Page 1 of 1 [ 3 posts ] 


End Prohibition?
Yes - Everything 56%  56%  [ 5 ]
Only certain substances legal, but no criminalization 44%  44%  [ 4 ]
Drugs are bad, mmmkay 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Total votes : 9

Vigilans
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Jun 2008
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,181
Location: Montreal

08 Mar 2012, 11:10 pm

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

LEAP is a non-profit organization of current and former officers of the law who favor legalization and regulation of drugs. Many police officers support legalization, having been on the "front lines" of the war on drugs that has been waged for decades and see first hand what putting control of substances in the hands of criminals does. The war is an enormous and unnecessary burden on the world, a war that is profitable to people who fight other wars in the third world. I think LEAP has a very good statement about why drugs should be legalized:

LEAP wrote:
We believe that drug prohibition is the true cause of much of the social and personal damage that has historically been attributed to drug use. It is prohibition that makes these drugs so valuable – while giving criminals a monopoly over their supply. Driven by the huge profits from this monopoly, criminal gangs bribe and kill each other, law enforcers, and children. Their trade is unregulated and they are, therefore, beyond our control.

History has shown that drug prohibition reduces neither use nor abuse. After a rapist is arrested, there are fewer rapes. After a drug dealer is arrested, however, neither the supply nor the demand for drugs is seriously changed. The arrest merely creates a job opening for an endless stream of drug entrepreneurs who will take huge risks for the sake of the enormous profits created by prohibition. Prohibition costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year, yet 40 years and some 40 million arrests later, drugs are cheaper, more potent and far more widely used than at the beginning of this futile crusade.

We believe that by eliminating prohibition of all drugs for adults and establishing appropriate regulation and standards for distribution and use, law enforcement could focus more on crimes of violence, such as rape, aggravated assault, child abuse and murder, making our communities much safer. We believe that sending parents to prison for non-violent personal drug use destroys families. We believe that in a regulated and controlled environment, drugs will be safer for adult use and less accessible to our children. And we believe that by placing drug abuse in the hands of medical professionals instead of the criminal justice system, we will reduce rates of addiction and overdose deaths.


_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do


jojobean
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Aug 2009
Age: 46
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,341
Location: In Georgia sipping a virgin pina' colada while the rest of the world is drunk

08 Mar 2012, 11:34 pm

I think that some drugs like marijuana should be legal and regulated like tobacco and Alcohol,
however the more dangerous drugs, crack, cocaine, meth, LSD, should be decriminalized but if caught with them more than x amount of times, or drug related behaviors put themselves or others at risk, one should have to be in a drug treatment program in a therapeutic environment.
Prison for drug offenses only makes the problem worse. A teen or young adult gets caught with just a users amount of illegal drugs, they go to prison only to be introduced to gangs and violence, and become a hardened criminal just to survive being there. Then when they get out, they cant find a job cause employers wont hire anyone with a rap sheet, so then they turn to a life of crime to survive.

It is just a backwards way of doing things.

Jojo


_________________
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.
-James Baldwin


Vigilans
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Jun 2008
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,181
Location: Montreal

08 Mar 2012, 11:46 pm

Personally I think everything should be legal and regulated according to its potential for abuse. Even decriminalizing a substance, though a good step, is not enough, because it does not eliminate the biggest result of the war on drugs- those who are engaging in smuggling and sales, because they can profit on the lucrative black market. Only by eliminating the black market for these substances will many of the problems associated with them go away. Cocaine, for instance, is funding guerrillas in Central and South America, and there is an undeclared civil war raging in Mexico between the cartels and their enforcers and Mexican security and military forces. The drug trade is so profitable many Mexican soldiers find better employment in the cartel's private armies. This story is repeated in almost all of the places of the world that provide for this enormous black market. To stop many of the wars raging around the world, eliminating the largest source of funding for many rebel factions would be a major blow to them. Besides the blow it would be to criminals in the West. It is well known that politicians are often crooked. I wonder if it does not occur to people that criminals lobby politicians as well, and their lobby is not up for scrutiny. Hardened criminals have more to lose from legalization than anybody


_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do