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legalize (soft)drugschico-lama
As most of you probably now, In the Netherlands it is legal to sell softdrugs in coffeeshops. I think this is possible since the '70. Up till now the grow of softdrugs is illegal. It means that coffeeshop holders are allowed to sell, but are forced to buy from criminals. Not the ideal situations if you ask me.
This week a debat is started wheather the government wants to allow a testcase in which the whole procces of growing and selling is allowed. The results will show if this throws back the criminals (and some other results) Why legalize?
and there are a whole lot of other reasons....think about it nik
not a good idea if someone want' to use drugs he can find it. make is legal will only make more drugs.
by the was by the number of posts about drugs i can see that there is alot of drug users here Borse
I figure the best way to kill the drug trade is to Legalize it and then put the government in charge of it.
chico-lama
Nobody will force you to complete this form. I am limited with options, but I like to hear some reasons. Maybe the following will help. I will add two options: No, other reasons and Yes, other reasons. If you choose one of these you can add you reasons in a post.
I thought it was prescribed in the Netherlands, Unfortunately I can not find any proof. Maybe I am wrong. I will delete this. chico-lama
The facts; consumption of cannabis note:It is legal to buy drugs in the Netherlands. Judge for yourself
sources: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2004). Statistical bulletin 2004. Lisbon: EMCDDA. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) (2002). Results from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: volume I. Summary of national findings. Rockville, MD: DHHS. hive
Drugs were aways legal, just in the recent centuries we had turned it illegal. And if you dig deep for the true reasons of proihibition you will realise that are others reasons for the prohibitions than it make us harm.
Drugs are with us since the beginning of mankid and I think we have to (re)learn how to live in peace with it. wingo
In an ideal world, there wouldn't be (soft) drug usage or (soft) drug users. However, this isn't an ideal world, and such impurities exist. It's the same case with homosexuality. So I guess they have to allow it...
darczeku
drugs are still drugs...soft or hard......
Revvion
Well i'm from holland but now we have another problem, it legal for some shops to sell sot drugs but elegal to make them. So now they buy it from many people so that some of the drugs might be dangerous (or what ever you want to call it
cinecorp
By soft drugs I assume we're talking about pot. I don't think that their is any reason why pot is still criminal, seeing as it has no proven serious health repercussions. However if it were to be legalized then it would surely only be sold by the government at a dramatically inflated price.
Ikonoklast
I smoke marijauna and my friend drinks and there is nothing really different about what we are doing. recreation is recreation, yes as with alcohol you can develop a psychologial need for weed :) but it is not like hard drugs where use is all it takes to develop a physiological need.
SunburnedCactus
Incorrect. Hard drugs (and alcohol) cause the body to develop a physical dependency, whilst marijuana causes a psychological dependency and leads to schizophrenia etc. Ikonoklast
http://www.anakata.hack.se/papers/pdf/Lancet-352-1611.pdf Dependence syndrome Animals develop tolerance to the effects of repeated doses of THC and studies suggest that cannabinoids may affect the same reward systems as alcohol, cocaine, and opioids. Heavy smokers of cannabis also develop tolerance to its subjective and cardiovascular effects and some report withdrawal symptoms on the abrupt cessation of cannabis use. There is evidence that a cannabis dependence syndrome occurs with heavy chronic use in individuals who report problems in controlling their use and who continue to use the drug despite experiencing adverse personal consequences. There is some clinical evidence of a dependence syndrome analogous to that for alcohol. In the USA, cannabis dependence is among the most common forms of illicit-drug dependence in the population. About one in ten (10%) of those who ever use cannabis become dependent on it at some time during their 4 or 5 years of heaviest use. This risk is more like the equivalent risk for alcohol (15%) than for nicotine (32%) or opioids (23%). http://www.anakata.hack.se/papers/pdf/Lancet-352-1611.pdf SunburnedCactus
Yes, that supports what I said.
