Why prohibition really pisses me off

[Guest]

Well agagn I'M going to say, Why is someone who claims to be an ex-chem head, and someone who claims to help addicts wants what is causing these peolpes problems accessable to them? If their accessable they will relapse, I did and everyone else I know did.

And since he claims to have lived it and is now clean, why he wants it accessable to people who havent done it before? Since he stopped I'll assume it was causing bad things in his life also. I'm all about gettin addicts clean but legalisation is not the way.

 

[Jam Master Jaco]

What criminalizing the drugs does is this: it sends the message that we are too weak to make decisions for ourselves, other people (the government) need to make them for us. That is complete bullshit at its finest. You, me, and every other person has the strength to not do drugs. This is going to sound offensive but it is my honest viewpoint: if you cannot stay clean off drugs that are damaging your life, whether legal or not, you are a weak person and need help from a psychiatrist, not the police or correctional officers who will throw you in a cell for a nice 6 month "time out" to reflect on our bad behavior. It's ridiculous.

 

[Guest]

I think that the differences between mandatory jail and mandatory tx vs. legalized and regulated narcotics are, in part, the same as the differences between suicide and murder; it's the philosophical perspective that what I do to myself is inherently less criminal than what another does -to- me. Specifically because of the relatively common belief that I own my own body, life, and soul, and that I am the -sole- proprietor of those things.

Freedom has costs, and one is heightened responsibility. Another is heightened awareness.

The Liverpool Project found significant success before politics shut it down. They were giving Rx cocaine and heroin to addicts, with accompanying 'case management.' Street crime in that particular neighborhood went down by approx. 65%. The clinic was paying approx. $4.00/gram for clean, unadultered pharmaceutical-grade coke and smack, and had clamped down tight on the spread of Hepatits and HIV amongst that population

I hope that no one ever sees the need to protect me from myself by incarcerating me, seizing my home, taking away my children, and all of the other things that those more unfortunate than myself have experienced in the WO(S)D.

"I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I -want- to." (Jimi Hendrix, 'If 6 Was 9')

Regards,

moose eater

 

[TUTIDO]

Prohibition laws are made upon the Principal of Paternalistic Law. This is law that is designed to protect a citizen from oneself. To make a law based on this principal is to violate the very principles of freedom we are all supposed to be striving for. Now, I'd like to quickly give my qualifitcations before I get flamed for not "living the life." I have been addicted to one illegal drug in my life, a high end muscle relaxer, for 6 months. The second half of that time was spent getting off of them myself, no rehab. I have taken pills again, once or twice, never those and I never went back into a period of addiction. I have had friends do everything from meth to heroin, including a friend who went into a three day coma from heroin. I've watched a pregnant women smoke meth while everyone in the room, including her boyfriend, protested. And I still believe that to make a law upon the principle of paternalism is wrong. Prohibition only furthers the problems associated with addiction. Some ask how one can believe that something like heroin should be considered legal. The answer I have for you is that because I am someone who believes in true freedom. Not some psuedo bullshit americanized freedom, but actual freedom.

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't argue with what you've said TUTIDO.

(A near and dear family member) runs a mathadone clinic, as well as providing other professional services, and I'm a former licensed clinician.

Many programs have shown that the two biggest problems with IV use of street dope are, a.) adulterants, and b.) poor education on IV use. These two factors result in the vast majority of diseases, over-doses, etc.

When folks say, "But what about the theft, the (this), the (that), the child neglect, etc., etc.?" ad nauseum, I reply, simply, "Aren't there already laws governing taking what's not yours and not taking proper care of your kids??"

-and- "Show me one instance where prohibition hasn't made those things -more- prevalent, in part by spawning a lucrative black market that offers upward mobility to dealers."

The drug ed. folks, with all of their b.s. hype, came to my oldest daughter's class room this last year. She's an honors student and a violinist in two orchestras. Sixth grade kids, most of whom were more prone to thinking about soccer at recess than dope.

After the propagandizing 'hypesters' left, the (unintentional) glamorization of the taboo, 'forbidden fruit' world of drugs and drug trafficking had several 6th grade boys rolling up chewing gum wrappers like joints, and whispering, smiles on faces, "Hey maaaannnn, ya' wanna' buy some marijuana??.. "

We pull our daughter from their 'life skills' classes now-days. Moralizing and truth are mostly a parent's job. And the school is most definitely fucking it up; especially by buying into the non-scientific, propaganda b.s. of the WO(S)D. They're cultivating their own problem, and they're too stupid to even see it.. Let alone change it...

