Interesting video. I personally don’t put much weight to emotional arguments like this. I have a family member in jail right now for drug offenses. He’s a junkie, and I’m really more upset that they’re letting him out than anything else.
That being said, I’m upset they’re letting him out because I know it won’t be long before he’s back on the junk. You see there are very few people in America who WANT recreational drugs (including off-label use of pharmaceuticals) who DON’T get their hands on it. Of course the drugs are unregulated and can be very unsafe in their street formulations, and they’re being peddled by violent criminals making massive financial gains BECAUSE of prohibition.
Further there are innocent people who will be killed by police TONIGHT in the name of the “War on Drugs”, as well as countless other people who will have their rights violated because they are suspected to be involved in the drug trade.
Plus we all know people who are convicted felons under petty possession charges.
And that isn’t even getting into the international cartels in wonderful places like Mexico, Columbia, and Afghanistan, and the body counts created by them.
People are so willing to look at the Prohibition of Alcohol as the huge mistake it was, but they are too cowardly to see that the prohibition on other drugs is vastly worse.
END PROHIBITION!
One of our very close-proximity neighbors is on the local PD’s short list, we assume for drug-related reasons. As such, there’s been a TON of police activity on our street recently. Now, as a disclaimer, we’ve never had any problem with the local officers, the way they work, their methods, or their professionalism. Compared to the “Only Ones” stories I read on a daily basis, our guys and gals are downright fantastic.
That said, it’s a little disconcerting when we have several officers searching the area for someone. With lights flashing. And body armor. And K-9 units. The only things they haven’t brought out are the riot helmets and “patrol rifles” (you know, the kind the antis call “assault weapons” if you or I have them). We bring our kids inside when it starts looking a little … hectic.
It’s not that I don’t trust our officers; like I said, they’re great. It’s just that a cornered criminal might get a little desperate, and already has fewer moral inhibitions than a normal person. In other words, not the kind of creature I want my kids to encounter. Ever. So the never-ending “War on Drugs” causes us to alter our lives and routines, even when we have little-to-no involvement.
“Society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.” — Jeff Snyder
“It’s not that I don’t trust our officers”
I see it a bit like Sigfried and Roy. They had pet tigers, the tigers were good and well trained. Only problem is they’re TIGERS and eventually no matter how much training they have, they are just too powerful and deadly to be pets, and Roy suffered greatly for it.
I’m a huge fan of my local Police as well, they generally don’t do a lot of the bullshit many other Police departments do. There isn’t any crazy ticketing, over-zealous speed traps, or wholesale denial of rights from our onerous firearms permits.
That being said, they have a SWAT team and an armored vehicle. Sorry guys, but the BEST thing that can happen with that is when they drag it out on field day and let the kids play on it. Otherwise it only does us harm, how great a harm is just a question of dumb luck, and how long the timeline exists.
Weer’d, that’s probably the best analogy I’ve ever seen. And as someone who lives in a town with a good PD, works with the police regularly, and has friends who are LEO’s, I still feel the same way. Even many of the good ones would turn on you with the stroke of a governor’s or president’s pen.
The police are becoming (and have become, in some cases) the standing armies our Founding Fathers warned us about.
Excellent point, Weer’d. The honest officers desperate to catch the wanted man are equally likely to push their normal moral bounds as the criminals desperate to not be caught. The bar being higher just means there’s farther to fall. The absolute BEST result of becoming caught in the middle of these two entities is “no harm done.” The worst case, I don’t care to think about. Not that we haven’t prepared for it as much as we reasonably can, but it IS an unpleasant thought, and I don’t want the mere possibility to rule our lives. 😉
Relatedly, isn’t complacency the root cause of a lot of animal attacks? People get so caught up in the cuteness of the animal, and let their guard down because “it’s never happened before,” forgetting that there’s teeth/claws/venom in there somewhere, and the best training can ONLY overcome millions of years of evolutionary instinct by the BAREST of margins.
I’m with you. Where has prohibition of anything worked? The solution here is to legalize drugs, require honest labelling of the product, and collect a reasonable tax on sales. I say this having known addicts in the past, people addicted both to legal and to illegal substances. All the thou shalt nots in the world did nothing to stop them. I do hope that things work out well for your relative.
Totally with you on this. The war on drugs has been a hyocritical disaster at best since it’s inception. It has done nothing to curb drug use or abuse, and has as it’s only accomplisment an erosion of property and personal rights for law abiding citizens and the incarceration of millions of non violent “drug offenders”.
And even the violent drug offenders are most often violent because they run their own enforcement system outside the police. Somebody steals some beer from your shop, or somebody is smuggling in cigarettes without the punitive tax stamp to out-price your shop (not that I agree with the taxes either) you call the cops, and the cops handle it without violence, or kicking down doors, or shooting of personal pets.
It ALL hinges on prohibition. The St. Valentine’s day massacre was a bunch of crooked cops and gang enforcers murdering a bunch of other gangsters over BOOZE. When was the last time you read about a mass murder over booze distribution? Hint: Not since we made the stuff legal to buy at your local corner store.
Yeah there would be some ugly side effects if I could pick up a baggie of Heroine at my local CVS or Seven-Eleven…I can’t say those bad things would be WORSE than the “War on Drugs”.
I never tried the stuff, but from what I’ve read the primary consequence is people nod off and take a nap. Is that really an ugly side effect?
spontaneous vomiting is kinda icky too. Also the fact that it is very addictive with severe withdrawal, and retards respiration.
In those aspects it can be compared to alcohol with the volume turned up.