How many people have to die before America legalizes drugs?

You are correct, Catch.

Again, America does not have a drug problem.

People who use illegal drugs have a drug problem!

If you legalize illegal drugs, millions and millions of more people will try these drugs and many of these new users will now die of drug overdoses.

Most people who use illegal drugs cannot stop on their own because these drugs as so addictive. If you legalize these drugs, you will simply drive up our national health care costs.

It is really that simple.

 

I prefer the freedom to have you beaten up and thrown in jail.

 

You CANNOT OD on anything.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to OD on anti-biotics. it is IMPOSSIBLE to OD on weed... which is why there is not a single case ever of anyone doing either in ALL of recorded history.

You can OD on aspirin, which is legal. You can OD on alcohol, which is legal.

My standpoint is, to make illegal, ANYTHING you cannot die from is utterly absurd.

 

You can drown your body in antibiotics, as you can your lungs with marijuana.

 

I think they are illegal because the people in charge make just as much money off it if it legal or not. There are plenty of these smugglers that do not get caught, and wont. There is a reason for that.

 

Source.

10char

 

Sources for you.

 

Reform society in the sense that we stop allowing authoritarians to abuse the power of government to imprison people doing things they personally disapprove of, like using drugs? Or reform society in some other sense?

 

Color me skeptical.

 

You should check out "monging out" in urban dictionary.

Oh, and there's been a few cases of WoW overdoses.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Two-...t-Gamers-Have-Died-Becouse-Of-WoW-11821.shtml

By the way, what does "happy with a stubby" mean?

 

You are very wrong, Daybreaker.

If you throw all the people who use illegal drugs in jail, the dealers will not have anyone to sell to and they will be forced out of business!

The ones who are sincere can avoid jail time by going to drug rehab centers that actually work!

Case closed! Problem solved!

 

No, because you see, dealing is also illegal so dealers also end up in jail, in exactly the perfect place to meet clients!

 

Who on earth would want to get high on amoxicillin?

Are illegal drug users in the U.S.completely nuts, or do they have too much money to spend?

 

You can't get high on Amoxicillin.

 

More prisons is definitely a great solution. Prisons are one of America's fastest-growing industries and one for other countries to envy.

Lock up all them dangerous midnight tokers! FUGG YEAH, USA, #1!

 

Show me one of these.

 

Yes, your solution is very simple and well understood: build more prisons, lock more non-violent drug users up and increase the prison population in this country by another 600%, that's all fine and good. No one should challenge this view because obviously it's somehow the "cheapest" solution to America's drug problem. It's an interesting viewpoint, if anything.

 

Prisons is probably not a terrible solution but it is costly, i would just say BETTER security, why are these drugs always getting through?? i can say i've never been sniffed by a dog in an airport and i've been on over 100 flights, same for boats. I think we just need an invention that scans for specific substances on a largescale.

Anw the comment you should ALLL be looking at is the comment on health care. It doesn't make sense to legalize drugs because those people will need more treatment, also if you legalize them then there will be no boundaries and the profit margin on drugs won't be ridiculous like 300%, what does this mean?? Drugs will be DIRT CHEAP, combine this with legalizing it and MILLIONS more will start. Also the argument of legalizing them but not encouraging them is as sensible as legalizing murder but not encouraging it.

 

We are allowed to slowly kill ourselves. Fat clogs arteries, alcohol shuts down liver and kidney functions. Prolonged use of amoxicillin having a bad effect on your kidneys is not the same as a death by overdose. You can overdose and die on TONS of over the counter drugs. You have to be trying. However you cannot overdose and die from a round of amoxicillin.

Your second source is complete and utter bull(*)(*)(*)(*). I would like a source for your source on "talkingdrugs.org". A coroners report. A medical reference.