Ikonoklast
I belive what this is saying is that marijuana can make it worse if it is already there, but it does not cause schizophrenia. The hard evidence one way or another is not there. And my last post stated that marijuana actually has the least possibility of dependance of any of the drugs listed.
http://www.anakata.hack.se/papers/pdf/Lancet-352-1611.pdf Psychosis Large doses of THC produce confusion, amnesia, delusions, hallucinations, anxiety, and agitation. Such reactions are rare, occurring after unusually heavy cannabis use; in most cases they remit rapidly after abstinence from cannabis. There is an association between cannabis use and schizophrenia. A prospective study of 50 000 Swedish conscripts45 found a dose-response relation between the frequency of cannabis use by age 18 and the risk of a diagnosis of schizophrenia over the subsequent 15 years. A plausible explanation is that cannabis use can exacerbate the symptoms of schizophrenia and there is prospective evidence that continued use predicts more psychotic symptoms in people with schizophrenia. A declining incidence of treated cases of schizophrenia over the period when cannabis use has increased suggests, however, that cannabis use is unlikely to have caused cases of schizophrenia that would not otherwise have occurred. This observation suggests that chronic use may precipitate schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals, an effect that would not be expected to change incidence. http://www.anakata.hack.se/papers/pdf/Lancet-352-1611.pdf SunburnedCactus
Fair point regarding genetic predisposition. You didn't need to paste the whole article again though, did you?
Dorfinger
The only reason for a gouvernement to legalyze soft drug is to tax it .
Ikonoklast
just wanted to make sure of the context :)
benwhite
Legalization process: the low price makes it easy to get drugs. Then government taxes, like on cigarettes, and makes desperately need money. Any moral argument against this is untenable. Smoking is leading preventable cause of death in the world. Alcohol also kills millions yearly. There is little to suggest that legalization increases use and would most likely not increase health causes. People who are going to do it, do it. The few that don't try because it's illegal are the people usually wouldn't end up doing it habitually were it so. I don't smoke, but I can. Why would smoking pot be a revolution to the drug world. It'd just make it make more sense. The amount of money the government spends on the war on marijuana is immense. To contrast, meth labs are springing up everywhere, police everywhere in the country have stated that meth is more a problem then marijuana. But why is it not being stopped---because the money is spend putting pot dealers away from 10 years. Sort of silly when you think about how the government sanctions A and T use.
Quick factoid: Alcohol and Tobacco are regulated by the ATF, not the FDA. But, here's the kicker. Quit-smoking drugs, like the patch and the gum are under the jurisdiction of the FDA. Thus, the industry to quit smoking is more tightly regulated than smoking itself. Odd, no? Ressurrector
Mmmm whats a "soft" drug? Caffeine , nicotine , weed, what?
VincentBlack
I think people should be allowed to do what they want with they're lives, if they arent mature enough not to abuse drugs then they shouldnt start using them. If they do get addicted there is always rehab, and if they choose 1 to take drugs and 2 not to go into rehab, then thats 100% their fault for anything bad that happens. Btw, I've never done drugs or even gotten drunk before, I never plan to do drugs ever but I'd like to get drunk at least once or twice in my life.
chico-lama
Ofcourse it`s a hard question. In the Netherlands ('My' country) Caffeine and nicotine are not considerd softdrugs, although it is accepted that these substances couse an "addiction". Weed/hash are considered soft drugs (although it is not that addictive, as the figures above show). There is research that show that it cause brain damage, but only when it is used for years and years and of course used large amounts. This is also the case with cigarets. This is no reason to make it illegal to buy or use (in 'my' country). But that is already clear from my first post. note: I am NOT a weed/hash/cigaret user myself.[/b] hrtorrent
Soft drugs are easy road to hard drugs, and hard drugs leads to deadth.
chico-lama
Hmm are you from this world? Okay, it hapens sometimes, but its not a rule. If someone wants to try harddrugs, he will find it. No matter its legal or illegal.. But believe me far most of the softdrugs users, will never try harddrugs. wowz
I think they should be legalized. It's true, if they were legal, people would use them less. Because they can, so they don't want to.
