Saturday, July 13, 2019

The Stupid Is Strong With These


This is what happens when you screw with things above your IQ.

Now you see the problem arguing with people, using facts and logic, in trying to convince idiots who didn't reach their positions using facts and logic. You're trying to teach a pig to whistle.

It's like throwing tennis balls at tanks.

And they keep overlooking the 800 pound gorilla in the room:
The cartels exist now.
They're rich beyond the dreams of Croessus, brutal, utterly ruthless, and will not stop unless you're going to kill them, in your quixotic quest to get the 1-5% dopers of society their high, legally.
Tell me how you're going to deal with them without making things 10-20 times worse by simultaneously legalizing everything, everywhere.

That fight is the exact "War On Drugs" we've never had, and some here say we will never have, except once you legalize it will be that same war on steroids and crack.

So by
a) ignoring its necessity, like planning the Normandy invasion and leaving that whole annoying Germans-on-the-beach thing out, and
b) admitting it will NEVER be dealt with adequately
you who think we can legalize it all are knowingly and deliberately opting to make things ten to twenty times worse everywhere simultaneously, and arguing some imaginary savings after you create, by design, at least 3-4X as many addicts nationwide.

Show. Your. Work!

Answered nor explained has been not one single objection nor observation I've raised in three days dealing with this moronic policy suggestion. You can't, so you don't.
























(Hint: gainsaying doesn't count. Neither does ignoring the points entirely, because they undermine your position, and then trying to change the subject. Yes, we noticed.)

Before pot legalization here, I never -zero, nada, zilch, not once in fifteen years - saw anyone in the ER for pot use. It simply didn't happen.
Now I get two to three a night, 24/7/365/forever.
At multiple ERs I've worked in just the last 5 years.
Three potheads in a ten-bed ER is a big deal.
Three potheads in every ER is yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.

The idea that adding in legal heroin, legal methamphetamine, legal cocaine, legal PCP, and legal everything else will not impact things beyond disastrous is a flatly jackassical delusion, yet one and all in favor cheerfully accept the loss, for all intents and purposes, of most capacity in most ERs in perpetuity as no big deal.

Being yourselves entirely clueless of the fact that, without any disasters at all, we barely have enough (and many times far less than) adequate ER capacity in any locale on the planet, you want to literally destroy the resource, in order to accommodate a flood of dopers. Fuck all those people with heart attacks, strokes, and 300 other legitimate medical problems, right?

I tell you honestly, we'll start euthanizing them. Mark my words, it's going to happen. They'll be shunted to the side and left to expire, and the body count will rise to the hundreds of thousands, all chalked up to OD. And people will quit in droves, and stop entering the medical profession.

And that's just the acute side. It doesn't even consider how many will impact ICU and less-serious hospitalization, to say nothing of the problems with EMS, fire services, law enforcement, and yes, the courts.

Because even were you to make taxes as low as 1¢ per metric fuckton on everything, drug addicts will go broke feeding their habit, at any price point you could imagine.  Because addicts don't keep normal jobs and lives for beyond the time it takes to get hopelessly addicted. Like they do now. (Something else you overlook.)

There are virtually zero treatment programs now, for 99% of all addicts.
A few, for rich dabblers, and they relapse too. WTF do you think the second time, even Charlie Sheen's entire family said "Fuck him." And most people don't have a $1M/episode cushion in the bank from 5 years of sitcoms to fall back on. They snort and shoot up their job, their house, their car, their savings, everything they own, and then they turn to crime.
It's what addicts do.
(And you want to make orders of magnitude more  of them?)

And then they'll rob people, break into cars, steal them outright, burgle homes, and you'll have added millions of addicts-turned-felons, and jack the crime stats virtually overnight, in perpetuity.

Which will take the anemic current MBSFO(S)DWCD*, and turn it into a Stalinist wet dream of enforcement, because the cops, and society, will be under siege from the exact plague of junkie-criminals you all want to create. When the only tool on your belt is a holster, all of your problems look like targets. The police state you'll necessitate at that point would make Beria cream his pants.

And also, the only thing you'll eliminate when the cartels take over all legal distribution, (like they will) is them shooting each other up, and transition that to people shooting Normies up to feed their habit. Well-played.

[I've largely left out any mention of what the inevitable spillover will do to kids from 0-17, despite the fact that it will be horrific - and you know that too, but you clearly don't GAF - because some asstard will Godwin his pseudo-smart "It's for the chirren!" into the commentary, and because I don't need the damage to children to make my case. It's honestly only about the 17th most idiotic and monstrous thing your ideas would do, so I can live without it and still make my case on the other 16 points. But you simpletons will own it, and the human carnage that follows, for generations yet unborn, if your feeble-minded evil ever comes to pass.]

And if you try to set taxes at the point where they'll cover the cost of using drugs, you'll jack prices beyond what they can be smuggled in for, and create the exact market in which smuggling and untaxed drug sales will flourish, like it does now, but with multiple times more people doing drugs. What a boon to cartels!

Think about that, idiots: drugs are cheaper now, with no taxes, than they'll ever be with taxes. Enforcement is a negligible expense, (never and nowhere has the current anemic MBSFO(S)DWCD effort shut even a notable fraction of supply down) and taking enforcement away via legalization just lowers the cost of smuggling in  more illegal untaxed drugs.

You'll accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend.
WTF?!? Are you  idiots congressional Democrats, or what? 

And then some fucktarded lackwit (with which Team Legalize is vastly oversubscribed) will posit the obvious answer to all that crime:

"Well, obviously we need to have the government just give the drugs away free, to anyone who wants them."

