How does one deal with a country supported by drug $$?

Satya said:
Been tried and it doesn't work. Where there is a buyer there will always be a seller. The laws of economics won't change just to suit your crime and punishment sensibilities.

The solution rests in legalization and treatment, not in trying to find new and harsher ways to punish people. At what point are you going to stop? When we have the death penalty for selling drugs and the drug rate is still going up? Take a look at the current penalties and tell me how much further we have to go before that is the reality.
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If it was tried and didn't work, doen't mean that legalization and treatment are the way to go.

http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/debate/myths/myths4.htm
 
Shai Gar said:
A Pittbull is a wonderful gentle dog, intelligent, loyal and brave. If you abuse it, it'll attack you, or passer bys.
Dogs don't attack because they're a dog, dogs only attack if they're abused.

People are the same.
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Some are trained to attack/kill; people and dogs.
 
A chihuahua can be trained to attack people, so can just about any dog. It's not in their nature to be violent unless abused. Training to attack someone is abuse.
 
Not exactly Shai. A dog can be trained by abuse. But not all dogs trained to attack are done so.

Examples would be the police dogs. They are trained to attack on command. But not by abuse.

ETA

However, any dog trained to attack is dangerous. No matter what the methods of training may be. Just that the methods used to train also effect the level of danger associated with the animal. i.e an abuse trained dogs is dangerous to everyone at any time. An animal trained to attack on command by a handler is safer generally....but not by much.
 
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alcyone said:
If it was tried and didn't work, doen't mean that legalization and treatment are the way to go.

http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/debate/myths/myths4.htm
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Most of their sources for that article are newletters, letters, and news articles. Forgive me if I call a big bullshit on that source. Give me some peer reviewed evidence that supports the idea that drug legalization is bad policy. I could cherry pick statistics from various sources and make an article to support my point of view. And frankly it doesn't disprove my argument that the pricetag for keeping drugs criminalized is greater than the pricetag for legalizing them would be.

To put it another way, if keeping it criminalized costs hundreds of billions of dollars and legalizing only costs tens of billions of dollars, which way would be the best investment?

But let's consider Mr. Schaffer's point of view...

http://rxmarijuana.com/shared_comments/pain21.htm
 
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To put it another way, if keeping it criminalized costs hundreds of billions of dollars and legalizing only costs tens of billions of dollars, which way would be the best investment?
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Here is the White House Report of the Economic Costs of Drug Abuse.

The billions that could be theoretically saved by decriminializing drugs do NOT match the projected year 2000 Health Care costs.

ETA: Eliminating the costs incurred by the criminal justice system does NOT mean that money is going to be saved, or be put to other uses. The other associated costs of drug use will rise thereby eliminating any savings that decriminalizing drugs will incur.

What is a bit frusterating is that no one seems willing to acknowledge this.
 
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alcyone said:
Here is the White House Report of the Economic Costs of Drug Abuse.

The billions that could be theoretically saved by decriminializing drugs do NOT match the projected year 2000 Health Care costs.
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Where is this White House report?
 
Satya said:
I don't see anywhere in this entire report where it says what you claim it says. There is no tally for how much would theoretically be saved by decriminalizing drugs.

In fact, at this point I'm starting to wonder if you are making up things to support your position.
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The amount supposedly to be saved from decriminalizing drugs came from PsilocinProject where by he quoted me a figure of 12.5 billion as represented by the amount of money spent on keeping drug offenders in prison for their offenses. 50,000 a year per inmate x i don't remember how many inmates he quoted me as being currently jailed for drug related offenses.
 
My contention is that 12.5 billion currently spent on imprisioning drug offenders doesn't offset the health care costs incurred by drug abusers.
 
alcyone said:
The amount supposedly to be saved from decriminalizing drugs came from PsilocinProject where by he quoted me a figure of 12.5 billion as represented by the amount of money spent on keeping drug offenders in prison for their offenses. 50,000 a year per inmate x i don't remember how many inmates he quoted me as being currently jailed for drug related offenses.
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That isn't even the tip of the iceberg. All that represents is how much it costs to house drug offenders in prison. What about their legal costs? What about the billions that is spent destroying drug fields in foreign countries? What about the loss of production that results from imprisoning all those people?

Also, if you look what is listed under the health care costs...

untitled.webp

Most of those costs would be the same either way. Most of the health costs are accrued from alcohol and tobacco, not the drugs we are talking about decriminalizing. And from the earlier discussion, there is a good chance that drug use will go down by decriminalizing them.

Try this article on the costs...

http://www.nyam.org/initiatives/docs/Cost_Effectiveness.pdf
 
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alcyone said:
My contention is that 12.5 billion currently spent on imprisioning drug offenders doesn't offset the health care costs incurred by drug abusers.
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You also have to remember the amount of money that's used to build these prisons. Did you know that most federal prisons are privately owned businesses that are funded by the government? Prison is a business.

That's the main reason they're able to keep drugs illegal.
13.9 BILLION dollars in '07
They're wanting over 14 billion dollars this year. That's just the money that goes into the federal drug control budget. That doesn't include the amount it takes to prosecute people, house inmates and all the other fun little details.

The health costs would be completely covered. It doesn't cost nearly as much to put someone into treatment for an addiction as it does to keep them in a cell.
 
Especially since when they're in jail, they're given treatment for addiction anyway.
 
Satya said:
You might want to look up the history of Israel a bit more. You might be surprised how much we have done and continue to do that makes us an enemy to some Muslim societies.

Sounds like the same kind of predictions that people had for the Soviet Union. Fear is not a good place to look to when trying to see the future.
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I cannot understand why you use fear in your descriptions based on my sayings. My predictions are based on reason, the reading of Quran, and the goals stated by radical Islam in Iran and other places of state-sponsored terrorism....and even feelings to a certain extent. There is no fear in my predictions. If you have fear, then I can understand what you mean. I read enough history of Israel already.
 
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