Reply #57: Easy solution... legalize and regulate [View All]

[DrBloodmoney]

It is what I will advocate time and again for any 'problem.'

Takes away the profits from the crime world, shuts down dangerous meth labs, identifies people who need treatment, use money for rehab programs and schools. Profits for big business.

It would be quite the elegant solution.

People will always use psychotropic drugs. It is a fact, that history has borne out, for time out of mind.

The question is: who do you want to have oversight over it... the government or the crime bosses.

Hard time without treatment is an asinine answer to the problem. Suggesting that solution demonstrates naivete and ignorance with regards to people with addictive diseases (alcholism or hard drug abuse).

My position has always been: don't punish users, provide safe access to drugs AND treatment, take profits away from the crime scene, and provide harsh punishment to anyone providing drugs to persons under the age of 18. And tax the hell out of it.

Quotes I like from that Rolling Stone article:

Since 1992, according to a recent analysis of federal crime statistics by the Sentencing Project, arrests for marijuana have soared from 300,000 a year to 700,000. The government spends an estimated $4 billion a year arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes -- more than it spends on treating addiction for all drugs -- and more and more of those busts are for possession rather than dealing.

That's lovely

Pot now accounts for nearly half of drug arrests nationwide -- up from barely a quarter of all busts a decade ago.

That makes perfect sense.

I also enjoy how the ONDCP likes to point out that so many people have enrolled in rehab programs within recent years. That's a bit striking (because most folks don't consider marijuana to be an addictive drug) until you discover why they have enrolled. A very large percentage had forced enrollment after a possession bust. I'll try to hunt those numbers down