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March 20th, 2007, 12:07 PM #1
The legalization of illicit drug debate.
I moved this from the gun control thread...lets end the hijack and start it here...this issue is huge, and I think discussing it is beneficial.
I don't think you guys get it. YOU"RE NEVER GOING TO CAPTURE THE MARKET FROM THE DRUG LORDS!!
Drug profits are astonomical...yes...So let's harness the power of extreme and uncontrollable addiction for profit. You may say that its the same with alcohol or tobacco...I say it's close, but it's different. One beer, one cigarette, it isn't going to kill you...it isn't going to get you hooked, and you body recovers from these substances. But one ecstacy pill kill non-regenerative brain cells, on needle of heroine can kill you.
Of course there is a violent drug market...The violence would double, triple, whateverwordmeans100timestheamount what it is now. In the past, South American drug lords have controlled entire countries with their reign of violence and payoffs. The can and will fight back.
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March 20th, 2007, 12:12 PM #2Grand Member
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Re: The legalization of illicite drug debate.
This is flatly false. When the profit vanishes from that market, the criminals leave the enterprise. This has been observed with Prohibition.
It costs MUCH more money to import and distribute something illegally than legally. The amount of money made on, say, aspirin, would not support a parallel illegal market. Who would buy aspirin from a drug dealer when it's cheap and safe to buy at the 7-11?
Criminals are not attracted to no-profit enterprises. When drugs are legal, there is no illegal "market" anymore.
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March 20th, 2007, 12:14 PM #3Grand Member
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Re: The legalization of illicite drug debate.
Ask yourself why sometime.
One beer, one cigarette, it isn't going to kill you...it isn't going to get you hooked, and you body recovers from these substances. But one ecstacy pill kill non-regenerative brain cells, on needle of heroine can kill you.
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March 20th, 2007, 12:28 PM #4
Re: The legalization of illicite drug debate.
Pot is the nations number 1 cash crop.
Food for thought.....mmmmm...foood
Emptymag better give me back my Funyuns
Anyways, if you legalize drugs and have them manufactured and over-seen by something like the FDA. You could easily undercut any street drug prices. You could undercut them so bad. So, drug users say "Hey, I can buy pure drugs that aren't tainted through the process of getting into my nose, arm, lungs, etc and pay less....hmmm." Crime would go way down. Instead of a druggie needing to accomodate a $500 a day habit with theft and robbery, they could do it on a much lower budget, in turn decreasing the amount of crime needed to facilitate their addiction. Not to mention, when things are legal, their use declines severely. That's been proven by every other civilized country with legal drugs. It's not something kids care about and addiction usually sets in when people are in their teenage years. If it's not illegal, what's the draw? People get started on shit like crack because you can get high for $10-$15 instead of having to buy a bag of pot at $40.Last edited by D-FENS; March 20th, 2007 at 12:33 PM.
"Because I'm an American." - MtnJack
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March 20th, 2007, 12:37 PM #5
Re: The legalization of illicit drug debate.
Legalization would result in:
1. Purity assurance under Food and Drug Administration regulation;
2. Labeled concentration of the product (to avoid overdose);
3. Obliteration of vigorous marketing ("pushers");
4. Obliteration of drug crime and reduction of theft crime
5. Savings in expensive enforcement
6. Significant tax revenues.
Other reasons ?LEGUM SERVI SUMUS UT LIBERI ESSE POSSIMUS
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March 20th, 2007, 12:43 PM #6
Re: The legalization of illicite drug debate.
Drinking alcohol was not criminalized under prohibition...using drugs is illegal...its a different debate. Prohibition also happend 80 years ago, globalization has made the market extremely different...the comparison is a simplification of a much more complex issue.
You're reversing cause and effect. BECAUSE there is an illegal market, illicit drug producers now have a reason to exist. The best way to get rid of drug dealers is make it illegal.
What the "hardcore, highly armed, highly motivated, and higly networked individuals" want it immaterial if there's no money to be made. And it is the illegality that provides them with money and arms.
Your opinion is duly noted, yet plenty of companies make alcohol, which causes more deaths than all illegal drugs combined.
