Saturday, January 5, 2019

Appeasement, Anyone?















Having exhausted attempts at further rational debate, we're now down to violin music and appeasement in discussing what to do about drugs.

Because we've tried half-assing it since...ever, which hasn't worked. And getting serious is simply too hard, too awful, and double-plus ungood. So let's just declare the whole idea silly, and surrender society to the much cheaper and better onslaught of doing Nothing.

The most I can hope for is some diversionary programs that keep non-violent drug users out of prisons. And I don't want to do that because I give a rat's ass about the users. I want to do it because it's expensive to house and feed them in prison. This isn't about empathy. It's about economics. The $31 billion we spent on this failed policy this year. The estimated $1 trillion we have spent since Nixon.
 Dear Borepatch:
1) How much we spend is no measure of anything but how much we spend.
You've perhaps seen Brewster's Millions? That's the government, at every level, every day for the last century.













And what was the punchline in that flick on how to spend $30M in 30 days, and have nothing to show for it?
Politics!
You're certainly bright enough to know that without me mentioning it, yet here we are.

And Point of Order!
We spent $31B last year. Let's stipulate that. Nixon, counting on my fingers, was president last 44 years ago. So to have spent $1T on the Slap Fight On Drugs, we'd have to have been spending a great deal less in prior years. And BTW, $31B today is $6B in 1974, the last year Nixon was in office.
And the vast bulk of what's been spent was post-1986, with the whole thing barely even registering from 1971-1985 (and that's the numbers on a bleeding heart "The Drug War Is A Failure" site), by which time the crack cocaine wars nationwide were as epic as anything seen during Prohibition, because of total neglect of this so-called war for 15 years, and after the infrastructure was well-established. And most of the "spending" they list is due to incarceration of a generation of former Uzi-toting narco-warriors at the street level, not grannies scoring an extra Vicodin at the corner for a fin.
So if we're going to talk about economics, probably best to use constant dollars, then or now, and not pull recockulous numbers out of our @$$#$, don'cha think?

2) Using the exact same "logic", I can point to all the cars with flat tires and involved in crashes at the side of the road, and say the experiment with automobiles is futile, and should similarly be abandoned.
I'm pretty sure we spent far more than $30B dollars on highways, and what has it gotten us? Travel is worse, drivers are grumpier, traffic is more congested. It couldn't possibly be, e.g. in just my home state, because we haven't spent enough on freeways, as the state has gone from 15M to 40M people, but Moonbeam, in two different 8-year terms, has halted all spending on freeways for his entire tenures, and diverted those literal billions in gas tax and car tax money to welfare for illegal aliens, could it???

Now, see if you can extrapolate how that's worked for drugs, at the federal level. Maybe look at the budgets for the Coast Guard, Customs, Border Patrol, etc. and see if they've seen the five-thousand-fold increase in the last 50 years as drug traffic has, and then let me know why you think we're not solving the problem.
Or just go down to the sea with a child's shovel and pail, and tell me how long before you solve hauling away all that sand.

The problems are identical.

3) I spent ten years watching caravan after caravan of human dope mules toting 80# dope bundles across the border from Mexico, by walking it here on foot carried on their backs. Real high tech stuff there. O, if only there were some way to stop people from walking here!
In person, on trail cams, and finding the piles of discarded burlap packs after we'd missed them, and they'd handed it off to a vehicle, like the March Of The Mexican Dope Penguins.
It went on for decades before I dropped in, and it's going on now.
90-95% of smuggled drugs get here.
(Except where they can't walk it here, because Big Beautiful Wall!)
Is that level of feckless incompetence your idea of a good college try at stopping it?
Or could we, just maybe, do a wee bit better?

(If I'd known then what I know now, I should have just shot the bastards on the spot. It would have had a more positive effect.)

4) I've already pointed out what an actual war looks like.
Feel free to jump in and tell me when we've ever done anything like that. IIRC, it's currently never, in history. But I'm open to honest discussion and facts I may have missed.

5) 99.99999% of those people in prison for non-violent drug offenses are there at all because they pled to lesser charges to get a reduced sentence, rather than cop to the violent felonies most of them committed, 5, 10, or 200 times prior to that conviction, and to save court costs and not clog the courts forever, D.A.s took them up on it.

Zero Fucks Given for jailbirds, or their whiny relatives yawping about how their baby wasn't that bad.

Plus, you know, I know, and Yellow Dog knows that no one, ever got caught and busted for their first puff on their first joint or crack pipe, the first time they tried it, and put in state or federal prison for that. Jean Valjean is a fictional character. So let's stop yapping about "non-violent drug offenders" when all but an infinitesimal fraction of them are far worse than that. I testified once on a guy that pled out to the two counts of auto burglary that I saw him do, and as the detectives explained to me after trial, the D.A. only took the plea after he told about all of the 500 other burglaries he'd admit to having done in just the last two months, on what was already his second strike. (Everyone who believes he started doing them spontaneously 60 days prior, stand on your head.) Oh, and the icing on the cake: he was doing them, per the PD, to get stuff to sell to support his drug habit. Ten burglaries a day or more, when he wasn't too stoned to work. Crimes are like cockroaches: for every one you see, there were ten more you didn't. Or in his case, 500. They don't just appear magically out of thin air either.

And you think if heroin was legally sold, he'd go get a real job to pay for that?
Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta my butt.
Which is about the time I'd be willing to pay for giving it away to him for free, too.

And those skyrocketing incarceration rates "just for drugs" also correlate beautiful with the plummeting crime rate over the same period. Consult the relevant statistics.
Three Strikes works. And the death penalty still has a 0% recidivism rate.
























Ponying out the three people railroaded for possession of a seed of marijuana (like will be done) and ignoring the literal trainloads of guys in prison for "non-violently" bringing in 80 pounds of dope, gunning down rivals for years, shooting it out with cops, and then pleading to the easy conviction, cuts no ice.

And you and I both know you won't put 24M people in chain gangs. You'll get to a few tens of thousands, which you have for possession anyways in any given month, but you'll actually do something about it besides a citation, and behavior will change. This is why a 40 ft² rudder turns a ship the size of the Empire State Building. You'll see even fewer second offenders, and damned few will need LWOP (which you cleverly glossed over completely in your response) after three times. Those meriting execution will be those who've already harmed people, and by definition, not committed victimless crimes. And you knew all that when you threw up that scarecrow and stuffed the straw in his raggedy clothes.

