General Discussion Thread of DOOM

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Not to mention how absolutely wasteful the war on drugs is.

Like, imagine if instead of the government having to waste funds on special police agencies to deal with dealers and smugglers, they could put all that money in to hospitals or schools.

But nope, it's apparently far more important to stop people from making informed decisions of what substances to put in there body.
 
It does show the figures of increase in organized crime around the criminalization of alcohol. I have a feeling that violent gangster activity has a bigger cost than drunkards needing treatment or causing damage. Unless you also think just shoving people in need of healthcare into a jail cell is a good solution to anything.
 
MutantScalper said:
Very much so if it leads to good results.
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It doesn't.
See the so called 'war on drugs'.



You want to really solve the problem, adress the source of the issue, not the symptoms, see here:



When you put drug addicts in to jail as 'criminals', it often has something to do with the idea of punishment and for some revenge, for what ever fucked up reason, but that seems to be a huge motivation for many people when they think about criminals.

The thing is this, let us take a look at nations with very harsh prison and penalty systems and then ask our selfs, ist there maybe a better way to do it? And there is, like Norway for example. In Norway a person who left prison is 3 times less likely to get convicted again compared to the US. Why?

In large part this has to do with the idea behind the prison system in Norway, which is based solely on the idea of rehabilitation instead of punishment. Giving a murder only 21 years and the idea to rehabilitate them, might be a bit to much for the typical american, who wants to see them suffer.


But at least when we're talking about drug abusers, then punishment makes absolutely no sense. Why is that? Well, that is because drug addicts ARE already punished ... by their addiction. People don't take drugs cause they are fun, people get addicted to something if their life sucks, that is usually the reason for alcoholism and almost any druge abbuse you can imagine. Countless of studies show that, and we're not talking here about people that throw a pill in to their drink at a party, no we're talking about people that are really at the bottom in their life. If you really want to change something, then you have to look at the individuals and their reasons for taking drugs, you have to improve their lifes, to give them a chance to get stability.

I wish people would be at least honest, they are not looking for improving the situation, they just want to punish someone for taking drugs, for being 'weak'.
 
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Walpknut said:
It does show the figures of increase in organized crime around the criminalization of alcohol. I have a feeling that violent gangster activity has a bigger cost than drunkards needing treatment or causing damage. Unless you also think just shoving people in need of healthcare into a jail cell is a good solution to anything.
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You have a feeling? Well feelings are good, people should have feelings. I suggest you visit, say, a liver replacement patient who is an alcoholic and then multiply his case by a few million per year and you'll start to approach the true cost of alcohol. A nation that provides it's citizens with easy access to addictive poisons like alcohol is not a very good nation. Look at Russia and how their cheap vodka is plummeting the average lifespan of male citizens. Now I hate gangsters but I doubt gangsters could murder that many folks.

Crni_Vuk,

I'm not putting addicts in prison. However when a nation puts addictive poisons on store shelves the average lifespan starts to go down.
 
I suggest you visit a frontier town in Mexico that has been taken over by cartels. Because you are really coming off as just extremely ignorant.

Also, your solution to that Alcoholic in need of a liver transplant is to label him a criminal and thro0w him in jail? Because that's the only thing criminalization would change. Consumption rates only dropped initialy during prohibition era and then they soared back to what they were before.
 
MutantScalper said:
I'm not putting addicts in prison. However when a nation puts addictive poisons on store shelves the average lifespan starts to go down.
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No one said anything like that.

Besides, alcohol, tobacco, coffeeine, suggar and many other potentially addictive poisons sit happily on store shelves for every adult to buy, and the average lifespan isn't affected in such a way that you have citizens runing around like addicted zombies killing everyone or themselfs.

Did you even watch the videos? Because it doesn't seem like you did, particularly as you constantly make the same argument, just repeating how 'potentially' dangerous those substances are. I suggest you watch the second one at least so you have a somewhat informed opinion.

But I give you a small summarize, the issue isn't the drugs or the availability, but the reasons why people take them.
 
Your ideal Nanny state society would be a society without these items then: Alcohol, Tabacco, Sugar, Salt, most spices, Meat of any kind, coffee, weed, ginko biloba, corn syrup, cough syroup, morphine, painkillers, videogames, headphones, cellphones, etc.
 
Walpknut,

you're the one wanting give little kids free heroin, not me.

Who knows, maybe I'll visit Mexico one of these days. I'll give you my report afterwards.
 
MutantScalper said:
Walpknut,

you're the one wanting give little kids free heroin, not me.

Who knows, maybe I'll visit Mexico one of these days. I'll give you my report afterwards.
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Nobody is handing drugs to anybody, this is the myth I refered to earlier.

Think about this: Does anybody exist - in the world - who thinks "I wish I could smoke cannabis, I wish it so badly, but alas - it is forbidden by the law, so I can't! I just can't!"
Nobody.

You can see this by the rate of people who smoke cannabis - including "non-stoner-types" such as school teachers, gvt officials, and so on. Hell - little kids can smoke cannabis, contrary to legality.
People get their hands on illegal drugs _anyway_

Making it legal will not make MORE people get it. Legal does not mean "free for all", alcohol is legal, but is strictly controlled, 18 or 21 to purchase. Tobacco is legal, 18 to purchase.
Legalized narcotics would be _even more_ controlled, and ideally only available in pharmacies

Street dealers would dwindle, because the bulk of their customer base *would vanish* away to the pharmacies!