So then you're going to tell working people that their taxes must be raised again, to grow, produce, and distribute literal fucktons of dope to dopes, rather than just ending the whole boondoggle. And you'll be there to say that, because you're that moronic, that unhinged, and that evil.
QED

UPDATE: Just checked in with the OP of this cockamamie idea-set:
No points for guessing what the ultimate answer suggested is , but suffice it to say we nailed this outta the park without looking.

All of this to be administered by The Government:
The same government that can't run the VA, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the State Department, BATFE, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, the Post Office, the census, the Park Service, AMTRAK, or even the DoD, not even the parts of it in charge of driving Navy ships without hitting container ships - the absolutely biggest, slowest ships on the ocean - will suddenly be able to make and distribute drugs, for free.

And it will totally work.


Word to your mother: When your policy suggestions make AOC sound sane,
it's time for a major psychiatric intervention.















Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.






And that's the point when I, and hopefully hordes of sensible people, will start shooting you assholes in the face, along with the druggies you created, for daring to shill for and then inflict this plague upon society, with a cheery smile, while blithely ignoring all the "Bridge Out" signs on your way to push that society over the cliff.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”  - C.S. Lewis
That's Team Legalize in a nutshell, preaching that society must be "cured" of wanting to ban drug abuse and mitigate the consequences, by the horrific "cure" of legalization.

We'll lay waste to you lunatics out of self-preservation, and you'll be the most surprised of all when it happens.

We can barely afford you (and your beloved druggie pets) now, but at that moment, you'll become a dystopian luxury, and you're going to go. And if you don't go quietly, you'll be fighting a war to preserve open drug use. That ought to be one helluva recruiting poster for your side!

With the same surprised, stupid looks on your faces as the French nobility had when they faced Robespierre, and Madame Dafarge.

From here on out, anyone advocating legalizing drugs is merely virtue-signaling their abject cretinism, and malign intent, for the entire country. This entire idea is exactly the psychotic horseshit I correctly identified it as earlier in the week, and all anyone espousing it is doing is indicating that they're crazy, don't care that they're crazy, and aren't interested in coming in off of the ledge.

So be it.

Jump, you fuckers.


The sane part of society is loading magazines.

You want to commit suicide by jumping off the ledge, go on ahead.
You won't be missed, I assure you.
Just stop trying to drag the entire society with you.








*(Mutually Beneficial Slap Fight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage, for those who just tuned in.)

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

45 comments:

ga6 said...

more on ebola plus measles
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-12/massive-loss-life-2418-confirmed-ebola-cases-congo-alongside-2000-measles-deaths

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

Bill in illinois started off right then screwed the pooch. He started with what aesop said. Back when we had real freedom you could buy it at the apothecary. That point in time there were no rules and hospitals. You got hooked you died and were buried. Just as Aesop stated and most of you forgot he said let 'em die where they lay, or a bullit if they misbehaven. No EMT no cops no narcan no trips to the hospital, bury them. Let the demand disappear the supply will follow. It surprises me after being here and reading for years that anyone would suggest a government answer to the problem when they know better. This all happened after government began to try to answer the problem. Give it a rest.

Aesop's cousin back in the day was being chased through west Texas for stealin a horse. The law finally caught up to him at the Tannebaum place. No trees in sight. The law asked Tannebaum if he had a barn? Nope got a well though. Law said that will work and they hung him.
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And that was the last of the well hung Aesop's.

Anonymous said...

There's really only one way to fix the drug "epidemic".
STOP helping addicts. No methadone, no welfare if you test +, no help from the public coffers AT ALL.
Choose that life and you're on your own. No help, no forgiveness. PERIOD.

Those trying to fix the problem with more government are just closet socialists. And yes that includes anyone with a libertarian attitude towards the problem. You say you want to fix the problem by legalising drugs, but forget to mention we'll have to add more huge government bureaucracy to levy taxes on all drug market activity. You'll turn the BATF into the BATFD, and the IRS into a bigger behemoth, adding thousands of government workers to the orc roll call. Just what we need dumbasses.

There is no cure for the junkie mentality other than self. You can only be cured of addiction if you do it yourself, and fewer than 10% of addicts can recover to lead normal lives. In most areas I've worked the recidivism rate is almost 100%. Help does not help, it actually makes the problem worse, prolonging the inevitable. People that have not lived the junkie life first hand have no idea what they're talking about and should stfu.

If not Now... said...

I tell you honestly, we'll start euthanizing them. Mark my words, it's going to happen. They'll be shunted to the side and left to expire, and the body count will rise to the hundreds of thousands, all chalked up to OD.
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
I fail to see the problem here. Now or later they are headed out. Yes, triage will have to send them back to the treatment areas but, once their condition is determined, people suffering from non-self-inflicted problems being prioritized would leave O-Ds on the bottom of the totem pole for time and attention. No conspiracy, no coordination needed. Just the natural outcome of flooding the ER and ICU with people living their lives as they choose. We can't find Public Sector jobs for all of them.

cyrus83 said...

Legalization is just one more instance of the current national mental illness of coddling everybody's problems through government sanction of said problems. Indulging bad or destructive behavior only incentivizes it, it's certain legalization will make more addicts and won't solve any current addict's problems.

Even in some bizarro world where all the economic fairy tales of its supporters came true, exactly what makes anybody think that drug abuse would improve simply because the drugs can now legally be bought at the corner store?

Bob57 said...

