412 replies to this topic

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 8:01 AM, said:

So you want to legalize pot because there are worse things?

No, I want to legalize pot because it's not that bad, especially compared to any number of things that are already legal.What we pay to criminalize it is absurd. We'd be better off criminalizing Twinkies or Rock and Roll music.Criminalization offers no benefit to society whatsoever, but does cost society a goddamn fortune and harms individual people who are good people.Great ****ing policy there.

[hblask]

The cost to society -- in terms of lives, dollars, and standard of living -- of making something illegal should not be higher than just letting people do it. The Insane War on Drugs fails on this most basic test of legal sanity.

[Balloon guy]

AmScray, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 7:09 AM, said:

No, I want to legalize pot because it's not that bad, especially compared to any number of things that are already legal.What we pay to criminalize it is absurd. We'd be better off criminalizing Twinkies or Rock and Roll music.Criminalization offers no benefit to society whatsoever, but does cost society a goddamn fortune and harms individual people who are good people.Great ****ing policy there.

Arguing that alcohol is bad and legal, therefore pot should be legal since it's less bad, is faulty.Unless you want to allow me to argue that alcohol should be illegal because it's much worse the pot and give me equal credit for the strength of the argument.Also saying that keeping pot illegal is not cost effective/too hard is a bad reason to argue for its legality.Just because there is difficulty in maintaining a law is no reason to argue to just quit making it illegal. The whole 'cost to criminalize it' it false also. If/when pot is legal, we will not be firing half the police force and socking away the savings into Obamacare. There will be no closing of prisons, and there will be no days of closing the courts because of a lack of trials to hear. The budgets spent on law enforcement will not be reduced.

[hblask]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 9:28 AM, said:

The whole 'cost to criminalize it' it false also. If/when pot is legal, we will not be firing half the police force and socking away the savings into Obamacare. There will be no closing of prisons, and there will be no days of closing the courts because of a lack of trials to hear. The budgets spent on law enforcement will not be reduced.

Who do you think we'd be throwing in jail, jaywalkers?Also, I was referring to the destructive effects on neighborhoods and law enforcement, too.

[Balloon guy]

hblask, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 7:32 AM, said:

Who do you think we'd be throwing in jail, jaywalkers?

If only...law breaking scum. Get em off the streets..literally!

Quote

Also, I was referring to the destructive effects on neighborhoods and law enforcement, too.

That's a two sided street..with pot smokers jay walking back and forth......

[Balloon guy]

In 2001 there were a total of 63 persons in jail for simple possession at the federal levelAt the state level, only 1.6% were in jail for possession only.This study shows that the inflated numbers of the 'legalize it' group are false. And these numbers in this study were from a while back, when pot was less accepted so it's probably lower now.Caution PDF download.

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 8:28 AM, said:

Arguing that alcohol is bad and legal, therefore pot should be legal since it's less bad, is faulty.Unless you want to allow me to argue that alcohol should be illegal because it's much worse the pot and give me equal credit for the strength of the argument.Also saying that keeping pot illegal is not cost effective/too hard is a bad reason to argue for its legality.Just because there is difficulty in maintaining a law is no reason to argue to just quit making it illegal. The whole 'cost to criminalize it' it false also. If/when pot is legal, we will not be firing half the police force and socking away the savings into Obamacare. There will be no closing of prisons, and there will be no days of closing the courts because of a lack of trials to hear. The budgets spent on law enforcement will not be reduced.

I'm not making the argument that alcohol is bad and legal, therefore pot should be legal since it's less bad.I'm making the argument that pot is not bad all all, period, and that people should be allowed to make the decision for themselves what they put into their own body, in terms of benign, recreational substances. We have effectively two options here. Prohibition or legalization. Once upon a time, we put the ideas of people like you into action and decided that for the benefit of society, we should ban these substances, so we did. Marijuana, alcohol, various narcotics- all banned. We then had a decade or so of prohibition to learn from, and we did. It's an abysmal policy that creates more trouble than whatever 'social ills' its supposed to solve. Ironically enough, it was all in response to an extremely isolated group of moralists, not a bona-fide addiction problem. There was a time when you could buy Heroin over the counter, yet Heroin use was colossally lower then than it is now. Once we came to our senses, we eventually undid these dumb laws. The catch, obviously, was that in the 1930's, there was no significant marijuana use, so there was nobody to lobby for its legalization when booze was made legal.You're promoting the standard prohibition mentality- a demonstrably failed mentality- then shucking and jiving, arguing semantics with some anti moral-relativism position when people point out the absurd hypocrisy and illogic. Like I said. If you're just for banning it all- beer, pot, coffee- OK, you get points for intellectual consistency, but either way, total prohibition or just pot prohibition but legal alcohol, you still look like a total dumbass who doesn't think things through. Your characterization of the cost issue is equally dumb. It's a human resource issue. We are currently wasting an insane amount of human resources on marijuana offenses, from police and support personnel, to judges, juries, attorneys, court reporters, bailiffs, jailers, prisons, all associated services. It's a full fledged 'industrial complex', which itself has some grotesque implications.Whether decriminalizing marijuana actually shrinks government or simply releases the existing government facilities to pursue meaningful crime, either way, the only possible result is a total positive... and if your objective is to shrink government, that would be a good start. Of course, the 'conservative' delusion isn't really about 'small government' when it comes to prisons, military, police forces, etc. You ****ers really do have a huge hang-up about control. One day, science will isolate the part of the brain responsible for this and hopefully, with gene therapy and/or abortion, we can eliminate it.

