Reefer Madness Hits Colorado’s Toddlers

Indeed. No use getting nasty just because there is a disagreement. You are exactly the type of person I seek in debate, one who has a different view than I and can intelligently argue it without anger and insult. My purpose here to to learn from the perspective of others and I am hoping that something you say teaches me something new.

A harm reduction program would not be limited to pot users. As for previously posted stats I place little value in them unless they are backed by a link to a source that shows an objective body of research. Much of what I have said in the thread thus far is opinion as I have yet to deep dive the issue. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that 46.3% of prisoners are in on drug related offenses.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp

Why not? Are you saying if an objective body of research and case studies showed a positive correlation between harm reduction and crime reduction you would stand against it?

Lower crime and a dip in the spread diseases associated with the sharing of needles benefits us all. I understand that the idea of harm reduction is counterintuitive and unorthodox, but sometimes when a policy fails, the solution can be found in dispensing with convention and exploring alternatives. Legalizing, taxing and regulating drugs takes the power away from the cartels and gangs that sell drugs in the street.

The reward you get is a reduction in crime and infectious disease if I am right about harm reduction. We are not rewarding them, we are removing the incentive for them to break into your home, car, or holding you at gun point all so they can rob you to fund their addiction.

The studies I have seen thus far are from Europe and Canada. For example in Vancouver BC they have a safe injection site that is funded by the government and claims to have reduced the incidence of infectious diseases and deaths from over doses. The following link references peer reviewed studies but sadly does not provide a link to them... something for me to dig up in my deep dive.
http://supervisedinjection.vch.ca/media-centre/an-overview-of-insite---10-years-later

 

Driving recklessly can land you in jail and your car can be impounded for it. BUt nobody should be driving anyways while truly impaired, and im talking drunk or high and not 3 beers and some meter tells you that you are drunk when you are not. ANd im sorry, but there is no doing meth, crack , acid "responsibly" lol . Thats like saying a steet race is ok as long as you do it responsibly lol.

 

If marijuana is not legal to sell then it is not legal.

If it can be taxed and regulated then it is legal to sell.

No. Are you arguing that if something is taxed and regulated it is illegal to sell?

 

Oh BS, just because you think we should provide and care for total morons who want to get their rocks off on crack does not make you right one bit.

Sorry, I do not want our tax dollars to pay for someones (*)(*)(*)(*)ing drug habit, it's not my problem or anyone else but the moron who is shooting up heroine. AGAIN the government does not supply beer to alcoholics SO AGAIN WTF SHE WE PAY FOR YOUR *******N COCAINE ?

Answer that one simple question and stop dodging the issue.

 

At least we have a little good news in the same vein.

http://kdvr.com/2016/05/09/number-of-dogs-needing-treatment-after-eating-marijuana-skyrockets/

If the dogs are stoned then they won't be attacking .

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/02/21/owner-facing-charges-in-dog-attacks-on-children-in-colorado-springs/

 

I will not support paying for your drug habit, your home, food and car and easy life while I have to work my ass off.

Get a job and buy your own drugs. you ruin your life or can't buy none because you are a bum then that is your fault. Cry me a river.

 

I don't care if you legalize it, Im just talking about tax payers having to fund a dopers needs. Im not down with that and never will be. If I dont have money to buy beer, does that mean you have to buy it for me via tax dollars? Beer, drugs, cigarretes etc. etc. are not a right, it's a privilege.

And during the first day of the democrat convention they had some lady speaker talking about making tax payers pay for treatment for drug abusers. Her daughter is a doper, now she wants us to fix the problem she should have in the first place by being a parent.

Rewarding stupidity.

 

SO when do we start paying murderers so they stop killing? So when do we start paying mexico billions upon billions to give to their people so they stop crossing our border? When do we start paying child molesters or buy them some young looking hookers so they will never touch children?

Throwing money at it is not always the answer. People are going to rob, steal, kill and cheat regardless. How much you wanna pay gang bangers to get the guns out of their hands?

 

As a Republican, great post. It's a shame to see people from both parties disavowing personal responsibility.

