mecklenburg

Dont do the crime if you cant do the time,

No violin necessary. Your point of view is sad enough. Again, you don't care about ending drug abuse. You don't care about what the evidence supports. You just want to make sure a certain group is punished.

Cut the violins Us working folks dont owe druggies anything. there are numerous programs available and even a methadone clinic here in our little town. And the harsh reality is most junkies ignore them all till ordered by the court, to avoid jail,

"We will have to agree to disagree, Drugs addicts are a drain on the taxpayers and the cause of most property crimes,"

So instead of actually addressing the problem and having them become a productive member of society you'd rather lock them up with other criminals and continue the cycle that enables them to be a drain on society? On what planet does that make any sense? And if your so outraged tat the thought of us "subsidizing their lifestyle" then maybe you should consider that instead of using taxpayer money to lock them up and house them I a prison where often drugs are still accessible we could use taxpayer money to rehabilitate them. It seems like you're not actual opposed to spending the money, you're opposed to the idea of the money being used for anything but perpetuating misery.

And as far as who's making it, it's the cartels or big pharmaceutical. Which would you rather?

I think drug use for most is a lifestyle choice. Just like having a cold beer is a lifestyle choice, but addiction is a literal disease. Let me ask you this. How fun does being a crackhead sound to you? It doesn't sound too fun to me. You said yourself that people use drugs despite everyone and everything telling them it's a bad idea. Think about that. Why do people choose that? Do you think it's a question worth examining? Si you think it's possible that the answer to that question is something other than they're bad people put them in jail?

Would you deny that drug use is a voluntary life style choice ?

We will have to agree to disagree, Drugs addicts are a drain on the taxpayers and the cause of most property crimes,No one forces them to take drugs and the rest of us should not be forced to subsidize their life style choices or provide free drugs, Are there any programs that give alcoholics free booze? The only thing legalization would do would be to give big pharma another tremendous income stream, Did you know that even though you can buy weed legally in CA the black market is still booming because of it being lots cheaper due to no taxes.

Mandatory sentencing curtailed crack use and destroyed peoples lives in the process. What I'm saying is if we had approached the crack epidemic with care and rehabilitation instead of locking up and creating a generation of recidivist addicts we could have curtailed it without destroying so many lives and creating so much suffering for individuals and communities. You can't seem to not miss the point or put words in my mouth can you? Never did I "blame" the cartels. I said decriminalizing drugs would take money and power from them. You keep asking me questions that are already answered in the data. There is no evidence that decriminalization leads to more people trying hard drugs. If you stop penalizing addicts and start encouraging treatment instead of punishing them, providing drugs that are clean and doses that are measured and safe and stoping the flow of money to dangerous violent cartels. These would all go a long way to limit death and disease associated with drug addiction. Again, it's in the data that you simply decided wasn't valid or important.

Any way you spun this one light years from the original subject,I will close by saying the legalization of hard drugs is something i would never condone. Weed on the other hand i would have no problem with

The crack epidemic is a great example of how a destructive substance can become abused so heavily despite it being illegal

I bring up guns in relation to this because like drugs, there will always be a demand for guns. I hear so often the old arguments of if you outlaw guns then only criminals will get them, or guns don't kill people people kill people and yet many of those same people don't see how drug prohibition is a failed approach for much the same reason they claim gun prohibition would be. It's silly.

Why do you keep putting words in my mouth? I never said or implied that making something legal meant no one abused it. I brought up alcohol purposefully because you equated legalization with lawlessness. Alcohol is both dangerous, addictive, legal and regulated. There will always be a demand for alcohol wether it's legal or not, so better to allow it and manage the negative impact it has on our society than prohibit it and empower and funnel wealth to criminals. I would go a step further and say we need to end the punitive approach to drugs and offer people treatment instead of jail. The data also supports this. If we have a different approach to drugs we can take power from drug cartels and limit the amount of death and suffering that people affected by addiction experience. The crack epidemic is a great example of how a destructive substance can become abused so heavily despite it being illegal. I have very little love for Clinton or Biden and think so many lives could have been saved if we had developed a model based on care and rehabilitation instead of locking people up for decades.

Later the residents protested to many young urban men were being jailed even though the were the group most devastated by the sale and use of crack.

You may be to young to remember the crack epidemic in the late 80s to mid 90s, When the streets of large urban areas were awash with dead bodies and crack heads willing to commit any type of crime they could to buy a another rock. And residents screamed for harsher drug laws. President Clinton responded with the controversial crime bill of 94 which Biden sponsored, It cut the homicide rate in half in some places but not before most of a generation wound up in jail or dead

Alcohol is legal. Does that mean there are no alcohol laws?

You clearly suggest prohibition of something is not the answer. LOL I just pointed out there are probley more gun laws on the book than their or drug laws

Who said there would be no laws?

Prohibition in either case is not totally effective but with out some laws governing them where do you think we would be?

When did I say that all gun or drug laws should be done away with?