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| That stinging sensation in the back of your neck is the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith, slapping your fool head hard enough to jar all your fillings and crowns loose. As you deserve. |
...drug dealers and narco-cartels will line up twenty deep to pay their taxes on their newly legalized products, they being such law-abiding and tax-paying folks since forever.
...cartels will not smuggle drugs in illicitly, unlike they already do with legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco products, which was your most recent argument for why we should stop trying to stop drugs from getting here.
...drug cartels and dealers will not undercut the price of legal, taxed drugs by selling their product for less, exactly unlike they've been doing with pot in Califrutopia since 0.2 seconds after weed became legal here, because they're not capitalists, and will do nothing to maintain and expand their market share, and profits, even by continuing to break the law.
...the cartels will not get fifty times wealthier, once getting their product safely into the U.S. will become virtually consequence free once it hits our shores, and thus be emboldened to try to take over this country de facto if not actually de jure, as they already have in any number of nations south of the Rio Grande.
...drug dealers will never, ever allow minor children to get their hands on drugs, just like that never happens with alcohol and tobacco now.
...they will never expressly market their products to younger users, knowing that the actuarial tables means that as their old clientele dies off from using their products, that's the only way to continue raking in fabulous sums of money, unlike producers of legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco do right now, and since forever.
...drug users will never shoot up in public, they being such famous respecters of community standards in the public square and public sensibilities since forever.
...drug users will never discard their needles and paraphernalia in public places, they being so well-known for their long-term planning skills, their respect of other peoples' welfare, and being such all around great neighbors.
...junkies desperate for a fix will not rob, burgle, and thieve any longer, despite not being able to afford a fix, because they are such law-abiding citizens, and so well-provided with long-term planning and financial responsibility skills.
...police enforcing the collection of the taxes on legal drugs will never bungle the address on warrants for violators of same, and never, ever shoot innocent citizens, which every Dope For Dope argues as a reason to end the War On Drugs now.
...ordinary citizens will not see DUIs skyrocket, once pot, meth, cocaine, heroin, and everything else join alcohol as legal drugs to imbibe prior to a quick trip to the store for more.
...employees and employers will see far less people stoned off their ass at work while using power tools, forklifts, semi-tractors, cranes, and every other machine known to man, just like no one now ever comes to work drunk, which will make work a much safer place than now.
...medical insurance prices will plummet once anyone who wants to can get heroin and cocaine any time, anywhere, there being no actual medical consequences to their use, neither once nor serially.
...ER wait times will plummet because of the total absence of millions of more drug addicts after legalization, and your father or grandmother having a stroke or heart attack will never have to sit around in the waiting room hoping not to die because every bed in the hospital will not be filled up with the drunk and the stoned in small armies, 24/7/365.
...the cost to society of even the anemic, hamstrung, and deliberately and corruptly incompetent half-assed current War On Drugs will not pale into infinitesimal insignificance beside the new cost to society and civilization of "Legalize and Tax".
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| When monkeys fly outta my butt! |
Note to Common Core Diploma Graduate Fucktards:
The preceding was sarcasm. You could look it up.
All of the above, and orders of magnitude worse, are EXACTLY what will happen with legalization of drugs, and attempting to tax them.
Anyone with two brain cells knows any one of the foregoing points is horseshit of the rankest fly-encrusted sort, and proof of certifiable insanity, malign intent, or gross stupidity sufficient to prove profound clinical mental retardation in 57 states.
Anyone arguing seriously for "legalizing drugs and taxing them" has to believe (or pretend to) not just one of them, but all of them.
Adam Smith explained capitalism (verbosely, yes, but still...) waaaaaaaay back in 1776, in brutal and explicit detail.
P.J. O'Rourke updated Smith's work for modern short-attention-span lackwits a few years ago.
And Thomas Sowell's Economics 101 has been the go-to text on that subject for decades.
All three of these tomes are still currently in print.
Crack-a-friggin-book, FFS.
And that's just economics.
The texts and standard references on criminal law, human psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and even the local fishwrap sold in your town give any low-IQ moron only about 10,000 simple and clear reason why "Legalize and Tax" will never work, absent rending and burning down this republic until it is no longer recognizable when compared with the biological and social behavior of a pack of baboons.
They sell crowbars at Home Depot.
If you cannot figure out what I just said, purchase one, shove the business end as far up your rectum as you can manage, pull for all you're worth, and don't stop until you hear a distinct POP!ing sound, and notice an unaccustomed flood of daylight and oxygen into your cranium through the appropriate orifices.