Why do kids to drugs? Mainly to rebel. If it's legal, why would they? Also, medicinally, majuana is a great drug for treatment of many many things. There's a HUGE list of things it helps treat. Doctors and scientists in Canada are currently working on finding a way to extract the active ingrediants in majuana so that we can use them for said medicinal purposes. Because smoking is still bad for you, lol leonk
making soft drugs legal is a great idea
![]() horseatingweeds
cinecorp
[url] http://www.marijuana-addiction.net/marijuana-side-effects.htm[/url]
My idea would be to legalize growing marijuana, and not selling or importing it. That way if you really want it bad enough you can get it legally. This would also give many of the benefits all ready mentioned. It would also be a lot safer. From what I have herd people that grow it spray crap on it and people that sell it will some times add crap to it. Anyway, it would be a great project for the elderly. Thats what Im thinking. If your on your last limb, are loosing your mind anyway, and like gardening, why the hell not burn one down at 4:00pm after dinner. pjv
Drugs are good if put to proper use. Drug abuse is prohibited and the government should do all what they can to prevent misuse of this stuff.
SAY NO TO DRUGS! chico-lama
Why should the government prevent misuse? I can say no to drugs without my government prohibiting it. hive
The following is reprinted from The Pragmatist, August 1988. Some of the
examples and data are dated, but the arguments are still valid.(rbs) TWELVE REASONS TO LEGALIZE DRUGS There are no panaceas in the world but, for social afflictions, legalizing drugs comes possibly as close as any single policy could. Removing legal penalties from the production, sale and use of "controlled substances" would alleviate at least a dozen of our biggest social or political problems. With proposals for legalization finally in the public eye, there might be a use for some sort of catalog listing the benefits of legalization. For advocates, it is an inventory of facts and arguments. For opponents, it is a record of the problems they might be helping to perpetuate. The list is intended both as a resource for those wishing to participate in the legalization debate and as a starting point for those wishing to get deeper into it. Are we ready to stop wringing our hands and start solving problems? 1. Legalizing drugs would make our streets and homes safer. As Jeffrey Rogers Hummel notes ("Heroin: The Shocking Story," April 1988), estimates vary widely for the proportion of violent and property crime related to drugs. Forty percent is a midpoint figure. In an October 1987 survey by Wharton Econometrics for the U.S. Customs Service, the 739 police chiefs responding "blamed drugs for a fifth of the murders and rapes, a quarter car thefts, two-fifths of robberies and assaults and half the nation's burglaries and thefts." The theoretical and statistical links between drugs and crime are well established. In a 2 1/2-year study of Detroit crime, Lester P. Silverman, former associate director of the National Academy of Sciences' Assembly of Behavior and Social Sciences, found that a 10 percent increase in the price of heroin alone "produced an increase of 3.1 percent total property crimes in poor nonwhite neighborhoods." Armed robbery jumped 6.4 percent and simple assault by 5.6 percent throughout the city. The reasons are not difficult to understand. When law enforcement restricts the supply of drugs, the price of drugs rises. In 1984, a kilogram of cocaine worth $4000 in Colombia sold at wholesale for $30,000, and at retail in the United States for some $300,000. At the time a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman noted, matter-of-factly, that the wholesale price doubled in six months "due to crackdowns on producers and smugglers in Columbia and the U.S." There are no statistics indicating the additional number of people killed or mugged thanks to the DEA's crackdown on cocaine. For heroin the factory-to-retail price differential is even greater. According to U.S. News & World report, in 1985 a gram of pure heroin in Pakistan cost $5.07, but it sold for $2425 on the street in America--nearly a five-hundredfold jump. The unhappy consequence is that crime also rises, for at least four reasons: * Addicts must shell out hundreds of times the cost of goods, so they often must turn to crime to finance their habits. The higher the price goes, the more they need to steal to buy the same amount. * At the same time, those who deal or purchase the stuff find themselves carrying extremely valuable goods, and become attractive targets for assault. * Police officers and others suspected of being informants for law enforcement quickly become targets for reprisals. * The streets become literally a battleground for "turf" among competing dealers, as control over a particular block or intersection can net thousands of additional drug dollars per day. Conversely, if and when drugs are legalized, their price will collapse and so will the sundry drug-related motivations to commit crime. Consumers will no longer need to steal to support their habits. A packet of cocaine will be as tempting to grab from its owner as a pack of cigarettes is today. And drug dealers will be pushed out of the retail market by known retailers. When was the last time we saw employees of Rite Aid pharmacies shoot it out with Thrift Drugs for a corner storefront? When drugs become legal, we will be able to sleep in our homes and walk the streets more safely. As one letter-writer to the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, "law-abiding citizens will be able to enjoy not living in fear of assault and burglary." 