Contact Your Senator - Stop New Drug Czar From Being Confirmed

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Evil Knevil
Oh and weed is not a euphoric drug. Look at a textbook some time -or better yet have a joint, being stoned isn't being euphoric by any stretch of the mother tongue.

(Damn other posters getting the way)

So euphoric is the wrong word. It still works through directly stimulating the release of certain neurotransmitters.

[Pekka]

Well I just don't believe in the gateaway theory. I mean I understand what it means, but I just doubt it.
'All heroin users and drug addicts started with marijuana'... Umm... yeah? All marijuana users don't ever try heroin. And it's not like people go for heroin for the first time, right? But there are types of people that always goes for the more extreme, and these types will smoke that marijuana, LEGAL OR NOT, and then proceed to heroin. Does it make more heroinists? I don't know, but it makes few less alcoholics, and that's only good.

And smoking marijuana does not force me use other drugs. They don't tell me 'good good.. now go for the cocaine'. The types of people that go further, would do it anyway, because they want to do different drugs. Not because smoking marijuana made them want.

It's also like this. Not all people drink alcohol. But most tobacco smokers uses alcohol. Now, does this mean that if I smoke tobacco, it makes me want to drink booze?

[SlowwHand]

They all started by breathing, so let's do away with breathing.

[Evil Knevil]

You should read my previous post. A release of neurochemicals does not equal an addiction.

[DanielXY]

alcohol is far too easy to make on your own. Virtually anyone can do it using household materials. Thus it is essentially impossible to regulate (as the Prohibition showed)

Same goes for marijuana. At least the last part. Its not as easy to grow weed as it is to make alcohol. You need some knowlegde about growing and seeds of course. Other stuff is optional. But a full functional, secure Indoor-Growroom able to provide enough weed for the grower, all of his friends and more can be build for as little as 300$.

Of course you can jail everyone and his dog who is in possession of marijuana. Bu tell me is there now less marijuana around than 10 years ago or is it even more? Did all those tough laws and enforcent change anything (Dispite having about 1million ppl. who did no harm to nobody in prison)?
Unlike "real" drugs like heroin, which has to come from sources outsite the US, Marijuana is provided by normal everyday folks. Maybe your neighbour has a secret grow-room. There is no way you could really enforce the ban (enforce meaning in this case, to make sure noone or close to noone is smoking anymore...).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Evil Knevil
Show me the evidence for chemical dependancy.

Biologists have proven that the release of abnormally large amounts of neurotransmitters damages dendrites and causes the brain to "recalibrate" itself to higher levels, requiring the continued release of those abnormally large amounts to stay at an even normal state.

How much to you know about addiction models? Doesn't seem like much. If releasing neurotransmitters formed an automatic addiction, then L-Dopa, Adamintin, Prozac, Elavil, MAO inhibitors and Chloroplazime would all be addictive.

I've never heard of those other ones, but Prozac IS addictive.

There is no evidence that weed causes effective 'classical addictive' brain changes like nicotine, caffeine, diamorphine, alcohol and the amphetamine groups(fast food as well possibly?)

Yes there is. It works in EXACTLY THE SAME MANNER as nicotine, caffeine, et al. It stimulates the release of abnormally large amounts of neurotransmitters.

The addictive properties are due to 'dependancy' either as a part of a person's identity, lifestyle or wether they like the feeling of being stoned. Like candy; "candy tastes great, so I have it all the time".

Those are psychologically addictive properties. The CHEMICALLY addictive properties have to do with the "recalibration" of the brain to accept abnormally high levels of neurotransmitters as normal.

Weed is a carcinogen, containing about 4X as much tar as tobacco. I'll give you that. Although this number depends on the method of intake (cooking it, or spraying have no problems).

But......... weed is Americas largest cash crop, about 16 million Americans use it weekly. It provides domestic income to thousands of people. It has always been grown in the US, even when it was brought over to New England.

So? Heroin is Afghanistan's largest cash crop, does that mean they should keep growing it?