We've also laid waste to two countries, and toppled regimes in a couple of others, and no one has batted an eye. We've invaded Mexico three times IIRC, and frankly, carpet-bombing the cartels and perpetual kleptocracy there into charcoal would probably get the rest of the country to clamor for annexation and incorporation. At the very least, you'd end drugs coming through by the trainload, and whatever replaced their perpetual socialist nightmare there would be a vast improvement over the last 150 years.

You wouldn't need the draconian police state you decry here, because the cops would have their hands full just dealing with the paddywagon-loads of shitbags they literally trip over 24/7/365 right now. And when you clean up the little dirty corners, the middle of the floor takes care of itself. The same is true for cities. They wouldn't need to be doing all the War On The Constitution things that piss all of us off, because they'd actually be taking the problem children off the street. The crime is that they pass by the obvious causes in order to do no-knock raids on the wrong houses, and you act like doing something means doing more stupid things, rather than doing the obvious.

That's fallacious horseshit of the foulest sort if you want to seriously discuss a topic. So I think you don't.

If you want to abandon rational argument, and cut to sob stories and the typical internet nonsense about this, further debate is clearly a waste of time.

You're tired of seeing us spend $30B/year on what is a pathetically weak and horribly ineffective effort to stop drug use. Because it seems like a lot of money.
(Sorry, but 30B out of 4.3T isn't even three days' expenses. But - what a coincidence! - it's exactly what a Wall would cost. You want to propose shoving all that Drug Slap Fight money into building the entire wall this year, and we can talk about how much we need next year.)

Fair enough. Just say that you want to see that money go to food stamps and more gun laws and $30B worth of other federal horseshit neither you nor I will like instead, like it will, and then own it.
(Quick! Tell me how much your taxes dropped with the "Peace Dividend" of gutting the US military after the Cold War. I'll wait.)

But before we surrender unilaterally in the faux-war on drugs, let us know what that's going to cost us every year, forever. Just so we can measure things on a level balance scale, apples to apples.

And then, when you haven't proven your idea would cost less (because it won't, so you cannot), pull a 180, because you have to, like it or not.

Or else just come out and tell us that economics don't matter, facts don't matter, reality doesn't matter, and you aren't going to change your mind because of such petty things as facts and common sense, because it hurts your feelings. And you didn't really mean it in the first place, because it isn't ever going to happen.

If the latter, was this the five-minute argument, or the full half hour?

Wish in one hand, and crap in the other, and tell me which one fills up first.

Either drug use is bad, or it isn't.
Either government has the right to order society such that plagues like that are stopped rather than spread, or it doesn't.
There is a moral component to government, and you can't make everyone happy all the time. Everyone wants to pretend they're good, until it's time to act that way.

You can't look at the evidence, and then claim drug use even now is tolerable, let alone at what it will be when you quit that fight.

Given that conundrum, if I'm going to have to piss on someone's heads, I choose to do that to drug users and drug dealers. I didn't make their choices, they did. Drug use is a choice, not a disease, and fatness isn't caused by forks any more than mass murders are caused by guns. Banning some drugs is no different than confiscating murderers' guns, rather than the Evil Party's crusade to ban all of them.
There are medicinal uses even now for cocaine and opiates, but not for putting them on the snack shelf next to Twinkies. The same caveat applies to marijuana.

And unless you think there's room to add crack, meth, LSD, and everything else to that list, you have to continue the very drug restrictions and faux-war you say are the problem, and the quandary has you baffled, because reality is in conflict with your dogma.

So what it comes down to is whether you have the stomach for the fight, and the courage of convictions when faced with reality, or whether "Too Hard" is a good enough cop out on watching it all slide down the sewer. Like it has been. Like it is. Like it will.

I already pointed out that with most drugs of abuse but alcohol illegal, I've spent 1/3 to 1/2 of my career dealing with drug abusers. Now pot is legal here. In the first fifteen years I worked the ER, I probably never saw two people in the ER for marijuana use problems.

Now that it's not just medicinal, but recreational use that's totally legal here in Califrutopia, it's one patient/night for that, minimum.
Every. Night.
Big ERs, small ones, all over the county, in one of the (until this last election) reddest counties in the state.

So I should feel bad for convicts, and make that share of my time wasted on life's fuck-ups doing what they do....what?
75%?
90%?
100%??
And that's if abuse after full decriminalization only doubles or triples the phenomenon. If instead it goes up five- or ten-fold, you're totally f**ked.

And you want to do that because the ER isn't that busy, the wait to be seen is always so short, and we have so much free time there, and national medical costs (borne by you and me, and other people with jobs paying taxes, not by the dope users, ever) are so small, and shrinking every year?

As you responded: "Syrsly?"

"Hey, shame about your stroke, Mrs. Abernathy, all our beds are full of dope addicts, because legalization is saving the feds $30B this year. They must have forgotten to refund you your share. Bummer. Home you can learn to walk on one leg, and get used to tube feedings."
"Mrs. Vega, Timoteo's asthma attack will have to wait, I've got three meth heads tweaking and bugging out, and you'll just have to try sucking air in the lobby a bit longer."

THAT's the solution???

Please.

The last guys this bright told us that by putting crazy people on the streets, their costs would go down, and things would be better, and we'd stop incarcerating them unfairly too.

How's that working out for ya?

If you think incarceration and institutionalization is expensive,
wait until you see what turning people loose on the streets costs you.
















So you'll, of course, pardon me all to hell for noticing the insanity of trying that exact jackassery again now, with drug users, who are so much easier to deal with in the ER than just crazy people.

Like the 90# guy so whacked out on PCP, he pulled the handle out of a refrigerator, and was swinging five pounds of steel with screws sticking out, and standing on his good leg, and swinging his open-fractured bad leg, bending in two places with bone ends sticking out, at me and the county cop, flinging blood everywhere, and tossing my fat ass and that of a 250 cop around like we were toddlers riding on grandpa's back. And not feeling any of it.

O, yes, more of that, every day until I retire, please, sir.

This is why discussions of the problem always derail, and it's been two years since I've last bothered.
People who favor appeasement will never admit that their way is inevitably going to be a monstrously bigger fail, More! Harder! Faster! than the worst excess of the government's Slap Fight On Drugs, because they're just sure that doing nothing has got to be better than doing something, because Ayn Rand said it was so, or some other imaginary reasons.

And all those collateral damage casualties when the war on drugs becomes appeasement on drugs are to them, exactly as to Stalin, "just a statistic".














You want to claim the moral high ground because less government is better, always.

I notice virtually No One (with the caveat "sane" helpfully added) tries to make the argument for less government at Omaha Beach.
Or Belleau Wood. Or the Battle of Britain. Or at the Angle at Gettysburg in the face of Pickett's Charge. Or on Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal. Or at the Dong Ha Bridge in Easter of '72. Or along the Korean DMZ. Or at Yorktown.