2. It would put an end to prison overcrowding. Prison overcrowding is a serious and persistent problem. It makes the prison environment, violent and faceless to begin with, even more dangerous and dehumanizing. According to the 1988 Statistical Abstract of the United States, between 1979 and 1985 the number of people in federal and state prisons and local jails grew by 57.8 percent, nine time faster than the general population. Governments at all levels keep building more prisons, but the number of prisoners keeps outpacing the capacity to hold them. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' 1985 Statistical Report, as of September 30 of that year federal institutions held 35,959 prisoners-41 percent over the rated prison capacity of 25,638. State prisons were 114 percent of capacity in 1986. Of 31,346 sentenced prisoners in federal institutions, those in for drug law violations were the largest single category, 9487. (A total of 4613 were in prison but not yet sentenced under various charges.) Legalizing drugs would immediately relieve the pressure on the prison system, since there would no longer be "drug offenders" to incarcerate. And, since many drug users would no longer need to commit violent or property crime to pay for their habits, there would be fewer "real" criminals to house in the first place. Instead of building more prisons, we could pocket the money and still be safer. Removing the 9487 drug inmates would leave 26,472. Of those, 7200 were in for assault, burglary, larceny-theft, or robbery. If the proportion of such crimes that is related to drugs is 40 percent, without drug laws another 2900 persons would never have made it to federal prison. The inmates who remained would be left in a less cruel, degrading environment. If we repealed the drug laws, we could eventually bring the prison population down comfortably below the prison's rated capacity. 3. Drug legalization would free up police resources to fight crimes against people and property. The considerable police efforts now expended against drug activity and drug-related crime could be redirected toward protecting innocent people from those who would still commit crime in the absence of drug laws. The police could protect us more effectively, as it could focus resources on catching rapists, murderers and the remaining perpetrators of crimes against people and property. 4. It would unclog the court system. If you are accused of a crime, it takes months to bring you to trial. Guilty or innocent, you must live with the anxiety of impending trial until the trial finally begins. The process is even more sluggish for civil proceedings. There simply aren't enough judges to handle the skyrocketing caseload. Because it would cut crime and eliminate drugs as a type of crime, legislation would wipe tens of thousands of cases off the court dockets across the continent, permitting the rest to move sooner and faster. Prosecutors would have more time to handle each case; judges could make more considered opinions. Improved efficiency at the lower levels would have a ripple effect on higher courts. Better decisions in the lower courts would yield fewer grounds for appeals, reduing the caseloads of appeals courts; and in any event there would be fewer cases to review in the first place. 5. It would reduce official corruption. Drug-related police corruption takes one of two major forms. Police officers can offer drug dealers protection in their districts for a share of the profits (or demand a share under threat of exposure). Or they can seize dealer's merchandise for sale themselves. Seven current or former Philadelphia police officers were indicted May 31 on charges of falsifying records of money and drugs confiscated from dealers. During a house search, one man turned over $20,000 he had made from marijuana sales, but the officers gave him a "receipt" for $1870. Another dealer, reports The Inquirer, "told the grand jury he was charged with possession of five pounds of marijuana, although 11 pounds were found in his house." In Miami, 59 officers have been fired or suspended since 1985 for suspicion of wrongdoing. The police chief and investigators expect the number eventually to approach 100. As The Palm Beach Post reported, "That would mean about one in 100 officers on the thousand man force will have been tainted by one form of scandal or another." Most of the 59 have been accused of trafficking, possessing or using illegal drugs. In the biggest single case, 17 officers allegedly participated in a ring that stole $15 million worth of cocaine from dealers "and even traffic violators." What distinguishes the Miami scandal is that "Police are alleged to be drug traffickers themselves, not just protectors of criminals who are engaged in illegal activities," said The post. According to James Frye, a criminologist at American University in Washington, the gravity of the situation in Miami today is comparable to Prohibition-era Chicago in the 1920s and '30s. It is apt comparison. And the problem is not limited to Miami and Philadelphia. The astronomical profits from the illegal drug trade are a powerful incentive on the part of law enforcement agents to partake from the proceeds. Legalizing the drug trade outright would eliminate this inducement to corruption and help to clean up the police's image. Eliminating drug-related corruption cases would further reduce the strain on the courts, freeing judges and investigators to handle other cases more thoroughly and expeditiously. 6. Legalization would save tax money. Efforts to interdict the drug traffic alone cost $6.2 billion in 1986, according to Wharton Econometrics of Bala Cynwyd, Pa. If we ad the cost of trying and incarcerating users, traffickers, and those who commit crime to pay for their drugs, the tab runs well above $10 billion. The crisis in inmate housing would disappear, saving taxpayers the expense of building more prisons in the future. As we've noted above, savings would be redirected toward better police protection and speedier judicial service. Or it could be converted into savings for taxpayers. Or the federal portion of the costs could be applied toward the budget deficit. For a change, it's a happy problem to ponder. But it takes legalization to make it possible. 7. It would cripple organized crime. The Mafia (heroin), Jamaican gangs (crack), and the Medellin Cartel (cocaine) stand to lose billions in drug profits from legalization. On a per-capita basis, members of organized crime, particularly at the top, stand to lose the most from legalizing the drug trade. The underworld became big business in the United States when alcohol was prohibited. Few others would risk setting up the distribution networks, bribing officials or having to shoot up a policeman or competitor once in a while. When alcohol was re-legalized, reputable manufacturers took over. The risk and the high profits went out of the alcohol trade. Even if they wanted to keep control over it, the gangsters could not have targeted every manufacturer and every beer store. The profits from illegal alcohol were minuscule compared to the yield from today's illegal drugs. They are the underworld's last great, greatest, source of illegal income--dwarfing anything to be made fromgambling, prostitution or other vice. Legalizing drugs would knock out this huge prop from under organized crime. Smugglers and pushers would have to go aboveboard or go out of business. There simply wouldn't be enough other criminal endeavors to employ them all. If we are concerned about the influence of organized crime on government, industry and our own personal safety, we could strike no single more damaging blow against today's gangsters than to legalize drugs. 8. Legal drugs would be safer. Legalization is a consumer protection issue. Because it is illegal, the drug trade today lacks many of the consumer safety features common to other markets: instruction sheets, warning labels, product quality control, manufacturer accountability. Driving it underground makes any product, including drugs, more dangerous than it needs to be. Nobody denies that currently illegal drugs can be dangerous. But so can aspirin, countless other over-the-counter drugs and common household items; yet the proven hazards of matches, modeling glue and lawn mowers are not used as reasons to make them all illegal. Practically anything can kill if used in certain ways. Like heroin, salt can make you sick or dead if you take enough of it. The point is to learn what the threshold is, and to keep below it. That many things can kill is not a reason to prohibit them all--it is a reason to find out how to handle products to provide the desired action safely. The same goes for drugs. Today's drug consumer literally doesn't know what he's buying. The stuff is so valuable that sellers have an incentive to "cut" (dilute) the product with foreign substances that look like the real thing. Most street heroin is only 3 to 6 percent pure; street cocaine, 10 to 15 percent. Since purity varies greatly, consumers can never be really sure how much to take to produce the desired effects. If you're used to 3 percent heroin and take a 5 percent dose, suddenly you've nearly doubled your intake. Manufacturers offering drugs on the open market would face different incentives than pushers. They rely on name-brand recognition to build market share, and on customer loyalty to maintain it. There would be a powerful incentive to provide a product of uniform quality: killing customers or losing them to competitors is not a proven way to success. Today, dealers can make so much off a single sale that the incentive to cultivate a clientele is weak. In fact, police persecution makes it imperative to move on, damn the customers. Pushers don't provide labels or instructions, let alone mailing addresses. The illegal nature of the business makes such things unnecessary or dangerous to the enterprise. After legalization, pharmaceutical companies could safely try to win each other's customers--or guard against liability suits--with better information and more reliable products. Even pure heroin on the open market would be safer than today's impure drugs. As long as customers know what they're getting and what it does, they can adjust their dosages to obtain the intended effect safely. Information is the best protection against the potential hazards of drugs or any other product. Legalizing drugs would promote consumer health and safety. 