Nothing I wrote is news to anyone who's thought about this for more than about a minute.
So to pretend otherwise, you probably need the crowbar applied to your problem.
One way, or another.
For Cement-heads:
Nota bene: Any reply in opposition not arguing to the points made herein above, and/or not showing your work in response, are guilty of the fallacies known as changing the subject and gainsaying; your girlfriend may be able to get away with that sort of bullshitting when her pearl of great price is the table stakes, but you won't pull it off here.
It will be whisked to oblivion, and you are invited to get your own blog to make your own irrelevant points. Blogger blogsites are free for the asking.
Stick to the subject, however, and you may expound here until drowned out by laughter, or overcome by exhaustion from all the swinging with no chips flying.
Part III
Part IV
Part V
As a recovering Libertarian: Can we talk?
ReplyDeleteIs there really no middle ground between "Legalize all drugs!" And "Make hemp products low enough on the Schedule for pharmacists to sell?"
Is pitting the Cartels against Big Pharma a crazy dream?
If a drug has a bona fide medical utility, then prescribe it and sell it at the pharmacy. It would probably surprise the non-medical types to find out cocaine is used medicinally, to this very day.
ReplyDelete"Snorting assloads of it because I want to get high as a kite" is not a recognized medical reason for using nor prescribing it.
So any actual medicinal use for cocaine is already legal.
The argument was to legalize cocaine for any use anyone wanted to make of it, and tax it.* That's asinine and insane.
*(Okay, fair enough: Tax is set at US$10B/oz., rather than a 1¢@ton, now buy all the legal coke you want. Next problem.)
"absent rending and burning down this republic until it is no longer recognizable when compared with the biological and social behavior of a pack of baboons."
ReplyDeleteWhat, like we haven't achieved that level of "civilization", already? I hardly recognize the USA anymore as compared to what I knew growing up 60+ year ago. Sad that.
Nemo
Instead of sending drug addicts to jail, maybe we should send them to Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
ReplyDeleteAesop, you are correct that returning to the open pharmacy standards of 1900 would require us to return to the "live and let die" standards of 1900. The general public likely is not ready for that yet. But if things heat up more, that attitude may change rapidly.
ReplyDeleteI spent the weekend with some of my cousins that live in Colorado. They are hoping legalized marijuana in CA will draw some of the potheads back out West. The influx has made the Colorado situation worse. I can only imagine that on a national scale.
I'm not in the legalize it all camp. But the current "solution" isn't working, and is sucking down massive amounts of time and energy, and is causing more hysteria and problems with the general public. I don't know what the right solution IS, but something sure needs to change.
ReplyDeleteI am in the camp of making drugs (including alcohol)"not illegal" (as the War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure) BUT if any harm comes to a 3rd-person (read innocent), the death penalty is on the table.
ReplyDeleteDrink as much alcohol as you want. Drink and drive, then maim or kill someone?? Death penalty carried out in 30 days.
Take as much cocaine as you want. Having chest pain and go to the ED (or call 911)?? Positive drug screen for cocaine?? Immediate discharge from said facility with refusal to return within 72 hours.
Smoke as much MJ as you want. Start having non-stop vomiting and go to the ED (or call 911)??? Positive drug screen for cannabinoid?? Immediate discharge from said facility with refusal to return within 1 week.
I could go on but you get my drift. You've also seen the above in your ED, we all have, and usually the same ones. People who make poor decisions tend to do such on a global basis (at least in my observations, as skewed as it is).
Have I thought it ALL through?? No (I obviously don't know what I don't know). But our current system isn't working though continues to suck tax dollars and the life of personnel involved (LEO, FD, EMS, RNs, MDs, and ancillary staff).
Then there's Singapore.
ReplyDelete"But if you have more than 25 grammes of ice in your possession, you can be charged with drug trafficking instead. Penalty for drug trafficking. Depending on the class and the quantity of the drugs trafficked, the penalty ranges from imprisonment and strokes of cane to the mandatory death penalty."
China had an opium problem for centuries culminating in the opium wars of the 1840s - 1860s which allowed Europeans to sell opium to Chinese and reap enormous profits. This devastated China in many ways and was one of the things Mao Tse-tung stopped with his Communist victory in 1949. Drug dealers were summarily executed and addicts were given one chance to clean up then it was off to prison.