It perhaps slipped notice, but those were all government employees there. Don't you wish there had been less of them?

WTF, Libertardians of Internetland, cat got your tongue?
Where's your Small/No Government god now??
Yell louder; maybe he can't hear you.
Or he's busy on the toilet.

Those were actual wars. Tell the class, and show your work, how less government would have been better there. As opposed to faux wars on poverty, inflation, or drugs.

And if less government wasn't the answer then, and actually fighting a war against those who'd happily destroy your society was justified, explain why that level of engagement isn't justified now?

And why is it that the vast majority of people who think like that just want their pot legalized?


















(Sorry that's not you, and about that 98% correlation, but your allies are your allies. Your circus, your monkeys.)

You don't want to be Singapore or Saudi Arabia on drugs?
ROWYBS.
Advocate for being Amsterdam.

Just don't BMW when you get what you're asking for, good and hard.
And own every casualty and caustic attack on civilization from the plague of drug use, because you'd rather look the other way than stomp on it. Open the gates of Troy, and bring in that shiny Trojan horse, then go and have a celebratory party. The war's over.

Kitty Genovese gets killed every day, I guess. Quite a brave, new world.

At least the Killing Fields and hordes of boat people finally got Jane Fonda to STFU about communism after she was so epically wrong.

So, how many skulls before that happens for the drug legalization crowd, and will there be anyone still around to notice afterwards?

 
And let's all recall that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Historically, the next stop after appeasement is Dunkirk.
 
So, where were you planning to go when you lose your continent this time around?
Just out to sea?
 
Asking for a friend.

 
Because that's the point where your philosophical desire for small government no matter what becomes a suicide pact.
 
You want to do fewer cavity searches on innocent men? Fewer no-knock warrants on the wrong house, or shooting dogs, or whacking decent people trying to get a good night's sleep when the SWAT team kicks the door in? I'm fine with that. My goal with "fewer" would be "none". I'm pretty damned certain we could ratchet up law enforcement's collective IQ, from beat cop to chiefs and national directors, and solve that problem. Something in the low 90s would suffice.
 
We can winnow out that obvious chaff without raising the white flag, throwing out the whole program, or burning up billions of dollars on stupid ineffectual enforcement, and substituting things that solve the problem and remove the incorrigible from society, rather than doing nothing, or less than what we're doing now, or just doing the same stupid sh*t over and over from inertia and laziness.
 
But quitting? Quitting just gets you nothing you'd want, orders of magnitude more of what you don't want, and cements failure into permanence, while demoralizing everyone trying to make a difference. It turns a setback into a rout, and makes an error into a biblical catastrophe, and a Shakespearean tragedy.
 
I decline.
Rethink, please.
 
Especially in light of this being a nation of some 600M guns, and trillions of rounds of ammo.
If government refuses to get a handle on this, people have a historical habit of eventually stepping up and solving things on their own. Even in carteltopia Mexico. The history of the same in the U.S. is long and distinguished.
 
And won't that be fun, and oh so much better than judicial law and order?

45 comments:

MEALONE said...

Violence is not always the anwer; But when it is the answer it is the only answer. IT has come to that. There is no way to legislate drugs out of existence. Drug use and trafficking is a national emergency and should be immediately declared so and war declared (or at least opened by the War Powers Act) on every major drug producing sh*thole in the world...........Oh, BUT BTW's our wonderful government is actually providing troops and armored vehicles to guard poppy fields in Afghanistan......news to you? Shouldn't be.....Gov't set Barry Seals in motion and that worked out well didn't it?
So what Americans have "600M guns" and "trillions of rounds of ammunition" it's all BS because the only Americans that might actually fight a war are white Americans and they have no balls left after Lincoln's war. If you want history there it is. Your wonderful gov't has slaughtered more of it's own citizens in useless war than all the drugs ever,ever smuggled into or used in this country......Government is not the solution to the problem; Government is the problem." Your boy Reagan, I think.
All gov't info, including the "history" you learned in your GOVERNMENT SCHOOL, is pure, unadulterated, 100%,deep, rich and brown bullshit!!!
WE!! Yes, WE!! ARE THE ONLY MEANS TO OUR SURVIVAL!! And, it will mean that many of us will have to be uncomfortable for a very,very long time. Living in the backstreets and field like hunted animals. Living on swill and whatever can be stolen from corporate or gov't entities. And yes, many, many will die in the fight. That is the part that keeps the "peace". No one wants to be first.
Every group gets infiltrated within one year of their notoriety and militias are a bad,bad, horrible joke. Your gov't is not going to ever, ever solve one fuukin' problem that doesn't create 10 or 20 or 100 more. People solve problems, not gov't and if the "drug war" is going to be a war then Joe Schmuckatelly is the guy that's going to kick it off and his grandchildren (maybe) will end it.
Americans, white Americans, are cowards, dullards, slovenly, fat, worthless, minions of their gov't run every-fukn-thing!
My solution? Get every first tier operator that has "seen the light" into a fold and support them and let them do what they do best. We, the useless fat-asses, can be the support tunnel that lets them deal with the problem unencumbered by military (read: Government) intervention and High Stupidity.
i.e.: Bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11 except as an observer. And I tell you with complete certainty that there are many in the "OPS" family that are fully aware.
It's time for them to step up and be real heroes.

Aesop said...

Tin foil: too tight.
Loosen. Get outside more.
Stop watching conspiracy videos on YouTube.
The government couldn't run a lemonade stand without outside help; keeping conspiracies you imagine secret would make their heads explode.
Gell-Mann is a thing, and it's strangling your mind.

Anonymous said...

Spot on my brother! Really like #5 above and came down to comment before the trolls and feels people wake up.
I work in the IFG "counter narcotics" sector at the moment and I will testify that yours is the only program which will accomplish the mission - unless the mission really is pissing away money for no effect save a jobs program.
BG

Anonymous said...

Mealone states: "Every group gets infiltrated within one year"

And yet all of the super smart conspiracies function beyond the sight of "normal" American and are deciphered only by an elite group of people who just so happen to agree with you.

I know a couple of people who are as "read-in" on the real secret, classified, not publicized, hidden conspiracies...One thing I note about them and their fellow commandos, they don't just have the secret knowledge about the one conspiracy, they have it all - from chem trails to the faked moon landings to 911 was an inside job...

So much crazy in such a little head, you claim that no group can keep from being compromised while in the next breath worship a conspiracy that would require thousands of people maintain absolute silence for almost two decades. The denial is strong in this one.

It surprises me that some people don't forget when to breathe, must be a conspiracy I know...