Peace,

moose eater

 

[rsteeb]

Prohibition drives violent crime

Prohibition drives violent crime

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060804/news_lz1e4stamper.html
Stopping drug violence

By Norm Stamper
August 4, 2006

Back in the early '60s, I often sneaked into Mexico at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Too young to cross legally, I'd coil up in the trunk of Charlie Romero's '54 Merc. My buddies and I would head straight for the notorious Blue Fox to guzzle Carta Blancas, shoot Quervo Gold and take in the “adult entertainment” acts.

This was not all Mexico had to offer, of course. And it was sexist and exploitative, not something I'd want my own kid doing. Yet the frontera of Mexico felt safe, even for a 16-year-old.

But that's all changed now.

From Tijuana to Matamoros, drug gang violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has taken the lives of thousands – cops, soldiers, drug dealers, often their families, other innocent citizens from both sides of the border. Even a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Many others have gone missing and are presumed dead.

In the mid-'90s, the Arellano drug cartel ruled Tijuana, perched atop the hierarchy of Mexico's multibillion-dollar illegal drug trafficking industry. Using cars, planes and trucks – and an intimate knowledge of NAFTA – the Arellanos transported hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into American cities.

They enlisted U.S. drug gangs. In 1993, in my last days as San Diego's assistant police chief, “Calle Treinte,” a local gang, was implicated in the Arellano-inspired killing of Cardinal Juan JesÚs Posadas Ocampo.

The Arellanos bribed officials on both sides of the border, spending more than $75 million annually on the Mexican side alone, to grease their illicit trafficking. And they enforced their rule not just with murder but with torture.

If Steven Soderbergh's gritty 2000 film “Traffic” caused you to squirm in your seat, the real-life story of Mexican drug dealing is even more disquieting. The brothers once kidnapped a rival's wife and children; with videotape running, they tossed two of the kids off a bridge, then sent their competitor a copy of the tape – along with the severed head of the man's wife. Another double-crosser had his skull crushed in a compression vice. And who can forget the “carne asada” BBQs, where the Arellanos would roast entire families over flaming tires?

Recently, the bodies of four men, three of them cops, were found wrapped in blankets in Rosarito Beach. Their heads showed up in Tijuana.

Corruption of public officials, useful to sustain and grow illicit drug trafficking everywhere, has always run deep in Mexico. But with the country now having supplanted Colombia as the biggest supplier of illegal drugs to the United States, and with annual profits topping $65 billion a year, the numbers of federal, state and local cops on the take has never been greater.

Drug criminals have an unlimited supply of high-powered weapons at their disposal. Kingpins pay mules, usually impoverished, always expendable, to travel to the states and pick up a firearm or two at a gun show. Using the Brady Bill “loophole” (and congressional and presidential failure to extend the ban on assault rifles), all it takes is a phony stateside driver's license and a handful of cash to walk out with semi-automatic Uzis, AR-15s, and AK-47s.

Last June in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, Alejandro Dominguez was sworn in as the city's police chief. That same day, three dark Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows pulled up to his office. Moments later, Dominguez, a reluctant top cop who only took the job at the pleading of a terrified citizenry, was dead. Police recovered 35 to 40 casings from an AR-15 assault rifle.

Mexico's drug dealers, including the “Zetas” (elite military commandos assigned to fight drugs but who've gone over to the other side), are among the most organized, proficient and prolific killers in history.

The violence does not end with the capture or the killing of major players such as the Arellano boys. (Ramón was shot and killed by the federales in February of 2002, brother Benjamín was captured a month later. Francisco has been in prison for years.) As with the illicit drug scene in the United States, thousands of low-level drug-dealing wannabes are marking time – waiting for today's kingpin to fall so they can move up.

And the violence grows, and grows.

Virtually every analysis of the Mexican “drug problem” points to the themes raised here: the inducements of big money and wide fame; the crushing poverty of those exploited by drug dealers; the entrepreneurial frenzy of expanding and protecting one's markets; the large, unquenchable American demand for drugs; and the complicity of many in law enforcement. But something's missing from the analysis: the role of prohibition.

Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds – cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) – or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and “precursors,” used, for instance, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the United States' prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption. In other words, we are the source of Mexico's “drug problem.”

The remedy is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.

Regulated legalization of all drugs – with stiffened penalties for driving impaired or furnishing to kids – would bring an immediate halt to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the costs of these drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and treatment, and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive.

