Yea but they won't ever legalize until they can TAX...

but I think they'll figure it out.

besides, crack was pretty much brought to California durring the Regan administration by the CIA...

 

The US now imprisons more people per capita than any other nation in the world according to Parade magazine and most of those behind bars are non-violent drug users.

 

i have mixed feelings about this thread...especially after reading all the posts. i have children and i know that i dont want them to grow up being addicted to anything, but i know that im pretty much powerless to stop them from making their own decisions. we talk to them honestly about sex and drugs, but then all we can do is trust them in the end. i work in a rehab facility and my hubby is correctional officer working in the prison system, unfortunately we've both developed rather cynical outlooks about people in general. anyway, we cant preach abstinence to our children about sex or drugs since that would make us hypocritics and forever damn us in the eyes of our children. perhaps the real problem is people and not drugs? i dont know. but i see heart broken parents bring in their children and i have seen heart broken children bringing in their elderly parents. do they do it to themselves? and as far as victims, are not the ones close to them and love them victims of the addiction? i just dont know anymore. probably would of been better if had experimented more with drugs than sex.

 

Here's where the argument to prohibit behaviors or laws to protect the innocent family victims of drug abuse falls apart. The innocent family members suffer the exact same painful ramifications when some one becomes addicted to the internet, or religion, or just runs off with the big titted red headed neighbor. And although most people turn a blind eye to it putting someone in jail also creates a host of painful ramifications for family members. There are no laws on the books or even proposed to protect innocent victims from these painful ramifications, nor should there be.

Also the argument that we must protect children from hazardous things falls apart when we consider that just about any child 12 or older can go into almost any store in this nation and purchase products like Draino, butane, or over the counter medications. Any of these products as well as a host of others could easily kill them, but there are no laws to protect them. Why? The answer is simple because all of us including our children know that these things will definetly harm or kill them and so we either avoid them or use them responsibility and that works.

Likewise do you also worry about products like paint, glue, areosals, butane, gasoline, cold remedies, asthma medications, alcohol and the medications in your own medicine chest? You should be. Kids commonly use these products to get high and they are truely more destructive and potentially fatal than street drugs.

Prohibition of drugs has never worked and never will. In fact it makes the problem much worse and only increases the likelyhood that your children will not only use drugs but be uneducated and more vulnerable to addiction, jail, death and destruction. As Gore Vidal once observed the solution is obviously simple: Drugs do in fact kill and destroy. Most people don't want to die so most people won't use them. Those that do have a personal problem they must take responsibility for and deal with personally.

 

true enough, stumbler....and there is a law on the books here about people that leave their spouses for another lover, called adultery (well, only if they're married) and they can be charged although most people dont because it turns into a big pain in the ass. as well the jilted lover can bring action against the new lover and it's called alienation of affection. as far as addictions, being addicted to anything one thing in particular is devastating and destructive, but do not all have our habits/vices that we routinely engage in? does this condone the use of drugs as well? interesting questions to ponder, because im sure the heroin junky and paint huffer enjoy getting their high. the problem of methampthetamines (specifically meth labs) has become so bad and has resulted in so much death from explosions that Sudafed is now only sold from behind the pharmacy counter and customers are limited to the number of packages that can be bought...this is a prime example of the government trying to rescue people too stupid know better, and they slowly chisel away at any liberty left to us. prohibition is not the answer, better parenting is....but where does that bring us, someone writing a manual for how to raise our children?

but i digress, this is not about children and drugs...this is supposed to be about whether or not drugs are good or bad. drugs, legal or otherwise, wreak havoc on the body. so the less drugs that you can take the better in my opinion.

 

Legalize Drugs!

Tobacco and Alcohol are just as bad, and legal...

 

Can you give me a source for the number of deaths from exploding meth labs? I'm not really aware of this happening anywhere in my area.

 

Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion a Year
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted February 10, 2007.



The latest numbers are out: nearly 800,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2005. When will the insanity stop?

American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.
Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.
The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.
Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.
According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.
These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.
Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.
According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.

 

Unfortunately meth labs are plentiful around here...I think my county ranks the higest in the state...don't know about them exploding though...

 

i know the part of WI that i am in is one of the highest in a few states too, we're rural, but with in an hour of St.Paul/Minneapolis MN, so there is alot of demand/availability to sell meth...to tell you the truth it scares the hell outta me.

 

It's rural around here, too. Do meth labs produce a lot of smoke when they're making it? If so, I think there might have been a meth lab in the rented trailer on the hill above me...it would get really smoky around 1-3 am sometimes and it didn't smell like wood or food cooking. And it seemed kind of late to be burning trash....

And they've even busted people for having mobile meth labs in the trunks of their cars!!!

 

stay far away...i don't know if it does, but the chemicals are very poisionous...stay farrrrrrrrr away

 

Yes, we absolutely need to legalize all drugs. We need more of this:
http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugIssue/MethResources/faces/index.html

 

My house was full of smoke one morning from whatever they were burning...I called the Sheriff's dept. to come to check to see if it might have been something suspicious..you know, smell the cloud of smoke to see if maybe it was...but I don't think they ever showed up.

The trailer's gone now...YAY!!

 

I doubt it would get very smoky, but the chemical combination is very volatile (hence explosions) and very destructive. Landlords are starting to have problems with property being uninhabitable after being used as a meth lab.

And yes, I have heard about the mobile labs. They busted one, and there was a kid or two in the back seat.

 

Very sad!!

 

It did scare me thinking that if it did explode up there, it would probably hit my house, too. Since this area is so rural and mountainous, people can hide in all kinds of places.

I know...those poor children being exposed to all kinds of harmful things!!!

 

In the UK I'm hearing of a lot of problems that landlords are having with "modifications" to their properties to grow dope. Because they are deliberate acts by tenants and not actually "Malicious Damage" some insurers are refusing to pay out on the buildings covers. But hte fact that this is getting discussed at all shows me that it's happening a lot.

Doesn's sound as dodgy as the meth labs you describe, though, but it's probably only a matter of time.

 

USAToday had an article on this just a few days ago. It was pretty amazing. They will bust out walls that are in the way, steal electricity so they won't alert the power company, install an air filtration system, etc.

Sometimes, they will buy a house and just never make any payments. And this is happening in middle class suburbs.

 

The specific one I was involved in was a combination of a large hole in a wall for ventillation, a significant amount of uncertified rewiring to feed the heating and lighting, and a major damp problem brought about by the condensation. And I'm given to understand that it was far from isolated.

Hate to stereotype but it appears to be prevalent in student areas in the UK, although not exclusively.