Thread: DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION YES OR NO

I absoluty NO NOT support legalization of any drug. But I do support decriminalization. I will give my reasons. The how it works will take a long time and a lot of conversation.

PUBLIC REASONS:
1. Real education.
2. Stops illicit activities.
3. Takes the money and glorification away.
4. Stops the Drug War violence on civilians, gangs and borders.
5. Stops the mandatory incarceration of passive users.
6. Stops kids from pushing to kids.
7. Add your own reasons.

FINANCIAL REASONS:
1. Stops support of gangs and cartels.
2. Stops Gov. and law War enforcement tax's.
3. Provide jail space for violent criminals.
4. Provide tax revenues instead of expenditures.
5. Frees up to 50% of DEA and law now involved with drug WAR.
6. Add your reasons.

Legalizing would open the door for abuse like we now have with alcohol and tobacco glorification and allurement advertising.

Decriminalization would allow safe guards for education and addiction support sending a social message of none condoning and health dangers warnings.

Will this change promote, diminish or stay about the same in social use perception is the question. The obvious advantage is to stop the War insanity. Change is inevitable and happening now. What is the direction we should take is the question.

I like the way this old cop says yes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNikI7tULj8

We have to legalize it. Decriminalization does not take the gangs out of the picture at all. The sales are still illegal and so the gangs will still be selling. How does decriminalization stop the kid to kid sales? Only legalization puts the sales into the hands of regular businesses. Decriminalization only lessens the charges....which is better than nothing, but wont solve many of the problems. Gangs would still have turf fights.

Originally Posted by redpony353

We have to legalize it. Decriminalization does not take the gangs out of the picture at all. The sales are still illegal and so the gangs will still be selling. How does decriminalization stop the kid to kid sales? Only legalization puts the sales into the hands of regular businesses. Decriminalization only lessens the charges....which is better than nothing, but wont solve many of the problems. Gangs would still have turf fights.

I had to send you a pm to answer...but to add even to that pm...the crux is to figure out a way to stop and promote so that what you have concerns with are properly and adequately answered. It will take real thinking ...not legislative thinking... that u tube clip above was pretty good.

How will decriminalization provide tax revenue? The drug has to be sold legally for tax revenue to be collected. Or are you thinking the gangs are going to suddenly start paying tax on their sales?

Originally Posted by redpony353

How will decriminalization provide tax revenue? The drug has to be sold legally for tax revenue to be collected. Or are you thinking the gangs are going to suddenly start paying tax on their sales?

Did you read my PM? Or watch any of the many vids on u tube found along with the u tube post above reguarding the thinking behind decriminalization? If not I don't see that you are truly interested in the subject?

Never mind I just saw your PM back. I really can't tell you anymore than I did in my letter to you. And no...I would not enjoy seeing the gangs legally organizing.

Yes, I support decriminalization and legalization with regulation and taxation under the FairTax, with a portion of the FairTaxes drug users pay being used for better education about the risk and consequences of drug use and free rehabilitation for anyone who wants or needs it.

I would want regulation of a legal industry to dictate the make and mix at the growing, production, distribution and sale at the retail level. I would want every aspect of this trade controlled 100% by US citizens and US controlled corporations or businesses. I would want the retail stores to be licensed, monitored entities in convenient and safe but not prominent, high traffic or high visibility locations. I would not allow them to advertise their products on television or the radio at all in any medium, network, cable or satellite. They can take out a 1 line add in the yellow pages, no display ads, under the drugs or pharmaceutical category. Drug users will find them in the phone book if they're interested or there can be a website on the internet where they can find the locations for their area that they can only access if they are of legal age to purchase.

There will no imported product outside US states and territories. None. If it's going to be sold here, it's going to be grown and processed under US jurisdiction only by licensed US citizens and US businesses only. Period. Non-negotiable.

There will regulations on the quality to ensure safety and the quantity to control use to small reasonable personal consumption amounts and additional regulations to limit the sales to adults only, no sales to minors, all under a civil code, not a criminal code. If you violate the regulations, you'll pay fines and depending on the type and number of violations, you'll lose your license and your business. If you violate the regulations and someone is injured by it, then you're also subject to the same product liability as any other vendor.

There are experts on these drugs from medical professionals to former DEA agents who know far more about what the regulations should be than I do, and they are the ones who should work as a team to help write the regulations. I don't think we should have a lot of regulations, just important ones that a) ensure it's all American from the farms to the business ownership to distributors, carriers, handlers and workers b) ensure the products are grown, manufactured and sold responsibly c) ensure the amount sold to anyone at any 1 time is for their own small personal consumption use only in private not in public and d) using the FairTax to ensure FairTaxes are collected on all the retail transactions like any other product and a portion used to pay for better education about the risk and consequences of drug use and provide free rehabilitation and medical assistance on demand without stigma for anyone who wants or needs it. Then enforce the regulations, and stop worrying about it.

The results will be the end of a foreign controlled black market, the end of gangs and street dealers, the end of cartel and gang threatened neighborhoods and the end of cops chasing drug users and dope dealers and all the violence and crime associated with this foreign cartel owned and controlled illegal drug trade. Of course, if someone hijacks a truck of legal drugs or breaks into a store or factory, then of course these would be robberies and treated like every other robbery.

I would also want every person presently in jail for non-violent drug offenses, released immediately from prison and all drug offenses purged from all criminal records, so these people can start fresh and anew and try to restore their lives that I think were wrongfully impaired by a set of laws that ultimately infringed upon their liberty and civil rights as Americans.

