What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

[Cebby]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Do you really think people WANT to sell drugs???

Yes.

On the "what you have to do"/Money ratio, it's easily the best job in the country short of "inherit a lot of money"

That's just about as bad as doing 'hits' for a living.

That's quite the hyperbole.

If you are going to watch one..make it this one.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't drunk driving generally the result of drinking alcohol? Is it common for drug dealers to sell alcohol now?

Drunk drivers are the most underpenalized criminals in America. Line them up and gun them down.

[Jukeman]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Yes.

On the "what you have to do"/Money ratio, it's easily the best job in the country short of "inherit a lot of money"

Trust, they dont WANT too...They also dont have to but its the best option for them to make a living......ask any dealer(not a young one) do he WANT to sell drugs for a living....if he had a choice to receive a legit job, trust he will take it....nobody wants to live watching there back 24/7...

[Cebby]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Trust, they dont WANT too...They also dont have to but its the best option for them to make a living......ask any dealer(not a young one) do he WANT to sell drugs for a living....if he had a choice to receive a legit job, trust he will take it....nobody wants to live watching there back 24/7...

The average suburban drug dealer (especially when talking about marijuana) could almost universally find employment.

While I'm sure it may be difficult to find a job in some inner city or country areas, I still think the bigger hindrance is doing 10 times the work and making a 5th of the money. I'd reckon there are very, very, very few people truly "watching their back 24/7" and a person who would be certainly wouldn't want to seek real employment.

[Jukeman]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

The average suburban drug dealer (especially when talking about marijuana) could almost universally find employment.

While I'm sure it may be difficult to find a job in some inner city or country areas, I still think the bigger hindrance is doing 10 times the work and making a 5th of the money. I'd reckon there are very, very, very few people truly "watching their back 24/7" and a person who would be certainly wouldn't want to seek real employment.

Some guys would love to have benefits....

Young guys who im speaking for most likely are just hoppers and all they see is fast money and dont know better, bout time they are older they would have a record and cant get a decent job(even if its weed)

The guys who really are watching their backs are the ones in charge and dont even block hug themselves.....Even they have a job(of course if they wasnt cought) by starting up a business or opening up some real estate from using the drug money.....

Technically, the "boss" is not physically selling drugs but he is making most of the money despite him not being on a corner, if he wanted to sell drugs he would be out there himself....

[Whitesox]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Yes.

On the "what you have to do"/Money ratio, it's easily the best job in the country short of "inherit a lot of money"

That's quite the hyperbole.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't drunk driving generally the result of drinking alcohol? Is it common for drug dealers to sell alcohol now?

Drunk drivers are the most underpenalized criminals in America. Line them up and gun them down.

Alchohal may not be an illegal drug, but it is still a drug, and the point is people that have done nothing get killed all the time be people driving under the influence of drugs. People do get killed by drivers under the influence of illegal drugs too. And I agree 100 % About that last comment.

That post was aimed in the general direction of innocent people being killed by people who were doing illegal things.

[WeLLWeLL]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

This. 100%. Drugs can effect anyone. Period. Illegal drugs are NEVER good.

And anyone dealing drugs to make a living is a scumbag. That's just about as bad as doing 'hits' for a living. Scum.

You and the one you are responding to are both generalizing and stereotyping all illicit drug users. It seems as if you are basing movies like New Jack City as your sole motive for disliking drugs. There are mass amounts of people out there who do the 9 to 5 and use or deal marijuana on the side to their friends or people they know. It all depends on the person and their motivation or ability to make a living. I'm positive that some dealers are more than likely going to make more money dealing than they would working for minimum wage. So when you have bills, insurance, rent, and other necessities to pay for can you really blame them? Do you really believe that these guys are selling to 13 year old kids? C'mon now, and why shouldn't the 13 year old hold the same weight in blame if he is the one using? Maybe in some instances this scenario holds true, however the scenario just breathes anti-drug motives and irrational thinkikng.

I have no problem with marijuana and I feel that it should be legalized for medicinal purposes and decriminalized among the states. Our jail cells are overflooding with people who merely get detained for possession and that alone. Is a person that goes to jail over half a joint in their car really a criminal and a threat to society? I think not. If the government withdrew some of the billions of dollars they have spent on anti-drug ads and programs that are clearly failing and decided to legalize and tax marijuana than I am pretty sure our debt would be fading a whole lot faster than what it is doing right now. Numerous former Latin American presidents have pleaded with Obama to end the war on drugs because it is a failing war. By legailzig illicit drugs there is a serious chance that you can put an end to or at least slow down the production and gains made by cartels and other big-time people.

My problems mainly lie with "harder" drugs such as cocaine, meth, heroin, oxycotten (when abused), and it pretty much ends there. LSD and MDMA do not exactly fall in that category when they are done in a controlled situation. However the other drugs do much more harm than any amount of marijauna smoking and tripping could ever do to someone. But then again it all comes down to the person using it and them allowing a drug to essentialy control their life.

[Cebby]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Our jail cells are overflooding with people who merely get detained for possession and that alone.