MSG Grumpy

Anonymous said...

Oh and BUILD THE #%#&6)^ WALL.

Will it stop 100% of the illegals and drugs?
No
Will it make it much harder for illegals and drugs to come across?
Yes

When a ship is sinking you plug the leak, NOT rearrange the deck chairs which is what we have been doing for the last few decades. The ship will be in much better shape if the flood currently coming in is reduced to a trickle.

Those who say that if it doesn't stop 100% of the problem, then we should do anything are idiots.

BUILD THE FRECKIN' WALL

Rant over

MSG Grumpy

Anonymous said...

I'll just add my voice ( keypad) to the chorus

BUILD THE WALL

BG

Unknown said...

Great article. I agree with you. I love your blog.

A society needs rules and regulations: cultural, moral and legal. The liberal fascination with tolerance of everything will destroy Western Civilization if it is not stopped.

In terms of Evolutionary Psychology the K (wolves/conservatives/right wing) will bring order to the disgusting world of the r (rabbits/liberals/left wing).

RandyGC said...

My question to any conspiracy theorist is if the Cabal is so ruthless and efficient, how come they haven't killed you yet?

I can say that the "peace dividend" of the 90's cut my taxes for years, until I was able to find a job in the civilian economy and work my way back up the food chain to my equivalent pay in the .mil. And it will continue to keep my taxes low as I won't have to pay them on the retirement payments I won't be receiving.

Anonymous said...

Many years ago I asked a friend why drugs? What is it that attracts him to drugs. His answer was long and lurid but what it boiled down to was sex. Any kind of sex with any girl who wanted drugs and once she knew he had drugs she kept coming back for more. A lot of people simply do not know what their teen daughter does to get drugs. One answer is she does every guy in the house. Yes that is a fact; if there are 10 men in the house she screws and sucks them all till they can't any more and she gets her drugs. She does it again the next day, the next and every day and each day brings different guys to the house. Should we fight this sexualiztion of our children or should we buy into the idea that the choice to use drugs is a private choice???

Lee Van Queef II said...

To summarize your plan which is based on increasing punishment:

First and foremost, BUILD THE WALL G$%DAMNIT!

Offense Number & Corresponding Punishment:
1. Chain gang
2. Chain gang
3. Gulag
4. Chum factory

I concur. FWIW.

In the meantime, cannot your workplace triage crisis junkies into a room with a drain in the middle and a hose that siphons disinfectant to belay their treatment ahead of others?

1chota said...

https://www.breitbart.com/news/us-sends-troops-for-possible-violent-congo-vote-protests/

this should work out real fine___

Mario V Albano said...

Opium Wars, Vietnam (Golden Triangle) War, South American (Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, et. al.) War, Afghanistan War; it appears soldiers (not only of the US) have been busy protecting the trade in illicit drugs (just the British during the Opium Wars).
.

Anonymous said...

Time to change the subject.
Here's some comedy gold https://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2019/01/government-shuts-down-nation-descends.html

Enjoy,
Ned2

Aesop said...

@Wynn

Those personnel were overwhelmingly augmentation to the US embassy force and evacuation facilitators, should that become necessary, not presidential election peacekeepers. We do that all the time with the Turd World, because we have to.
A primary contingency mission of every Marine BLT afloat is emergency embassy and dependent evac. Sending in some guys to tally heads, pre-survey routes, LZs, recon the potential hostile forces and allies, etc. and augment the small embassy detail is common sense.

Ominous Cowherd said...

Drugs are a social problem, not a legal problem. As long as society tolerates drug use, the law doesn't matter. Once society stops tolerating drug use, the law doesn't matter.

When my grandfather was a young adult, opium and cocaine could be purchased at any pharmacy, straight or in patent medicines. Misuse was not socially acceptable, so outlawing those drugs in 1913 neither caused nor prevented much of anything. By 2013, misuse of drugs is socially tolerated, and re-legalizing those drugs isn't going to cause nor prevent much of anything.

Change society, or you change nothing.

Anonymous said...

I notice virtually No One (with the caveat "sane" helpfully added) tries to make the argument for less government at Omaha Beach.
Or Belleau Wood. Or the Battle of Britain. Or at the Angle at Gettysburg in the face of Pickett's Charge. Or on Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal. Or at the Dong Ha Bridge in Easter of '72. Or along the Korean DMZ. Or at Yorktown.


Charles Lindbergh and Smedley Butler were right. War is the biggest of big government programs. None of those American soldiers should have been there. If there is an attack, a rifle behind every blade of grass works fine as a defense, and doesn't tend to lead to a drug war to keep the soldiers employeed afterward. Faced with an attack like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, the gun nuts from Knob Creek can drive their submarines out and torpedo it.

Aesop said...

Thanks for proving my parenthetical point. ;)
Bonus points for bringing in stooges for Nazis and communists to drive it home.

Y. said...

@Aesop

To be fair, do you really think the French losing WWI would have been that bad?
It'd have prevented both USSR and the holocaust. Also WWII.

Most convincing argument I've seen it was that it was typical elite meddling; people who lent huge sums of money to Entente governments were afraid they'd never see any of that money back in case of German victory in France.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't matter which side we are on; One Thing we can do TODAY,

CALL AND EMAIL YOUR SENATORS
Especially if they are Democrats like mine.

For the GOP: Five Billion for the Wall. Build the Wall. Support President Trump.

For the Democrats: Give Trump his Five Billion for the Wall and End the Government Shutdown.

The wall will slow down drug smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal immigrants immediately. We need the wall

RF

Anonymous said...

Despite what government claims, voting is not morally disconnected from every other action a person takes. Voters and taxpayers are the most REMF in a logistical tail supporting the point of the spear. SJW and Drug Warriors are different teams in the same Fascist Great Game political-blood-sport league. Paying taxes, dialing 911, and sending your children to government school are Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy. The Irish figured this out.

Soon, when small-time organized criminals hook up chains to pull the bars off a retail store window, a drone run by Rooftop Koreans will come out of nowhere and shoot them, then leave the scene without leaving evidence other than video and bullets. This is because street gangs and the police who protect them are the shock troops of the Fascists. If the store owner calls big-time organized criminals, the drone will come back. This will repeat 100,000 times simultaneously everywhere in North America until no organized criminals show up.

Soon, humans will be free to buy heroin and cocaine for $1/pound and enjoy it in moderation, or not.

AB.Prosper said...

How precisely are you going to do that? The Right has little in the way of ethos or ideology and not much to sell there

We all know that many people long for a sane society, the staggering success of the Hallmark Channels alone prove this, its a fantasy version of what an implicitly White society with decent people in it would be like after all.

