Exactly. I can see pot go up in usage only because its good. But it wouldn't matter to allot of people if crack an meth were legal. Because we've seen what it dose. I'm sure they will go on a rise for awhile but eventually hard drugs will fix themselves. It just takes time.
I agree with Hugo.. I don't think use would go up, and would eventually drop. I know it was a lot easier when I was in high school to get a bag of weed than find someone to buy alcohol.
The problems with these other drugs is not only the horrendously harmful effects to the user, his family and life, but all the other societal effects. There is a huge difference in someone who is addicted to alcohol or marijuana and that of someone addicted to meth, coke or heroin. It's not very common for a person addicted to alcohol or marijuana to have to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars, weekly, to support their habit. This is quite common for these other drugs. This leads to crimes like robbery, theft, burglary, etc... to support their habit. Now the effects of the drug are definitely affecting more than the user or their immediate family, even though family members are also often victims of thefts by addicts. You don't hear much of an alcoholic or pot head robbing anyone for beer or weed money. At most they might steal a bag of Doritos from 7-11 for the munchies. I just truly think that the negative societal effects of these drugs outweigh the positives, even if there is a slight decline in use.
I think the most, certainly the worse problems come from the illegallity itself. People still use, and abuse those drugs. The illegality creates the bulk of the other crimes. It someone wants to shoot meth, there's no stopping them. Really, there's no legislating stupidity.. If people wanna poisen themselves, they're gonna do it.
Well I did, and from what I've heard the general consensus is the same. At 15-16 years old I could sit down with my buddies on a Friday night with a bag of dope, a strip of blotter acid, cocaine (powder or rocked) but we very seldom could ever get alcohol. My drug dealers never once asked to see my ID. Hard to deny that. Good point indeed.
I don't think that most of problems, when talking about these types of highly addictive drugs, comes from the illegality. The other crimes are a result of a person having to come up with hundreds or thousands of dollars a week, that they need, to buy the drug that their bodies are craving. They will do just about anything. Theft, robbery, burglary, prostitution. There have been several cases in our small town where not only are women and young girls prostituting themselves but we have had some mothers that have prostituted out their young teen and pre teen daughters to their dealers for meth. I don't think you see this type of desperate behavior with alcohol or marijuana.
I think that's the case all around the country.. Meth has really hit young girls hard. Nasty, nasty ****. But like Hugo said, I don't think people will all the sudden become drug addicts because they're legal. There is no keeping them out of the hands of children. It would be easier if it was legal, more open, and talked about. Not many girls would want to try it after they see their big sis age 40 years in 2 years of meth abuse. Scare the hell out of em, hopefully.
Another issue along that line is, meth/heroin/cocaine addicts have huge issue in holding down a job. Whether the drugs are legal or not, this will always be an issue. Therefor one could say even if meth was legal people would still rob and steal to buy their now legal drugs.
I would just like to add that trying to say drinking has not increased after it was made legal again is just plain wrong. Drinking is a huge problem in our Country and is increasing every year, along with the costs to our Country to take care of these problem drinkers. Outside of these problem drinkers, we have the families, mothers, fathers, children, parents, neighbors, co-workers, almost everyone around each of these people are effected in some negative way, some more than others. The biggest problem causing so many people to get involved with drinking is how accepted it is in society. You can get drinks at football games, basketball games, baseball games, bowling alleys, pizza joints, all restaurants of quality serve drinks, our Country clubs, even our office parties, birthdays, marriage receptions, national holidays, and new years are all acceptable situations to have a drink in your hand. Now, in each of these examples, try inserting a guy smoking a bong........... Pot and other illegal drugs are kept in the shadows, privately and carefully used because they are not considered socially acceptable. It would take some time to be sure, but once these drugs have been made legal and have the social acceptance that drinking has, it is reasonable to assume that their use will be similar to the current use of alcohol. Again, I must go back to my example of how things changed for young women in this Country once it was no longer considered bad to get pregnant out of wedloc. The social pressure was removed, and the mess that has followed is still getting worse every year. We now have more children born from mothers who have never been married than babies born inside homes with a married couple. When will we stop dropping the standards?