It's a pretty specious arguement to suggest that a substance potentially less harmful than booze, with more utility should be illegal 'because it always has been'.

I'm not saying it is less harmful than alcohol. I'm saying that the marijuana problem is solvable, whereas the alcohol one is not (or even if it is, it would be infinitely more difficult). So we should take care of it first.

[Berzerker]

skywalker -

Let me rephrase then: if marijuana is legalised, additional harm to society will ensue. Happy now?

Actually, no. Where's your proof? Do you want me to run down a list of the negatives wrought by the drug war? I can if you want. All these negatives MUST be outweighed by your utter lack of proof for your statement to be true. First and foremost, you need to show that pot consumption would radically increase and you can't even show that using US history (when all drugs were legal) or contemporary history in those countries where pot is legal or ignored.

There's no POINT in calling a sport a "gateway sport". The term "gateway drug" is useful because it has SIGNIFICANCE. If something is a "gateway drug" then it causes damage in excess of the direct effects of using it.

My knees are blown out from all the sports I've played, and I'm hardly alone. There are countless former athletes suffering from the effects of too much time on the playing field. Now, what permanent damage was done to me by pot or other drugs? Nada, at least nothing I can see or feel. Would you like to compare the effects of all illegal drugs to just one legal drug? Great! Let's look at all the people with diabetes induced by processed sugar. Then we can look at those graveyards filled with former cigarette smokers and alcoholics.

And the fact is, people who experiment with certain drugs (the gateway drugs) become more likely to try more damaging drugs not only because they are "that kind of person", but also because of the effects of the drug!

Nonsense! They didn't become more likely to try other drugs because they tried one, they were more likely to try other drugs for the same reason they tried the first one - that's their nature just as it is the nature of athletes to try other sports.

Yeah, I bet tobacco is really ok to use too, isn't it

Never said it was, can you stick to what I did say instead of inventing stuff? Btw, sure it's okay to use tobacco, your freedom doesn't require my approval or permission. I can advise against it, but I sure won't put you in a cage for your well-being.

You mean physiologically (or chemically), not physically, right?

There's a difference? Physically or physiologically, they both mean a physical addiction.

Marijuana IS chemically addictive. That is a fundamental property of any euphoric drug, ESPECIALLY one that works by directly stimulating the release of certain neurotransmitters.

Addiction use to mean physical withdrawals, but it has been expanded to include "psychological" withdrawals, i.e., "bummer, I have no more pot". That ain't addiction and I reject the BS thrown around by "psychologists" who are trying to call just about every desire under the sun an "addiction".

The chemicals in marijuana can enter the fetus, seriously affecting development and possibly even addicting the child.

"Seriously"? Where's the proof? I knew a woman who drank tea during her pregnancy and the result was a highly agitated new born who cried constantly. The fact is pregnant women ingest all sorts of things that effect their babies. A Canadian team of doctors did a study on the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and crack cocaine on fetus'. Their findings? By far, alcohol was the worst and tobacco and crack had similar effects.

Brain damage is cause not because of the smoke (though that may be a factor), but because the massive release of neurotransmitters can damage dendrites, weakening or preventing entirely signalling between neurons.

Is that damage permanent? Like I said, my brain cells are mine, not yours, so butt out. Your argument is dis-ingenuous since your reaction to us killing our brain cells is harassment, even jail. So don't persecute people in the name of helping them.

[Berzerker]

Here is the disaster wrought by the drug war pushers:

1) It's immoral - punishing the innocent because of the actions of the guilty is immoral and non-drug users surely don't want to be punished for the crimes of other non-drug users, but "we" are punishing all drug users because some drug users hurt others. Look at the arguments in favor of drug prohibition, they are all based on the immoral proposition that millions of people should be punished because of what others do.

2) It's unconstitutional - on several fronts.

2a) The 1st Amendment guarantees us religious freedom, and the drug war violates our religious freedom. Yes, some people use drugs as part of their religions...