How are you going to convince anyone you can give them something better if you can't convince yourself.

The problem with that is there is no path to such a destination that doesn't require actual work and coercion. When half your fight worth allies hate government as a concept, you'd might as well not bother, They are less useful than ANTIFA

The fact is if the Right wins they are not going to have a minimal libertarian state, its 2019 and people are not that rural. moral or religious . In the end there is going to have to be EPA, FDA, CIA, FBI or something like these and yeas maybe even the DEA if we want to go down that route. They get to reform them, get rid of the less useful ones but there is still going to be big state. Only this time you get to decide what it does and how it does it.

Our guys have to solve problems and while sometimes people can do it at home, sometimes they can't and the government needs to step in. A pro tip, Roosevelt's social democracy was hugely popular not because people are weak but because it worked. It worked far more than it failed for a lot of people

And note you can't turn society over to corporations or the church either, the former will abuse people to a level that would make Stalin queasy and as for the later, people just aren't that religious and the churches hold on society is for good or ill much weaker. If you want to succor the poor, the State will need to do it or it can decide not to and reap that whirlwind. Choose wisely.

AB.Prosper said...

Aesop. the last legitimate war the US fought was the War of 1812.

The Civil War might have been necessary but it wasn't legitimate as the South has every right to leave. However Vae Victus , the winner writes the histories and all that

As to WW1 and WW2 these mess was caused by globalism and a lot of blood and treasure could have been saved if we'd minded our own business, bought local, sold local and gone isolationist. I'm not even sure the Cold War would have occurred had be not started WW1

That said we have no way to know for sure. Our right now problems our destroying us . We need a real wall before anything else and after that we can work on the rest.

As for getting that and keeping it? Who knows.

John Wilder said...

Excellent and important series - I don't see much of that because here in Mayberry we don't see a lot of drugs or drug stories. Mainly what I hear about are kids having a few beers by the lake and (mainly the same) kids vaping. Doesn't mean drugs aren't here, but it's just not that pervasive.

I read the story from 2013 out loud to The Mrs., we both enjoyed.

1chota said...

this should work out real fine___
I was referring to the Ebola plague.
Lots of troops exposed?
mebbeso no, but it is in the realm of possibility.

MEALONE said...

To MSG GRUMPY
You are using an argument technique known as "argumentum absurdum". Go look it up.......I won't wait.
The line about militias being infiltrated is simply a reference to the stupidity of announcing your intentions to your possible adversary..Can we agree? If some half-toothed redneck decides to start a militia group because "S" is going to happen and announces that his group will "Fight for the Constytootion an' Uh-murika". That podunk goes immediately to the front of a short line of people that the "alphabets" will be watching closely and may even set them up to be busted like has been done in numerous "law enforcement" endeavors. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125856761
Remember also that the charges against this little coffee klatch were eventually all dropped because of the FBI's misconduct.
9/11 was an inside job.....There. Happy? I challenge you to watch one of those crazy youtube videos, titled "9/11 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR". It's a total of 5 hours of video. If you can't invest that time in just watching a movie then STFU about conspiracies. Conspiracies of gov't have existed ever since governments have existed.......deal with it. And keeping people quiet about them???
No problem. The Russians have a saying;"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead."......Or the threat of same.
Do you know what a NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER is? They are normally used to DEMAND info that the FBI wants but can also be used as an official "GAG ORDER" to keep folks quiet about things that the gov.com does not want talked about under the guise of .....you guessed it: NATIONAL SECURITY.

There are literally hundreds of people talking about 9/11 being a gov.com op. with help from some nice hebrews. Money also helps sew mouths shut. Many if not most of the high value persons involved were rewarded well for the complicity and silence. Trillions of doll-o-vees have flowed since that heinous act and flows still to this hour.
So grow TF up and realize the real world works more insidiously than either you or I can imagine. If some see what is not seen by others. Who is the real "crazy"?

Steve said...

Genuinely curious here. For all you War on (some) Drugs cheerleaders, what precisely is the difference between what you are saying and the "libs" who say, "You don't need a handgun that holds more than 3 bullets. But if you can give a good enough reason, maybe we'll let you have a permit for 5 bullets"?

Really? Your idea of a better world is one where you beg government for permission for everything?

Aesop said...

@Steve,

Thanks for demonstrating in living color reductio ad absurdum and false dilemma, whether you meant to or not.

Government passing one law does not = "POLICE STATE! ZOMG!!"

So by government making, e.g., crystal meth, PCP, and crack cocaine illegal, you do not get to immediately leap all the way to needing 300 permits to consume an aspirin or take a chewable Flintstones vitamin.

In English grammar, curiously, that's the difference between a war on some drugs, and a war on all of them. "Some" is a feature, not a bug.

And for precisely the same reason I don't want FFLs selling handguns to mass murderers out on parole nor the criminally insane on a day pass, nor should toddlers be permitted to play with live hand grenades.

Really? Your idea of a better world is one where toddlers play with live hand grenades?

See? Anybody can do that. It doesn't make it logical, nor true.

And forms of possible government have a vast spectrum of ideas, not just the two settings of either "Total Anarchy" or "Actual Nazis Stomping On Your Face 24/7/365/Forever".

I hope that explanation satisfies your curiosity.

Steve said...

It wasn't my reductio. I didn't even take the metaphor all the way to the zero-bullet policy you prefer.

If you want oxycontin and other pain killers to be illegal except for certain people, who have to get a government authorized permission slip, you favor the equivalent of full disarmament except for certain special cases. And only the most extreme among those favor capital punishment for merely owning a firearm. Most of them think you should have to commit some kind of an actual crime before the state puts you down.

Aesop said...

Then you're repeating other people's fallacies, Steve.
Who owns them doesn't change their fundamental nature.

"If you want...then you favor..."
No, I don't, nor must I. Misstating the situation doesn't make it so.

Now you're onto "straw man" exemplars.

"If you want one law, you must want all laws, and government to oppress you to death" is what you just said.

Show your work, and see if you can spot the point where you went off in the weeds.
{Hint: When you, the pedestrian, tells me, the guy who wants a small sedan to commute the 18 miles each way to work every day that I really want a Komatsu D575A bulldozer to cut down the rainforest in swaths, in an orgy of destruction, I'm not the delusional EarthFirst! loon. That is your error, in a nutshell.}

Steve said...

You are misunderstanding me, I think.

"I want to inflict draconian punishments on people who have product X because some people abuse product X."

What difference does it make if product X is cyclobenzaprine or a Glock 19?

Steve said...