ReplyDeleteThe danger of opium addiction was widely recognized and also the devastating effects this addiction had on society by destroying families. The only thing more addicting than opium apparently is the money derived from the drug trade.
NE Heretic
``...drug dealers and narco-cartels will line up twenty deep to pay their taxes on their newly legalized products,...''
ReplyDeleteIf paying taxes is cheaper than the all-in cost of operating a criminal organization, they will pay taxes. Cigarettes are legal and taxed, and most of the cigarettes smoked have a tax stamp, because taxes are low enough that you can't run a major drug cartel on the arbitrage between taxed and untaxed smokes. White lightning and smuggled booze are probably available, but I haven't seen any, again because the tax is low enough that you can't maintain a cadre of career criminals on the arbitrage. S
Eventually R.J. Reynolds is going to be able to undercut the criminal gangs, if taxes are cheaper than bribes. Right now there are drug cartels who have no other business than breaking drug laws, and it's a safe bet they're searching for either a way to sell legal pot or a way to sell drugs that are still illegal. The cartels will only last until a legal business undercuts them. In twenty years, if taxes are set a a reasonable level, the only criminals trading in legal drugs will be ma and pa selling the pot from their back yard.
Keep the cost of crime high and the cost of taxes lower, and career criminals mostly won't bother.
My problem with legalization has always been about the children. The babies born addicted, the children neglected because their parent(s) are addicts, the teenagers targeted by the dealers looking for new customers and of course the children given drugs by pedophiles. Adults can go to hell if they want, but children shouldn't be in tow, as it were.
ReplyDeleteI've been banned from various libertarian sites and forums for the impertinence of pointing out the innocent victims of drugs. So far, no one has come up with an actual plan for dealing with them. The most civil claim that the affected children are too few for them to care about. If someone has a cunning plan that legalizes drugs and protects the children, I'm really interested in learning about it.
I really like how the CaliCannabis bill was supposed to protect undercapitalized small growers by give them a way to go legal without too much up front whip-out. The thing is, by some odd circumstance, there was a "loophole" that allowed large growers to "stack" the small grower certificates and qualify as small growers.
ReplyDeleteWhen a new law
• Produces results other than those it was promoted as being guaranteed to produce
• Those "unexpected" results financially benefit a given business interest (licit or illicit)
• Was lobbied for and crafted by skilled and very highly paid professionals and consultants*
It's possible that all is proceeding according to someone's plan. Heck, maybe for all we know in this case, the PLAN's plan.
-------------
*That's how Willie Brown has been making his money for decades
About the children...
ReplyDeleteIt depends on whether or not you think they are going to be different from their parents when they get older. Many characteristics of people are genetic. A drug addict or alcoholic is more likely to have similar children than a non-drug addict non-alcoholic.
So if you have lots of government services to take care of these children, they just end up doing the same thing as their parents. The cycle never ends.
I like the idea of no medical care for drug addicts. Our society is falling apart so it will happen any way for most of us.
I replied at length: https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2019/07/portugals-experience-decriminalizing.html
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I left out was that you can learn everything you need to know about the futility of the War On Drugs by reading the text of the 21st Amendment. America can be a slow learner sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI live in California and see the wreckage cause by drugs every damned day, same as our host . I don't even work in the world's busiest ER
However the US does not have a functional system of government , not agreement capable to use a Russian expression, does not wish to and will not defend its borders. hell we can't be arsed to have children (the White TFR is 1.6 about that of Germany) or to build a society where its fit for them to live
It CAN"T win a war on drugs
Even when we could do this, our society locked up per capita more people than anyone, had and used capital punishment including on children and the mentally disabled till quite recently and this had zero effect on drug availability
They been available in increasing number for at least half a century and this shows no sign of stopping
Its abundantly clear the war can't be won with the current societal configuration and we lack the will for the draconian questionably effective methods to be employed
If we really want to go hardcase, you need build a society that is focused around family development and make that stick for a generation or three and seal the borders.
This will not be allowed at all though and to make it happen would require a ruthless dictatorial regime focused on that goal and that goal alone to cram it down. The Left and Libertarians wants drugs so they are out, the Establishment Right won't pay for it or the economic and social costs such and the Dissident Right factions are unable to decide anything since they are leaderless by design after the .ALt Right got plastered
So Aesop when you can find a way through elections or whatever to get the reigns of power for sane people get back to me.
At this point, we might benefit from simply letting them be sold with some attempt at potency control and more resources to clean up the mess, maybe from some of the taxes we actually are collecting.
