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

[WeLLWeLL]

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

No problem. I'm with you man, these blind accusations and hopes of imprisonment are not needed. Though they are funny at times they really just feed into the failing establishment. Some of the comments in this thread remind me of Reefer Madness.

[Stumbleweed]

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

Drug dealers are no worse than the financial speculators that drove our economy to ****. They're people taking advantage of a flawed system to make money, often harming others along the way. Fix the system, then deal with the issues on an individual level.

[Cebby]

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.

So it would clear the jails of people doing a month in jail?

It really does nothing to stop the violence, addiction, property crime, and family problems that arise from drugs.

It would divert no resources from law enforcement since you'd still have all the problems mentioned above. There aren't any special units detailed trying to nab the neighborhood dope fiend.

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.

Portugal doesn't have our friendly cocaine producing neighbors, leading to far cheaper cocaine in America and far more users.

The European countries do have ecstasy producing states among them, leading to far cheaper prices and more ecstasy use.

Instantly decriminalizing all drugs would have very serious problems here.

Most notably would be the most violent segment of the population (drug dealers) suddenly having no money.

[baumy300]

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

Drug dealers are no worse than the financial speculators that drove our economy to ****.

Name me an accountant who cut the limbs off of the last person to wrong him.

Name me a financial speculator who did a drive by, murdered an entire family, burned down a house, and kidnapped a person because they made them angry.

Name me someone in the financial industry who drives to work with a "tail car" that follows behind them for the sole purpose of killing police officers if they happen to get pulled over.

You do all that and then maybe I'll take your post a little more seriously.

[Stumbleweed]

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

I didn't say anything about jails in that bit. Processing and constant court dates for every little drug arrest (including appeals, etc.) does nothing but gum up the system and make prosecuting real criminals take far longer, causing more holding expenses, etc.... don't see what's hard to understand about that.

Baumy, again I was just talking about the principle -- the system is allowing people to make money selling drugs, which leads to the terrible things you mentioned. The system also allowed the financial sector to get wildly out of control in the interest of making money, which led to hundreds of thousands of lost jobs (including all the suicides, medical problems, murders, etc. that come from life-changing events like that).

I'm not playing moral equivalency here, I'm just saying that you need to look at ways to fix the systemic issues instead of just blindly punishing people. That gets us nowhere and does nothing to solve the actual issues, to which our high drug use and crime rates continue to attest (while we build more and more gigantic prisons at taxpayer expense, partly through shady back-room deals with government officials).

[Cebby]

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

Name me someone in the financial industry who drives to work with a "tail car" that follows behind them for the sole purpose of killing police officers if they happen to get pulled over.

Name me an American drug dealer who did that.

[Jukeman]

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

Name me an American drug dealer who did that.

Nino Brown???




LoL

[WeLLWeLL]

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

Nino Brown???

ROFL

[Cebby]

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

Nino Brown???




LoL

For real.

If you are rich enough that you can pay someone to take the death penalty for you, you're rich enough to pay someone else to take 5-10 and handle the drugs for you.

Now, in Mexico that wouldn't surprise me a bit, but in America, paying people to shoot police on camera is probably about the last thing a drug dealer would be interested in.

[NYJets]

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.

You avoid drunk driving by planning ahead, figuring out how you are getting home after drinking. People with multiple dui's, or who drive drunk on a regular basis are making the choice to do it.

[deaduck]

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

I can see the legitamacy of legalizing drugs.

Any historian can point out the foothold organized crime gained during prohibition and continues with newer "families" to this day through the drug trade. Making the black market industry surface would reduce the motivation of many drug related violent crimes including homicide.

For example, if say WalMart was selling weed at discount prices at everyone of it's stores...local dealers aren't going to continue to wage turf wars over slinging rights.

[Cebby]

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

Making the black market industry surface would reduce the motivation of many drug related violent crimes including homicide.

For example, if say WalMart was selling weed at discount prices at everyone of it's stores...local dealers aren't going to continue to wage turf wars over slinging rights.

Obviously.

The problem is that almost all of the violence exists outside of weed, shrooms, and LSD.

The drugs that would actually affect "turf wars" are highly addictive and dangerous and damage far more than the person taking the drugs.

While I don't think legalization would cause a huge influx of heroin and crack heads, nobody is convincing me that legal and cheap cocaine, ecstasy, adderal, and oxy/percs wouldn't lead to skyrocketing deaths amongst 16-25 year old kids.

[deaduck]

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

While I don't think legalization would cause a huge influx of heroin and crack heads, nobody is convincing me that legal and cheap cocaine, ecstasy, adderal, and oxy/percs wouldn't lead to skyrocketing deaths amongst 16-25 year old kids.

Well, maintaining our status quo isn't exactly KEEPING 16-25 year olds from doing drugs.

But why wouldn't legalized drugs means safer drugs? If the FDA is monitoring cocaine, it's going to reduce the imperfections of bad cuts. If there is a recreational usage dosage of oxy/percs, kids aren't sneaking a burn patients perscription.

It's likely the availability of a cheap safer drug stream is going to reduce huffing and other more ******** activities. If cocaine was cheaper than freon and available at 7-11, you'd be reducing even risker behaviors for a high.

Ponder this, If the pharmaceutical companies were given the green light to develop product for a LEGAL recreational drug using demographic, you don't think they could invent a safer better high than all these "dangerous" drugs.

[Cebby]

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

Well, maintaining our status quo isn't exactly KEEPING 16-25 year olds from doing drugs.

It does more than you think. High prices are pretty much the only thing keeping cocaine from being more common than smoking and lack of availability is the only thing keeping oxycodone from replacing advil. Adderal, Xanax, and Percocet would certainly become the three most purchased medicine items.

If the FDA is monitoring cocaine, it's going to reduce the imperfections of bad cuts.

People dying from "bad" cocaine is very overblown. A "bad" cut of cocaine is using too much No-Doze or baking soda. What person decides to kill his customers and bring police attention on himself?

Ponder this, If the pharmaceutical companies were given the green light to develop product for a LEGAL recreational drug using demographic, you don't think they could invent a safer better high than all these "dangerous" drugs.

They already do. Oxycodone, cocaine, molly, meth, LSD, and pretty much every other drug aside from shrooms and weed was created in a lab (some with natural ingrediants).

[deaduck]

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

They already do. Oxycodone, cocaine, molly, meth, LSD, and pretty much every other drug aside from shrooms and weed was created in a lab (some with natural ingrediants).

Well duh, they were created in a lab but not for recreational usage. Everything you listed was invented with other goals in mind. Let them loose with recreational usage as the goal, we'd end up with something different....something better.

And if your argument is keeping "dangerous" substances away from people, I'd be intrested to hear what your stance is on alcohol/tobacoo.