In the ideal world, Mexico and the United States would move to repeal prohibition simultaneously (along with Canada). But even if we moved unilaterally, sweeping and lasting improvements to public safety and public health would be felt on both sides of the border.

(Tragically and predictably, just as Mexico's parliament was about to reform its U.S.-modeled drug laws, the Bush administration stepped in, pressuring President Vicente Fox to abandon the enlightened position he'd championed for two years.)

With drugs stringently controlled and regulated by our own government, Mexico would once again become a safe, inviting place for American tourists – and for its own citizens, who pay the steepest price of all for our insistence on waging an immoral, unwinnable war on drugs.

Stamper was executive assistant chief of police in San Diego before leaving to become chief of the Seattle Police Department in 1994. He is an advisory board member of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and author of “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing” (Nation Books, 2005).

 

[bobby87]

shitty country.. shitty goverment

 

[Guest]

I agree that making drugs illegal, does make a black market, but they do ruin lives.
I'm done with this topic because it just angers me to chat with people who think chemical addiction is related to a persons will power, that "its my own body" argument is a crock of shit. If your harming yourself you need help you will thank them later. I have a last thought for you guys,

Have any of you ever know a drug former addict who says "damn you for getting me clean and getting my life togather, I was far better off while I was on hard drugs"

 

[Guest]

Dank1,

I know that this is a sensitive topic for you, and I'd completely understand your not responding to this, as you've already said that you're done with it.

But I don't think that the dichotomy or continuum is as rigid or black and white as that.

I've known of addicts to quit through a variety of means -without- having the 'system' take their life apart, who said, "thanks for sticking by me while I (did that)." They didn't require all the abuse of the WO(S)D. Or the mind-fucking of the Betty Ford Clinic or Stewart Smalley.

I've known of functional addicts who worked harder than anyone around them, and kept it humming, who were clean when they died, and the 'cleaning up' certainly didn't save them. Jerry Garcia; he kept three or four bands occupied at all times, and no one could keep up with him. He said that the biggest hassle of being addicted was trying to score all the time.

The Liverpool Project weaned persons at their own pace, at their own desire, and many of them continued being functional parents and employees throughout that process. A concept unknown to most Americans because of our rigid beliefs and experiences, many of which are perpetuated by prohibition, rather than by the illicit dope. Just as the routine over-doses and spread of diseases are.

In New Mexico, a phenomenon emerged; they discovered that they were having significant numbers of over-doses immediately after a heroin dealer would be busted. 'Why??' one might ask...

Because the black market deals in unregulated commodities of unknown quality, and leaving a dealer with stuff that's been stepped on until it's barely recognizable, who happened to get popped, and scoring from someone with much cleaner stuff, leads to O.D.s and death for those unaccustomed to the new product's purity.

New Mexico was a first 'trial/pilot state' to allow EMTs and family members/significant others to stock narcan for treating over-doses. "Dead junkies don't recover."

And some folks with severe biases, albeit in very limited numbers, have even found ways to use -that- punitively.

I could go on. And I won't talk about personal history on my end, though there is -way- more than you might think.

I will mention that Nixon scuttled many studies during his tenure (including the Schaffer Commission report that recommended legalizing cannabis), and one of the studies was of G.I.s returning from S.E. Asia who had done a lot of opiates; 4% went on to live what we consider to be the standard, stereo-typical life of an opiate addict within a year after their return. That means that 96% did not. Individual metabolisms -do- play a major role in determining the very personal experience called addiction. That's not good, bad or ugly. It's more like looking at two cars after a rain storm, and saying, "Hey, mine got wet, and your's didn't." It just is...

I'd be happy to PM back and forth re. this if you like, but I'll also respect it if you don't want to respond, if that stays your decision..

"Say a prayer for the every day people. Say a prayer for the salt of the earth. Say a prayer for the common foot soldier.." (Rolling Stones, 'Salt of the Earth')

Best regards,

moose eater

 

[Guest]

I agree rehab clinics are bull shit, their tactics are completely as some would say WACK. I know what your sayin about the people who can handle it, it also has to do with your life before the drug, there are many reasony why people get addicted but eventually after they get high enough to forget and then they get addicted to the feeling, their no longer covering anything up they just want to get a fix to feel normal. I was more mad at the others guys Moose, you've been nothing but a help to me, thank you

 

[robobond]

I agree that making drugs illegal, does make a black market, but they do ruin lives.
I'm done with this topic because it just angers me to chat with people who think chemical addiction is related to a persons will power, that "its my own body" argument is a crock of shit. If your harming yourself you need help you will thank them later. I have a last thought for you guys,

