Should marijuana be legalized?

I vote YES... but only for the Congressmen and Senators. Something has to help them think more clearly...

stokerscot wrote:What happens when the issue is ,,,,say,,, murder. Are we just going to issue a stamp and let the government get their cut? Scott

Not a fair comparison, its a victimless crime for the most part. The victims we do have are because its illegal. Granted you could argue the families are victims ans so on but locking them up isn't solving anything. The war on drugs has been going since when? The Nixon administration?

The only thing it has accomplished is putting 1 in 100 U.S. citizens in jail. the money spent housing these prisoners and building more jails would be better spent elsewhere.

EnergyManager wrote:I vote YES... but only for the Congressmen and Senators. Something has to help them think more clearly...

Good one!!

It wouldn't work for them. They wouldn't inhale!

Richard S. wrote:Not a fair comparison, its a victimless crime for the most part. The victims we do have are because its illegal.

Absolutely right....What gives me the right to prevent my neighbor from doing something that is unhealthy to him, if it doesn't effect me? If my neighbor decides to drink himself into a coma, smoke marijuana all day, shoot heroin until he kills himself.......That's his decision. As long as he doesn't get behind the wheel of a car, or rob me to pay for his addiction, I don't care what he does...& neither should you, imo.

Richard S. wrote:locking them up isn't solving anything. The war on drugs has been going since when? The Nixon administration?

Years before that Richard.....As the attached Genealogy shows, just on a federal level, the U.S. Government has been fighting this war (officially) since 1915 (almost 100 years!) & we have not put the slightest dent in the drug problem.

I feel that my years with DEA were not wasted however, in that we (DEA) never were really tasked with targeting street level drug sales, & never its use. DEA is tasked with going after large (usually international) criminal organizations that are almost always involved in many different crimes, of which the sale of illicit drugs is just one profit center. The other crimes are typically: Guns, Extortion, Money laundering, White Slavery, Murder for hire, Gambling, Kidnapping, Terrorism & many others. Infiltrating these criminal enterprises through their drug sales is just a relatively easy "gateway" for law enforcement to gain access to them.

Taking the profit out of the sale of illicit drugs (by legalizing this "Victimless" fact of life) is a great way of drying up a major source of revenue from them & releasing major assets to concentrate on their other, real crimes. (I think it's only a matter of time before DEA & FBI are merged anyway, as many of their case loads overlap & they are many times duplicating efforts against the same criminal targets. Talk about saving government tax money..right now they maintain 2 separate training academies at Quantico Marine Base, 2 separate bureaucracies, going after many of the same criminals.....combine them & save millions!)

There's no "Weed" in my garden???

Devil505 wrote:Years before that Richard.....As the attached Genealogy shows, just on a federal level,

Well I'm aware of that, one thing I've read suggested was marijuana was made illegal because at the behest of Dupont(Nylon) and Hearst(paper)....

There's two companies you can now boycott and bitch about,

Richard S. wrote:one thing I've read suggested was marijuana was made illegal because at the behest of Dupont(Nylon) and Hearst(paper)....

Could very well be Richard. I think CocaCola originally contained cocaine as an ingredient too.

(When I was a kid, all the TV cowboy shows talked about Indians drinking "Fire Water" & smoking "Loco Weed" )

The ingredient from the coca plant is still there, the cocaine portion is removed IIRC.

Yep!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola

YES

Wood'nCoal wrote:Yep!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola

I'll bet the stuff in 1900 really refreshed you after a few sips.

Devil505 wrote: I was simply responding to Coalkirk's question & saying yes, we should decriminalize marijuana use, possession, sale, whatever. I went beyond his question to voice my opinion that we should do the same in re all drugs. We can't ever stop them so, accept reality, legalize & tax them. (My years with DEA qualifies me to provide "Expert Testimony" that drug abuse cannot be stopped through law enforcement techniques, no matter how energetically applied!)
I don't follow your arguments Mike, turning this issue into a debate on welfare, liberalism, etc??? To me, those are separate issues in re decriminalization of drugs.
In my mind, It is merely a question of accepting reality. "Immoral people" will do what they want regardless of what Congress says anyway.

My arguments about welfare, liberalism, etc...it is my opinion that as soon as you legalize possession and use and add taxes to them you open the doors to addicts getting more hand outs via social programs. We have it already. People are milking the system for hand outs instead of getting a job and supporting their own addictions. They use government (federal and state) funds to care for themselves while continuing their addictions. Why make it even easier for people to become addicted to these drugs? Why should my tax dollars be spent on them.
I can live with the idea of legal narcotics. I can't live with the fact that social programs are in place to provide free care for people fighting their addiction. Legalize drugs, I'll support it....as long as they force people to provide a urine sample in order to recieve their food stamps and welfare checks.

BugsyR wrote:My arguments about welfare, liberalism, etc...it is my opinion that as soon as you legalize possession and use and add taxes to them you open the doors to addicts getting more hand outs via social programs.

I get what you are saying Mike I just don't think one thing will necessarily lead to the other.

One more thing to IMPORT into the USA and watch our dollars go to the criminally minded governments of S. America. Asia & Middle East gets it all now. Yea, that'll help our economy.
Don't give me, we'll grow it here. The best stuff comes from S. America. Remember? Red, Gold & Tai Stick? Nobody will want the homegrown.