2b) The 2nd Amendment guarantees us the right to keep and bear arms, but not for drug users, or even people who use prescription drugs assigned to others. Yup, if you own a gun and use a prescription painkiller belonging to someone else, you're a criminal subject to a very harsh sentence. And the violence resulting from the massive black market in drugs only fuels the gun banners' arguments in much the same way the violence from alcohol prohibition led to the prohibitive tax on machine guns.

2c) The 3rd Amendment guarantees us that soldiers will not be quartered in our homes during peacetime. That was added to the Bill of Rights because King George sent his troops to stay in the homes of "suspected" dissidents to keep an eye on them - spying. Now, technology allows government to spy on us without actually placing troops in our homes, but the spirit of the 3rd Amendment has been destroyed by the drug war.

2d) The 4th Amendment - no-knock raids. The cops can literally break down your door in the middle of the night. It was a no-knock raid with a deceitfully obtained warrant (based on the allegation of a meth lab) that caused the tragedy at Waco. An elderly couple in Minneapolis was killed in a fire started by cops using a "flash grenade" to break in at night. The number of dead and wounded is enormous, but government won't publish stats on how many they kill and wound in pursuit of the drug war.

2e) The 5th Amendment - no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. This amendment presumes we had life, liberty, and property after the laws were written. For example, what if Congress decided they didn't like you and wanted you dead? Could they simply write a law saying you can't live and then execute you for violating the law? No, the 5th assumes future laws have not deprived us of our inalienable rights before due process.

2f) The 6th Amendment - you have the right to a speedy trial by a jury of your peers. But the courts have become so clogged with drug trials, drug courts that don't have juries have been set up to deal with these cases. Of course, the accused can opt for this set up, but they are coerced into giving away their right to a jury trial. They are told if they go with a jury trial, they'll face a tougher sentence thereby punishing people for requesting a trial by jury. That's how drug users are coerced into "rehab" only for the drug war pushers to then use the number of people in rehab as proof of some new problem they need our money to fix. Furthermore, jury nullification, one of the checks the Founders believed in has been done away with. In the past, juries could acquit the accused, not because of their innocence, but because the law was either immoral or violated the Constitution. Juries are now told to act as robots computing guilt or innocence, not judging the law/government as well. Also, in some urban areas, drug cases have caused such a backload, civil cases can now take years to be heard. If you need to sue someone and find out the court can't get to your case for a couple years, you'll know why.

2g) The 9th Amendment - we have many rights, and as Madison wrote, the enumeration of certain rights in the preceding amendments shall not be used to deny the other rights we retain. But the 9th has become a dead letter...even some "conservatives" who claim to support the Constitution argue that if a right does not appear in the Bill of Rights, it doesn't exist.

2h) The 10th Amendment - re-states that the Constitution strictly limits what the feds can do and that all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. Congress has the power to regulate commerce with other nations and inter-state commerce, but not intra-state commerce and non-commerce. And the latter power was meant to create a free trade zone within the USA, not to allow Congress to ban or micro-manage trade among Americans. Those are the only powers Congress have concerning drugs or any other product. But Congress has hardly limited itself to these powers. That's the rub of the matter, no supporter of the drug war can point to any power to wage the war.

3) Lost productivity? - C'mon! You think wasting 100's of billions of dollars to catch and house/jail millions of people is a productive use of resources? It may be for all the people getting a paycheck to wage the war, but no "utilitarian" could sanely argue that the drug war is a pragmatic use of resources. And for what? If the drug war actually reduced drug use by an enormous amount, that might offset wasting all that money while taking millions of people out of the economy, but the drug war side will not and cannot show that their war has achieved such a reduction in consumption... because it hasn't. Drug consumption when all drugs were legal was not higher than now, if anything, rates have increased.

4) Asset Forfeiture - makes a mockery of the 4th and 5th Amendments. The cops don't even have to convict you of a "drug crime" to take all your property, they only have to allege that your property was "involved" with drugs. The standard for "convicting" property is much lower than convicting a person, and often, the property owner is not even charged with a crime. Donald Scott lived north of LA on some nice land. The BLM and National Parks administration wanted his property but he rejected their buy out offers. So what happened next? Well, a helicopter cop claimed he saw pot plants hanging upside down in trees on his property. The cops launched a late night no-knock raid, broke in, Scott's girlfriend screamed and he awoke from his slumber to defend her and was shot dead. No pot was found.