Specifically, what do you see as the significant difference between you and a gun grabber? Haven't you both selected something you think is bad for society and seek to have it banned?

Aesop said...

Everybody who uses methamphetamine, crack cocaine, etc., abuses it.
Not some people.

Glock 19s and cyclobenzaprine have valid and legitimate uses.
Those other drugs, not so much.

This is the same reason we want all guns taken away from mass murderers and psychotic lunatics, but not taken away from everybody who isn't in those two limited subset categories of the entire population. "Some" and "all" are not interchangeable terms for the purposes of your (or any) argument, no matter how many times you try and make it so.

Conflating "some" with "all" is an attempt by you to bootstrap your way into the textbook definition of reduction ad absurdum. (It's also being an anti-grammatical jackass. Just saying.)
Words mean things, and that's where you're trying to palm the queen in your little mental game of three-card monte.

No points, and party foul for being a shitty street magician.
In Brooklyn, that sort of thing is usually answered with an activation of your dental plan.

When you can show a constructive use for most drugs of abuse, get back to me about why you can't conceive of limits on a potentially harmful object, which for example is why we don't give toddlers in cribs live hand grenades.

I'll wait.

Steve said...

There are completely legitimate uses for oxycontin, too, but as I understood your position, you believe that unless one has government-approved permission to have it, they should face the same penalties as the guy with meth, crack, etc., that you are going on about.

-------

This is your board, and you can be as much of a jerk as you like. A little constructive criticism, if I may.

Now you're onto "straw man" exemplars.

"If you want one law, you must want all laws, and government to oppress you to death" is what you just said.


No, that is the strawman. I said nothing at all about chewable vitamins or one law all laws, or any of the other reductio. That was you, constructing a strawman you could easily knock down.

Aesop said...

As is you claiming that laws prohibiting useless drugs, and requiring a legitimate prescription for medicinal use for the ones with some definable utility, are the same as laws banning all drugs, or that any gun law equals all gun laws. What you're calling "that" is your entire argument in suggesting any given law is the same as all law ad absurdum (which is where that reductio inevitably leads), since you first burped it up, comparing drug laws with gun laws with all laws:

"For all you War on (some) Drugs cheerleaders, what precisely is the difference between what you are saying and the "libs" who say, "You don't need a handgun that holds more than 3 bullets. But if you can give a good enough reason, maybe we'll let you have a permit for 5 bullets"?

Really? Your idea of a better world is one where you beg government for permission for everything?
"

That entire eructation is one massive reductio, as is any possible restatement or paraphrase of it. That's what happens when you try to equate a specific law or laws with indistinguishable from "permission for everything". How hard is it to grasp something that basic?

And pointing out that you're playing hopscotch on your own dick by doing that isn't being one. And doing it, then playing dumb about doing it, then claiming it was actually inflicted onto you, isn't making your case. Rather the opposite.

As for someone who has oxycontin without a prescription issued by a doctor for legitimate medicinal use (we call those prescriptions), yes, I'd be happy to see them ankle-chained to their fellow criminals for six months to fill potholes in the summer heat, in order to better contemplate the error of their ways.

We call that a misdemeanor hereabouts, and have for some paltry few centuries according to English common law, going back to around the middle ages, when last I looked.

It does not, ever, in even the most fever-swamp induced delusions, equate to requiring "permission for everything", nor anything close.

This is why everybody doesn't start out ankle-chained together and in prison from birth.

Was any of that too hard to follow or latch on to, and if so, what?

Steve said...

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand.

That entire eructation is one massive reductio, as is any possible restatement or paraphrase of it. That's what happens when you try to equate a specific law or laws with indistinguishable from "permission for everything". How hard is it to grasp something that basic?

You have your thing you want to implement chain gangs for. So does the gun banner. So do those clowns who break windows and burn buildings at the possibility of a conservative speaker on campus. So do the vegans, at least some of the most strident. So do the eco-wackos who want to ban the internal combustion engine and make you live in a tent so you are carbon-neutral. Government has already imposed so-called "free speech zones." You lump all these things together and pretty soon you are looking around trying to figure out what exactly you are permitted to do.

Do you really not understand that other people have agendas they want to crack skulls over, too? It's not just you?

Aesop said...

No, whiz kid, you lumped them all together.
Which, it's made painfully clear to anyone with even a room temperature IQ, is simply fallacious horseshit.

You can't engage the actual argument, and you're either too lazy or too stupid to make a case on the merits, if there even are any. It's easier for you, instead of doing the brain work to take a position and make an intelligent defense of it, to just fucktardedly pretend that any law against anything equals all laws against everything, 1:1.

That's what reductio ad absurdum is.

You got that information with the first response, then continued on five more times trying to square that circle, and now you're baffled that it hasn't worked, not even once.

So you either have a skull that could crack walnuts all day long, or you're just really that stupid.

Got it.
Thanks for playing.

Steve said...

You can't engage the actual argument...

Don't tell me you expected someone to be able to do that. You know enough about the difference between logic and rhetoric to know that's not possible. You started out with the axiomatic "truth" that drug use is immoral. This may have been reached by logic and reason, but most likely you are just channeling Nancy Reagan. (I will grant that you have used anecdotes to support your axiom, but in the exact same way that David Hogg blames the product for other actual crimes.) I could no more talk you down from your moral stance than I could talk a islamist nut-job down from his 72 virgins thing.

Of course if you see drug use as immoral, you must champion a way to combat that evil. It's apparent from your rejection of consequentialist arguments that you don't care that or evidently how many innocents get swept up in your crusade to Make America Moral Again. How many false positives are you willing to accept? However many it takes, I guess.

Several have tried to offer other moral axioms. Mostly variants on the Golden Rule. Problem is that since you have such a strong belief in the evils of drugs, you see everyone who challenges that as advancing evil, and must be stopped by any means necessary. Mostly this is by strawmanning what they say. I don't know if you can distance yourself from your moral crusade sufficiently to go back through and read Borepatch's replies and see how you've done exactly that.

I doubt you can set aside the Axiom of Evil long enough to give a straight answer, but I'll give it one last try: Why is it that getting government approval (a prescription) converts an otherwise immoral act (taking a pain killer or muscle relaxant) into a moral or at least amoral act?

Aesop said...

You're still missing the point.
Probably deliberately.

Your premise is rejected out of hand, because it's a recockulous misstatement of the original one.

Taking a pain killer or muscle relaxant is not an immoral act.

So you've fallen on your face at the starting gun.

Pain killers and muscle relaxants have actual medical utility. When taken for that reason, and not "just to get high", there's nothing immoral about them.