Have any of you ever know a drug former addict who says "damn you for getting me clean and getting my life togather, I was far better off while I was on hard drugs"

To begin with it is ones personal choice to do drugs, whatever they may be in the first place. Everyone knows cocaines an addictive drug. Meth is an addictive drug therefore people who take them take the risk of becoming addicted. It's still your choice. Im sure that just because cocaine were legal people wouldnt be rushing out to buy it. Maybe some new people would but that is their decision they make. Then again people know ciggarettes are addicting yet still continue to purchase them and new people try them everyday. I call that the darwin process at work. Sure ciggarettes may be a far step from cocaine addiction but the same principle that these people are stupid enough to continue to buy them. Hence they should be weened out of society. Let them make their bad choices but always offer help and let them decide whether or not to take it. Now again like I said I dont necessarily agree people should be arrested and locked up. But for drugs with addictive propertys they should be placed in treatment centers and we should focus our tax dollars into a higher success rate at these kinds of places.

 

[creator]

Why is someone who claims to be an ex-chem head, and someone who claims to help addicts wants what is causing these peolpes problems accessable to them?

Teens report that cannabis is easier to obtain than tobacco, so we know that legalization need not make drugs more accessable. Quite the contrary.

Prior to prohibition, cocaine and heroin were legally available to everyone, and yet, the president did not avail himself. The average heroin user was a middle-class housewife sipping laudanum.

And since he claims to have lived it and is now clean,

She.

why he wants it accessable to people who havent done it before?

Accessability isn't really an issue. She did not quit because she could not
obtain it. What really controls drug use and abuse in society are social
customs and moors. Unfortunately, prohibition prevents the evolution of such customs. I can show my kids how to drink responsibly. I can not show them how to use cannabis responsibly. Prohibition just pushes drugs out of the mainstream and into a deviant stream. What prevents you from going out, buying a bottle of vodka and getting shitfaced right now?

Since he stopped I'll assume it was causing bad things in his life also.

Exactly.

I'm all about gettin addicts clean but legalisation is not the way.

Whereas abdicating the production and distribution to crooks who work on commission is?

Would you have a problem with legal opium and coca products?

Suppose one could only get heroin or cocaine by prescription?

Contrary to popular misconception, prohibition is at the bottom, not the top of the regulatory scale. We have more control over cat food than we do the so-called "controlled drugs and substances." If I wanted to obtain cocaine or heroin I would ask a teenager where to get it.

 

[Guest]

I feel privledged and flattered to receive your thanks, Dank1.

I'll PM you on personal observations, experiences, and sources to research.

I'm off to disassemble some playground equipment for my kids, so I can get it welded, and set in concrete before Fall is upon us here.

The garden's in great shape, despite being more or less owned by the yellow-jackets during the day-light hours, i've got awesome-sized broccoli heads of a tight and healthy nature, more snow peas than I can eat if I were to stir-fry every day all day, my potatoes literally resemble over-grown hedges, and I've even now, suprisingly, got -corn-(!!!!) on my stalks (not a typically successful crop in the sub-arctic; this year I did a mixed yellow and white kernel variety called 'Peaches and Cream')

In balance, I'm living in a really screwed up political system, able to functionally use all of my body parts, I have three healthy kids, an amazing wife, a great dog, relatively stable privacy, a healthy garden, a flower box at the end of the drive that's mind-blowing, (made out of spruce poles), a freezer full of wild-caught fish and meat, and a nice blue sky above today (though now I'll have to water in order to bring on the rain ;^>)

I guess that where that was headed is this; with all of that going on, most of my questions about serious dope having been answered during adolescence and early adulthood, personal physical and emotional pain being less than times gone by, and focusing on more of a balanced perspective, I rarely feel any strong urges to put anything serious (organic or otherwise) into my body today (I'm fortunate).

And, for me, it's a relative level of peace that makes being seriously adrift feel less necessary. That, and personally learned lessons of excesses. It never has been Uncle Schmuck that kept me from destructive personal habits. The more the fascisti said, "You'd better not!!" when I was a kid, the more I said, "Oh yeah!! Watch this!!"

Even as kids, we knew that our bodies were ours.

Peace,

moose eater

 

[mars2112]

I find it funny coming from a guy who claims to be an ex-addict and someone who claims they try to help addicts, wants the things that are ruining their live accessable. I think in a round about way that makes you a hypocrite. Is being poor an excuse to become a junky, poor people have less money to spend on essentials, not to mention a drug habbit that is not required to live,m again these people fall under my stupid list.