Right, then why are my parents paying over $120 just for one prescription? Even if you got them dirt cheep, most people live from paycheck to paycheck and a sudden addiction would still require them to either lose everything they own or start figuring out how to get more money fast. Drinking is a great example, once a person loses their control and starts abusing alcohol, financial problems quickly follow. So, clearly making them legal does not remove the problem of crime and broken families. All you do is make it easier for everyone to take the risk of addiction and increse that happening because it is no longer seen as a bad thing to use these drugs. By the way, once the government gets involved and starts adding taxes to the drugs, it is quite possible that the price would go up, just look at what people in places like New York pay for their cigs.
What you are basically stating is terrible government policies require more government to correct. The high prices of prescription drugs in the United States is largely due to the exorbitant costs imposed by the FDA on drug manufacturers. The Kefauver Amendment passed in 1962 is the primary cause of high drug costs. Repeal the Kefauver Amendment and prescription costs will drop dramaticaaly. I don't see recreational drugs as being subjected to the proof of effectiveness trials that drugs for treatment of illnesses are. I agree there is too much government. I'm trying to reduce government. I have to disagree. Alcohol has been the most popular drug of choice for most cultures fhroughout history. I don't recall my grandfather recalling the cocaine parties of his youth, when coke was in cola. My standards are the classical liberal standards of Jefferson and Madison where insuring individual liberty (at least for white guys) was the primary function of government. The surge in out of wedlock births began when government started paying women who had kids out of wedlock. Ronald Reagan was right when he said that "Government is not the solution. It is the problem." He should have extended that to social issues as well as economic ones.
Agreed. The prices would most certainly go way up. Pot is actually rather cheap as it is. Frankly, I don't care if they legalize pot or not. I do care that the laws are so strict that they literally destroy lives. And the talking heads try to tell us that marijuana destroys lives. They got their heads so far up their ass that they can't get it right. If you grow one plant, smoke it yourself and never even see another soul, let alone sell it to anyone, they will take EVERYTHING you own, including your freedom and your children and they will lock you in a cage with killers and rapist. Now tell me, is that acceptable?
The history of the prohibition era would argue otherwise. Of course, that was before the tax environment we live in today. Here though, once again, the argument is that terrible government causes the need for more government. The tax level should be equivalent to the taxes imposed on alcohol.
But your again confusing a dream idea with how things like this really work. A pack of cigs cost about 30 cents to produce but after taxes, some places pay over 8 dollars a pack to cover the taxes. One of the excuses is that smoking causes lung problems that put the burdon of unpaid medical bills on the states. Somking pot has similar lung related problems, in fact it has more tar then tobacco, so the idea is to tax those that smoke to pay for their later medical problems that the society must deal with. Let's not forget that this thread considered thaxing pot to pay for the fight on other drugs, so clearly it would need to be a large tax being as much of the populace would opt to grow their own instead of buying the government backed pot. Hell, I would wager that many pot smokers would reject the government's pot just out of spite, As jhony already said (I believe we can say he is expert in the subject of what pot costs), pot is already very cheap, it is difficult to imagine it getting cheaper. By the way, I will admit that the story you posted was a tad confusing on how it represented itself. It seemed to me to be comparing percentages of cost to people, not percentages of use. In one place it spoke of the cost being higher during restrictive times, something of a no brainer there, in fact, it had a disclaimer about not having any real data during the illegal times so really, it seems to be without any basis to decide anything concerning use, only price. Being as you just admitted that there were not over bearing taxes to deal with during those times, quite simply, there is no way to make comparisons with this modern era.
Pot smokers are not the ones that are robbing and killing people. the people doing that are the hard drug users. Legalizing pot will not do **** for society. Legalizing crack and heroin will. Let me quote the greatest man of the 20th century again: Now, let us ask a constitutional question--- If it required amendments to ban and unban alcohol use, how are federal laws against drugs constitutional? No one will answer this question.