I saw the chaos of legalization first-hand in Holland. I visited Amsterdam on business twice in my life. In 1983, it was a charming city full of beautiful old architecture, clean and well kept. If you wanted some hash or marijuana, there were a few bars where, if you knew someone, you could purchase and the law would not bother you. I returned in 1990 after drugs had been legalized. The city was now full of graffiti, and the parks were now full of addicts, sleeping in rows like the war dead laid out in ranks. After legalization, Holland began distributing free needles so the addicts would not get AIDS. Ha. That is the other facet of legalization which causes yet more problems - coddling the addicts as you so rightly pointed out. Coddle an addict, and what do you get? More addict behavior, and more addicts.
I run EMS and we already spray narcan around like air-freshener. And everyone of these poor bastards we save costs me a good two hours of down time between the actual rescue, transport, cleanup and the ocean of paperwork before we are ready to head back out to rescue somebody with real problems.
Legalized drugs will be a nightmare for all aspects of the healthcare chain. Add to that the fact that it creates (balloons) a victim class that big government wants to swoop in and save.
My cure? Make narcan illegal. Hey heroin addict - you shot it, you bought it!

A.B. Prosper said...

You can't just ignore addicts and hope they'll die. It doesn't work. Get tough moralism doesn't work unless the people you are tough on share your moral system. These people do not. They have no issue with killing you and carrying a gun only works with the right mindset and skills.

We already ignore the homeless and addicted in my part of So Cal , the net result recently being an engineer stopping for coffee at a gas station in a decent area got his skull crushed by a homeless crazy with a pipe. Pipes and knives and the like are free.

You could if there was will for it try locking them up again but you are going to have to pay for that.

If you want drugs to go away you have to fix society

1st clear out illegals and stop most legal immigration to increase social capital and wages

2nd severely restrict import of goods to prevent smuggling. Full 100% inspection or nothing with a non permissive rule. No selling roofies as typewriter cleaning fluid for example

3rd Full inspection of every lawful visitors and entrants vehicle including US citizens reentering the US or a ban on personal cars entering the US period , How the later works is cars are rented and the DEA inspects every rental car

4th Tight control on percussors for easy drug making

$5 Full federal enforcement of drug laws including high potency marijuana if not all pot.

Now the hard part

#1 Restore job stability

#2 Eliminate easy divorce

#3 No custody for single mothers (not married at time of birth of child)

#4 A Solid fully funded mental health system with no snake pits, outpatient care and the like treating mental illness in a non political manner

#5 Effective drug therapy and note this means no cheaping out on NA or AA, it's basically useless,

If you can do all those things you can stop most drug use cold.

You will still have shrooms, booze, ditch weed, salvia and a few others but the actual hard drugs will not be a thing . It will take a couple of generations to make happen

However the US does not have the will to do any of these things, we cannot and will not invade, bomb or attack latin america for fear or reprisals from the 50 million latinos here and because we lack the will for a war on our soil with real body bags to tell people not to take drugs

Since the US is in its Yeltsin decline phase with heroin and the like subbing in for krokodile it can't happen, won't happen and baring somehow President For Life Aesop is as impossible as a trip to Proxima Centaur B.

What we can do is try to reduce the mayhem a bit , best we can.

This sucks on a massive scale but our society lacks the will to do anything , so we will do nothing

T-Rav said...

Maybe try reading the last few posts.

Is it other people's business when the hospitals are flooded with junkies and don't have the resources to treat anyone else?

Is it other people's business when you can't go walking in the park because of all the used needles and other paraphernalia, and addicts mobbing you to get money for their next fix?

Our host's whole screed can almost be distilled down to one point: Drug use is not a victimless crime, whatever the ponytailed hippie at the "marijuana education booth" might tell you.

I don't pretend to know the minds of other people, but a post like yours, after years of seeing the effects of drug legalization in this country, can only be the result of willful self-deception.

A.B. Prosper said...

T-Rav , drug use is a very broad category and not all recreational use is abuse anyway. Drugs have been de facto legal for short time in the US , recreationally in some states since 2012 . No hard drugs are yet legal in any state and marijuana is still federally illegal

In real terms old school weed doesn't hurt people much (we are talking natural grown at most 8% hash here, max) shrooms, potency controlled LSD used in moderation , MDMA used with basic caution (hydrate you idiot) booze , cigs all have risks but don't wreck society

All these are cheap enough to sell that without high taxes, there is little need to for theft and most of these things can be enjoyed on a recreational basis without huge risk of addiction or harm. Well alcohol is kind of an exception, it's far more dangerous than ditch weed or cigs

The problem children are meth, heroin, PCP and cocaine with the last being tolerated by some people well enough in powdered form. There are also a few other drugs very possibly the GMO high potency hydroponic modern marijuana as well

However you don't have the ability to even reduce the supply. You don't have the money or the will and you can prate on and on about how it's isn't a victimless crime it won't help

There is no will, no money and in many states the people have spoken. You do not get to tell the elected voters of Colorado or California how they run their States subject only the Constitution

You can stop them from transporting it but good luck with that. we don't control migration, we can't control drugs

You tell me, how under the real circumstances we are in how is the drug war won. Not a stalemate, not more money for the prison industrial complex but an actual win.
Exactly what constitutes a victory and how is to be achieved.

If you can't than maybe you need to see if the harm can be reduced in some manner. If that fails, well see if you can manage to take over the government . Otherwise, its not ever going away

George True said...

I have been watching this topic here for the last several weeks. I have refrained from commenting because I do not have any of the answers. Having said that, here are a few things I have observed:

1) As we all know, anything you subsidize, you will get more of. Give junkies free dope, and you get more junkies doing more dope. One commenter cited the example of what free dope and free needles did to Amsterdam.

2) Most addicts will not change. As other commenters have said, if you give them free anything (SSI, SSDI, food stamps, AFDC, etc) you are enabling them in their junkie lifestyle.

3) I have known a number of junkies. Not one of them was willing to work for a living. Even if willing, not one of them was capable of holding a job due to their addiction. Virtually all of them were on some kind of public assistance. That assistance simply enabled them to feed their habit.