Society, in the form of representative government, has decreed that taking them for that purpose requires one to go through licensed professionals, acting within the scope of their practice, and responsible for ethical prescribing as determined by their own peers.

That's not rendering the immoral into the moral through the agency of government, it's doing the right things for the right reasons in the right ways.

That's not getting governmment's approval, it's getting everyone's: practitioners, pharmacists, and the people, via their representatives. (The only higher imprimatur than the will of the people in a constitutional republic is a natural law right predating human government or input. So all you have to do to win your case is show a line from one or the other, to crack cocaine, GHB, or crystal methamphetamine, and your logical and rhetorical troubles are over.)
This is Government 101 stuff, and yet it's kicking your ass.

It only becomes immoral when, with someone, with mens rea, sets out to evade those guidelines that it becomes drug abuse, which is inherently immoral.

So now, for Incident Six, you're still trying to mis-pose the question, this time as "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

And yes, I expect, if you're being honest, moral, logical, and rational, you could engage the actual original argument advanced, by offering something to argue in favor of legalizing everything - and most particularly the worst possible drugs, those with no redeeming legitimate medicinal value - as being good, and proper, and wise. (Which you have to do, necessarily, if your mantra is "Legalize everything". And if it's not, and you're in favor of banning anything at all, you've run headfirst into the same problem you're trying to palm off on me, and arguing against your own point.) But you've evidently got nothing in that line, so you try to advance the negative argument that drug laws=total government tyranny=evil, rather than showing positively that unrestricted drug abuse=good/proper/beneficial/wise, because you cannot come up with anything that gets you there.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
You're the candidate saying "My opponent is an evil fucktard; vote for me!" while wholly ignoring your own shortcomings. Except on a societal level.

So you don't even try.

Then you compound your moral impotence with philosophical dishonesty, by dragging the most obvious fallacies into the bargain. It would be cute once, from a three-year-old trying to justify stealing from the cookie jar. From a (presumably) adult, it's simply pathetic, intellectually dishonest, and morally bankrupt. (Bonus fallacy points this time for trying the fallacy of guilt by association in dragooning Nancy Reagan and David Hogg to carry your rhetorical water.)

"The product" in question. i.e. banned drugs, are not morally neutral items, nor even potentially useful items; they are absolutely evil moral negatives. So now you're the guy who wants to legitimize poisoning society by responding to "What's that bundle in your pocket?" with the clever playground retort of "None of your business." Try to take a live hand grenade to the courthouse or onto a commercial flight, and let us know how that works out for you. And by all means, use the criminal defense "The law is evil and oppressive" as your legal defense, and get back to us on the verdict rendered.

I don't see drug use as immoral at all, and I don't see drug abuse as evil "of course", but rather because of decades of empirical evidence that it is so.
Your only rejoinder is that I shouldn't believe common sense, nor my own lying eyes.
Well played.

"Consequentialist arguments", at least in your case, are your shorthand for a shitball of fallacious pseudo-logic running the gamut of classical error, and masquerading as rhetorical genius, all tied up in a bow that requires one to forget every rule of common sense, after baking it for 2 hours at 375 degrees in the soothing sauna of mental laziness.

Innocents get swept up in every form of human justice since before Hammurabi.
If your standard of legal acceptability is absolute infallibility (and you just advanced that exact standard), you are in fact advocating for anarchy.

And let's be clear on another misstatement of fact: I have no strong belief that drug abuse is immoral, nor have I advanced the argument on any such religious grounds, nor engaged in a moral crusade.
The reality is that I know use of the drugs in question is immoral, because I apply logic, observation, and the weight of evidence to the question, including years of professional and personal observation. In a court of law, that's called expert testimony, not anecdotal evidence.
You have consistently eschewed any such endeavor, and are now projecting your own methodology for achieving your unsupported wishlist as my motivation.
If you're going to require further psychoanalysis, either seek licensed professionals, or I'm going to have to start charging by the hour.

Strike Six, sport.
This isn't your game.
Really.

Aesop said...

Suffering cats, man, Silicon Graybeard is arguing that even radiation can be beneficial (in small doses), and I have zip to say in rebuttal, because he's sciencing the shit out of that argument.
Win any argument with this one weird trick: use facts and evidence in support of the proposition!

Go over there

http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2019/01/another-thats-funny-about-radiation.html

and take notes. If only to stop shooting yourself in both feet.

Steve said...

Society, in the form of representative government, has decreed that taking them for that purpose requires one to go through licensed professionals, acting within the scope of their practice, and responsible for ethical prescribing as determined by their own peers.

That's not rendering the immoral into the moral through the agency of government, it's doing the right things for the right reasons in the right ways.


Then what have you been complaining about these last several posts? Society, in the form of representative government, has decreed that they only want a "slap fight" on drugs. And that they don't want a Big Beautiful Wall. And that they want you to treat all those ODs. If they wanted chain gangs, they wouldn't have gotten rid of them, right?

Or is it OK to at least ponder the grounds upon which society made those decisions, or, indeed, if they made the right decision? For example, was it unacceptable for men like William Lloyd Garrison to try to get society to reconsider their position on slavery? Would it be acceptable for people to try to get islamic states to reconsider their stances on apostasy, gays and women?


And yes, I expect, if you're being honest, moral, logical, and rational, you could engage the actual original argument advanced, by offering something to argue in favor of legalizing everything - and most particularly the worst possible drugs, those with no redeeming legitimate medicinal value - as being good, and proper, and wise. (Which you have to do, necessarily, if your mantra is "Legalize everything".

Logical flaw beneath you, Aesop. Rather, like hypothetical laws about hate speech, I merely need argue that hate speech laws are bad, not that hate speech is "good, proper, and wise."



"The product" in question. i.e. banned drugs, are not morally neutral items, nor even potentially useful items; they are absolutely evil moral negatives.

The very next paragraph begins

I don't see drug use as immoral at all, and I don't see drug abuse as evil "of course"...

So, just as David Hogg says, it's the product that's absolutely evil. Though the people abusing those products are not acting immorally, they must be placed in chain gangs filling potholes. Because society decrees it. Oh, wait, society didn't...


And let's be clear on another misstatement of fact: I have no strong belief that drug abuse is immoral, nor have I advanced the argument on any such religious grounds, nor engaged in a moral crusade.
The reality is that I know use of the drugs in question is immoral, because I apply logic, observation, and the weight of evidence to the question, including years of professional and personal observation. In a court of law, that's called expert testimony, not anecdotal evidence.


Again, rookie mistake.

"Druggies burgle homes to finance their habit." The clue was in the word "burgle".