Its not a win its better than the current mess.
How much drug susceptibility is nurture and how much is nature? I'm betting there's both. Is the level of willpower in your genes, or is it a learned behavior? Can you expect a child to fight an addiction the same way you can an adult?
ReplyDeleteNo one wants to talk about drugs and the under age sex trade. The teens given drugs so they will turn tricks. The children targeted by pedophiles. How many girls did Epstein get addicted so he could have 'fun'? After they're used up, give them a lethal OD. No one looks at the addict that OD's, after all.
Portugal has a cohesive culture, a family structure that allows them to do what they do. We're an empire, not a nation like Portugal, and we have been destroying the family structures that we did have for decades now.
Human predators get taken out in Portugal by extended families. Misbehavior is frowned upon, outsiders are kept out, and bad folks tend to 'disappear'.Here, a family taking such action gets destroyed by the police state. Can't have folks taking the law into their own hands, after all. The only reason my dad and I didn't become felons after we 'evicted' a pusher from the neighborhood is that a police sergeant's parents were living next door.
Rebuttal Post 1 of 2:
ReplyDeleteWell Mr. Aesop, that’s a pretty hard line in the sand you’ve carved out for yourself on this issue with the last two posts regarding legalizing drugs. Which as a long-time fan of your blog seems to be a significant deviation. While you will generally stake out fairly strong positions, you’re usually a bit more nuanced in presenting your case & evidence.
I get given your current work profession that you see a fuck-ton of drug & alcohol infested humans plus the innocent victims of their drug abuse and chaotic life in your ER. I think most of the folks reading your blog sympathize with what you see on an almost daily basis. And I think most of us are extremely frustrated by the “failed or failing” solutions currently in place by idiots in government and enforcement (that would include local police up to and including the DEA (Drug Enablement Agency) plus the rest of the suck-ass 3 letter agencies involved). This group will be collectively referred to as “scum” for the rest of this post.
So I will risk your wrath by wading into this discussion. You have covered a lot of ground in your two posts on the drug legalization issue, which sort of illustrates that the drug issue is complex problem.
I think we are all on the same page that the “current war on drugs” as conducted by the scum listed above is a complete failure – to us! To the scum it is going as planned. One corrupt enforcement hand washes another. Occasionally some innocent citizen gets shot or some little kid gets killed. The gloves come off temporarily and the popo scum make some headline/press conference arrest for the news. Citizens be calm, we have fixed the problem. Gloves back on, fake arrest, no-nock arrests/killings, confiscation, pay offs, kick-backs, popo get more militarized equipment because reasons, popo step up civil asset forfeiture – yeah it’s the best!!! – even the Fed scum have approved it!
Meanwhile the US 24hour room and board program (prison) that many companies and the state/fed scum run require funding as well. So the word goes out, lets get those arrests and plea bargain convictions going – we gots rooms to fill, so we’s can gets our fed/state funding! Haha! What’s that you say – how can these crims run their drug kingdoms from prison? That’s unpossible! Oh pilgrim, pay attention, crims gonna crim and there’s a crim hierarchy where the scum pick and choose who’s the approved crim gangs that we will leave alone, so that you pilgrims can get all the drugs you want! Yeah I know pilgrim – bad boy bad boy – what ya gonna do when they come for you?
It seems from your post that you agree the “war on drugs” has not been properly run. However, I was surprised to see you go all “Eric Salwell” lets nuke em! I am hoping that was you using hyperbole? The war on drugs will never be won, because the scum don’t want to win it, they are making way two much money and installing various control points throughout the LEO scum community to control the pilgrims. You harshed on Borepatch’s mellow, but I think he has a point.
Legalize and the following could/should also happen:
1 – get rid of/make what is already unconstitutional illegal – civil asset forfeiture
2 – remove the popo from any drug enforcement & take away all their military toys, be community cops again
3 – Close the DEA (Drug Enablement Agency) – big savings here, plus scum population reduced!
3 – remove all the drug arrested folks from prison, it does nothing but provide advanced drug cartel training – and we are paying for it!
Those 4 steps alone would return significant liberties back to us pilgrims – I would welcome it!
Rebuttal Post 2 of 3 (sorry the 4096 limit got me – to wordy?)