4) The junkie and his lifestyle victimizes all of us. Even if he does not go out and steal, burgle, or scam, we still all get the bill for his public assistance and for his higher demands on our healthcare system.

5) any solution must combine several aspects. First, we should make it as difficult and risky as we reasonably can to squeeze the supply of hard drugs. Cheap and easily attainable drugs make it too easy for someone to choose the junkie lifestyle. Second, the policy towards junkies should be one of benign neglect. Cut off any public assistance of any kind. If they end up on the street - homeless, destitute, starving, sick.....oh, well. They chose that. And if they OD, oh well. They knew the risks. DNR.

As another commenter lamented, as a society we apparently do not have the will do do anything anymore that we should do and need to do. If we could somehow find the will to enact just these basic policies, we would see the numbers of junkies and the amount of related problems greatly diminish. But I am not holding my breath that there is enough collective will to do anything that would make a real difference.

Tal Hartsfeld said...

I'm guessing you must admire the way Singapore goes about enforcing its laws and regulations---you know, with its "no-nonsense" attitude and methods

Goose said...

Just two things for anon. One it is nobody's business what you put into your body until what you do affects me and then you have made it my business. So when you lay in a corner with a needle in your arm and having freshly shit your pants for the umpteenth time I will let you mind your own business and detour around you. But try to come into my home to tax (steal from) and all will resist you with maximum effort.

Second drug camps are the nursery's for every disease know to man and will be the place where the yet unknown new ones start. And no person but a bleeding heart stupid will treat druggies in a very short period. They are demanding, filthy, violent, disease ridden and displace real treatable illness. So the effect will be private health clinics out side the jurisdiction of the assholes in charge.

So the rule is just like you cannot fix stupid you cannot help a junkie. So anon do what you will but if you try to entice my grand kids the Wrath will visit.

June J said...

Funny how when you scratch below the surface of many “libertarians” what you discover underneath is a progressive socialist.

I’m not willing to fund with more of my taxes any “fully funded” mental health programs or “effective drug therapies” just so you alleged libertarians can help the socialists finish destroying the country by legalization of whichever form of dope you believe is acceptable.

Offer up some solutions where the “liberties” of those who want to ingest mind numbing chemicals, natural or man made, does not infringe upon my liberty to not to pay for or tolerate their bad lifestyle choices.

How about we restore liberty by getting rid of all the infringements on law abiding citizens carrying firearms openly or concealed, encourage every citizen to do so, thus make the homeless criminals and druggies face a greater likelihood of their pathetic lives ending instead of their intended victims’ lives?

T-Rav said...

@AB:

So because our politicians are too stupid and/or corrupt to implement an effective drug policy, the rest of us are supposed to surrender and accept having our neighborhoods ruined by a bunch of potheads and junkies, forever?

Yeah, excuse me for not signing on for that. I maybe can't change the law to where it's okay to let those people die in the streets, but don't expect me to vote to convict any cop/EMT who does.

RSR said...

Aesop -- curious about reasons for pot dopers ending up in ERs. Might be worth a separate post, but please -- definitely fill in some details there!

Re: "Before pot legalization here, I never -zero, nada, zilch, not once in fifteen years - saw anyone in the ER for pot use. It simply didn't happen.
Now I get two to three a night, 24/7/365/forever.
At multiple ERs I've worked in just the last 5 years.
Three potheads in a ten-bed ER is a big deal.
Three potheads in every ER is yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge."

Anonymous said...

You got a problem with the free market June? Liberties only apply to guns and not drugs? How one is just fine and the other is el Diablo?

The Gray Man said...

The Islamic State and AQ and all those guys are ruthless, but not very creative. They’re pretty much confining themselves (for now) to shooting, exploding or cutting off heads. Occasionally they set someone on fire or toss them from a building.

The cartels? Shit. The jihadis WISH they had the guts and brains that the cartels do.

Glen Filthie said...

I'm with RSR.

Up here in Canada we've gone an legalized weed because your prime minister is a feckless, empty headed man-child and most of his fart-catchers aren't much better. The narrative we have is that pot heads are mild and good humoured (unlike drunks) and that in the real world, the only people they have problems with are nasty cops and grouchy old men like us - who have nothing better to do than stick our noses into their business and ruin their fun.

I know these guys are full of chit when they say pot is just a harmless herb. But those guys ending up in the ER? To me that is new. I can easily see the turd polishers in the mass media ignoring something like that and white washing it so as not to jeopardize their agenda.

Anonymous said...

people are cooking carfentanil and methamphetamine here in their garages /now/

Which means neither a cartel nor a monopoly exists for those drugs; if either did, then nobody would be doing that.

The idea that adding in legal heroin, legal methamphetamine, legal cocaine, legal PCP, and legal everything else will not impact things beyond disastrous is a flatly jackassical delusion [...] accept the loss, for all intents and purposes, of most capacity in most ERs in perpetuity

Great! Government goes bankrupt even sooner! Then we can operate ERs which do not accept non-paying patients, and the problems vanish for everyone except the addicts.

I tell you honestly, we'll start euthanizing them.

It's not called euthanizing when the victims inject the poison themselves.

They'll be shunted to the side and left to expire, and the body count will rise to the hundreds of thousands, all chalked up to OD.

Yay! Darwinian sanity returns!

And people will quit in droves, and stop entering the medical profession.

Nah. Most medical people want to serve reasonable patients.

They snort and shoot up their job, their house, their car, their savings, everything they own, and then they turn to crime.

Only because of your prohibition price supports. Allow the price of opium and cocaine, both agricultural products, fall to the price of table sugar, and crime won't be used to feed habits.