This isn't about "free for all", it's about placing drug use under government control. It is not ideal, but the situation as it is now is _even less_ ideal, because _nobody is able to control it_

Criminalization *has no effect*
 
I can even go deeper, and explain it like this:

Criminalization creates "risk addition" because of the illegality, right? A smuggler requires a high payment to risk his life and freedom to smuggle drugs - high salary = high price in order to cover salary costs, this is how drug prices increase they way they do.

Criminality creates the high cost.

This cost equals cash. Nobody pays for drugs with digital money, they pay in cash.

This cash goes through hundreds if not thousands of white-washing businesses (the kind you've seen in Breaking Bad)

However, unlike Walter White real mafiosos do not keep the end result as piles of cash, it's just too much money, we're talking hundreds of billions. These billions, once cleaned, will go into bank stockpiles and form part of the loans that go out of a bank, and come back as paid interest.

There is a logical reason why world governments insist on keeping drugs illegal - and incredibly costly. It's not for no good reason. It's also not for the safety or health of the population, for all the reasons discussed in this thread. It's for the same reason as we keep manufacturing wars, that blow cities up - that require billions in loans to rebuild cities. It grows bank stockpiles.
 
Jogre said:
Not to mention how absolutely wasteful the war on drugs is.

Like, imagine if instead of the government having to waste funds on special police agencies to deal with dealers and smugglers, they could put all that money in to hospitals or schools.

But nope, it's apparently far more important to stop people from making informed decisions of what substances to put in there body.
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I've always felt the argument revolved around the two dealers willing to start a turf war over who has the privilege of selling in the area. And then there's the repercussions of people that over-indulge, resort to petty crime, robbery, etc, just to get the next fix.

Don't really give a shit about weed. Smack and crystal? No thanks.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
I've always felt the argument revolved around the two dealers willing to start a turf war over who has the privilege of selling in the area. And then there's the repercussions of people that over-indulge, resort to petty crime, robbery, etc, just to get the next fix.

Don't really give a shit about weed. Smack and crystal? No thanks.
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If there were legal ways to settle disputes, drug dealers wouldn't have any reason to start turf wars. It's only because it's an industry run by criminals that they resort to violence to begin with.

As for addicts causing trouble. Sure, if a guy is mugging or harming others for drug money, that's a problem, but those are crimes in themselves. Purely possessing drugs isn't the same thing as mugging someone.
 
Jogre said:
If there were legal ways to settle disputes, drug dealers wouldn't have any reason to start turf wars. It's only because it's an industry run by criminals that they resort to violence to begin with.

As for addicts causing trouble. Sure, if a guy is mugging or harming others for drug money, that's a problem, but those are crimes in themselves. Purely possessing drugs isn't the same thing as mugging someone.
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My point is cause and effect. As a society we've learned to deal with retards that can't handle their alcohol and get behind the wheel - the question is should we be adding to an already prevalent issue.
 
The cause for the being turf wars between dealers isthe criminalization. Remove it and drugs become like any other controlled substance. You don't se Liquor stores going on turf wars nowadays.
 
Walpknut said:
The cause for the being turf wars between dealers isthe criminalization. Remove it and drugs become like any other controlled substance. You don't se Liquor stores going on turf wars nowadays.
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I certainly don't want another Hunter's Point or Tenderloin district in SF. Sure, you've eliminated the cartels out of the equation, now you have to deal with the repercussion vagrancy, and people turning the neighborhood into a shithole that nobody wants to walk around in.

It's not my business what somebody does with his/her body - it is my business when your decisions start to impact the areas that I'm in.
 
I don't see how this is so difficult to understand, this isn't something like... "they shoot each others because they like shooting each others because they enjoy shooting each others - "

These things *have a cause*

Of course, its easyer and more comfortable to just brush causes aside, who gives a shit, let's just bomb them to fuck - but then don't argue about what's best for people, because waging war simultaneously with showing concern is not really compatible.

Decriminalization is the way to go IF you truly show concern, because decriminalization will have the end result of less death, less misery, less imprisonment - OVERALL.
 
Eh, it's this strange idea that many people have that if a punishment doesn't work, then probably beacuse it wasn't harsh enough ... I mean yeah, if something doesn't work, then probably more of it will do the trick. Sounds reasonable.

BigGuyCIA said:
I certainly don't want another Hunter's Point or Tenderloin district in SF. Sure, you've eliminated the cartels out of the equation, now you have to deal with the repercussion vagrancy, and people turning the neighborhood into a shithole that nobody wants to walk around in.

It's not my business what somebody does with his/her body - it is my business when your decisions start to impact the areas that I'm in.
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And ask your self why, beacuse people have miserable lifes, without any perspective of improvement. Can you blame a hobbo who's sick and rejected by society that he turns to anything he can get his hands, which makes him forget everything if only for a short time,?

Give people a realistic reason to improve their live, and most will.
 
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