3% of US population behind bars, on parole or on probation last year

[Sava]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
We should allow criminals to join the army and get all charges dropped

nah, the military already pools it's recruitment from those in poverty... we would only need to do that if we actually had socio-economic systems that decreased poverty. As opposed to the current system that fosters it.

[Barinthus]

Legalization of drugs would drive prices down and it'd not be as profitable. And the excitment of doing something 'illegal' wouldn't be there anymore which translates into fewer users.

As for the arguments for holding drug dealers responsible - it's all about enabling. Take bars for instance, if a bartender willingly sell alcohol to someone obviously completely smashed and let him leave the establishment with his car keys then later he winds up in an accident, the establishment could be held responsible.

I, however, agree with the principle that everybody should be responsible for their own actions and resulting consquences of their actions. Unfortunately if people are not acting responsible enough on their own, the government will intervene at some point because their irresponsiblity is threatening the public safety of everybody else and their property.

[Al B. Sure!]

And the excitment of doing something 'illegal' wouldn't be there anymore which translates into fewer users.

bah... i contend there will be more users once it is legalized due to the greater ease of getting it.

i dont get this forbidden fruit arguement. history (as well as that one experiment done a few years ago with the electrocutions) has shown that people pathologically do as they are told.

[Barinthus]

Just look at Amsterdam. My friends who grew up there never set a foot into the Red Light District until their out of country friends visited and wanted to go.

Look at American experience with the Prohibition. I'm curious about how many people partaked in alcohol during and after.

[Al B. Sure!]

the effects of heavy drinking (such as domestic abuse) went down during prohibition

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by lightblue
Thos is a quite interesting comparative study as well:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r116.pdf

KEY POINTS
Some 8.6 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, either as pre-trial
detainees (remand prisoners) or having been convicted and sentenced. Half of these are in the
United States (1.85m), China (1.4m) or Russia (1.05m).
Russia has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 730 per 100,000 of the national
population, followed by the USA (680), the Cayman Islands (665), Belarus (575), Kazakhstan
(495), the Bahamas (485), the US Virgin Islands (475), Belize (460), Bermuda (445) and
Kyrgyzstan (440).

US, China, the former USSR - no surprise
the Caribbean - what's going on there?

[Last Conformist]

All those pesky pirates.

[Gangerolf]

ah, of course


So how many of you American posters are posting from gaol? Gotta be a few?

[Gangerolf]

sorry that was mean

[Kuciwalker]

Aarr, matey! irate:

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
the effects of heavy drinking (such as domestic abuse) went down during prohibition

Can you back this statement up with some evidence? It's more for my curiousity than to 'verify' your statement, I would like to read up some more on this subject.

Gangerolf - I didn't think it was mean. I went through a period of probation myself. It was... interesting.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Cowardly soft on crime weenies!

Surprise surprise we don't lock people up and we have low crime rate too.

In that regard I was very impressed with the contrasts with Canada that Michael Moore brought out in Bowling for Columbine. In Detroit it's crime central, across the river in Windsor people don't lock their doors at night. A very telling contrast I thought.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
if you ask me, drug dealers should be let free... nah matter fact, they should get subsidized college educations...

great. more dealers with business and economic degrees......

[Dis]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


Surprise surprise we don't lock people up and we have low crime rate too.

In that regard I was very impressed with the contrasts with Canada that Michael Moore brought out in Bowling for Columbine. In Detroit it's crime central, across the river in Windsor people don't lock their doors at night. A very telling contrast I thought.

so you are saying criminals from Detroit should cross the border, and raid Canadian homes then? sounds good to me

It's a culture thing. Americans are violent. The rest of the world is not.

[Berzerker]

Dan S -

Crack cocaine destroyed Southeast Washington. For about 15 years it was a war zone. It's just coming out of that era this year.

Correction: both crack cocaine and the violence were products of the drug war, not drugs. You cannot look at the results of prohibition and reach conclusions about drugs. That's like blaming the rise of the Mafia during the 20's on alcohol when prohition was the prime catalyst.

As I've pointed out in previous threads on this subject, in the early to mid 80's Reagan and Congress followed by the states increased penalties for adults selling drugs. The result was many adults in the drug trade tried to reduce their exposure by hiring minors to sell drugs. Gang recruitment exploded and juvenile crime exploded too and has been rising ever since. The recent reductions in adult crime so trumpeted by prohibitionists ignores that the crime rates before and in between drug wars was much, much lower. It's like having 5 murders a years increase to 11 because of a certain policy and then taking credit for a reduction to 10 murders a year.

As for crack cocaine, it is also a product of the drug war. Back in the late 60's and early 70's Nixon declared his drug war and the focus was on those hippie pot smokers. The result? Traffickers dealing in pot tried to reduce their exposure by switching from pot which is bulky and smelly - easier to detect - to drugs that are more concentrated and easier to hide. Cocaine and heroin... The drug war drove the mass importation of these harder drugs and crack cocaine became the "poor man's" cocaine, a result of the inflated cost of cocaine due to the drug war.

You're right, it doesn't. However, it does mitigate the wide-ranging and rather severe impact of this use by removing dealers and users from the general population.

Because of the profits to be made there is a never ending supply of people who will become dealers and you can never arrest your way out of problem when there are roughly 20 million users. All you do is create the violence associated with the black market.

Think of it this way, the reason for alcohol prohibition was alcohol related pathologies. Prohibition didn't reduce the pathologies except is certain dry states where black market violence wasn't a big problem. But prohibition did create alot of violence where gangs fought over marketshare.

Over all, the homicide rate doubled in the country during prohibition. When prohibition was repealed, the homicide rate declined 13 years in a row and leveled off to half what it was under prohibition. Then in the late 60s with the new emphasis on the drug war the homicide rate began increasing again. Over the last 35 years the homicide rate surpassed the rate during alcohol prohibition and double what it was between the 2 drug wars. Far from mitigating drug problems, prohibition merely increases them.

Speer -

bah... i contend there will be more users once it is legalized due to the greater ease of getting it.

That's what you'd think, but when all drugs were legal in this country there weren't more per capita users. And the per capita addicts was actually lower. The Netherlands has fewer per capita teens using pot than here even though pot is legal over there for adults.

i dont get this forbidden fruit arguement. history (as well as that one experiment done a few years ago with the electrocutions) has shown that people pathologically do as they are told.

Then explain why millions of Americans use drugs if we do what we're told. The forbidden fruit argument is real simple, put a small child in a room with some boxes and tell the child not to open a particular box and leave the room. The child's curiousity was sparked by your prohibition on opening that one box and that child will open the box. Just think of where the "forbidden fruit" concept comes from, God tells Adam not to eat the apple and that's just what he and Eve do...

the effects of heavy drinking (such as domestic abuse) went down during prohibition

It might have where alcohol prohibition went largely unaffected by the black market, it didn't where the black market was prevalent. But homicide rates doubled, violence exploded within a couple years of prohibition becoming law. William Bennett likes to cite a recent experiment with prohibition, an Alaskan town of about 3,000 people (largely Eskimos) banned alcohol. Pathologies declined but the experiment ended 1 year later when the people voted to end it. While Bennett implies alcohol prohibition was a success based on what happened in Alaska, he conveniently ignored that this small town was on the northern coast of Alaska where organised crime had no desire to set up base for obvious reasons nor the time given the experiment lasted just 1 year.

Are you going to answer my questions from the previous page or are you going to keep running away?