We need a force field and robotic guards with laser guns.
Dig this.
MORELIA, Mexico—Fierce fighting among apparent rival drug gangs in western Mexico left 28 dead, while in a nearby state more than 700 people huddled in shelters after fleeing villages that had become battlegrounds.
The violence, which appeared to be unrelated, escalated Wednesday in the western states of Nayarit and Michoacan, where drug cartels have been warring for territory ...
Police found 28 men lying dead and four others wounded on the road littered with bullet casings from high-powered weapons and 10 abandoned vehicles.
All I'm asking is give heavily armed robots a chance.
Would it not make sense to legalize these drugs, thereby eliminating the black market which funds these vicious cartels?
ReplyDeleteYes, John, yes it would. And then we could take the new drug addicts created by the lowering of barriers to entry for drug use and make them teachers through a government education program! What a brilliant idea!
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like the barrier to entry could get much lower at this point, despite our ongoing war on drugs.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I think that if SavOn was selling methamphetamines, you might see an uptick in addicts.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure, KT.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't go out and buy currently-illegal drugs if they became legal.
I don't think you would, either.
Neither would any of the people I know well enough to speculate about.
Except for the ones who use (or have used) illegal drugs, in spite of them being illegal.
But, nobody I know has ever told me that they *would* use them, but don't just because they are illegal.
And even if they would: how many people with a persistent drug habit, equal one drug-dealing-related murder?
Final thought: Is compassionate concern for drug users the main reason for the current drug laws? If so, wouldn't this be another example of the Government Compassion(TM) that you (correctly, I think) point out is so expensive that it will bankrupt us in other contexts?
I dunno, man. My direct and prolonged interaction with drug addicts suggests that this ould be a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteBut is it a worse idea than arresting 1.5 million people per year, and imprisoning 500,000 of them?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Arrests_and_incarceration
Or continuing to promote what is essentially a civil war in Mexico/Central America/South America?
Or spending at least $44 billion/year extra on law enforcement?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Costs_to_taxpayers
All, I might add, while *still having a drug addict problem*?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Efficacy
I'm not arguing that it is good to have free access to the currently illegal drugs. I'm arguing that the "compassion" for drug addicts that drives us to create these laws, is costing us billions, destroying millions of lives, and having no clearly demonstrable benefit.
Can you say failed state!
ReplyDeleteThey're using ultra-lites to fly drugs over the border so that force field will have to extend pretty high.
Tim, what you're seeing is the results of a failed societal morality. Loosening it even further will not result in improvement. If you want to legalize drugs, make sure you've got plenty of guns available in your house and you've done a decent job making a safe room. Also, invest your retirement funds outside the country, preferrably in places that won't be printing money to cover medical and maintenance costs for drug addicts.
ReplyDeleteDruggies are pretty bad at paying for their own needs.
Kelly, the Cylons can deal with flying things, by your command.
ReplyDelete;-)
Aren't we already doing that though when we shell out tax dollars to pay for ever-increasing prosecution and incarceration of non-violent offenders? Not to mention the billions upon billions in revenue we're handing over to violent cartels, money which could be spent domestically (not to mention taxed) were it legal...
ReplyDeleteThis drug problem did not always exist. Why choose a path that cements in a high(er) level of human destruction? To save people who are currently inmates? If drugs were legal, just what would they be doing? Reading Plato and sipping chai?
ReplyDeleteA higher level of destruction? You mean higher than the thousands upon thousands who are needlessly incarcerated for daring to consume the 'wrong' chemical? The story after story of no-knock SWAT team raids that end up with people dead just because they were growing plants that are 'bad'? The almost weekly stories about mass graves being found in the Mexican desert?
ReplyDelete