ReplyDeleteNow on the negative side of the ledger the majority of the issues you wrote about will most certainly occur. The unknown question is will it be worse than it is now? I submit that the barriers to illegal drugs are non-existent to anyone so inclined to indulge, the laws, the popo, the scum, etc. – have stopped none of it – as evidence by the crap and wrecks of humans you see daily in your ER.
So let me move on to two further related yet unfortunately subjective issues with the current drug problem. Economics and Society/Culture. OMG! Let’s start with economics.
You take the position that drug dealers don’t care about economics - basics like pricing and costs? I would disagree with that position. I believe that all drug dealers (until they start using their products) are surprisingly good businessmen. NOTE – I did not say that they were good people! There is a difference. The majority of drug dealer wars are to protect market areas/volume and/or to expand or achieve monopoly control. Now obviously their variable costs for sales and enforcement aren’t reflected on any financial statement, but nonetheless, they do make those calculations.
So if drugs are legalized, why do you not think that the drug companies here and around the world could not produce a quality product at a reasonable market price. In a “true” free market (which sadly only exists in the illegal drug market presently) the drug dealers would have to compete with the “licensed” drug dealers on price.
One of the reasons the weed market in Calistan is still dominated by the illegal drug trade is because the Calistan government has made the bureaucracy and taxes around the weed market so expensive and oppressive that legal companies cannot compete with the illegal drug dealers. In fact the Calistan approach is eliminating all but a few of the largest legal weed companies. I suspect that this may actually be the intent, as it will allow the Calistan scum to illicit kickbacks and special deals with the few legal weed companies – crony capitalism rules! Especially in Calistan!
But if we could implement this legalization in a true free market, then I believe private industry could compete. There’s obviously the tax issue as the scum cannot let a market come into being with grabbing a piece of the pie for themselves. So you are correct that the drug dealers will still be dominant as long as they can match price – and then say hey you don’t have to pay me taxes!
I would hope that the private companies could cut price due to more efficient methods of production and scale, but that’s conjecture on my part. So my dilemma – Govt or Drug Dealer? My position is what is the difference – they are both corrupt. Pick your poison. As long is it’s all legal, the drug dealers are simply another business selling a legal product. Granted, they aren’t paying taxes, but guess what, good on them, I don’t care – fuck the scum – they created the problem to begin with.
Finally we have the issue of Society/Culture.
I don’t have good answers here and as I said, at least initially it would be logical to see an uptick in the use of drugs after legalization. That’s human nature and it’s been seen in a number of European countries that have gone down the
Rebuttal Post 3 of 3 (yeah I'm done)
ReplyDeletelegalization path. That said given what we are spending for the scum to keep us “safe” from drugs, my position is that it would be better, cheaper and more effective to setup/fund drug centers for dispensing/taking drugs in a control situation and rehabilitation centers when said serf finally figures out – this is not the way to live? (Approach used in Switzerland – see 4 pillar model)
I realize this is a fairly progressive position and normally I am in no way progressive, however it seems to me that we need to address why people want to take drugs? I know life is hard, but that’s simply a path I would never take, so I lack a basic understanding of the “addiction” problem.
So I am really interested in the “why did you feel the need to take drugs”? Why/How fucked up is your life that that is the best solution? I am usually pretty matter of fact about things, but it is troubling to me that so many people are choosing that option – why! This is a society/culture problem that I don’t have an answer too.
But there has to be a better way of helping people that are addicted, and it seems to me if you can control the dispensing so it’s “safe” and we really work on solutions to help the addicted maybe we get a better outcome? Again, I get that this is a very subjective issue, but I think if we remove the “illegal” issue and enforcement crap (which isn’t working anyway), then maybe people will be more inclined to ask for help? Well what do I know, I am just a serf as well.
That concludes my rebuttal. Be nice Mr. Aesop, LOL - I do appreciate your work & blog.
DW
For my part, I really do not understand why Libertarians (not libertarians) get so worked up over drugs, of all things. There are literally a MILLION other issues in 21st-century America you can and should wave the small-government flag on, and you're picking the legalization of pot? That stuff that smells like sour cigarette smoke? Really?
ReplyDeleteI have known quite a few people who have imbibed (not sure that's the right verb here, but whatever) the stuff from time to time. Some were the stereotypical gigglers and some were fairly level-headed, but if you use the stuff heavily, you will--not can, WILL--become a puddle of your former self. Note also that, if you know anything at all about history, you know liberty is never something that just falls off the back of a truck, but something you have to be vigilant in the protection of, and cautious and responsible in the exercise of, for it to last.