We'll lay waste to you lunatics

First the Democrat party took its mask off and revealed itself to be armed control freaks demanding perverted behavior, and now the prohibitionists have joined them.

Peter B said...

The ER stuff is due to the fact that after the expenditure of a great deal of money and effort (purely for scientific and humanitarian purposes of course) pot today is a lot stronger than it once was. Also, unless somebody is deliberately shopping for a high CBD strain, the percentage of the cannabinoids that is THC is much, much higher.

And that's just the actual plant material, not the various extracts and oils that are out there.

Remember Maureen Dowd's little adventure from five years ago?

"What could go wrong with a bite or two?

Everything, as it turned out.

Not at first. For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand.

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

It took all night before it began to wear off, distressingly slowly. The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label."

We've known for a long time that performance on critical tasks such as "operating machinery" is degraded by cannabis. The correlation between blood levels and impairment isn't as simple as it is for alcohol; the pharmacology is very different and the plant is a complex drug.

Conflicts of interest have been in the picture for a long time. Back in the late '60s or early '70s there was an effort to forbid airline pilots from smoking dope within 24 hours of a flight. One teeny problem is that the half life of THC is days to weeks; (alcohol is metabolized at a steady rate). What with one thing and another, the Airline Pilots Association successfully opposed the ban.

A.B. Prosper said...

T-Rav, nobody me included like dealing with the junkie vermin but the US is a dying nation and lacks will to get anything done.

As to the anon at 10:59, no we're are not going to go to pay to play only for Emergency Rooms any time soon nor is the US going to go bankrupt and leave you with a libertarian playground/wasteland

We will either keep the shit system we have or not that long after Trump gradually and on little cat's feet go fullbore socialized medicine paid for with price controls , a hefty VAT tax and money printing as needed,

Pretty much every developed nation has some kind of socialized medicine and nearly every system provides decent outcomes in health and longevity . I'll note that despite the horror stories no one overseas wants our worthless broken healthcare system at all

Given we can't reform it, all we can do is kill it and build a new one. This will allow us to treat drug addicts as the medical problem they are.

You may not like it but the big grift is over and the US sooner or later will join the rest of the world in social democracy. This will BTW suck a lot for many people but it is what it is.

As for threats of action by the Right, it's all mouth noise.

The Right allows abortion , mass immigration to population replacement , gun control and a hundred other groteche injustices to stand. Their complete inability to organize and act for a common goal or to conceptualize a common goal has allowed the left to dominate the culture for at least 50 years and done jack and shit about anything. They can't even keep their people from being bought off

The only actual Right guy is Trump recently who gets things done is a New York Conservative Democrat by incination .

There have been a few exceptions, the anti abortion people and a few criminals like McVeigh but push to shove the Left gets shit done, a lot of it dumb the Right is all talk and bluster and just lets its corporate overlords stripmine countries for muh economic liberty

Unknownsailor said...

To legalize drugs will require a much more liberal attitude on armed citizens on the part of the government, and dismantling large portions of the social the safety net as it exists today, starting with EMTALA. Before legalization is implemented, addicts must be totally cut off from all public services, including trauma centers, otherwise they will absolutely swamp all public services. Concurrently, the populace must get used to being armed, everywhere and at all times, because addicts will descend to violent crime to get their fix.
Absent that, no fucking way, no how. We see what is happening in Seattle, which is largely opiates related. It is a disaster, and legalizing all drugs would be that, everywhere, and ten times worse.

Anonymous said...

Happy Reader/First Time Commenter. Love author's site and insight and incite.

Have a modest proposal:

What if the system merely returned captured drugs back into circulation, but added large amounts of deadly poison? The problem would begin to solve itself as the end user was removed from the equation. Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Law also seems to have merit.

Felix Bellator said...

A. B. Prosper said, "I'll note that despite the horror stories no one overseas wants our worthless broken healthcare system at all"

Which is why they keep coming here for treatment and using all the medical innovations the U.S. medical industry generates? But that is off topic.

Okay, so in these unbroken socialized medical paradises with legalized drugs, how are they handling the drug addicts? Full treatment for them? Euthanasia? Many are already euthanizing the elderly.

Reltney Mcfee said...

Yeah, Felix Bellator, but, as with unborn children, the elderly are inconvenient Innocents. THAT is why they are euthenasia bait.

McChuck said...

Every drug rehab facility you've ever heard of is an scam. Those 30, 60, 90 day programs? They do no good whatsoever in 99.44% of cases.

Successful drug rehab requires a minimum of 9 months in a specialized facility. And that is only for the well behaved people who want to be there, and have a serious consequence if they fail to pass the program. It takes 90-120 days for the average druggie to finally admit to himself that he actually has a problem, and that problem is the drugs. Rehab starts the day after that breakthrough. The average stay is 12-15 months.

Real rehab centers have to teach druggies how to be human. This is neither easy, quick, nor cheap. Once they have mastered how to human, then they are taught how to be an adult.

The staff to patient ratio is around one to one. Staff members are on a two year rotation, because they burn out fairly quickly.

How do I know this? I was lucky enough, in the Army, to be selected to be my unit's urinalysis drug testing program coordinator. (Better known as the piss test NCO.) And we were located near both the drug testing facility for the East Coast, and one of the two successful rehab facilities in the entire country. Yes, there are only two. The one in Maryland is the biggest, and can handle up to a maximum of one hundred and twenty patients at a time.

George True said...

Peter: You are absolutely correct. Marijuana today is many times more potent than it was 50 years ago. While I was never a consumer myself (tried it, did NOT like it), I remember my college buds and budettes who did, and they got a high that just made them a little bit giggly, spacey, and mellow.

