Guest Post by Loki
Of all of the Republican candidates this year the one I least support is Ron Paul. Mainly because he is not a Republican or a conservative but is a socially liberal Libertarian.
Today I was reminded of that by the death of Whitney Houston. The extremely liberal Tony Bennett upon hearing the news proclaimed that as a tribute to Ms. Houston we should legalize drugs to prevent deaths like hers, Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson. Legalizing drugs would not have helped Ms. Houston one bit. It would have brought on her demise much quicker. She did not die from her lack of being able to attain drugs. She died because of her long history of abuse of drugs and the destruction it had on her health.
Ron Paul agrees with this stand as to the legalization of drugs, an extremely liberal position. Man is weak and to think legalizing drugs would not have dire consequences is utter madness. Ron Paul has a similar attitude about world politics. That somehow if we let the world fight its own battles things will work out gloriously. Too bad our enemies do not feel that way. If we were to abandon our friends and let chaos rule the world we would soon find ourselves alone.
Were drugs to be legalized our hospitals would soon be filled with victims of drug over doses and addicts. And of course liberals would also demand that we would have to build many more rehab facilities and pay for them with Obamacare. The cost of so many people being unproductive and using our resources to return to normal lives would be extremely costly.
The war on drugs is ugly and costly. The alternative offered by Ron Paul and liberals is socially destructive and financially worse.
One final off topic thought, why do liberals want to legalize drugs but regulate our sugar intake? Liberals just seem to have such diametrically opposed thoughts completely free of logic. I sometimes feel flummoxed.
ED Note: The delay in posting this is entirely mine. Loki wrote and submitted this post on Feb 12. Apologies for the delay. ~ Basketcase Mgr.
That is not the case in Portugal (“Were drugs to be legalized our hospitals would soon be filled with victims of drug over doses and addicts”) according to John Stossel’s latest cablecast, ‘Illegal Everything’, and Blog post:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2012/02/25/end-americas-drug-war-lesson-portugal
John Stossel is also a libertarian. And the USA is not Portugal. The USA leads the world in abuse of cocaine and cannabis. And oxycontin is a powder keg just waiting to explode. And would anyone ever think legalizing meth is a good idea.
Although I agree with Stossel on a lot of things, this is not one of them. The USA has a lot of extra spending cash and a tendency to abuse drugs. Like gun crime in the UK as compared to the USA I just don’t think you can compare the two.
Stossel also believes in legalized prostitution. Something else I don’t agree with.
I don’t want our government to be keeping the public drugged and complacent. Reminds me too much of “1984” and “A Brave New World”.
My family also has a history of alcohol abuse and I don’t think we need to add more temptations.
But others have different opinions, that is why we have elections.
It would probably be less expensive to give dopers outpatient treatment for the occasional overdose rather than maintain them in a correctional facility. And, of course, there is always the chance the dopers will kill themselves off at an early age and thereby save society a lot of money.
Personally, I think dopers make life a little easier for normal people, because dopers cannot compete for placement in good universities, cannot obtain high-paying jobs, and cannot attract intelligent mates.
You need to look at this in Darwinian terms.
Remember we had a time when everything was legal (drugs) we didn’t have the problems we have now. But I guess some people support this war on the Constitution.
I have been considering this for a blog post for awhile. What is the best reason for criminalization of drugs that can’t be applied to alcohol as well? If you want to say that drugs adversely influence a person’s view of reality, well so does booze. Destructive of the family? How come Alanon is so busy, and top it off by answering the harm to the family when a family member is in prison.
Not to mention the costs to the tax payer of $55,000 for each inmate, plus all the wrong homes broken into during police raids, and you start to figure out the costs don’t justify the measures.
Steve,
But think again of all the problems with alcohol. Legalizing drugs will not lessen the alcohol problem. Something most proponents for legalization keep forgetting. And adding drugs will not double the problems at home. It will double, triple or quadruple the problems.
Americans have a lot of disposable money that they already spend on drugs. Imagine if all of the drugs were now cheaper.
Okay, but criminalizing drugs hasn’t prevented their use either. Not sure what the answer is, but I do know that what we are doing now is not working.