"Druggies consume valuable medical care without any compensating value." No, sorry, you personally are squandering those resources. Granted, you do so because if you don't you will not have a job, but that's because society, through their representative government, has decreed those resources are not being squandered at all. Your analysis is obviously in error. Or possibly society's analysis is. But that would mean that their representative government would be... no, whatever society decrees is right and proper.

Same with the other anecdotes I saw from you and others. The subsequent crime (note use of word "subsequent" instead of "consequent" -- the latter being a word that must be a part of your argument but is conspicuously absent, BTW) is the social cost that should be recovered. Having a baggie of weed in your pocket, then toking up on your couch and eating a whole bag of Doritos is not. Assuming you could find a social cost in there somewhere.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

Steve GTFO

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

or STFU

Aesop said...

Society has manifestly not declared they want a slap fight on drugs, nor that they don't want a Big Beautiful Wall. Inaction, and failure to enforce the enacted laws, is not the same as government doing its job. You've mistaken executive inaction and judicial misfeasance with legislative intent. Maybe you were sick that day they covered separation of powers, and the branches of government in this country?

They are doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons in the wrong ways.
And that has moral and societal consequences of enormous magnitude.

If they wanted to enact laws in conformity to what you imagine, and then followed them scrupulously, to widespread general acclaim, you'd have a point.
But exactly like you, they half-ass this, and refuse to go about things according to the rules, for immoral reasons, and mischief ensues.

That's the difference between "is" and "ought". Those are not interchangeable words.

And Islamic states can do whatever their religion decrees, without me giving any fucks about it. I rather imagine that being a simultaneously political and religious system, they're rather circumscribed internally in what they can or cannot do, but frankly I couldn't give a wet shit about their religious/political problems as long as they keep their malfunction confined within their own borders.

Btw, their position on drugs is remarkably simple and gloriously clear: they cut your head off.

In any event, that has nothing to do with the price of tea in china, nor the topic under discussion. You're now merely grasping at straws. We noticed.

Logical flaw beneath you, Aesop. Rather, like hypothetical laws about hate speech, I merely need argue that hate speech laws are bad, not that hate speech is "good, proper, and wise."
You cannot do one without doing the other, and you get no pass by pretending otherwise. Now you're just being an agnostic moron about that reality.
If you had even half a wit, you could, and indeed, must be able to show the affirmative truth of your proposition, otherwise you're merely gainsaying.
Rather exactly as you've done from the outset. This is my shocked face.
And trust me, it was funnier when Monty Python did it as a bit 45 years ago, rather than taking it seriously as an accomplishment.

So, just as David Hogg says,
Ad hominem: guilt by association
it's the product that's absolutely evil.
Correct. See, you can learn. That's what malum in se means.
So, apparently, all that went right over your head all this time.
Though the people abusing those products are not acting immorally,
Oh, but they are. That's why possession is what's criminalized already, before all the other crap happens.
This is why pulling on a ski mask with a gun in your pocket as you enter the bank is the same in court as actually sticking the place up, even if you never pull the gun out. But don't believe me. Try that, or try taking a hand grenade into the courthouse, as suggested earlier, and show us how clever your arguments are in open court.
they must be placed in chain gangs filling potholes. Because society decrees it. Oh, wait, society didn't...
Oh, wait, it did, but in practice, the courts have molly-coddled them at the behest of half-wits like you, as does the government, rather than swooping in and enforcing state and/or federal statutes well within the established precepts of black-letter law, thus creating the exact disconnect between statute and practice that's created the current disasterpiece theater. This has led to mandatory minimums, so they've now skipped all the way down to non-enforcement. Almost like you had no fucking clue what you're talking about, were gainsaying yet again, and then gaslighting reality.
Because you have no argument, so you have to content yourself with trying to dance around in circles as though you were making a point, while refusing to engage in one beyond that.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
Again, rookie mistake.
This coming from the guy who can't find a point to save his life in seven tries.
You're an all-star, all right, but not on the team you think.

"Druggies burgle homes to finance their habit." The clue was in the word "burgle".
Actually, the Straw Man Fallacy was in the word "burgle". No points for building it all by yourself, then knocking it down.

"Druggies consume valuable medical care without any compensating value." No, sorry, you personally are squandering those resources.
Straw man argument. Again.
What is this, ten times running? Look, I made half a dozen long posts before you ever stumbled by here. One might expect you could cut-and-paste something I actually said, and make the bare attempt to disprove it. If only for the novelty of the approach.
Granted, you do so because if you don't you will not have a job, but that's because society, through their representative government, has decreed those resources are not being squandered at all. Your analysis is obviously in error. Or possibly society's analysis is. But that would mean that their representative government would be... no, whatever society decrees is right and proper.
Abyssmal try, but once again, you're conflating "is" with "ought", as though there was no difference between statute and practice. Gaslighting.

Same with the other anecdotes I saw from you and others. The subsequent crime (note use of word "subsequent" instead of "consequent" -- the latter being a word that must be a part of your argument but is conspicuously absent, BTW) is the social cost that should be recovered.Having a baggie of weed in your pocket, then toking up on your couch and eating a whole bag of Doritos is not. Assuming you could find a social cost in there somewhere.

Entire cornfield full of straw men.
Epic fail.

Change weed to crystal meth or crack cocaine, which you have refused to attempt from the outset, and you'll be on the same debate as the rest of us.
But you can't, so you try your line of sophopmoric bullshit, despite failing to do anything but gainsay the proposition, from a position of moral relativism, logical bankruptcy, and evidently mental incapacity.

You're utterly worthless at making your own argument, and you haven't landed so much as a blow against mine, because you're off shadow-boxing with things that aren't part of the discussion, and never were.

Walking on the board, squealing and squawking, shitting all over everything, and knocking the pieces over, as though you'd won, is playing chess with the skills of a pigeon, or a seagull.

Walk tall, man. Walk tall.

Look Steve, it's been fun, in a cat-toying-with-a-mouse sort of way, but after seven tries, it's fair to point out that you're simply a sophomoric jacakass with delusions of logical competency.

I've given you every benefit of the doubt, but you're thick as a block of concrete, and you couldn't prove water was wet if someone pushed you into a pool of it.
You haven't touched any point of my arguments, and you can't or won't make any of your own, so if you're incapable or unwilling to engage the central tenets of the discussion, all you're doing is killing electrons to no good purpose, and being annoying about it.

Persistence is only a virtue when you're persistently attempting something worthwhile.
Pedantic jackassery is why mules get beaten, or turned into dog food.
So be off with you, unless you can find a clue, and make a point.
You've worn out any welcome you might expect, and done nothing but soil yourself in reply.