Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

I think legalizing marijuana (and possibly Ecstasy) is about as far as you would ever see this go. And honestly, the slippery slope argument of "Then we'll have to legalize cocaine and heroin and crystal meth and huffing paint thinner!" is one of the more powerful anti-legalization arguments out there.

A significant number of people surreptitiously smoke pot, and are therefore somewhat amenable to its legalization. Far fewer do the "hard" drugs, and thus there's a much lower support for legalization there.

[Criptfeind]

Anyone else notice that Germany has a lot of people signing up?

[Levi]

As some random Canadians view, I figured I should add this.  Recently in Vancouver there has been a bad batch of heroin going around(double strength or something) that has been causing a lot of people to overdose.  Some people who have been shooting up on the street or alone have been dying, while people who have been overdosing in our Supervised Injection Site have all survived because of the clean and safe environment and the trained nurses.

The current Canadian government has been trying to shut down the supervised injection site as part of their "war on drugs" even though its been doing a fantastic job of:

A) Preventing overdose deaths.  (So far not a single person has died from an overdose while at the site)
B) Helping addicts get some stability in their life so they can work towards getting help with their addiction.

To me, this is just one example of the war on drugs causing way more harm than it solves.  There are plenty of other examples, such as causing criminals to profit from illicit drug sales.

[G-Flex]

Reading the OP, it's amazing how disingenuous this seems:

Firstly, a plea:  Please do not turn this into a thread debating the rights or wrongs of deregulation.  I'm all for discussion, but make another thread for that if you feel the need to rehash old arguments.  People tend not to change their mind because of strangers on the internet.  I'm posting this solely to raise awareness of what I feel may be a chance to change a great flaw in our nations laws.

Translated:

Please don't argue for against deregulation, because it won't change anyone's mind. Now here's my argument about it.

There is a real opportunity here to change the world in a positive way.  I'm going to simply paste the entire e-mail I received here and hopefully some of you will see this as a cause worthy of supporting.

Great, a chain e-mail. As if there aren't enough of those in people's inboxes; why do we need those here?

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs/97.php?cl_tta_sign=f81b8ded264af962cdb49ffca3c86334

A vague internet petition? Really? That's the plan?



I agree that current drug policies are not very helpful, that marijuana should be decriminalized at the least, that we need better rehabilitation facilities and to help addicts rather than prosecute them, and that, regardless of what's legalized, it would be a shame if any of this were deregulated enough that they become corporate-profit-driven commodities, because we have enough corporations preying upon people by exploiting addiction as it is.

Oh wait, I wasn't supposed to debate. Sorry.

[DJ]

America will never relax the war because it's voters are very conservative, it'd be political suicide to legalize pot. Other countries will never relax the laws because they'd face too much pressure from America. So yeah, the world is held hostage by the Bible Belt.

[Criptfeind]

You know, I really agree with G-Flex here.

I know you do not want us to argue about whether it is a good thing or not, but that gives us not… Well anything to talk about.

And after all… If we take our lead from the OP….

(think how much tax would be raised if drugs were taken out of the hands of criminals and how many jobs would be created), personal freedoms and the increased potential for medical research.

Easy access to cheaper, cleaner heroin would be a massive advantage too, in that the amount of people pumping themselves full of untested chemicals and being forced into prostitution/theft/whatever would likely decrease pretty drastically.

I assume it would end up being handled rather similarly to alcohol, tobacco and other toxic substances.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

America will never relax the war because it's voters are very conservative,

Yes, we Americans are all conservatives and have no other political opinions in our society. Really. 

it'd be political suicide to legalize pot.

Tell the political suicide to talk to Gallup, because you might find this data of marijuana opinion in America interesting.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Other countries will never relax the laws because they'd face too much pressure from America.

Here's the world map of marijuana laws:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See how many areas are marked as legal, decriminalized, or unenforced, including a fourth of the US itself? I find your statement very questionable.

I apologize if I seem somewhat hostile here, but I can't stand this stereotype of my nation as being made up of ultra-conservatives holding the rest of the world back. While there are people like that, they don't make up the US as a whole by any stretch of the imagination.

[Haschel]

A million signatures seems like a low goal for a world-wide petition, I hope they don't intend to stop there. Of course I haven't a clue where to look for statistics on something like this so maybe it's a practical goal. I'm not going to sign it because I don't personally agree that this will change the situation.

[Virex]

Considering the trouble we have in Holland with condoned drugs, I'm not going to sign this (we're practicably begging for organized mass-murder here for Christ's sake!). I will however add that while I think persecuting drug criminals isn't bad in itself, most of the world focuses way to much on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation (as always I should add, but I feel the need for rehabilitation and supervision is more pressing in this case). America is actually a peculiar case since it seems to focus very much on the users as opposed to the gangs that cause the bulk of the problems.

[Jackrabbit]

Heh, I noticed that Somalia has outlawed Marijuana. I wonder how they'll enforce that.

[Levi]

Considering the trouble we have in Holland with condoned drugs, I'm not going to sign this (we're practicably begging for organized mass-murder here for Christ's sake!).

I'd like to hear more.    I was under the impression that the Netherlands drug policy was working out fairly well.

[Virex]

Yeah it was, until people started to realize they could get a bigger profit if they'd organize themselves. Cue organized crime. Things aren't really bad yet (compared to the US that is), but the people holding "coffee shops", shops where soft drugs could be bought, are noticing more threats and violence and we've recently had several drug-related killings. It's only a matter of time before things spiral out of control.

[G-Flex]

I apologize if I seem somewhat hostile here, but I can't stand this stereotype of my nation as being made up of ultra-conservatives holding the rest of the world back. While there are people like that, they don't make up the US as a whole by any stretch of the imagination.

This is fair, but "moderate" in the US is still fairly right-leaning, and "liberal" in the US is still not usually all that liberal, at least when it comes to the grand scale of national politics. The US is still very right-leaning and the right wing (along with the fundamentalist Christian Right in particular) does hold a lot of sway; there's no real getting around that.

[Levi]

Yeah it was, until people started to realize they could get a bigger profit if they'd organize themselves. Cue organized crime. Things aren't really bad yet (compared to the US that is), but the people holding "coffee shops", shops where soft drugs could be bought, are noticing more threats and violence and we've recently had several drug-related killings. It's only a matter of time before things spiral out of control.

Ahhhhh.  That sucks.    I hope they do something about it.

[Virex]

Ahhhhh.  That sucks.    I hope they do something about it.

Considering that our government's idea of "doing something about it" seems to mean "train 500 cops to fight animal cruelty and cut the budget of the police while we're at it", I somehow doubt it...