I never said i want drugs "accessable" to addicts. if you read my post again, i said i think health care professionals should be in charge of distributing drugs to addicts who depend on them, so they can be weaned off (for those who can) gradually.. also so addicts don't end up in and out of jail which makes their situations worse. doesn't make my a hypocrit to want things better for addicts. people shouldn't be buying drugs on the streets where there is no quality control whatsoever. there is no education, no harm reduction. if addicts got drugs at clinics, communicable diseases would cease and so would most overdoses. they would have access to health care and access to social support. look at the european models of harm reduction.

and i'm sorry you find poor people with drug problems "stupid."

Why is someone who claims to be an ex-chem head, and someone who claims to help addicts wants what is causing these peolpes problems accessable to them?

because access isn't the issue. like creator said, alcohol is accessible EVERYWHERE but that doesn't make everyone alcoholics.

Sorry if that sounds harsh but thats the truth, if you cant accept that, then maybe you havent moved on yet

Your opinion is not "the truth" it is simply your opinion.

look.. i respect you a lot for getting control of your problems and overcoming them.. trust me i know how difficult it is.. but we obviously differ in opinions on this issue. i will never be convinced that jail or criminal justice is the right way to deal with drug addiction and use. it hasn't in 100 years and it never will.

 

[Guest]

I think that something that's not been well-defined here, mars, Dank1, et al, is the difference between a physical addiction (as medically defined), a psychological addiction (re. serious cravings/difficult-to-control urges), and the mamby pamby John Bradshaw-esque, neo-mental health (self-serving and somewhat manipulative) definition of addictions that includes everything from gambling to milk shakes.

Personally speaking, I still heavily doubt that most amphetamines and stimulants, to include coca products, etc, are anything more than (sometimes intensely) psychologically addictive in nature, despite changes in status that, in my opinion, were more or less politically motivated.

Certainly there is a rebound period where a person's metabolism re-adjusts to the absence of whatever stimulus there was that's absent after they've quit.

The physical addiction, that brings on serious symptoms of actual physical illness, is another matter altogether, and though more intense, is not really the source of long-term cravings.

For those who don't get to the point of using where using creates more anguish than not, the psychological cravings can easily last -years-; well beyond whatever physical 'need' has subsided. And certainly well beyond even a mandatory minimum prison sentence; especially when most/many jails & prisons have dope inside of them... And, most often, even fewer responsibilities exist for those inside prisons than those on the outside... Which clearly, in my opinion, takes away some of the more serious motivation for cleaning up.

And now I'm back to work, amidst the yellow-jackets!!

moose eater

 

[Guest]

If your poor you dont have the money to waste on drugs, so yes I find it stupid to waste money that could be going to their kids, or to buy themselves new things or food, I wouldn't smoke pot if it ate all my money like these hard drugs do. and if YOU go back and read my post I said that I'm all for clinics that wean people off, I specifically refered to the herion clinic in Amsterdam remember?

Creator-- dude you cant blamne society for your own problems. PERIOD

What prevents you from going out, buying a bottle of vodka and getting shitfaced right now?

I dont drink liqour

Suppose one could only get heroin or cocaine by prescription?

that is a totally different story, and here you can get cocaine on prescription, my buddies dad had some when he had to have an infected part of his sinus cavity removed.

alcohol is accessible EVERYWHERE but that doesn't make everyone alcoholics........i will never be convinced that jail or criminal justice is the right way to deal with drug addiction and use. it hasn't in 100 years and it never will

go look at the stats and I would put a fat joint on their being more alcoholics in the world than drug addicts, I wasnt really sayin that jail is the answer but 6 months without drugs and the physical side of the addiction will be gone. Sorry about being such a dick about it but it allmost cost me my life, I dont reccomend this road for anyone. I think we have the same agenda but we just go at it differently.

 

[Guest]

>>>Sorry about being such a dick about it but it allmost cost me my life, I dont reccomend this road for anyone. I think we have the same agenda but we just go at it differently.<<<

That's the part of the learnin' I was referring to, Dank1, that squelches the psychological cravings that may or may not accompany a physical addiction.

When a person gets to a specific point of personal cost/grief/pain, and I believe that point is different for each person, that pain/memory/etc. then can out-weigh the pleasure, and the -psychological- attraction can lessen. But that's experiential, not easily taught by another. Certainly not mandated by the 'gummint.'

I haven't PMed yet, but I will.