Show of hands: who thinks stoners fall into either of those categories? Anyone? Anyone?
This is why I think the Libertarians need to either learn to read, or find another name for themselves.
If you have read the book 'The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics' you will see the reason we have so many drug addicts and alcoholics is because we have too many 'rabbits'.
ReplyDelete'r' Prey rabbit lamb: Environmental Conditions:
Lots of resources. Survival is random.
Eventually exceeds carrying capacity of environment.
Believes all shortages are due to greed.
Safety and security is more important than freedom.
During easy times population shifts towards liberal (r).
Example is unmotivated, peace loving hippie.
Young people are more liberal than older people.
'K' Predator wolf lion: Environmental Conditions:
Scarce resources. Only fitest survive (Darwinian).
Stays in balance with environmental resources.
Believes resources produced by work.
Freedom is more important than safety/security.
Unemployment & high inflation cause shift to conservative (K).
Example is fiercely focused, accomplished warrior.
The amygdala (creates K) is more developed in older people.
Not buying the comparison to Portugal. An ethnically and linguistically homogenous culture of eleven million has little to compare with a multi-cultural empire of 329 million and the largest ethnic group (if "white" is really an ethnic group) is sixty percent of the population. Considering the racial the racial disparities in murders I am willing to bet similar disparities by race exist in drug abuse.
ReplyDelete@ Ominous Cowherd
ReplyDeleteYou postulate something that experience undoes in about a second.
People already smuggle cigarettes.
Because not paying the tax is always cheaper than paying it.
So we now have not only a War On Drugs, but also a War On Cigarettes.
Taxing tobacco multiplied criminality, rather than removing the incentive for it.
Criminals gonna criminal. You can't undo them by refusing to play; they just eat you alive. That's what the idiocy of "Legalize and tax" fails to grasp.
It ignores that we're talking about criminals to begin with.
Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.
@ Secession Is The Answer
ReplyDeleteI "harshed on Borepatch's mellow" because while wars are costly, the cheapest way to end one is to surrender.
How did that work out for Vichy France in 1940?
Because that is what the ultimate end of "Legalize and tax" is.
California and CO are currently Occupied France. The other 48 is Vichy. For the moment. And we've only legalized pot. Califrutopia is awash in shit and needles in its three largest shities, er cities, with medieval plagues making a comeback.
So let's by all means, quadruple down on that by adding meth, coke, heroin, and crack to the legalization pipeline. What could possibly go wrong?
And no, I wasn't being hyperbolic.
I we're going to do a "War" On Drugs, 1945 is the go-to example.
Bomb the cities of the offending countries into charred ruins.
Dresden and Tokyo were firebombed long before we got to nukes.
I'm fine doing it old school, but if we're going to call it a war, let's actually have one.
But carrot-and-stick:
Any year they send us all the heads of all the people producing drugs there and shipping them here, and their total imports to the U.S. are 0 pounds of drugs, we agree to reimburse them the cost of their bullets, and send them an industrial guillotine blade sharpener, free of charge.
Alternatively, for every pound of drugs they ship, we drop an equal weight in Composition B from 10,000', alternated with napalm.
Either way, the problem is over in short order. Ask the Barbary Pirates how that works.
Not the 50-year running-sore half-assed disaster we've got now.
My plan requires zero no-knock warrants, no asset forfeiture before due process, nor any more unconstitutional bullshit that's was foolishly tried (and predictably failed) in the Slapfight On [Some] Drugs With Collateral Damage we've been running since the 1960s.
The cops in every town know whose running drugs.
Build the case, and round them up. They'll only need a trial, once.
But check me on this:
Anybody, Google narcotics recidivism in Singapore and Saudi Arabia.
Get back to us.
You're doing drugs? No medical treatment. Ever. You get the Libertarian Dream, laissez faire. No meaningful employment. No insurance. You're officially an unemployable pariah. Steal to support yourself, or your habit? Second offense, with drugs in your system: execution. You're now not just a waste of skin and oxygen, you're a criminal waste of skin and oxygen, and a danger to society. Maybe this is something with a genetic component, so we're throwing you out of the gene pool. Problem solved.
You're selling drugs? Enemy combatant. Firing squad when found in possession. Execution if a trial is necessary.
You're profiting from other people working for you selling drugs? Convicted, executed, everything you own seized and forfeit.
No prison costs whatsoever. Except perhaps for the 0.1% who rat out their cartel, and only get LWOPed rather than executed.