Motorists have been stopped and robbed, not by street thieves, but by cops claiming the money was "drug-related". And you, the owner of that money, has to prove the money was yours and not involved with drugs. And even then, there have been people robbed of thousands by cops even though the rightful owners could and did prove the money was "legit", but still can't get their money back even after judges have ordered the release of the money. This happened alot down in the SE USA, especially Florida.

5) A nation of suspects - which is what we've become. Because drug possession has no victim inspite of the tortured rationale from drug war pushers, there is no one to go to the cops to complain about being robbed or to provide a description of the thief. So the cops have to view nearly all of us as suspects, hence the expansion of illegal searches. And to add to that, government officials go into schools to convince children to turn their parents in for using drugs. Ever hear of the "Brownshirts"? Of course, the kids are never told what will really happen to their family because of the induced betrayal of one of the most sacred of trusts - the trust between parent and child. The families are often broken up with the kids sent off to live in foster "care" while the parents are carted off to jail.

6) Hypocrisy - alcohol by far causes more harm to "society" than all the illegal drugs combined, but we keep that one legal - votes. How many people die from alcohol and tobacco every year? Maybe 500,000? How many from ALL the illegal drugs combined? Maybe 30,000 if that? Hell, processed sugar kills far more than all the illegal drugs combined, maybe even more than alcohol and booze. And how do the hypocrites defend this sin? They don't, they can't...

7) Immoral laws create dis-respect for the law - You may not think the drug laws are immoral, but millions of drug and non-drug users do. They know they have the moral authority to live their lives as they choose, it's called freedom. And when laws make such blatant attacks on freedom, millions no longer respect the law or government. What do you think would happen if guns were outlawed? Millions of people would refuse to obey the law and there might even be a rebellion with many gun owners feeling justified in killing government agents trying to enforce the ban.

8) It's for the children - that's what we hear. But is it true? Nope, the black market created to supply adults with drugs has spilled over to supply children too. Pot use among teens in Holland is lower than here, but pot is legal for adults in Holland. In the mid-80's, the Reagan administration and Congress followed by the states enacted much harsher penalties for adults convicted of dealing. What was the result? Any economist worth the title could have told us before the laws went into effect. Many adults, seeking to avoid the harsher penalties, recruited minors into the drug trade. Gang recruitment exploded and so did juvenile crime and it's been climbing ever since. Yeah, it's for the children...

9) Murder - if the drug war is such a blessing, why did the homicide rate over the last 30 years double over the rate from 1945-1965? And if you say liberal policies, then explain why the homicide rate doubled during alcohol prohibition too? And why did homicide rates decrease 13 years in a row once alcohol prohibition was repealed? Take a look for yourself:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/graphs/10.htm

Is it just a coincidence that homicide rates reached their zenith in the 20th century twice, both during drug wars?
And because of improvements in medicine and paramedics and their response times, murder rates would be even higher now than if we were living back during alcohol prohibition.

10) Crime in general - property crime (theft) has increased greatly, but while drug war supporters call these "drug-related" crimes, I call them drug war related crimes. One goal of the drug war was to dramatically inflate the cost of drugs. Well, what a surprise! Increase the cost of a product in great demand, and the result is more stealing. If a heroin addict could get his fix with only 1-2 dollars a day, he wouldn't need to steal 100-200 dollars a day. Just imagine the crime wave we'd see if basic food staples were banned with a corresponding inflation of cost...

11) The expansion of government - does this need further explanation? We now have government trying to micromanage our economic lives (no, not the corporations, they get a free pass) so it can catch us making money "illegally". Banks are required to spy on customers, and so on...I've already run down some of the abuses of the Constitution, but the drug war is a never ending war which will require an ever expanding government to control more of our lives. A statist's wet dream...