Regards,

moose eater

 

[Guest]

>>>Sorry about being such a dick about it but it allmost cost me my life, I dont reccomend this road for anyone. I think we have the same agenda but we just go at it differently.<<<

That's the part of the learnin' I was referring to, Dank1, that squelches the psychological cravings that may or may not accompany a physical addiction.

You lost me man, what do you mean?

When a person gets to a specific point of personal cost/grief/pain, and I believe that point is different for each person, that pain/memory/etc. then can out-weigh the pleasure, and the -psychological- attraction can lessen. But that's experiential, not easily taught by another. Certainly not mandated by the 'gummint.'

I agree, its not really the governments place to tell some-one what to put in their body, but and its a big BUT when it is harming you I think someone should step in weather it be a friend, relative or the cops. Their are reasons why these drugs are illegal besides the addictive side effects, like thought preception, emotional preception, basically it makes your reality different from what is really real and important.

 

[Guest]

Robobond- just because you know things about drugs doesn't mean that eveyone does, what about chirch school kids, do you think they know the facts. NO, I have dated many chirch girls and they are all the same, they think that drugs are bad because they get you high. Not for the right reasons, their sheltered, oh and what about homeschool kids, you think they know all this? You know it by experience just like me and all the others posting on this thread.

 

[creator]

If your poor you dont have the money to waste on drugs, so yes I find it stupid to waste money that could be going to their kids, or to buy themselves new things or food,

Yes, the high cost of illicit drugs causes severe problems. As one user once said, it isn't the drugs, it's the lifestyle.

East Africans have been chewing a stimulant herb called "Khat" for hundreds of years with few adverse effects. It costs pennies per dose. We Canadians prohibited it in the late 1990s. The price has gone up an order of magnitude.
It now costs $10-$20.00 per dose and some African immigrants are spending all their money on it. Others are trafficking it to make money on the side and support their habits. Sound familiar?

People with access to a clean, affordable supply of heroin will experience
constipation, but that's about it.

Creator-- dude you cant blamne society for your own problems. PERIOD

I wasn't blaming society. I was pointing out that, prior to prohibition, heroin
and cocaine use were largely non-problematic. Recall that Coca-Cola once contained cocaine. It was when we outlawed these substances that things got ugly.

I dont drink liqour

And I don't use Prozac, even though I could. These drugs are "accessable" to both of us, and yet we do not use them. The point being, what makes us use or abstain is something besides accessablity.

that is a totally different story, and here you can get cocaine on prescription, my buddies dad had some when he had to have an infected part of his sinus cavity removed.

Yep, and interestingly, people who use morphine medicinally rarely become
"addicts," even when they use morphine over a long period of time. The majority of Vietnam vets who were addicted to heroin quit when they returned home. The lesson here is that set and setting are very important.

go look at the stats and I would put a fat joint on their being more alcoholics in the world than drug addicts,

Perhaps in the Western world, where alcohol is the recreational drug of choice. There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is that
we drink alcohol. If we injected or snorted it I suspect it would be less popular. Another is that alcohol disinhibits, which is great at parties and for loosening up dates.

Where I grew up in North Vancouver, there were magic mushrooms all over the place every fall. Literally free hallucinogens for everyone. And yet, few people used them and those who did would use them for awhile and then stop on their own. Again, accessablity is not that significant.

I wasnt really sayin that jail is the answer but 6 months without drugs and the physical side of the addiction will be gone.

A survey of Vancouver IDUs found that most of them were introduced to heroin in prison.

Another significant but overlooked issue is housing. If the addict emerges from prison and returns to their old neighbourhood, (or alleyway), and circle of drug-using friends, they will often start using again. Set and setting are key.

If you are self-medicating emotional pain and coping with low self-esteem,
then being put in a cage isn't going to help. We could put five addicts through Harvard for the cost of locking up one.

Sorry about being such a dick about it but it allmost cost me my life, I dont reccomend this road for anyone. I think we have the same agenda but we just go at it differently.

No problem, but I think many cannabis legalization advocates mistakenly think that cannabis should be legalized because it is (mostly) harmless. Many even argue that legalizing cannabis will allow the police to focus on hard drugs. However, the more dangerous the substance, the less it makes sense to abdicate its manufacturing and distribution to crooks who work on commission and sell drugs of unknown origin, potency and purity to anyone of any age, anytime, anywhere, no questions asked.

In fact, I would argue that we should legalize hard drugs before we legalize cannabis BECAUSE they are more harmful.

Clearly prohibition did not prevent you or Mars2112 from getting messed up. Do you think it will protect your children better than it protected you?