Get rid of asset forfeiture? Hell no. Just do it right: after you're arrested, and convicted, via due process in place for 500 years. In the interim, it's simply seized pending the outcome.
No trial? Assets returned, intact. This isn't hard.
Take away cops military cosplay toys? No problem with that. They're incompetent to use or have them anyways. Hell, just mastering batons and pistols has been kicking their asses for a century.
Abolish the DEA? Fine with that too. They've largely been naught but expensive buffoons anyways.
Remove all the drug arrested folks from prison? If their only crime was possession of less than 6 ozs. of something, with no other criminality, and only a single offence, sure.
Everyone else leaves feet first, in a pine box.
@Secession Is the Answer
ReplyDeleteI most certainly did not take the position that drug dealers "don't care about economics"!
If you missed that point, go back and re-read what I typed.
They're intensely aware of economics.
Currently, enforcement costs are negligible, and they can undercut the price of anyone jackassical enough to pay a government tax on the product, just by cutting prices until their competition goes under.
Including the tried and true "Hey, Merck, Bayer, Glaxo-Smith, etc., that's a nice drug factory you got there. It'd be a real shame if your entire company burned to the ground in the morning, and a horse's head was in your CEO's bed when he woke up."
So, tell me how long Bayer stays in business going head to head with Medellin or the Jalisco cartel. I'm betting about 0.2 seconds.
Oh, and criminal, so they'll definitely use other measures to rub out their "legal" competition, because CRIMINALS.
So now they've eliminated competition, ad btw, destroyed all legal drug manufacturing, because they can. Or made it 5000% more expensive to produce cough syrup, because of the battalions of armed troops around the factory they didn't need yesterday. Then, their employees' heads keep getting found in a duffel bag outside the courthouse every Monday, and no one will work for them.
Legalization is the belief that you can harness a team of crocodiles, tigers, and polar bears to plow your fields, without them eating you.
It ain't going to work like that.
I know it.
You know it.
They know it.
Borepatch knows it.
Yellow Dog knows it.
Stop selling chicken shit as chicken salad.
This is Economics and Criminology 101 stuff.
Why people take drugs is their own problem, not the government's. Until it's not.
Once it's everyone's problem, they are a surplus commodity on the humanity continuum, and I'm fine with transitioning them to worm fertilizer expeditiously, whether actively, with dealers and cartels, or passively, for addicts.
that's the least government for the least money.
Any other solution costs trillions more than even the current disasterpiece abortion, and Right Effing NOW, not in twenty years - and destroys civilization, in short order.
Look at just San Franshitsco, yesterday and in perpetuity, and get back to me if you want every city to look like that all the time.
I'd rather start scooping people up, and feeding the sharks of the Farallon Islands.
@ Borepatch,
ReplyDeleteYou're changing the subject, but I'll leave your reply.
Portugal's experience is valid for a tiny homogenous country, as is Norway's experience with government funded health care in a nation of a few million.
Neither of which country is even the size of just New York Fucking City, nor the State of California, let alone an entire nation the size and scope of this one.
Move all of current Detroit or Philadelphia bodily into Lisbon, wait a couple of years, and get back to me on Portugal.
Otherwise, this is simply the "apples to oranges" fallacy.
Since you haven't disputed any of the cogent points of apples to apples as it now stands, I have to assume qui tacet consentire, and your silence on all those points grants their truth and validity.
So we're back to the trilemma on your rationale for ignoring them: insanity, other mental defect, or malign indifference. There isn't any fourth option I can see.
I'm sorry, but there it is.
The only way legalization has a chance of being successful is for the government to QUIT SUBSIDIZING PERSONAL DECISIONS... Which means no welfare, no Medicaid, no rent assistance for the indigent etc. And eliminate probation and parole. You go to jail, you do your time. We got better things to spend tax dollars on than babysitting the culturally and socially challenged. The gravy train stops at the station and ALL passengers disembark. Limited government to tend to the borders, roads, courts etc. HANG ALL THE LOBBYISTS AND EVERY PUBLIC SERVANT THAT CAN BE TIED TO THEM IN ANY FASHION.
ReplyDeleteLegalize NATURALLY occurring substances and tax them. The line being naturally occurring and or the result of a natural process such as fermentation. Tax it at 100%. Might have to grandfather distilled spirits. PROSECUTE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF TAX EVADERS. Seize ALL ASSETS owned or co-owned by tax evaders. Yes some 'innocent people' will get hurt financially. Tough shit, you're judged by the company you keep. Don't get involved with lowlifes and ya won't get thought of as a lowlife... Just saying.
