Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Does legalization of Marijuana...

You can stop people from using the stuff; if they abuse it outside, without being able to eat, sleep and live in the comfort of what they can't provide, they will die and quit using it.

Kicking the can down the road whether its spending or keeping addicts alive never fixes anything, has never been "legal" from a Constitutional perspective and will never override the cold reality of natural order/nature.

Addicts, be they bureaucratic spenders or pot heads, always will justify their habits, find ways to make the responsible pay for irresponsibility and feed off of that notion until nothing is left. (Nothing is left BTW).

Its illegal and a failure because we fund it.
If we legalize it, we will still fund it and say, from a statutory level, "what would you like to do now"?

Depravity knows no bounds and until the pocketbook isn't run by the depraved, there will be no "freedom", in any natural sense.

The 'logic' being proposed is rather breathtaking in it's vacuousness; what we're doing isn't working, so let's do nothing (basically).

I wonder if a farmer would use that method effectively when dealing with weeds, pests?

I wonder if a General would make such a call in battle?

What would happen to a person lost in the wilds or out at sea if they simply did nothing?

It seems pretty evident that while the law might be changed, related laws won't go away, regulations won't be diminished, resources won't be saved to be used for better purposes.

So perhaps it isn't the war on drugs that is the problem here.

Keeping marijuana illegal is accomplishing NOTHING.

Although it does seem to make some people 'feel good' to keep it illegal.

So what are we to do...?
It seems like the choices are either to continue to WASTE money on a dismal failure of a policy...or stop it, and spend the $$ that was saved on something else that is also a huge and abject WASTE.
If those are the choices then why do anything at all...? Not just about the failed war on drugs but about any government expenditures/waste at all...? Why even discuss fiscal responsibility when it comes to government...?

You got that right!

I think eliminating the coddling of depraved behavior is miles better than doing nothing...

Spraying for weeds and rewarding the weeds we didn't get with some fresh manure obviously doesn't work....

More accurately, we just won't be wasting any more taxpayers $$ on keeping marijuana illegal...although the government will most definitely find something else to waste the $$ on.

Hawk I, "Eliminating the coddling of bad behavior" would eliminate most of the factors {people} that have lead to the degeneration of our society. It is a simple and elegant solution.

mike r

Where did all that money go? Out the window? What was all this Money spent on?

Lets see, I can think of a very things.

LEO salaries,
DA Salaries,
Judges Salaries,
Court reporters Salaries,
Administrative Salaries,
Equipment and the jobs created to manufacture, sell and maintain this equipment.
Education programs (Salaries)
Rehab programs (Salaries)
Office supplies and the jobs created to manufacture and sell these supplies.
Training for LEO (salaries)

Tell me again how this "Trillion" dollars was wasted?

If Colorado doing so well with legalized pot, when are they going to do the right thing and legalize the remaining "controlled" substances?

Should "save" much more....

George

The problem is people wanting to use the crap in the first place. Not just marijuana, but any drugs/s illicitly.
The 'war on drugs' certainly hasn't made that situation any better...at all...especially for it's cost of implementation. The 'war on drugs' is like doing nothing, and spending over a trillion dollars to 'do nothing'.
I think you hit the nail on the head with "I think eliminating the coddling of depraved behavior is miles better than doing nothing.

All I know is if'n I get to Colorado, I plan on making exact change everywhere - or using a card.

Hate to have all that dope stank on my cash and get pegged by a K-9 on my way home.

lol

It's supposed to be a 'war on drugs'...not an industry in and of itself for the benefit of all of the entities you just listed.

It's just another tine in a many pronged fork. I look at it the same is the gay marriage lobby.

A subset of society that wants to have their deviant behavior accepted by society at large. No more, no less.

Oh, BTW, George Soros is the major backer of the marijuana lobby world wide.

All government spending is an industry and those listed are not "Entities" they are American Citizens doing a Job, a job they feel needs doing.