A single accredited source for either please. Here are mine.
1) Marijuana and Health, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1982. Note: the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior of the "Marijuana and Health" study had its part of the final report suppressed when it reviewed the evidence and recommended that possession of small amounts of marijuana should no longer be a crime (TIME magazine, July 19, 1982). The two JAMA studies are: Co, B.T., Goodwin, D.W., Gado, M., Mikhael, M., and Hill, S.Y.: "Absence of cerebral atrophy in chronic cannabis users", JAMA, 237:1229-1230, 1977; and, Kuehnle, J., Mendelson, J.H., Davis, K.R., and New, P.F.J.: "Computed tomographic examination of heavy marijuana smokers", JAMA, 237:1231-1232, 1977.
2) See Marijuana and Health, ibid., for information on this research. See also, Marijuana Reconsidered (197 by Dr. Lester Grinspoon.
3) The Dutch experience is written up in "The Economics of Legalizing Drugs", by Richard J. Dennis, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol 266, No. 5, Nov 1990, p. 130. See "A Comparison of Marijuana Users and Non-users" by Norman Zinberg and Andrew Weil (1971) for the negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of alcohol. The 1993 Rand Corporation study is "The Effect of Marijuana Decriminalization on Hospital Emergency Room Episodes: 1975 - 1978" by Karyn E. Model.
4) See a review of studies and their methodology in "Marijuana and Immunity", Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol 20(1), Jan-Mar 1988. Studies showing stimulation of the immune system: Kaklamani, et al., "Hashish smoking and T-lymphocytes", 1978; Kalofoutis et al., "The significance of lymphocyte lipid changes after smoking hashish", 1978. The 1988 study: Wallace, J.M., Tashkin, D.P., Oishi, J.S., Barbers, R.G., "Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte Subpopulations and Mitogen Responsiveness in Tobacco and Marijuana Smokers", 1988, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid.
5) The 90% figure comes from Health Consequences of Smoking:
Nicotine Addiction, Surgeon General's Report, 1988. In Health magazine in an article entitled, "Hooked, Not Hooked" by Deborah Franklin (pp. 39-52), compares the addictives of various drugs and ranks marijuana below coffeine. For current information on cannabis drinks see Working Men and Ganja:
Marijuana Use in Rural Jamaica by M. C. Dreher, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982, ISBN 0-89727-025-8. For information on cannabis and actual cancer risk, see Marijuana and Health, ibid.
6) For a survey of studies relating to cannabis and highway accidents see "Marijuana, Driving and Accident Safety", by Dale Gieringer, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid. The effect of decriminalization on highway accidents is analyzed in "Do Youths Substitute Alcohol and Marijuana? Some Econometric Evidence" by Frank J. Chaloupka and Adit Laixuthai, Nov. 1992, University of Illinois at Chicago.
7) For information about the Partnership ad, see Jack Herer's book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1990, p. 74. See also "Hard Sell in the Drug War", The Nation, March 9, 1992, by Cynthia Cotts, which reveals that the Partnership receives a large percentage of its advertizing budget from alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies and is thus disposed toward exaggerating the risks of marijuana while downplaying the risks of legal drugs. For information on memory and the alpha brainwave enhancement effect, see "Marijuana, Memory, and Perception", by R. L. Dornbush, M.D., M. Fink, M.D., and A. M. Freedman, M.D., presented at the 124th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 3-7, 1971.
See "Cannabis 1988, Old Drug New Dangers, The Potency Question" by Tod H Mikuriya, M.D. and Michael Aldrich, Ph.D., Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, ibid.
9) See Marijuana and Health, ibid. Also see "Marijuana, Memory, and Perception", ibid.
10) The fat solubility of cannabinoids and certain vitamins is well known. See Marijuana and Health, ibid. For some information on vitamin A, see "The A Team" in Scientific American, Vol 264, No. 2, February 1991, p. 16.
11) See "Too Many Rodent Carcinogens: Mitogenesis Increases Mutagenesis", Bruce N. Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold, Science, Vol 249, 31 August 1990, p. 971.
12) Cannabis and alcohol toxicity is compared in Marijuana Reconsidered, ibid., p. 227. Yearly alcohol overdoses was taken from "Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives" by Ethan A. Nadelmann, Science, Vol 245, 1 September 1989, p. 943.

 

Not in the least - prisons are already overcrowded as it is, and it is far more expensive to keep hundreds of thousands incarcerated for years than to fork out a few grand for medical expenses.

Additionally, I would posit that the vast majority of overdoses are due to poorly made product cut with god knows what - issues that can be addressed by legalisation and regulation.

 

Yes, and you cannot overdose on 'a round of' alcohol..

 

Stubby is a beer. Typically a low class one like VB or Fosters.

 

You also cannot overdose on a round of marijuana, or a tab of LSD. Both drugs are less addictive and destructive than alcohol.

 

LSD can have serious consequences after one use; so that may not be a good example...

but we're talking Heroin and Cocaine; which are much stronger and restricted schedule drugs.

 

Outliers are not a good method of formulating policy. LSD is vastly safer than even alcohol.

Both of which should also be legal.