jlm53089 wrote:Driving while high is not that bad, I honestly feel like I am more focused, and in a zone of sorts. But that is baiscally what is keeping from it being legal is because you are not supposed to drive while intoxicated with anything.
Driving while high is a reaction time reducer definitely. Also I find it hard to concentrate say in the rain or at night with all the tracers
driving in a snowstorm is like going into hyperspace
Curtis Pride wrote:As someone who doesn't smoke, allow me to say that pot should be legal.
As should coke, heroin, mushrooms and any other mind altering substance that people want to put into their own bodies.
They are not hurting anyone else by doing it.
Now, if they hurt people while intoxicated (violence, driving under the influence, etc) then that should be penalized just as it is with drunk driving.
We're missing out on tens of billions of dollars in potential tax revenues with this foolish "war". Plus, it would allow us to either fire or redeploy half of the nation's police forces.
what he said for the most part
and something of a case study on whether or not legalization would spur drug use to epidemic levels
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.
The reasoning that drug use (or more specifically marijuana use) would increase was based on the prerequisite that drugs were legalized and were made as accessible as cigarettes and alcohol. Neither is true in your Portugal example.
It is imperative to note that this law (Law 30/2000) did not legalize drugs in Portugal, illicit drug use and possession are still illegal but are subject to police “intervention” rather than the criminal justice system. Criminal penalties continue to be imposed on drug dealers, growers and traffickers.
Could you imagine some of the advertisements that they would come up with if all drugs became legalized? The Super Bowl Crack commercials would be hilarious!!
jlm53089 wrote:Crack, Heroin, Coke, Ecstasy... ETC Will never be legalized. Only weed.
You can't OD on weed, but hey they have pills and you can OD on them, so who knows.
Just give me legalized weed.
I agree, legalize weed and use the resources freed up(I'm guessing more than half) on the others. So not only did half the drug sellers go away but now you have twice as many resources to use on the ones left.
I ain't askin' nobody for nothin, If I can't get it on my own. - Charlie Daniels
josebach wrote:The reasoning that drug use (or more specifically marijuana use) would increase was based on the prerequisite that drugs were legalized and were made as accessible as cigarettes and alcohol. Neither is true in your Portugal example.
It is imperative to note that this law (Law 30/2000) did not legalize drugs in Portugal, illicit drug use and possession are still illegal but are subject to police “intervention” rather than the criminal justice system. Criminal penalties continue to be imposed on drug dealers, growers and traffickers.
ah ok, i did gloss over that. it's still somewhat applicable in that their model for intervention vs incarceration seems to be "working". and let's face it, the decriminalization of drugs would also be a massive change for this country
another thing: the idea of making "all drugs legal including heroin and crack" and their sudden appearance "in every corner convenient store" are two completely different things. to assume that every mom/pop is going to start stocking their shelves with crystal meth simply because it isn't illegal is ludicrous. would some people sell it? certainly, just as people do now even though it's illegal. i just wonder why so many people think that the only thing holding hordes of citizens back from distributing or using hard drugs is the simple illegality of it. if you do feel that is the case, what are your thoughts on the potential for realistic education on drugs (as in, a bit deeper than "drugs are bad, m-kay?" and "just say no") helping to counteract the potential for interest? if more people were educated on the real affects on crystal meth, how many would want to try it?
and i find it pretty hypocritical that we continue to participate in this war on "drugs" while nobody bats an eye at the fact that ~$3 billion is spent annually on legal "drugs" that just help guys get a boner. if those are purely recreational, then i don't know what is
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