 

Yeah, well then I guess this thread is evolving into a different debate altogether from the one the OP seemed to pose, and that's fine.
I understand your position of not wanting your tax $ to pay for drug rehab. I just don't really follow your comparison of taxpayer-funded drug rehab to the government buying drugs for addicts. I'm not a rehab expert, but I'm pretty sure that rehab isn't about giving addicts their fix of whatever the drugs they're addicted to, or "rewarding" them for their behavior. My understanding is that rehab is a process aimed at helping an addict get off of that addiction. Yes, I know, you don't want your tax money paying for that, lots of people have different strongly held beliefs about what their tax $ should or shouldn't spent on, I get that. My point is, I don't know where you get this warped idea of that rehab is paying for, rewarding, or encouraging, someone's addiction.

I didn't see the that DNC speech by the woman you're talking about, but from what you describe, it sounds like she's asking for the government to help her daughter get off drugs, not to "reward" her daughter's drug habit, or buy free (whatever drugs her daughter is addicted to). Then again, I didn't see that speech, so feel free to correct me on that.

Seriously, where are you hearing this about the government buying drugs for people to support their drug habit? I'm not saying this isn't happening anywhere in the U.S., I just hadn't heard of it.

 

One will lead to the other, just like how making marijuana legal has turned into making all drugs legal no matter their potency and serious side effects. I mean look , you may not think its about that but if you see the replies to my post you will see I am being engaged by those who do in fact want the government to provide these drugs like a form of welfare lol.

I heard bits and pieces of the speech, I tried to watch the most of both conventions thus far but other priorities pop up of course. But from what I heard she was not just talking about rehab, she sounded like her daughter needed her fix so to speak. Take a look at methadone clinics. Supposed to be used to fight addiction to opiates like heroine, but the thing is you get off heroine and get an addiction for methadone and you need your fix on a daily basis. Government sanctioned drugs. Then there are a bevy of others out as well, with a new one that is supposed to only be once a month but no doubt you will just need that one for the rest of your life as well unless you do the 90 days of cold turkey. I just know about this stuff from a friend who is currently fighting opiate addiction, on his 60th day now and it's been a rough ride and the doctors he goes to see stay trying to get him on some new "miracle" drug that says will help with with addiction, when he knows too well from the past that all those drugs do is point your addiction to the prescribed medicine to fatten the docs pockets.

So yeah, rewarding drug abusers is exactly what people like this mom is looking for. She failed as a parent, now she wants us to fix it. I feel sorry for the girl but if its treatment she wants then she can go get it herself on her own dime. She needs to take responsibility for her own kids like most people do.

 

Apparently it hasn't dawned on you that murder increases economic activity.

Swell, try eating a Lady Gaga track.

Or a volume of poetry by Maya Angelou. Hell, try reading it without losing 50 points off your IQ.

 

Geddon: Was this the mother you were referring to? Pam Livengood?

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4612158/pam-livengood

 

Hmm, strange, how did this thread evolve from a conversation about "Look, kids are eating their parents' edible marijuana, therefore legalization is a bad idea..." to talking about murder? Both murder and possession of marijuana are illegal, but there's a gigantic difference between murder and ingesting marijuana. Pot prohibitionists always bring up that asinine slippery slope argument.

 

I don't stand against harm reduction. I just don't believe in it and I don't believe our tax money should pay for it. If there are millions of people in this country that believe in harm reduction than they can fund it themselves through charity. I don't see how the government can pay to resolve one form of addiction and turn down others.

I agree that slowing the spread in disease helps us all. I'm a million times more likely to die from getting hit by a impaired driver than I am contracting a disease associated with needle sharing though. Lets just say for kicks and giggles that we eliminated 100% of illegal drug distribution in the United States. What do you think the criminals, gangs, and cartels would do for money here? Do you think they would all just get jobs instead and become productive members of society? What type of crime do you think they would commit? How would their lives change? I'm honestly interested in what you think.

I can certainly understand how harm reduction would prevent overdose deaths. In all honesty, and this probably sounds pretty dark but it wouldn't bother me one bit if everyone using hard drugs overdosed and died the next time they use. The world would be a better place for it and I wouldn't shed a tear.