I've never used drugs, never had any interest them, they never appealed to me in any way shape or form and I don't really understand why it appeals to other people, but the fact is it does and no one has the right to deny them that in the way that we've done. The War on Drugs may have been a well-intentioned program with a noble goal, but it overlooked the higher principle we hold dear and essential as Americans, and that is the liberty to pursue your own happiness your own way so long as you don't harm another person or damage their property in the process. You can not claim to have a free nation of free people when you are locking people up, stealing their liberty, ruining their lives, invading their privacy, or killing them, because they choose for whatever reason to smoke pot, snort cocaine or shoot heroin. It's their right and their choice. We can educate, we can discourage, but we already know that a certain portion of our population will do anything to get these drugs and have for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Thus, our duty as a society is to do the best we can to make sure that in their pursuit of something they want, we are not causing them greater harm than the drugs they want to use. So our job is to make it safe for them to buy it, to contain the distribution to designated appropriate areas where they deal with decent honest responsible people of their own country, provide the products with the proper cuts and mixes in small quantities and provide them printed warning information at the time of every sale. Driving under the influence of drugs if not already covered by traffic laws should be added to the regulations. The rest is up to the individual, their family and friends.

To me, this is the best we can do because in addition to making this industry safe and crime free for the user, we've also stop the primary reason our politicians want to keep the borders open, we've stopped the link between illegal immigration and the illegal drug trade, we've stopped the drain of our money supply out of the country, we've stopped the flow of illegal aliens to run these illegal drugs for their foreign cartels into the country, we've stopped the promotion of drugs to children, we've stopped the forcing of children in many neighborhoods to sell the drugs to other children under threat of harm to themselves or their family by illegal drug dealers, we've stopped the drug gangs, we've stopped the black market, we've created legal jobs in legal farming enterprises, processing operations, distribution and retail sales stores, we've created a revenue stream for our own people and our own governments while stopping an enormous futile harmful enforcement cost, we've asked drug users to pay the Fairtaxes that will educate themselves and the general public on the risk and consequences of using these products as well as covering the cost of regulating the trade they participate in and the rehabilitation and medical costs associated with it.

That's a win-win-win-win any day in my view. I believe over time, much of the intrigue of drugs will actually dissipate and for future generations there will be less interest and curiosity in them, and hope the "coolness" or "adventure" or whatever it is will slowly fade. It will never disappear, we know that, but we'll have done the best we can do with it while still calling ourselves Americans living in a free nation of free people.

To parents, I say this. No one is protecting your children today. So if you don't want your children to use drugs, then you know where they are, who they're with and what they're doing at all times while they live under your roof. If your children have locks on their bedroom doors, remove them. You check your children's drawers, closets, bed, backpacks, purses, cars if they have them, every few days. It will be extremely difficult for them to get these drugs once they're decriminalized, legalized and regulated, but they can still sneak it from a friends parent's stash so you still need to check. If they close their door you feel free to walk in after a quick knock or without one any time you want and do so often. If they go to the basement, you check on them often. If they go to a friend's house, you often show up unannounced and never let them go to a friend's house that you don't know where it is and you haven't met their parents. If your children wail to you about their privacy, you raise them to know they have no privacy at all while they live under your roof. Society can't protect your children from anything or anyone, you must do that and do it all.

Here is a great website which has a lot of good information about ending the War on Drugs. It's called LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

www.leap.cc

Here is a great video from their website, there are many more, but this one I liked very much because of the facts it provides and the people involved in LEAP:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28

Here's a link to the FairTax, which is to me an essential part of making the legalization program work:

www.fairtax.org

Originally Posted by redpony353

We have to legalize it. Decriminalization does not take the gangs out of the picture at all. The sales are still illegal and so the gangs will still be selling. How does decriminalization stop the kid to kid sales? Only legalization puts the sales into the hands of regular businesses. Decriminalization only lessens the charges....which is better than nothing, but wont solve many of the problems. Gangs would still have turf fights.

Correct. It has to be decriminalized, legalized and regulated under a civil code, not a criminal code. There has to be a plan for the legal domestic growing, manufacture and distribution of these products to shut down the illegal cartels and criminal gangs. The products have to be available without stigma in a safe legal store or the drug users will turn to a black market to get them. This is as obvious as the logic that we have to deport illegal aliens to secure our borders.

Originally Posted by sk1951

Originally Posted by redpony353

How will decriminalization provide tax revenue? The drug has to be sold legally for tax revenue to be collected. Or are you thinking the gangs are going to suddenly start paying tax on their sales?

Did you read my PM? Or watch any of the many vids on u tube found along with the u tube post above reguarding the thinking behind decriminalization? If not I don't see that you are truly interested in the subject?

Never mind I just saw your PM back. I really can't tell you anymore than I did in my letter to you. And no...I would not enjoy seeing the gangs legally organizing.

How will decriminalization provide tax revenues? Tax cannot be collected on a substance that is sold illegally.

I thought about this since the term of decriminalization arose, and yes, we need to decriminalize, which is why we need a civil code of laws, not a criminal code, governing the recreational drug industry, but at the same time we have to legalize so we convert a dangerous crime-infested irresponsible foreign black market into a safe no crime responsible domestic legal market controlled 100% by US citizens through government regulations. I've researched the growing of the raw products and we have locations within our US 50 states and territories such that we can grow every product our people want to buy, from the coca plant for cocaine to poppies for the dreaded heroin.