In the late 70's I began reading and hearing about a 'new' super strain of marijuana called semsemilla, which was supposed to be an order of magnitude more potent than regular pot. This must be what today's pot is, possibly hybridized numerous times since the 70's to make it even more potent than it already was.

This new pot is a whole different thing altogether. It will seriously fuck you up all to help and gone. And this is the stuff that 14 year olds are toking today. I have a neighbor about 50 years old, who smokes this chit every day. He is not giggly or mellow. He has a malevolent stare like someone on meth or pcp who is being restrained by quaaludes.

This is not nice stuff. A tiny amount is enough for a therapeutic dose for an adult male. But they are loading up their papers and pipes as if it were 1970's pot. And this is the stuff they are making the edibles out of. And did I mention that 14 years old have easy access to it, including edibles. It is no wonder to me that ER's today are seeing marijuana overdoses every day, every shift.

And this new stuff SMELLS different. The old stuff had kind of a pleasant smell. The new pot smells downright nasty, like a skunk just sprayed nearby. I smell it every day coming from my neighbor's place.

George True said...

And in my non-user opinion, there is no way this chit should be legal anywhere in the USA. It is bad enough that adults are using it. The indirect cost all of us for social services, healthcare costs, cost of SSI, SSDI, SNAP, etc must be staggering.

But even worse, we now have a generation of high schoolers, middle schoolers, and even grade schoolers who are consuming this super potent pot. I cannot even imagine what the societal cost will be when this generation reaches adulthood with permantly impaired brains.

Aesop said...

@Anonymous 10:59PM

1) the people cooking carfentanil and methamphetamine in their garage are working for the cartels, because that's who's smuggling the precursors up here to begin with. They're not independent enterpreneurs. Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

2) Most ERs aren't run by the government, and you lose the ERs for everybody, jackass. If you're the guy cheering when the giant meteor hits the planet because government is going to have a problem, you're an idiot.

3) I expect the euthanizing will be given a helpful nudge.

4) Darwinian selection is great, but most people didn't get into medical professions to be camp guards at Treblinka.

"Only because of your prohibition price supports. Allow the price of opium and cocaine, both agricultural products, fall to the price of table sugar, and crime won't be used to feed habits."

a) That price fall will never happen, because of who controls those drugs now.
prohibition accounts for less than a couple percent of the cost of the drugs. So the price will not drop, but instead, obviously, demand will rise, as new customers become multiples of the old customers, and drugs will become more scarce and costly, not more plentiful. You halfwits keep forgetting price is a function of supply and demand. Demand will quadruple; supply will probably shrink on a per capita basis. So the price is going to increase. And that's before we add in those taxes the legalization moron March wants to slap onto every kilo of dope.
QED

b) At any price above "FREE" drug addicts will spend everything they have to do all they can, and then turn to crime when they've gone through it all, to get "MOAR DRUGS!".
Always, in 100% of cases.
Hint: That's why they're called addicts.

5) I'm very much a "control freak" when you decide the pecadilloes of <5% of the population have a claim on one penny of my income to support their self-destructive behavior. I will donate happily one bullet to the head apiece to that cause, if necessary, but nothing more than that.

If you'd rather fund people getting stoned, feel free to send all your extra money to the IRS, and tell them it's for drug programs like that.

Let me know how that works out for you, but until you do, you've no place to talk in this conversation, let alone shill for the government to try and coerce my unwilling support for this jackassery.

The minute someone tries to lay claim to my income to do their dope, they're in the same boat as the IRS, only less welcome, and with no precedent to support that claim.

Anonymous said...

Pretty much every developed nation has some kind of socialized medicine and nearly every system provides decent outcomes in health and longevity.

The two countries most culturally similar to the US are Britain and Canada. No society can afford all the healthcare its members want. You can either ration by price (voluntary trade), or by government death panels. Canada used to have death panels. If the Canadian government thought treating you was too expensive, they sent you home to die. Canada has a nice copy of 1950's American medicine. Around 2002 I looked into how many MRI machines Canada had, and I remember it as something like ten for the whole country. Whereas my university town has three. Canada backed down from their monopoly, because they finally realized banning a willing doctor from treating a willing patient is evil.

Britain has turned into a horror show, with incoming ambulances delayed to pretend to meet NHS time-to-service ER goals, and expensively sick children prohibited from escaping the system to the US to accept donated treatment. There were two sick children that made the news, one was named Charlie Gard. Also the "Liverpool Care Pathway" means to drug seniors in the hospital into unconsciousness, then dehydrate them to death. I read a newspaper article about a nurse watching this done to her mother.

We will either keep the shit system we have or not that long after Trump gradually and on little cat's feet go fullbore socialized medicine paid for with price controls, a hefty VAT tax and money printing as needed

Increasing the number of tokens called "dollars" does not increase the number of doctors and nurses. Government cannot create wealth out of thin air. Most of the socialized-whatever service sales pitch is about wealth creation by magic, not wealth transfer. See Canada experience about how there doesn't exist enough wealth to transfer to give everbody all the care they want.

You may not like it but the big grift is over and the US sooner or later will join the rest of the world in social democracy. This will BTW suck a lot for many people but it is what it is.

The reality is that technological growth/innovation shifts military power to the individual. For instance, you and I are conversing for an audience, and the mainstream media is not exerting nearly so much censorship as they used to do when the best channel was letters to the newspaper editor. So, yes, government at every level in the US is bankrupt, we're soon going to pay to play only for Emergency Rooms, and the libertarian playground is just around the corner. It will only seem a wasteland for current welfare recipients, who will no longer be paid merely to exist.

Peter B said...

@George True:

From what I've seen those impaired brains soak up socialism and statism like a sponge.

TiredPoorHuddled Masses said...

