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So, what your saying is when the kid does become delinquent, those responsible for the deliquency can and should be criminally charged,right?

Quite the reverse. After working with addicts, and being married to a LEO with 23 years on the job I have become firmly convinced that the war on drugs has been an abject failure.

That the public at large has been seriously misinformed about the effectiveness on the war on drugs has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is true or not. Man people once thought the world war flat. Did that make it so?

The verbal gymnastics you display are quite amusing and clearly demonstrate you have chosen your profession well. Take your comments about drugs and replace them with something like terrorism, and you are arguing the from the same position you ridicule. Or apply your logic to guns. And popularity has nothing to do with 'right'. Isn't that what you argue vis-a-vis the war.

Finally, you also are operating under the mistaken idea that the only thing I am trying to do is get elected. You may adopt your moral, ethical and legal positional based on what is popular, or will gain you position, but I happen to believe that principles should not be sacrificed in the name of popularity. Better to lose and stand on principle than blow with the wind, even if that means being unpopular or not getting elected.

Of course as a lawyer, having principles is probably detrimental to your career.

See what I mean?--the only folks fit enough are the chosen few?--like those with law degrees?



Casey

So the government should really take over the care and raising of our children. That is what you are advocating, yes?

Sure you aren't a democrat deep down.

"It's for the children" and "Government knows best". These seem to be your mantras.

Alpinecreek, we talk a lot about the neo-cons and their links to liberals, and this is a classic example. 'Republicans' like Isaac are basically arguing that they can run your life better than the Dems.

I don't want or need anyone to run my life, even if they think they 'know what's best for us' and are doing it 'for the children'.

If you can establish proximate causation, yes. That is to say, 1) were it not for the sale of drugs to the minor, he would not have become a delinquent, and 2) the chain of causation is unbroken by an intervening/superceding cause.

Tod...Let me get this straight before I come right out and accept the fact you're just a loopy guy. Is it your position that the criminaliztion by and through the selling of drugs and alcohol to minors is a government invention only implemented because the government wants to control the raising of kids over a parent's rights to decide what's best for their children?

As to your other non-sensical post, sorry if I don't consider your life experiences or your wife's job as authoritative at all.

Tell your campaign boys you ain't in it to win and it's your principles that are paramount.Unless they already know you aren't in it to win or can't, I'd make sure you have at least a couple grand in contributions before you do so.

Lastly, a transparent politician denouncing the principles of attorneys has some great punch to it Tod.... what a knock-out blow! LMAO!

I think Tod would make a good politician! You on the other hand, Bob, should of been a nanny!

If your comment relates to my position of drug and alcohol laws pertaining to the safety of children, I'll accept that. I can assure you it would be far better, for some here, than my being a juvenile and domestic relations judge presiding over cases where children's parents take a position as manifested in some of the posts in this thread.

Well I can see where your coming from--More laws = More business for lawyers too.

More laws and the fact I'm an attorney has nothing to do with my views as to laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol and drugs to minors. If I were a stone mason, my view would be the same.Mostly, my views stem from being a father and from 21 years of seeing just exactly what devastation can be thrust upon families who suffer the fallout.Victimless, my azz.And to present a position that it is merely a non-criminal financial transaction demonstrates a ignorance I am incapable of grasping. I lament the fact,both as a dad and a lawyer, it often takes tragedies for some folks to get it.

Do you, particularly, have a problem with those laws, Jacques?

I have a problem with them in the fact that each and every law is an infringement on our rights and privacy. I know you weren't using those rights anyway, but I'm in favor of keeping mine. I have a 24 year old daughter as well, and am not the least bit worried about her becoming a druggie. You see, I think that's a parents job to teach them better, and the farther the government is kept from interfering in her or my grand children's lives the better off they will be for it. I can see right where this war on drugs is taking us--more wiretaps, more unwarranted searches, seizure of private properties. It's sort of like the "War on Terrorism," and the "Patriot Act". I can't see anything more patriotic than giving up essential liberties for the safety of the children, and all the while, we're really changing the country into a place that won't be fit to live in when all the rules are passed. It's really about power--the kind the Founding Fathers didn't want the government to possess. After all, it's the argument they'll be using when they come for your guns too--"It's for the children" ("But I had guns as a child," I say, "That proves you were neglected and put at risk by your parents", they'll say). I guess in short, it must be the Darwinist in me, maybe even a little of the Social Darwinist, that believes that the fit will take care of themselves and those not so, will perish--so be it. In the meantime, I don't see how it can possibly be in my best interests to give up rights, and taxes, to make sure that some ignorant Springer candidate, can have a trailer, a place in jail, or even a big old government funded mental institution, while reproducing at my expense.

I like to think of myself as an Ayn Rand type of objectivist and I have seen for years where the looters and the new rules are leading us. I have a problem with about 95% of all laws, those particular ones are included. I know it may be hard for you to imagine, Bob, but I believe that I can take better care of myself and my family than a bunch of Liberals and social conservatives ever could.

From out here near Galt's Gulch, Brad.

Educating your children about drugs is far more effective than passing more laws which are really aimed at controlling the behavior of adults. Keep in mind the origin of this argument was about adults, and the issue of children was inserted to appeal to the emotional side. It's exactly the same argument used by the anti-gun folks.

If drug laws really work in reducing drug use, why do countries like Holland, with extremely liberal drug laws, actually have much lower rates of drug use?

