412 replies to this topic

[hblask]

strategy, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 8:22 AM, said:

it's a libertarian idea* that's showing results in the real world. that's a pretty huge win for libertarians regardless of the fact that it isn't a market-based solution, that it requires some degree of central planning, etc. h is just being greedy here.

Yeah, pretty much all of that.

[vbnautilus]

hblask, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 8:12 AM, said:

The government *caused* the problems; their solution was to stop causing problems. It's good news that they stopped making society terrible, but that's hardly evidence of how wise and useful they are.If I break your leg and then give you a crutch, does it prove what a good person I am? Especially since I stopped breaking your leg -- a double win, right?

The government did not cause drug addiction.

[InternetExplorer]

he's referring to prohibition as a response to addiction. not sure if it's a productive train of thought, but can we actually blame republicans here? did reagan simply give a name to what was already common practice? the history of drug laws and such, it's so fucking muddled with people pushing an agenda.

[vbnautilus]

InternetExplorer, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 8:41 AM, said:

he's referring to prohibition as a response to addiction.

Which makes his analogy (I break your leg and then get credit for fixing it) absolutely horrible. Prohibition is an inappropriate response to addiction, but it does not cause it. If it did, treatment would eventually not be necessary once prohibition was removed. The point here is that treatment is a much better response to the problem of addiction than prohibition.The comment which triggered this discussion is one where he praised the success of the treatment program because he thought it was an example of free markets outperforming government.

hblask, on Sunday, February 12th, 2012, 6:51 PM, said:

The real world experiment, 10 years later

Quote

Many of these innovative treatment procedures would not have emerged if addicts had continued to be arrested and locked up rather than treated by medical experts and psychologists.

Free markets work better than central planning for all types of ideas.

In other words, to Henry these innovations were great if they were done by private organizations, but if they were accomplished by a government agency then they no longer deserve credit; they are instead just treating the broken legs that they caused. Ideology.

[Balloon guy]

Funny thing to me is that the Portugal's drug 'fix' was because their large number of heroin addicts was causing extremely dangerous numbers of Aids carriers.So the reasons they tried to fix the drug problem is because the drug problem was resulting in a sick society.In other words, left to itself, drug users destroy societies.

[AmScray]

InternetExplorer, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 8:41 AM, said:

did reagan simply give a name to what was already common practice?

Absolutely not. "War On Drugs" was a very finite and unique policy. Care to guess at what point on that graph we 'declared war on drugs'?People really don't understand how laws, law enforcement offices and law enforcement agents work. Law enforcement agents will run right up to the edge of what they can get away with and then tiptoe on it, always, 100% of the time. This is universal to law enforcement in all societies and cultures, regardless of economic status. The only difference is how regularly they cross the line- standard in the 3rd world, less standard in the developed world. When you pin a badge on a man and tell him its his job to go after other men who are engaging in certain behaviors, that man will do so with a gusto regardless of whether or not the 'law' in question is ethical. Power over other humans is a neurochemical reward behavior, which is precisely what attracts a 'certain type' of person to law enforcement professions. You can be sure that when you tell cops they can now pull over redheads- and you tell the courts that they can now incarcerate redheads- as sure as the sun rises, cops will start pulling over redheads and courts (including juries of their peers- a useless mechanism in a mindless society) will start throwing them in jail. When Reagan instituted war on drugs as a hyper-aggressive policy, he basically gave carte blanche for hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers to attack tens of millions ofpeople. In time, drug arrests became tied to law enforcement funding, drug arrests are enormously tied to prison industry and a decade or two later, there are 120 pages of lawyers in every phone book and we have more people locked up than any other country on earth. Reagan was a privileged ideologue from another era, who really didn't understand contemporary social policy. Guys like that are great at the macro like dealing with Russia, terrible at dealing with the Southside of Chicago.

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 9:49 AM, said:

In other words, left to itself, drug users destroy societies.

Given that drugs have been around since man first chewed on a plant and seeing as at no point in the entirety of human history have drugs ever ruined a society, I think we can safely categorize that statement as incorrect.

[hblask]

Balloon guy, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 10:49 AM, said:

Funny thing to me is that the Portugal's drug 'fix' was because their large number of heroin addicts was causing extremely dangerous numbers of Aids carriers.So the reasons they tried to fix the drug problem is because the drug problem was resulting in a sick society.In other words, left to itself, drug users destroy societies.

Please re-read your post and see if you can pick out the unintended irony.

[vbnautilus]

Balloon guy, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 9:49 AM, said:

In other words,

This is balloonguyese for "here comes some BS!"

[Balloon guy]

AmScray, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 10:47 AM, said:

Given that drugs have been around since man first chewed on a plant and seeing as at no point in the entirety of human history have drugs ever ruined a society, I think we can safely categorize that statement as incorrect.

Somalia...Khat

[AmScray]

Balloon guy, on Monday, February 13th, 2012, 1:15 PM, said:

Somalia...Khat

LOL.

[AmScray]

Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should be Legal

Quote

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

For a little perspective, on just how far back in the dust BG is on this issue. He's taking a position more reactionary than a man who says "beverage alcohol".

[brvheart]

Haha