@Felix Bellator
I'm pretty sure the reason people come here has nothing to do with the dirty hospitals, stuffed ERs and ungodly expensive medical bills. It's all about the Benjamins, baby. Or fleeing from death squads paid for by our drug money. (What's that saying about crows coming home to roost?)

Anonymous said...

Most ERs aren't run by the government

If you do the IRS worksheet to see if you are an independent contractor or an employee, which measures who controls the format and details of your work, you find that medical personnel are government employees.

and you lose the ERs for /everybody/

No, you only lose ERs for people who haven't made arrangements to pay themselves for the true cost of their own care. Meanwhile, people who aren't so passive do things like create the Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

prohibition accounts for less than a couple percent of the cost of the drugs

Opium and coca are agricultural products, and should cost $1/pound like table sugar. Hemp has the plant characteristics of a weed, it's easy to grow. Alcohol is made as a hobby. Before prohibition, addicts could afford more than enough to kill them. The addiction growth didn't lead to theft, it led to death by overdose.

A.B. Prosper said...

9:58

Rationing will occur either by the State or by the private insurance carriers. Morally it makes far more sense for the State to do this since you can vote out your Representative but can't do jack about a multi billion dollar insurance global companies policy.

As for money printing, I personally suspect we'll stick with the current system but the US has been borrowing trillions of dollars over the last few decades with little ill effect. There has been some hidden inflation in product sizes and prices but the natural tend is deflation and as such , there is plenty of room to mint more dollars. Also there are no real currency alternatives out there, period. Everyone else is money printing too. And no, neither the renminbi or some cryptocurrency is going to replace the USD . The former has its own problems and the later are unstable. Non state currency are a dumb idea and these days exist by suffrage of the State

The later depends on a lot of factors but my money's on the Reds. I'd prefer the Dissident Right who BTW are not Libertarian but they can't organize, broadly this is a problem with the entire right and the last attempt to fix it, by grafting Leftist White Nationalists/Neo Nazis into the movement got the Charlottesville Debacle

Totally agree that media is a bit more decentralized for now but that also spread other ideas, socialism, social democracy as well as anarchy and yes Libertarian ideas too just as well . The media is Neo Liberal anyway not Socialist

Long term Demography is working against you, only the only constituency for Libertarianism is middle class almost entirely male WASPS with Amy Interruptor and Sarah Hoyt being noted exceptions

That bloc doesn't control any of the larger states , save maybe Texas to some degree and probably will not control the US government You'll get instead a Central American patronage model , know a big man or get nowhere in most areas with a lot of redistribution and socialism baked in

You might get a collapse and separation . This could give Libertarians a few states, maybe but that's predicated on them not being quickly forced back into a different polity or people not having enough sense to refuse to trade with them or anyone else who does

All that aside, the way we use Emergency Rooms is stupid. They should be for emergencies only . As I understand it , this was voted in as a pressure valve to prevent medicine from being socialized back in the 80's and maybe to prevent a few John Q moments from happening

A proper socialized to some degree medical system that treated drug abuse as a medical problem combined with a basic socialized medical package and not treating illegals would probably fix most emergency room issues not related to personnel . It would be expensive though and if the US simply can't support the tax levels required, we'll we won't get it.

We won't get much of anything honestly, we've made too many malinvestments and not making good ones means that the lower fertility rate will go on indefinitely . I'm hugely opposed to immigration legal and illegal but no nation can sustain on 1.6-1.8 forever

No babies, no econom. Just ask Toy's R Us

Felix Bellator said...

@TirePoorHuddled Masses, perhaps I did not express my point clearly. People in these socialized medical systems like the UK and petty dictators and other tyrants, like the King of Jordan, come to the US for quality medical treatment they cannot get anywhere else in the world.

But let's stay on topic here. This is about drug legalization and the effects on the US, not criminal immigration. Is it possible to reduce the medical cost for the addicts we have now by shoving them into a second tier system? Like a tent in a cage in the parking lot?

Beans said...

Well, yeah. What you said.

I don't know how many times during a 3 year stint of working in a local PD crime lab I got to watch drugged out parents blowing thick clouds of pot, crack, meth smoke into the faces of little kids. Or watching toddlers come lurching out of drugish fog banks.

I have watched the excess of open drug use in Florida magically appear since 'medical marijuana' was legalized.

Now, I am for complete legalization in one location, in the middle of nowhere, like a gov-run Burning man, 24/7/365. Once you go in, you don't come out. Maybe one of those islands in the Hawaiian chain, or Johnston Atoll...

Legalization of stuff that's 100 times worse than alcohol because Prohibition supposedly didn't work (even though it did. It worked at seriously lowering the number of drunks in factories and in normal every-day life. It worked in breaking the epidemic-levels of death by alcohol related issues. It worked to dry the USA up to a reasonable level of alcohol use.)(And people don't understand that many drugs were made illegal because of the negative effect upon the population overall. Though it is remarkably funny how people want illegal drugs and illegal aliens made legal while legal things like guns are wanted to be made illegal.)

Anonymous said...

Good idea, sending them all to an island somewhere, but it won't work, because "feelings".
Better to deal with the problem financially. Cut off any gov benefit, period. In addition, cancel funding for any subsidized agency handing out "help".

Eskyman said...

Back in the late '60s & early '70s I smoked some pod, since I was cool. Right on! A one-paper joint passed around 3 or 4 guys, and we all got mellow.

Then I went to Australia in 1973, where I met some folks who invited me to have a smoke with them; I was not impressed when they rolled a huge joint, using 5 or 6 papers, mostly loaded with tobacco. They did sprinkle a little bit of grass in it, about enough for half a normal joint. Since I was there, I helped smoke it, and I tried not to show my disappointment. Mixing grass with tobacco was bad enough, but then to be niggardly with the grass too!