"Entities", give me a freeken brake.

The same argument could be made for crank, crack & heroine...
I'd hazard a guess that I could leave the house right now & within the hour find just about any drug I was looking for.
I'm not so sure that making it available through pharmacies wouldn't be such a bad idea...

lol

So, Steve, the failed 'war on drugs' is 'justified' because it gives people jobs...?

The failed 'war on drugs' is justified because it's implementation 'serves' those who are implementing it...and accomplishes nothing else...?

lol

You'd make a great government bureaucrat Steve...!

IMHO the "failed war on drugs" has created more problems than it has solved.

That is all money given to the government to manage and spend. It was taxed from productive citizens who could have otherwise spent it on consumer goods - providing jobs to non-government workers, invested it or done any number of things with it.

If taking money from taxpayers and giving it to the government to spend is a good idea then it is surely a better idea to take ALL of the taxpayers' money, 100% of it, and give it to the government to fund the programs they think should be funded.

Plus, and this is the part I really like - the money earned from the sale of illegal drugs goes into the hands of the most unscrupulous and violent segment of our society. Just like prohibition made millionaires of the most vicious criminals in society, illegal drug sales are pouring billions of dollars into the hands of the same kind of people.

I may have missed it but I can't really recall the last time I heard of a shootout between the goons of Coors and Anheuser Busch, or New Belgium Brewing leaving the heads of Sierra Nevada Brewery employees lying on public squares. Of course those driveby shootings between R. J. Reynolds and Ligget and Myers, leaving scores of innocent bystanders dead in their wake, are a national tragedy.



Drugs are bad. Yeah, most people get that. And no matter how many hypocrites love to say "my drug is okay because I'm a good guy and responsible guy - but other people's drugs are bad because they're all scum sucking losers" - drugs are drugs are drugs and a drug user is a drug user and a drug abuser is a drug abuser.

Drugs and drug abuse have been with mankind since some Neanderthal learned to eat fermented berries. You'll never, ever, ever, stop some people from taking some substance to change their mood or their brain chemistry, even under penalty of death.

But trying to solve the problem of drug abuse - nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, oxycontin or anything else - with the hammer of law enforcement did NOT work for alcohol and it is NOT working for any other drug.

Legalizing anything will obviously create more "regulations", if driving was illegal we wouldn't need the DMV and we'd save millions on stop signs. But when was the last time anyone saw a SWAT raid on the local 7-11 to check that their beer license was up to date? I know those MRAP's in front of every Piggly Wiggly and those dynamic entries on aisle 6 are a constant annoyance to me.



All I am saying is what we have is not working. After billions of taxpayer dollars spent, after countless man-years in prisons aka crime college, drugs are still plentiful, apparently the quality and potency of some of them are getting stronger and stronger and apparently anyone can get them. This particular war is lost; but instead of giving up, let's try to find another strategy besides criminal penalties and an escalating arms race between police and drug dealers.

Or, if what we have is working like a charm then I'll still raise my anti-hypocrisy cry in the wilderness that if what we have for one drug is good then it is good for ALL drugs.

Steve, you must have kept all the Koolaid for yourself. All the expense, the lives of everyone in those useless jobs you listed, was simply wasted in order to also ruin the lives of thousands of other citizens. Consider all the lives it took just to earn that wasted trillion$. The War on MJ is all about supporting a monstrous legal, penal, and enforcement system we don't need to waste $ on.

The citizenry are being sucked dry by those of you who work those very jobs, and by those who continue to support MJ prohibition. Ending this prohibition must be done soon. And we must reduce .gov by the amount we now spend on this foolishness.

Edit to add--Jim, good post.

Maybe so, but no money will be saved as these jobs will not be eliminated if pot is legalized. To say legalizing marijuana will reduce spending and save money is a Fallacy. To say that CO "Saved" money by Legalizing pot is not only a fallacy it is a Lie.