9. Legalization would help stem the spread of AIDS and other diseases. As D.R. Blackmon notes ("Moral Deaths," June 1988), drug prohibition has helped propagate AIDS among intravenous drug users. Because IV drug users utilize hypodermic needles to inject heroin and other narcotics, access to needles is restricted. The dearth of needles leads users to share them. If one IV user has infected blood and some enters the needle as it is pulled out, the next user may shoot the infectious agent directly into his own bloodstream. Before the AIDS epidemic, this process was already known to spread other diseases, principally hepatitis B. Legalizing drugs would eliminate the motivation to restrict the sale of hypodermic needles. With needles cheap and freely available, the drug users would have little need to share them and risk acquiring someone else's virus. Despite the pain and mess involved, injection became popular because, as The Washington Times put it, "that's the way to get the biggest, longest high for the money." Inexpensive, legal heroin, on the other hand, would enable customers to get the same effect (using a greater amount) from more hygienic methods such as smoking or swallowing--cutting further into the use of needles and further slowing the spread of AIDS. 10. Legalization would halt the erosion of other personal liberties. Hundreds of governments and corporations have used the alleged costs of drugs to begin testing their employees for drugs. Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Walker has embarked on a crusade to withhold the federal money carrot from any company or agency that doesn't guarantee a "drug-free workplace." The federal government has pressured foreign countries to grant access to bank records so it can check for "laundered" drug money. Because drug dealers handle lots of cash, domestic banks are now required to report cash deposits over $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for evidence of illicit profit. The concerns (excesses?) that led to all of these would disappear ipso facto with drg legalization. Before drugs became big business, investors could put their money in secure banks abroad without fear of harassment. Mom-and-pop stores could deposit their cash receipts unafraid that they might look like criminals. Nobody makes a test for urine levels of sugar or caffeine a requirement for employment or grounds for dismissal. However, were they declared illegal these would certainly become a lot riskier to use, and hence a possible target for testing "for the sake of our employees." Legalizing today's illegal drugs would make them safer, deflating the drive to test for drug use. 11. It would stabilize foreign countries and make them safer to live in and travel to. The connection between drug traffickers and and guerrilla groups is fairly well documented (see "One More Reason," August 1987). South American revolutionaries have developed a symbiotic relationship with with coca growers and smugglers: the guerrillas protect the growers and smugglers in echange for cash to finance their subversive activities. in Peru, competing guerrilla groups, the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru, fight for the lucrative right to represent coca farmers before drug traffickers. Traffickers themselves are well prepared to defend their crops against intruding government forces. A Peruvian military helicopter was destroyed with bazooka fire in March, 1987, and 23 police officers were killed. The following June, drug dealers attacked a camp of national guardsmen in Venezuela, killing 13. In Colombia, scores of police officers, more than 20 judges, two newspaper editors, the attorney general and the justice minister have been killed in that country's war against cocaine traffickers. Two supreme court justices, including the court president, have resigned following death threats. The Palace of Justice was sacked in 1985 as guerrillas destroyed the records of dozens of drug dealers. "This looks like Beirut," said the mayor of Medellin, Colombia, after a bomb ripped apart a city block where the reputed head of the Medellin Cartel lives. It "is a waning of where the madness of the violence that afflicts us can bring us." Legalizing the international drug trade would affect organized crime and subversion abroad much as it would in the United States. A major source for guerrilla funding would disappear. So would the motive for kidnapping or assassinating officials and private individuals. As in the United States, ordinary Colombians and Peruvians once again could walk the streets and travel the roads without fear of drug-related violence. Countries would no longer be paralyzed by smugglers. 