In very short order I was higher than I'd ever been in my life! What they'd put in that joint wasn't California grass, but Thai Stick grass. It was superpowerful compared to what I was used to. I was still high the next day, and didn't much like being totally wasted like that stuff did to me. I could hardly stand up, but had to walk back to my campground, and things in the night leered at me.

Now there's stuff that is 100% stronger than that Thai Stick; that must be dangerous stuff indeed, and I want no part of it!

Aesop said...

@ Anonymous 10:30

Most ERs aren't run by the government

If you do the IRS worksheet to see if you are an independent contractor or an employee, which measures who controls the format and details of your work, you find that medical personnel are government employees.

Right, genius, and the Fed prints every dollar you own, paper and digital, so you're a government employee too if you want to play that b.s. game. Fail.

and you lose the ERs for /everybody/

No, you only lose ERs for people who haven't made arrangements to pay themselves for the true cost of their own care. Meanwhile, people who aren't so passive do things like create the Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

That would be everybody. You're really not very good at this.

prohibition accounts for less than a couple percent of the cost of the drugs

Opium and coca are agricultural products, and should cost $1/pound like table sugar. Hemp has the plant characteristics of a weed, it's easy to grow. Alcohol is made as a hobby. Before prohibition, addicts could afford more than enough to kill them. The addiction growth didn't lead to theft, it led to death by overdose.

"Should", Soopergenius??
There's no crying in baseball, and there's no"should" in capitalism.
So, who sets the actual price on those products. Not the government. Oh, wait, might it be...drug cartels and their dealers? Holy shit, almost like you keep getting hit with that Invisible Hand, right in the back of your head, every time.
We already talked about what's going to happen if you start spring up pot patches from hell to breakfast: you'll need so much security as to make the price higher than it is now. So much for $1/pound. Adam Smith FTW. You've got it bass-ackwards: if you could get the price of weed down to $1/pound, you might eliminate theft. I doubt it. Because as you also cleverly overlooked, the desire for weed, let alone cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, etc., are all vastly more addictive than alcohol and nicotine, let alone sugar.
I'm going out on a limb here, and guessing your education was Common Core light on the hard sciences. And psychology. And reality.

That exact overwhelming addiction growth leads to theft, and death by addiction.
It's not either/or.
It's one, and then the other.

Back to your Acme Drawing Board, Wile E.

OvergrownHobbit said...

Thank you, Mr. Aesop. I appreciate the help in recovering from libertarianism.

There's still more on this I need to think about, but you've been a help, and I appreciate it.

Anonymous said...

I think a class of mistake here is called "static analysis". This means imagine changing the laws, but don't imagine how people change their behavior in response to the new laws. For instance, the OMB is legally required to pretend that a proposed 99% tax on income would bring in 99% of last year's income.

can't do jack about a multi billion dollar insurance global companies policy.

I bank with a local credit union run by locals. If health insurance were legal to be similarly local, I would do that.

Non state currency are a dumb idea

Fiat currencies are used in trade because government employees kill citizens who don't use them. That's the only reason. Imagine opening a pirate chest and finding it full of paper notes inflated to worthlessness?

Long term Demography is working against you, only the only constituency for Libertarianism is middle class almost entirely male WASPS with Amy Interruptor and Sarah Hoyt being noted exceptions

When the right new cryptocurrency springs up, backed by barrels of oil or gold coins, all those middle class male WASPS are going to stop paying taxes. Then what will your government pay its enforcement goons with?

We already talked about what's going to happen if you start spring up pot patches from hell to breakfast: you'll need so much security as to make the price higher than it is now.

When the supply goes up, the price goes down. Nobody is going to bother stealing pot from the fields if enough is grown they need a combine to harvest it.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

I think you should start that cryptocurrency backed by gold and/or oil genius. I am sure the government would never catch up to you since your anonymous. Government, like I said before

Anonymous said...

I think drugs should be legalized. Starting with the most hardcore....Heroin, meth, crack etc not the gateway stuff like pot. Not only legal, but free*

*small catch, 1 in every 200 doses is concentrated, lethal poison


If you want to experiment once or twice, you'll probably be fine. If you chase a high once a year on your vacation week, you'll probably be fine. If you're a hardcore addict...you'll be dead, likely in less than a year.

And there ain't shit the cartels can do about it as their criminal customer base dies off.

Anonymous said...


Generic pharmaceutical fentanyl is <$1.00/100ug vial and made in US (at least some)
Legalize it, give it away, and quit spraying Narcan around
Darwin wins big, again; and, no, you don't get a ton of new users...

Aesop said...

You're not paying close enough attention, or you've been getting your news from reporters who are idiots. (But I repeat myself.)

Fentanyl isn't killing anyone. Not even mixed into heroin.

Carfentanil, which is a non-pharmaceutical grade, exclusively-home-brewed concoction like methamphetamine, OTOH, has a lethality on the order of Sarin nerve gas. Three crystals the size of three grains of table salt would be the LD50 (the dose that would kill, DRT, 50% of all persons ever given it).

Mixed with heroin, it is intended to give a higher "high".
Usually, as with most street practitioners of arts generally requiring am earned doctorate, that high stops at the Pearly Gates (whoops), before you can even finish pushing the syringe plunger.

Narcan is totally ineffective in that case; you could be getting a liter bag of Narcan (it's usually administered as a 0.5-1ml push) and shoot that hit up, and it'd still kill you before the Narcan could take effect.

The problem with carfentanil is that it isn't mixed into every dose of heroin. If it were, the faux opiate epidemic problem would be 90% over by noon tomorrow. but there might be a temporary shortage of natural gas, due to increased cremations of the clientele from coroners' offices nationwide.