And FYI, I am in this race to win, but just not to win at any cost. If you cast aside your principles when they become inconvenient, then you really don't have any principles at all. My donors know exactly where I stand on all of the issues. You should have learned by now from posts right here that I don't say what I think what will garner approval, but rather what I think I right. I don;t argue that you necessarily have to agree. Ultimately the voters will decide who they want, and that right an proper.

The problem with people who claim to believe in freedom is that they don't understand that true freedom includes the freedom to make bad choices. The only way you can keep people from making bad choices is to take away any choices at all and dictate behavior. And of course who decides what are 'good' and 'bad' choices?

I completely understand your position, because as a lawyer it is all about wining, and nothing to do about truth or justice or principle. The only rule is to win. You don't get clients if you don't. How many people have you defended who you knew to be guilty? How many have you helped avoid paying for their crimes? If you were appointed to defend a drug dealer who was selling to children, would you not work as hard to get him off because of your principles?

Finally, I think we all recognize that drugs have a devastating effect on peoples lives. But can you show any evidence that the increased incarceration rates or the war on drugs has actually made a difference, other than filling up our prisons?

If you look at the statistics, drug use has actually increased in the US since the 'war on drug' began in the 1970s. The purity and availability of drugs has gone up. More people are using and we have vast and well funded criminal enterprises in the US funded with drug money.

So basically, after 30 years, vast sums of money and thousand of people put into prison, we are actually worse off that before.

So how are the current drug laws working.

By contrast, areas with active and aggressive drug education campaign has seen a decline in drug use, particularly in the case of minors.

Education may not be as viscerally satisfying as throwing people into jails. But it certainly seems more effective.

Finally, with regard to being a parent, many of us are too. Thinking in terms of your own children, which do you consider a better deterrent: setting a good example and educating them, or leaving it to the government and fear of the law and going to jail?

"If you cast aside your principles when they become inconvenient, then you really don't have any principles at all."

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Amen, Tod!!!!

I'm not a big fan of the war on drugs, either, but to propose no laws to prosecute those who would sell to a minor is ridiculous.

Tod's fantasy of education as a cure-all has never worked and never will. The best of the educated from the best of parents will play, pure and simple. Always have.

Try the education approach for those that it will help, reserve harsh punishment for those who would sell to our children - regardless of whether some calamity occurs. The cat is out of the bag, cow out of the barn, etc... To qualify that as any sort of harmless event is preposterous.

Save the "possession" punishment for the extremely harmful (strongly addictive) drugs such as meth, not something relatively harmless like pot.

Someone mentioned above that there is no evidence that meth is more addicting than anything else. BS, even the Narcanon web site talks about its' ability to addict in very short order.

Actually Joe, I don't have any problem with laws regarding minors. As I stated a while ago, we have always recognized that minors are a special case under the law. The argument has really been about the drug war in general, which certain people turned into 'we must do this to protect children' to make their case.

I'd have no problem whatsoever with laws that punish those who take advantage of children. But what was argued is that if we liberalized (Isaac will probably be all over that word) the laws as they apply to adults, there wouldn't be a sufficient market among minors alone to be profitable for dealers.

And as noted, there is exactly zero evidence that the war on drugs has done anything to reduce the use of drugs by anyone, including minors. Indeed, drug use in the US has actually increased in the last 25 years.

By contrast, countries with fairly relaxed drugs laws and public education about drugs, have much lower rates of drugs us among groups of all ages.

This is not opinion, this is fact. Regardless of how much we wish it to be true, the war on drugs has accomplished nothing except to fill up our prisons.

Time to try a different approach.

I don't think anyone said it was "harmless" to sell drugs to kids. It's not harmless to persuade a kid to pop wheelies on his bicycle without a helmet either, yet that's not a crime, and shouldn't be, unless foreseeable harm resulted and the kid was known by the persuader to be quite low functioning and impressionable, and actual harm resulted. We should, in any case, exert a great deal of social pressure against those who would induce a child to pop wheelies with their bikes absent a helmet, and we should do likewise (injury or no) with regard to those who'd sell them cigarettes, alcohol or other drugs, i.e., they should be made pariahs in their communities. But criminalize only actions which foreseeably cause actual harm to an actual victim. That's our legal tradition in this nation. The other nonsense (punishing the possession, sale, or purchase of something because it makes future real criminality a possibility) is a recent and alien influence, not to mention destructive of liberty.

But Isaac's objection about children distracts us from a crucial point, which is that there would be no market at all for the industry which supplies and pushes these drugs to kids if drugs were, generally speaking, legal to possess, use, sell or buy. Even if only legalized for adults, the industry which supplies and pushes to kids would disappear.

Brad, so that I don't misunderstand your intemded position; is it your belief that the only deterrent to a legal adult selling alcohol or drugs to a minor or a parent permitting the use of alcohol and drugs to their minor children would be the parent's of the minor themselves.

Hawkeye, you're talking in circles. You claim that no one said selling drugs to children is harmless and then you say to criminalize only those actions which foreseeably cause actual harm to an actual victim.

That foresseable harm would be the possibility of addiction, the certainty of impaired judgment, and all that can follow that.

Social pressure deterring a drug dealer? That's funny!

The argument has really been about the drug war in general,
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No it hasn't. The discussion had specifically centered around the very issue Joe addressed.

And Hawk, you most certainly implied it was harmless to sell drugs to kids. How else could you argue that it was merely a non-criminal financial transaction and there shouldn't be laws prohibiting it?

The waffling is amusing to witness, to say the least!