12) Corruption - J. Edgar Hoover rejected repeated requests from Presidents wanting to get the FBI into the drug war. Why? He knew the drug war would eventually corrupt the FBI just as it is doing to so many other police departments.

13) Foreign Affairs - while the government has put out ads blaming drug users for 9/11 (more demonization of drug users), the ads were both hypocritical and dishonest. Only Opium (heroin) comes from Afghanistan, but the ads intentionally made no distinctions among drugs. That's like blaming caffeine users for the behavior of alcohol suppliers during prohibition. And prior to 9/11, Congress was sending our tax dollars to the Taliban because they were actually waging a war on opium. The Taliban were true believers and opium was a big no-no to them. It was their opponents like the Northern Alliance that were involved in the opium trade. But we didn't see any ads blaming tax payers or Congress for 9/11 even though our taxes were supporting the Taliban. And then, of course, there's the oil and diamond money that helped fund OBL. We don't hear politicians accusing us all of supporting terrorism because we buy oil.

14) More foreign affairs - we're pouring money into Latin America to wage our drug war. If drug wars were so good for "society", why has Colombia seen horrific crime rates? Because we blackmailed them into waging our drug war and has created massive crime rates! And since drug producers cannot rely on government to protect their participation in the marketplace, they have to seek out those who will provide protection. And in Colombia and other areas of S America, that happens to be leftist rebels who profit from the drug war.

15) Overdoses - yeah, drug war supporters point to this too, God only knows why. But just as alcohol poisoning deaths increased under alcohol prohibition because of poor quality control, drug overdoses have increased under the drug war for the same reason.

16) What has the drug war solved? That is a question consistently avoided by it's supporters. They cannot identify any problem solved by the drug war and usually ignore all the problems the drug war causes.
All they can do is offer "Chicken Little" predictions about how drug use will sky rocket, but when all drugs were legal in this country, consumption rates were not higher than now. And in those countries where certain drugs are legal, consumption rates are comparable or lower.

17) Pot is a "gateway" drug? Nope, that's another falsehood. People who love playing sports started out with one sport, does that mean the sport they started out playing was a "gateway" sport? People inclined to use one drug or play one sport will obviously be inclined to try other drugs and sports. Even the medical analysis commissioned a few years ago by the federal government concluded that pot is only a "gateway" drug because of it's illegal status, not because pot somehow magically instructs the brain to want other drugs.

18) The drug war has promoted the use of harder drugs. How? Back when Nixon began his war on pot, traffickers were given the incentive to reduce the risk of getting caught with pot which is much harder to conceal. Many switched to more concentrated, more easily concealed drugs like cocaine and heroin. Drugs that also became more profitable because of their illegality. So, many pot users who could no longer get pot from their dealer now had access to the harder drugs. The ban on cocaine led to the introduction of "crack" cocaine - the poor man's cocaine.

19) Freedom - the absence of coercion or constraint in choice or action. If I use pot or cocaine, I've imposed no coercion or constraints on others. But those who ban these products are imposing constraints upon me. Then to add insult to injury, they claim they are doing this because some other drug user might impose a constraint upon them. Hypocrisy and immorality have become virtues under the drug war.

20) Taxes? No, it's called stealing, more accurately, armed robbery. That is how supporters of the drug war pay for their attempt to legislate "morality". Apparently legalised stealing is a moral endeavor, just ask any leftist trying to justify their thievery. Consider the reality: you use pot in your home. I steal money from others to hire people to break into your home and put you in a cage because your personal behavior offends me. Then I accuse you of immorality? Lol. If the weapon called "government" was not there to hide behind, would I (you) risk our necks stealing money from others and breaking into other people's homes to cage the owners for smoking pot? Would we claim the moral authority to commit these acts? Nope, but in the mind of the drug war pusher, government magically transforms immorality into a moral crusade.

21) Communism - yeah, taking the position that the state can decide what we ingest is communistic. Supporters of the drug war are effectively claiming they and the state under their control owns us. But when they have to share power and other leftists with a different agenda use the state to exercise "ownership" of those who support the drug war, that is when we hear hypocritical platitudes about freedom.

