72 hours to end World's most senseless War! - Page 19

"for me the images of failed drug regulation trials (such as free needle-exchanges and the resulting surge of dumps of used needles littering open streets) are much more saddening than anything else."

That's not a strategy to do anything, that's a needle exchange.

"I guess that the liberal voice is stronger on the Internet,"

No, centralised distribution of information is weaker on the Internet so over a given length of time surfing teh interwebs you hear/read a broader array of views from the hundreds of individual voices than those that can possibly be expressed by a few monolithic media outlets. Now you may believe that these organisations do a good job of representing the broader population's views, I don't.

"I am strongly in favour of taking increasingly punitive measurements to tackle drug use, and I do not encourage people to sign this unless you have spent an exhaustive amount of time studying this subject and have an informed opinion. "

Have you done an exhausting amount of research on the subject? Given the evidence you have presented I would estimate no, but I can understand how you would miss your own hypocrisy here. Concision has the disturbing effect that people come to believe that agreeing with the status quo means you need present no evidence to support a position while when disagreeing with it you need mountains of evidence. Where in fact in rational debate all positions require an evidence based approach.

"You're as closed minded as the people who you say shouldn't be able to vote and sterilized."

Don't take me seriously when I say that individuals should be rendered infertile because of an opinion, I was joking in poor taste. Do take me seriously when I call you a moron for agreeing with the statement "Drugs are bad and should be illegal, drug takers and dealers should be pursued and jailed."

"Some people choose not to do drugs because they are illegal, can you blame them for being law abiding citizens?"

No I don't blame them, however if they try then to stop other people taking drugs by throwing them into overcrowded jails then I might have a problem. No one who is worth listening to is seriously saying everyone should take drugs or that drugs are "cool".

"I don't believe there's anything wrong with current policy really. If you want to do drugs you can. You will become a less productive member of society and because of that, you rightly take the risk of being punished by the authorities for your drug taking. It's a good status quo."

So your position is that "unproductive members of society should be punished with jail time." Does that mean that if a person's net input and output is balanced at zero they should be jailed at the cost of society? Of course not. So you are assuming that people who take drugs tend to take more from society and give less back than people who don't. Even then the real PRACTICAL answer is to weigh the cost of the current war on drugs, which we all must agree is huge, against the cost of the increased drug use after decriminalisation which the vast majority of statistical evidence seems to agree is virtually zero. Unless of course your real position is actually: "Drugs are bad and should be illegal, drug takers and dealers should be pursued and jailed." which if you took the time to think about it a bit, it is.

"Less drug use in these areas because of less poverty/better living standards."

The point is a comparison of before and after not between societies. Unless you mean that in rich societies everyone that wants drugs can get them anyway but in poorer societies lots of people don't do drugs because of the possibility of punishment which we'll set aside as an interesting opinion. "Legal weed would have a massive take up rate with blacks in America compared to the relatively wealthy Dutch." Ah yes, you do seem to be saying just that, if I can translate you mean roughly "poor black folks who are desperate for drugs just can't get them right now because of all the law enforcement, but give sambo a legal high and he'll be all up in that like white on rice." Which once more I'll set aside under the label "interesting".

"And not all drugs are the same. Sorry but you got your head up your ass if you think legal heroin/pcp/crack/ice is a good thing."

This seems to be the opinion of the US government, just like you they have no reasonable grounds for it other than... "Yea but they get you SUPERDUPER HIGH plus they are addictive ... like prescription medicines, sugar, alcohol, gambling, video gaming and stuff."

"Legalising drugs will not reduce drug use, but will shift the wealth from from criminal organisations to governments and corporations."

Key mistake here, money doesn't just vanish into thin air once criminal organisations get hold of it, a great deal of it ends up in the hands of governments and corporations through campaign contributions, the stock market and arms sales to name a few.

"Drug cartels generally don't cause problems for people not involved in drugs. "

I wouldn't know, however the massive policing effort that does nothing to stop drug use costs taxpayers.

"The real problem is the drug users because:
A. They can be violent and cause increased crimes. Alcohol makes people violent too, but at a lower rate (most adults drink alcohol but not many commit alcohol related crimes, not many adults do drugs but a lot of those who do commit crimes)."

It was at this point I stopped reading due to fear over becoming infected with dumb. If you can't work out the glaring assumptions in this statement you should probably just stop having strong opinions about anything.

There's a decent troll in the thread named VIB, being fed by a gang of evangelists for rope, who sets a big old straw man in the form of millions of pro decriminalisation web sites, his observations are not entirely inaccurate but they all misleading or irrelevant.

"- it's natural so it can't possibly be bad"

Retarded.

"- three wrongs make one right. Aka tobacco and alcohol are also bad."

50 wrongs, there's a lot of recreational drugs that are pursued in the drug war other than pot, they should all be decriminalised.

"- points to country that didn't legalize but claim they did anyway: portugal, netherlands, switzerlands are popular targets"

Yep not legal, decriminalised; an end to their drug war which is what this thread is about. "In July 2001, Portugal became the first European country to formalize decriminalization of drug possession for personal use, when they introduced Law 30/2000. The law decriminalized the use, possession and acquisition of all types of illicit substances for personal use, defined as being up to ten days' supply of that substance." So in portugal if you have a few grams of heroin on you the police don't care. I would argue that this isn't the same as the policy in the U.S. and that as such it represents an alternative to the war on drugs and that data comming out of portugal about changes in drug use is relevant to the discussion.

"- points out violence of drug cartels, but forgets about violence of drug junkies"

Yep, because people high on opiates are all about the getting out there and doing the robbing and the murders. (Please PLEASE note the sarcasm of that previous statement. You ever been with someone while they are high on opiates? Perhaps in a hospital environment, how much get-up-and-go did you observe in them?) Also don't forget the violence of the prison system jammed with people who committed crimes to fund an addiction to a substance the price of which was wildly inflated by tax payer funded law enforcement.

"- talks of conspiracy theories of prisons who wants to profit of arresting junkies, but ignores lobbies of billionaire drug lords"

Are you implying that a billionaire drug lord would prefer decriminalisation? The drug lord who made his Billions under the current system?

Or Prozac. Or Ritalin.

There is actually an interview on the BBC in which one of the reports authors - Former president of Colombia, Cesar Gaviria - rebuts these statistics specifically.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9502000/9502660.stm

If you can get this whereever you are the response is about 45 seconds in. If not I'll quote for you:

"They are talking of the very high consumption of the 80s, not the last 20 years... if you look at 20 years that hasn't happened. The other argument is methamphetamines in the us; more addicts to methamphetamines than to cocaine, so people move from one drug to the next, if they find difficult to consume a drug they just look for another drug"