First, the primary thing to legalize is pot, which alone would reduce the problems of the Drug War. Yes, there is a safe amount of pot.
As for the other things, there are plenty of recreational users of those substances who hold down jobs, etc.
Will there be a hard core group of abusers? Yes. But you're asking all the wrong questions. Here's what you should be asking:
1. All those drugs are ALREADY ILLEGAL, yet there are addicts. The WoD has failed. So why do you defend it?
2. Is criminalization the best way to handle the hard core of drug abusers?
2. Is legalization the best way to handle the existance of hard core chemicals that fuck people up beyond no return in small amounts?
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March 20th, 2007, 12:47 PM #7
Re: The legalization of illicit drug debate.
I have another class....I have lots of thoughts on your replies, and I'm enjoy this debate a lot.
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March 20th, 2007, 01:06 PM #8
Re: The legalization of illicit drug debate.
While some of your arguments are valid, there are at least reasons to believe that some of them are invalid. We already know about people who traffic in cigarettes, so I would anticipate the same thing happening with drugs. That would also mean that there would be enforcement expenses, perhaps not to the level of today but it would still be there. Obliteration of pushers and drug crime? You can't possibly be serious. For every drug legalized, there would be two or three new ones popping up that would still be illegal. That is another thing that has been going on for time in memorium. Would it help with some of this nation's problems, yes. Would it be a drug problem cure, no way.Bill USAF 1976 - 1986, NRA Endowment, USCCA
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March 20th, 2007, 01:15 PM #9
Re: The legalization of illicit drug debate.
How could a drug producer undercut the price if the feds regulated it? They couldn't, what would the point be of importing drugs when we would produce our own. It would still be illegal to import them, so why would they risk it for such little reward.
It's never going to happen though, they will never legalize. It produces jobs. Think of all the DEA agents that would loose their jobs, not to mention local police that would have even less to do. We throw billions of dollars fighting drugs on the criminal level, and that produces alot of jobs for people.
Besides the fact we know lobbyists normally get what they want. I'm sure every alcohol producer has hundreds of lobbyists making sure that drugs don't get legalize, as it would cut into their business.
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March 20th, 2007, 01:19 PM #10Grand Member
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Re: The legalization of illicite drug debate.
It's exactly the same debate if you're talking about the crime and violence associated with importing and distributing a proscribed commodity...and how the profit from that fuels crime cartels.
Prohibition also happend 80 years ago, globalization has made the market extremely different...the comparison is a simplification of a much more complex issue.
Why be determined to not learn from history?
What you aren't understanding is that drug production and trafficking is a globalized market, they have huge stakes in this. Any legal market would be undercutted by the illegal drug trade, because their business would still be deemed illegal, and people would continue to buy from the illegal drug market.
Read some studies on illegal drugs -- the vast majority of the cost is precisely in the fact that it IS illegal. A substance that has to be illegally imported and distributed -- with all the extreme costs implied in that -- can never compete with a legal business that does not have to pay any of those costs. The profit margins for legal commodities are usually razor thin; there's no way illegal commodities could compete. And again, no one in his right mind buys an unlabelled, unknown substance from a dealer when the safe, labelled thing is available, for less.
These guys don't dissappear, they will take on the legal drug trade in anyway possible. Either by undercutting the market and I state above, or by organized violent act...I would see them as a new breed of terrorist.
Very true, but, and I guessing no such gathering of statistics has taken place, but I would like to see the deaths per thousand or million or something. I be the ratios would tell us something.
Ok, for me, the argument that there is a safe amount of pot is extremely vague. Don't tell me it isn't a gateway drug, because that's a bold faced lie, and everyone knows it.
I encourage you to research it a bit, but the short answer is: the substance of pot itself is not a gateway. The ILLEGALITY of pot is the gateway.
As for recreational users who hold down jobs...does that make it ok? Could they do their job better. Could our economy improve if all the functional alcoholics and drug users were clean and sober?
1. Did I defend the war on drugs at any point during this discourse?....hmmm
2. Is legalization the best way to handle the existance of hard core chemicals that fuck people up beyond no return in small amounts?Last edited by dgg9; March 20th, 2007 at 01:31 PM.
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