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 8:44 AM, said:

In 2001 there were a total of 63 persons in jail for simple possession at the federal levelAt the state level, only 1.6% were in jail for possession only.This study shows that the inflated numbers of the 'legalize it' group are false. And these numbers in this study were from a while back, when pot was less accepted so it's probably lower now.Caution PDF download.

I don't have time to read it all, but 63 incarcerated persons who are now in federal prison for simple marijuana possession is ****ing appalling. I don't know what "1.6%" means, but if it means "1.6% of the inmates at the state level", that is a gigantic figure... of human beings... locked away in cages, away from their families and lives... for possessing a harmless plant... because people like you don't understand it, fear it. Yeah. This has got to end. The article seems to attack the false narratives that a lot of decriminalization proponents use- in that regard, it's probably right. People on both sides are apt to employ narratives that don't accurately characterize reality. If anything, it's a good primer for 'the other side', since this is one of those issues where reality is good enough to win the argument, without having to resort to any hysterics or hyperbole.

[CaneBrain]

1.6% of state prisoners has got to be over 50,000 people total....at least....locked up for possession of marijuana. lol.

[hblask]

You have to remember that without prohibition, all those people locked up for the other drug crimes, such as selling drugs (rather than possession) would not be in jail. Approximately 50% of our law enforcement resources go to the Insane War on Drugs. After all the trillions of dollar spent, it has had ZERO affect on usage.When people point to the billions spent on the Department of Eduction with no result, conservatives applaud and demand the DoE go away.When people point to the billions spent on the IWoD with no (positive) result, conservatives hem and haw and peddle irrelevant statistics.Billions of dollars for NO effect on usage = Stupid.Billions of dollars for no effect on usage and loss of respect for law enforcement, invasion of privacy, turning neighborhoods into war zones = Insanity.This is going to be an issue in this upcoming presidential election, because Gary Johnson is going to be pushing it hard and the Republicans are determined to run someone that no sane person could vote for.

[Balloon guy]

So you are for stopping all welfare since the insane war on poverty started under LBJ has had no effect on poverty rates?

[Balloon guy]

CaneBrain, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 8:43 AM, said:

1.6% of state prisoners has got to be over 50,000 people total....at least....locked up for possession of marijuana. lol.

State's don't run prisons, those are federal, state's run jails, or minimum security club housings.And most states have clear requirements for possession to rise to incarceration level.A guy with a joint doesn't. A guy with less than an ounce caught next to a school does.Obfuscation is your best strength in the 'insane' war on drugs. So continue as begun though.

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 12:03 PM, said:

State's don't run prisons, those are federal, state's run jails, or minimum security club housings.

What. The. ****?The depth of your lack of understanding just blew my mind.

[hblask]

Balloon guy, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 1:00 PM, said:

So you are for stopping all welfare since the insane war on poverty started under LBJ has had no effect on poverty rates?

I am all for stopping all *federal* welfare programs, as these have caused far more harm than good, including the interruption of the decline in poverty rates. I think local poverty programs can be effective, and are useful and viable.

[hblask]

Nobody can believe any of these sentences help society in any way.

[AmScray]

hblask, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 12:09 PM, said:

Nobody can believe any of these sentences help society in any way.

.. because the title suggests what it is, and it's just too depressing.

[hblask]

AmScray, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 2:21 PM, said:

.. because the title suggests what it is, and it's just too depressing.

Don't blame you for much of, just skip to the part with the list of ridiculous sentences.

[AmScray]

That's whats too depressing to read. I've seen it with my own eyes, otherwise good people's lives ruined because of the 'war on drugs' and the absurd sentencing schemes for possessing some drug. You can get a lesser sentence for possession of an explosive device than they regularly hand out for having cocaine. I always was a 'good American' in that I blew off the rest of the worlds criticism of the United States as typical losers hating on the winner- and in a lot of cases, that's totally true- but man, a lot of that criticism is painfully valid. Our court/justice/prison/incarceration/police system is the laughingstock of the world for damn good reason.We've totally failed there but the problem is, systems never go back. It can only get worse, as we've seen over the past couple decades.The tragedy is, we're way too soft as a people to revolt, so it's impossible to change, as that's the only way a rotten system can be changed.

[Balloon guy]

AmScray, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 11:09 AM, said:

What. The. ****?The depth of your lack of understanding just blew my mind.

Yea, I failed there.In my defense I was trying to set up a joke that probably wasn't going to work for Cane about class warfare, but my wife was yelling at me to get off the computer and go get the backyard ready fro my granddaughter's 2nd birthday party before I left to set up a lighting job for an event Rick Santorum was going to be at.So I rushed it and screwed it all up and will just take my lumps for failing miserably.

[Balloon guy]

hblask, on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, 12:09 PM, said:

Nobody can believe any of these sentences help society in any way.

Just read the first one.More of an example of a guy suffering because of mandatory sentencing rules.He also refused a plea for 15 years and instead got 55 years.The dude had a gun and sold enough pot to pay cash for a Lexus, let's not pretend he was some guy smoking a joint.And I can probably find 5,000 examples of leniency because of it being pot for every one example of overboard sentencing.