22) The cost - government seemingly tries to hide the cost so we won't know what is being spent. They do this by speaking only about the cost of federal enforcement, but they ignore what the states spend and the costs for military interdiction, foreign bribes and aid, courts, "education", treatment, and jails, etc. The costs are enormous, roughly a trillion dollars for the last 30 years if not more.

See any errors? Flaws in logic? How about a list of drug war successes? I've posted this several times at other political forums and can't get any drug war supporters to offer a rebuttal or a list of successes.

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Pekka
Fez, man that's just evil

Which is why he says it. Thinking evil in regards to only the "vices" he doesn't partake in is a real nationalist attitude, rather than "batsh*t insane".

Go take it up the ass a few more times buddy, I think Ronaldo's penis has to undo the damage done by repeatedly ramming all the way up and into your brain. Hey, a lot of "nationalists" such as yourself might just round you up for such offending behavior and give you a bullet to the back of the head as you begin to sob. Hope they don't yell "fagg0t" on your way to the ground, because they're wasting precious breath which could have been used against worthless druggies!

Get my point, yet?

[Pekka]

My point is everything is potentially dangerous.
Heck, even potato chips can cause cancer according to Swedish scientists. Should we ban potato chips? No, because the possibility of getting cancer from them is low anyway. I think marijuana is a low risk substance.
And if it would be legal, we could effectively intervene to the bad aspects of it and lower the 'damage' it does to society. And people these days don't find it dangerous, they don't have the respect for the law. It won't send any new messages to people that drugs are ok now.

They are illegal in some countries already (MJ that is). So how's that for message? And you can have all the educators going to schools and tell youngsters that IT WILL KILL YOU! and does it have effect? No.. it has a negative effect IMO!!!!!

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Now. Young recieving mind is listening that marijuana is very dangerous. But since everyone does it, he/she wants to try too. After experiments, he/she finds all the threats BS, or at least most of them. Now, he/she can come to conclusion, that the harder drugs and their threats are BS too... and that is dangerous, then they go and try harder stuff and that leads them to troubles.

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Berzerker

See any errors? Flaws in logic? How about a list of drug war successes? I've posted this several times at other political forums and can't get any drug war supporters to offer a rebuttal or a list of successes.

That's because you're a weirdo and we hate you

[Berzerker]

skywalker -

Yes. You can't make marijuana without certain items that are NOT standard household items. However, you CAN distill alcohol with standard household equipment. I could do it if I wanted to. It took all of a minute for my chemistry teacher to explain it to us

So, they tried to eradicate the production of booze and discovered they couldn't after about a decade, but after about 70 years of failure, you think pot can be eradicated?

People are wary of things like heroin et al, but some people who would not use those drugs WOULD (and do) use marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol. They later get into heroin, cocain, etc.

And what does that tell you? It ain't the drug, it's the person using the drug.

huh?

HUMAN NATURE! Just look at my argument about athletes and think a bit about why some people play all sorts of sports while others don't. There is nothing in pot that induces the user to desire other drugs they've never used. Their nature is what induces them to experiment...

They are. I'm for getting rid of tobacco. I would be for getting rid of alcohol, if I thought it was possible.

Then don't complain when the freedoms you cherish are done away with by people who share your contempt for freedom.

We haven't been talking about psychological addiction, we've been talking about chemical addiction. Caffeine can be both. However, I think that the toxicity level of caffeine is low enough that it shouldn't be illegal. I still disapprove of it. The number of people addicted to it is directly related to the fact that it is in more widespread use.

Skywalker, how many people have died from the "toxicity" in marijuana? How many have died from aspirin? How many have died from your drug war?

[Berzerker]

That's because you're a weirdo and we hate you

"We" meaning you and anonymous?

[DinoDoc]

Somehow I don't think Trent Lott would be moved by me writing to tell him to reject this nominee because she is too hardline.

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Berzerker


"We" meaning you and anonymous?

LMAO

That guy is just SO funny!