 

The linky game? You need to play that with yourself.

 

Yeah that's her.

 

Just making a point that paying off criminals of any sort won't make much of a difference. You pay them, all they will do is demand more. I keep hearing how making drugs legal will stop crime if we buy it for dopers and keep them all supplied. But to me all that sounds like is the enabling of more drug users and at the end of the day a coc fiend is just gonna keep demanding more, and when he can't get it most likely gonna make some dumb decisions.

 

You keep hearing? Again, who is talking about buying drugs for dopers? I'm not hearing anyone talking about that, not even that Pam Livengood lady you reference earlier. When I asked you about this before all you could come up with is that it "seemed" to you that that's what she was asking for.
And you can tell us all you want that you don't care whether MJ is illegal or not, but it's pretty clear that it does matter to you, otherwise you wouldn't be railing against it making false assertions about what you "keep hearing" about the issue.

 

Even if that addict were your brother, sister or cousin? I ask this because you talked before about how it's the parents' responsibility to raise their child right. What if it's someone you grew up with but had no hand in raising? I believe it was you who said:

Are you saying it would not bother you one bit if your parents overdosed and died? Or has that already happened and you didn't shed a tear?

 

Like most people I have family members with drug problems and no, it wouldn't bother me.

 

So you have no facts, just repeating posts of your claims, good day troll.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah right, especially since the sites have access to doctors.

 

I provided links to other addictions, where tax dollars are used. This notion that a specific issue for general public service can be used a tax issue is BS, and pettiness.

In addition, I will repeat just once more, there have been more than a handful of other posters, that have provided confirmed statistics, that the marijuana trade has been profitable.
Now hold on to yourself, but sin taxes are a staple of tax income. This is common knowledge, so yes, once again, the outrage is BS!!!!

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/finance/state-sin-tax-collections-revenues.html
State sin tax collections exceeded $32 billion in fiscal year 2014, representing roughly 3.8 percent of total tax revenues. While they're not a major source of revenue in most states, some do rely on them much more than others. Sin taxes account for the largest share of tax revenues in Rhode Island, Nevada, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Delaware.

Definitions on what constitutes a sin tax vay. Data shown here reflect alcohol, tobacco, casino, racino, video gaming and pari-mutuel revenues that states collected in fiscal year 2014.

 

Those are facts. They come from the Department of Justice, the state, and federal government. I don't understand if you're trolling or really that ignorant.

Go ahead and click through your little links. Let me know who is providing the help at the very end. It's not a government funded Doctor. It directs you to non profit private organizations.

 

Controlling the drug industry differently does not necessarily mean "paying" anybody for anything.

Right now, what we have is drugs with artificially high prices that entice people into a life of crime for profit, with all the risks to the general public that that entails. We essentially have the same situation that we had during Prohibition, only worse in that our country's secret services, to their own ends, are sometimes complicit. It is causing pervasive corruption as well.

The real question is, is it worth it to punish those who are already addicts by making their condition illegal and driving them to lifelong illegal activity and the enrichment of local drug dealers, who then are motivated to seek out even more local victims, or can we somehow put a stop to this dynamic?

Once we decide to put a stop to it we should start to get answers. I am with you in not wishing to reward the behavior with coddling, however. Detox centers and secure incarceration with group counseling in a prison setting is a lot less costly than the posh private drug treatment centers celebs hang out in.

I also agree anyone that gets hooked is foolish, but tell that to someone with lingering pain from a war wound, accidental injuries, or something like cancer. The current, repressive pain control regulations require even very elderly people immobilized by arthritis to show up, via ambulance if even possible, at a pain control center every three months to renew their prescriptions for the only pain killers that work. One of the cruelest things going on in this country is the denial of adequate pain killers to bedridden people no longer able to show up, since that causes even more pain. Once such people are provided with an illegal substance by a compassionate family member there is no going back for the whole family. From then on they are slaves to the illegal drug dealers in their area, and the rest of the family is at risk of following suit.