Synthetic products or products that cannot be created without chemical processing to remain illegal with DRACONIAN penalties, such as if you're caught with cocaine part of your sentence is to consume your entire inventory in a single dose. PUBLICLY. FAMILY REQUIRED TO SIT IN THE FRONT ROW... If you survive without medical intervention, you get to serve your prison sentence in full.
Get caught bypassing customs with your otherwise legal stash, go full House of Saud on them.
And that's how legalization can be implemented successfully.
Aesop:
ReplyDelete"But carrot-and-stick:
Any year they send us all the heads of all the people producing drugs there and shipping them here, and their total imports to the U.S. are 0 pounds of drugs, we agree to reimburse them the cost of their bullets, and send them an industrial guillotine blade sharpener, free of charge.
"Alternatively, for every pound of drugs they ship, we drop an equal weight in Composition B from 10,000', alternated with napalm."
It strikes me a similar approach might be employed against those countries responsible for flooding our southern border. Not naming any names....
quadruple down on that by adding meth, coke, heroin, and crack to the legalization pipeline
ReplyDeleteGreat! Then find a new way to treat (but not cure) addicts that costs 10X more than whatever happens today. Maybe all of them go into a hyperbaric chamber for oxygen under pressure. mayoclinic: nonhealing wounds may require 20 to 40 treatments.
Then, all that 'but we can't not treat them' nonsense goes broke, and cause->effect reality returns. Addicts aren't a problem if they can't arrange to bill other people. Sober people who demand transfer payments ... for any reason whatsoever ... are most of the problem.
In the case of drugs of abuse, there is no middle ground, but there is a grey area. The grey area is, how abnormal and dysfunctional does behavior have to be before you will morally consider a person to be legally incompetent due to mental illness?
ReplyDeleteIs a person so addicted to heroin they are homeless evidence of mental illness and a brain needing repair? How about a person who gets drunk or high every weekend, but during the week has a functional middle class life? How about a person who drinks one beer a week?
What standard would you want to be enforced upon yourself? If the future you is found standing on a building ledge about to jump, maybe present you would like future you to be forcibly restrained and an attempt made to repair your survival instinct.
But as a former libertarian, you used to know that trying to get voters to respect your preferences is a crazy dream. History is full of government declaring every observed racial, religious, ethnic, geographic, and cultural difference to be mental illness. You want a beer? Off with your head! The mental-illness standards of the Taliban and the former Nazis are just as certified by majority vote as yours are.
As a libertarian, I know that you giving power to government employees to oppress drug addicts means you are creating a hazard which will eventually come after me. Protestations that 'no, /this/ time government will work' are just as contrary to historical pattern when they come from conservatives as when they come from liberals. Most conservatives *are* liberals. Both want big government, they just wrestle over whether their team or the other team gets to drive it.
@tweell, those small children do not belong to you. They are chattel property of their parents until they homestead themselves by moving out and earning an independent living.
Anonymous, true and totally beside the point.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 6:23
ReplyDelete"Sober people who demand transfer payments ... for any reason whatsoever ... are most of the problem."
And 'twas ever thus.
Now, you decide whether you have better odds of disassembling Leviathan, or going after the drug problem.
If I could shoot the addicted homeless and their dealers on sight up to the limit of my ammunition without legal penalty, I could clean up my entire county single-hnded by the end of the month, in my spare time.
But the government hates competition, and there's always somebody who'd take the opportunity to settle scores with a neighbor, so it always goes all Robbespierre on you in the end.
So I choose capital punishment here, and napalming the source countries until they decide all by themselves it's in their enlightened self-interest to unf**k themselves. If we're going to spend billions one way or the other, better to Dupont and Boeing than to Medellin and Jalisco.
"Crack-a-friggin-book, FFS"
ReplyDeleteA man after my own heart. I have been telling all within ear shot exactly this for decades. Ask Mike over at StatelyMcDanielManor how that has worked out.
OvergrownHobbit asks, Is there not a middle ground?
No, there is not. That is, unless you have no displeasure to things done half-assed. But I do not tolerate half-assed and I imagine there are tens of millions of others who are like-minded. Aesop has already well presented the myriad of reasons all which are opposed to this utopian middle ground. And, as the subject is not so pedestrian as how to arrange the flatware, it is imperative to be serious.
Rick