12. Legalization would repair U.S. relations with other countries and curtail anti-American sentiment around the world. a. When Honduran authorities spirited away alleged drug lord Juan Matta Ballesteros and had him extradited to the United States in April, Hondurans rioted in the streets and demonstrated for days at the U.S. embassy in Tegucigulpa. The action violated Honduras's constitution, which prohibits extradition. Regardless of what Matta may have done, many Hondurans viewed the episode as a flagrant violation of their little country's laws, just to satisfy the wishes of the colossus up North. b. When the U.S. government, in July 1986, sent Army troops and helicopters to raid cocaine factories in Bolivia, Bolivians were outraged. The constitution "has been trampled," said the president of Bolivia's House of Representatives. The country's constitution requires congressional approval for any foreign military presence. c. One thousand coca growers marched through the capital, La Paz, chanting "Death to the United States" and "Up with Coca" last May in protest over a U.S.-sponsored bill to prohibit most coca production. In late June, 5000 angry farmers overran a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration jungle base, demanding the 40 American soldiers and drug agents there leave immediately. U.S. pressure on foreign governments to fight their domestic drug industries has clearly reinforced the image of America as an imperialist bully, blithely indifferent to the concerns of other peoples. To Bolivian coca farmers, the U.S. government is not a beacon of freedom, but a threat to their livelihoods. To many Hondurans it seems that their government will ignore its own constitution on request from Uncle Sam. Leftists exploit such episodes to fan nationalistic sentiment to promote their agendas. Legalizing the drug trade would remove some of the reasons to hate America and deprive local politicians of the chance to exploit them. The U.S. would have a new opportunity to repair its reputation in an atmosphere of mutual respect. source: http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/policy/policy_writing1.shtml SgtGarcia
I'm from holland and i work at a burger king near a so called coffeeshop. I don't feel safe when i have to cycle home at night. You can't tell what some people will do when they are influenced by drugs. In my opinion drugs should not be legalized, just to keep places safe for non-drugs using people
Dread Lord Chaos
"Soft" drugs such as marijuana should not be legailzed simply because they have gotten an increasingly larger following. And as for the government regulating it and charging highly inflated prices, their will STILL BE illegal activity as foreign countries will import drugs illegally and MUCH cheaper.
rwojick
There is an inherent problem with ALL drug use.
Once you take a drug you alter your course, some more so than others. If you choose the drug yourself then that gives you some measure of responsibilty, however, if someone else gives you the drug then the possibilty exists that you will pay the mental price while he or she takes in t he money. Drug trafficers seldom take responsibility, that is what makes them such a seedy lot. Do I think soft drugs, and by this I think you mean marijuanna, should be legalized? I do. But I also think legalized drugs like you get from the "doctor" should be scrutized to a greater degree, as in the US bureau boys are little better at narcotics than the are with weapons of mass destruction. Each of us must take responsibilty for what we take into our bodies. tbsly
If the US government really wanted to win the war on drugs they would legalize marijuana and tax and sell it just the same as alcohol and cigarettes. In the grand scheme of things, pot, cigaretts, and alcohol are all just as bad for you, and they all are used for somewhat the same reasons. They are all just a means to an end.
The government would be making billions of additional dolars in revenue and the people would be happy. Jails wouldn't be filling up with one time offenders, who either have pot on them, are smoking pot, or selling pot. Jails should be reserved for rapists and murders, not pot heads who participate in a victimless crime. April_May
A drug is a drug. We call them drugs because they affect the self concience and body while creating addictions. For example. Caffein, im addicted to, Nocotine, myfriends are addicted to, alco, my cousin is addicted to, weed (pot) alot of people are addicted to. Every drug causes dependancy. And with every drug, over use will cause death. Even caffein because it can eat away the stomach. If you mean pot as a soft drug as apposed speed, well there are chemicles and pesticides in pot and it creats psychological problems. When it is legalized, more people will get addicted.
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