I'd be willing to bet that that is simply not true. You generally don't get locked up for simple possession unless you're an idiot and have gotten arrested numerous times.

By legailzig illicit drugs there is a serious chance that you can put an end to or at least slow down the production and gains made by cartels and other big-time people.

Legalizing illicit drugs would put an end to that. Legalizing weed would do nothing.

It might put a minor dent in the border cartels in Mexico.

It would do nothing to stop the warring in Columbia, other South American countries, and Afghanistan.

My problems mainly lie with "harder" drugs such as cocaine, meth, heroin, oxycotten (when abused), and it pretty much ends there.

Which account for the vast majority of actual problems (and concentrated money) with drugs.

LSD and MDMA do not exactly fall in that category when they are done in a controlled situation.

Molly is probably "worse" for you than anything aside from meth.

[Stumbleweed]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Taking all the money out of selling drugs would make it not such a lucrative opportunity for people. The solutions are obvious, but people are too blinded by years and years of demonization, punitive justice, and lack of education to see that there are more sensible ways of dealing with drugs as a societal issue; namely, as a medical/social issue, not a criminal one.

Yes, all drugs should be decriminalized. If you do illegal **** to obtain your drugs or do illegal **** while high on drugs, you get punished just the same as you would otherwise.

[NYJets]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Alchohal may not be an illegal drug, but it is still a drug, and the point is people that have done nothing get killed all the time be people driving under the influence of drugs. People do get killed by drivers under the influence of illegal drugs too. And I agree 100 % About that last comment.

That post was aimed in the general direction of innocent people being killed by people who were doing illegal things.

Nobody ever argues that it should be legal to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, so I'm not really sure what you are arguing against.

[Whitesox]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Nobody ever argues that it should be legal to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, so I'm not really sure what you are arguing against.

It is not like some guy said, "I am gonna go drunk driving tonight!" The point is you do stupid stuff while you are under the influence of drugs, and it is not always you who pays for it.

And Tumbleweed, give me a break. Decriminalizing all drugs would bring this country to the ground.

[ryan36]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

I don't know that legalizing pot would bring this country to the ground. I think Cebby will agree with me that the spread option does at least 13 times a year I will say that making pot legal wouldn't really matter, and yes most people in jail are addicts. Their crimes are all drug related or alcohol. Or sex assault

[Whitesox]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

I don't know that legalizing pot would bring this country to the ground. I think Cebby will agree with me that the spread option does at least 13 times a year I will say that making pot legal wouldn't really matter, and yes most people in jail are addicts. Their crimes are all drug related or alcohol. Or sex assault

He said all drugs.

[Stumbleweed]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

All drugs. That would bring America to the ground why? I didn't say legalize them, I just said stop penalizing people for simple possession of ALL drugs. If you can prove that they are selling them, doing illegal things to get them, or doing illegal things while on them, then you're punished as normal. It would cut down all the processing for low-level offenders, stop messing people's futures up because they have a drug problem (background checks), divert resources from law enforcement to rehabilitation and medical care, and serve to bring the communities of drug users out of the shadows so that social programs can reach them more easily.

I would argue for an eventual legalization of all drugs, but America isn't ready for that after a hundred years of prohibition... decriminalization focuses on things that we can help immediately such as the crush of drug crimes in the court system, the affects that a bad background check has on future lives, the need for rehabilitation instead of punitive justice that has been proven over and over again not to be an effective deterrent, etc.

If you (a drug addict) are constantly worried about being thrown in jail simply for doing the drug that you're addicted to (which many severe users NEED to survive at this point in their lives), are you going to go out and take advantage of the social programs, rehabilitation, etc. is available to you? Absolutely not. Granted, many people would still be unwilling to seek treatment, but you can't force people to get help until they get in legal trouble -- but if they do get in trouble, then you can put them in rehabilitation programs instead of JAILS/PRISONS (where their problems are exacerbated, and they often can still get the drugs they want). Countries and municipalities that have needle exchange programs, pill checks, etc. have all reported great results -- these forward-thinking medically-based programs go a long way towards relieving the public sector burden required to handle all the health problems that IV and chemical drug use causes.

Do some research -- Portugal totally removed penalties for marijuana and now has the lowest usage rates in Europe. The simple-minded "logic" used by people in favor of punitive justice and drug criminalization makes me laugh.

[WeLLWeLL]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

It is not like some guy said, "I am gonna go drunk driving tonight!" The point is you do stupid stuff while you are under the influence of drugs, and it is not always you who pays for it.

And Tumbleweed, give me a break. Decriminalizing all drugs would bring this country to the ground.

Courtesy of Time:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

<!-- /div.header --> Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?

By Maia Szalavitz Sunday, Apr. 26, 2009





<script type="text/javascript"> var ad = adFactory.getAd(88, 31); ad.setPosition(8) ad.write(); </script>Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
<!-- Begin Article Side Bar --> <!-- Begin Article Side Bar Copy -->
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.

"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

[Stumbleweed]

Re: What Are Some Rights Citizens Have When Dealing With The Law?

Thanks for posting that WellWell -- I just read that the other day and couldn't find the link.