollars-in poorly thought out (and ineffectual) enforcement, and draconian sentencing policies, yes. Don't even want to imagine how much it costs our economy, importing all that damned weed. Buy american y'all.

I said street drugs, there are a lot more out there than your old favourite weed, just in case you didn't realize that.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, I'm out of my depth beyond the ganja. Pure as the driven snow - honest.
(just in case you missed it, I just spent the better part of an hour arguing for the legalization of heroin....lol - now I have to go wash my hands -and- my keyboard. See the shitty position that our garbage drug policy puts us in? I have to argue -in favor- of hay-ron as the lesser of two evils.....goddamnit!)

[psychoslice]

Yeah, I'm out of my depth beyond the ganja. Pure as the driven snow - honest.
(just in case you missed it, I just spent the better part of an hour arguing for the legalization of heroin....lol - now I have to go wash my hands -and- my keyboard. See the shitty position that our garbage drug policy puts us in? I have to argue -in favor- of hay-ron as the lesser of two evils.....goddamnit!)

Yep, drugs are for losers that's for sure.

[CapnAwesome]

My personal reason for being against legalization of drugs is because I don't want to live in a world with junkies. Imagine how bad poor neighborhoods are now. Now imagine them with everyone out of their mind on drugs. How scary would it be if we lived in a world with violent psychotic people with impaired cognitive ability?

So, in order and by color:

You are already living in a word with junkies. After 40+ years of this drug war shit it should be patently obvious that it creates junkies and does not prevent them.

You know, once you legalize this shit and remove the profit incentive for the smugglers the reverse may happen. The druggies are fine once they are doped up. The gunfire comes from the turf wars by the sellers not the users.

But only for "drugs" which the government has determined are illegal, eh? What about alcohol and prescription drugs? Do the negative impacts of those not count because Pfizer makes hefty campaign "contributions" (a/k/a bribes)?

You're coming across as very naive. In addition to the above you are failing to factor in the increase in police intrusion and the decimation of our civil rights for this so-called "drug war" which is a total flop in any case. Read through the "Fucking Cops" thread for example after example of what has really happened in this country.

I totally agree with you about the drug war. However I don't think it's unfair to say that the increase in use of certain drugs, say meth, also lead to an increase in crime. Are there reliable stats on gang crime compared to the crime that people commit to fund their addiction? Most of what I have encountered personally (although that means jack shit in the over all scheme of things) is junkies ripping people off to pay for their habit. Although I think that it's hard to be in favor of anything that helps the drug war, I feel it's almost as naive to think that legalizing drugs will do all these miraculous things to solve the social and crime problems associated with the use of hard drugs.