Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:54:36 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: It's Phinally Phriedae,
and Drug prohibition created the drug lords. (
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ok.....focusing a bit on the concept of 'addiction.'
What I find bothersome is that ..........
truthfully, if you consider all the people that need a little coffee to
start the day, all the people that drink soda pop regularly, all the people
that 'need' a beer or two or a glass of red wine most evenings, all the
people that are very used to eating cow meat a few times a week say.......
and that it would be difficult for them to not consume those ,
..........those can all be considered 'addicted' . There's cigarette
smokers too of course. Plus other substances. Point is, being 'very used'
to having something most days is very common for the majority of the
population.
my point is ....'the powers that be' say sugar, caffeine, alchohol, and
nicotine are 'the OK drugs.' It is fully legal to buy 10 bottles of vodka
and drink them in one setting at home if you want. You can buy 20 cartons
of cigarettes etc .....
My ponit is 'those highly addictive drugs are OK, becuse they are THEIR
drugs ...the law makers ..
they say those drugs are fine, because ................they're in power and
their drugs are OK, but another person's drug isn't. ( not that really hard
drugs are OK ) .
It's just hipocriical. Many thousands of people die every year from smoking
tobacco, or related diseases from that pracitce. . Yet another smokable,
that has not been known to kill anyone that I have ever read, is illegal
still in some legal climates - mainly federal.
and ....talk about adictions and medical danger.........if they wanted to
save billions per year in health costs, there should be big warning sings on
every fast food and McDonalds.........that stuff is frankly.........deadly,
long term, yet 'that's ok.' Check out the rates of increase in diabietes
and obesity - there's a epedemic ......but that's legal. And they are just
barely getting going on raising awarness there.
the TV show 60 Minutes just did a big thing about tobacco products ...making
a big point about 'being addicted' ......as though only a small ( and bad )
portion of the population is addicted.
I have met exactly one person in my life who did not do 'something'. I knew
a guy, no caffeine, no sugar, no alcohol....no 'anyting..
Maybe 90 to 95 % at least of people 'need' ,or really like something
...........their coffee, their cow meat, their chocolate, etc...
so that's NORMAL ....most humans do that in some form or another ...
some additive behavior, whether it's cofffee, kava kava root, or a religion.
It's 'normal'....as in very, very common.
so to say being additcted to anything at all is 'bad' is not reconginzing
that many people 'need' their whatever, and that 'they' say 'these drugs'
are fine, but 'these other substances' are not, is hypocritical.
and there is example of recongizing that living with the situation is better
than trying to eliminate it, because, the nature of additcion if insideious,
..very strong. Addictiveness really gets some people.
And that is why there are clean needle programs and methadone.
They, smartly realize.............it's not practical to keep some people
away from some drugs ...the nature of addiction is so strong for some
people......that they will do anything to get their drug. So they wisely
choose to manage it.
Now that would be very possible for much of the drug trade.
Adn we have, for example, taxed and regulated alchohol and cigrettes.
Prohibition was tried, and it didn't work.
and, while I don't support tobacco use , and I was a smoker once upon a
time, so I know the demon ........I am sad to see state goverments raising
cigarette taxes to generate more money to run government. It's easily
justified since tobacco use is so damaging from a health viewpoint , and
they need the money ..........but then they should tax every other
non-esssential .....soda pop and candy bars say to be fair about it.
is there anything in Constitution banning Hypocrisy ? I think there should
be.
as for 'eliminate the drug culture' and you end the current mexican
violence thing - a vast, vast oversimplification, and not practical.
If I blame anything.........I blame the glorification of violence in movies,
tv shows, and video games, and music.
I mean really..............the Monkey-see-mondkey-do affect is huge. And you
show guys or people shooting at each other, robbiung 7-11 Stores, or just
killing each other ...
people are going to copy that behavior ! Duh. Particularly one gender, but
it's creeping into the other gender too.
then of course, you produce mabye 10,000 new guns in this country every day
( 'jobs' you know ) ........
surely at least soem of those guns get used on other humans. Happens
constantly. Just read the newspaper.
So why isn't anyone all outraged over that ?
you know, when I went to high school, it was absolutely
unthinkable.........wouldn't even ever occur to anyone, to bring guns to
school and shoot up the place, killing teachers and other people. No one
had every even heard of an AK-47 as an example of the relative innocence of
the times.
There was just a mall shooting in Oklahoma the other day. In my newspaper
it was a small sidebar article deep in the papoer, , not even front page or
a big story.
That's how accepting we have become of violence.....it's normal now. Oh
there was a gun fight in a mall, a person or two got killed. What else is
new ? That is sick. People should be outraged at the amount of violence
there is right here, never mind mexico.
There is simply nothing wrong with repsonsible drug use. We prove that by
say.....keeping alcohol use moderate sometimes.
It's not the drugs per se.
It's the cultural practices of violence and controlling others that has
gotten completely out of hand - the gang thing for example.
There are gangs that you have to kill someone to belong to. I actually read
that there are 700 some gangs in LA recently.
And I doubt most of those are humaitarian service clubs.
Tell me that we did not get here by glorifying vilent acts in media .
It's not the drugs per se, it's the cultural embrace of violence and the
guns....
I can't get past that one. There are more weapons every day, and they get
used.
That also is a vast oversimplification, but I still can not ignore that
thousands of new weapons get produced every day ...
and then people use many of them.
And that violence is commonly glorified in lots of enterainment.
I mean .....take Miami CSI ....really cool tv show for the
visuals....exceptional in that regard, very colorful and imaginnative , but
...
there would not be a plot if they did not have a murder to solve. Every show
is based on a murder, ...and it's fascinating.
Like killing fellow humans is a normal thing to do - stopping that
cultural obsession would be a nice place to start.
and let's be truthful about addiction and drugs ...
'most people' do some stiumlant on a regular basis, and the people in
control right now say their drugs ( damagineg as some of them are ) or ok,
and other people's drugs are not ok............and to be clear, I'm not
saying meth is fine, etc.
it's coming around slowly on what's a dangerous drug or not,
but I don't see the hypocrisy decreasing too much yet, and the guns and
violence....that's the bigger issue seems to me, and it sure looks like it's
only going to proliferate, sad to say. When will humans wake up and stop
harming themselves and each other ?
blessings to all.
and I was gonna try to be quite today !
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Fisher" <garciasghostvw@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 12:29 AM
Subject: Re: It's Phinally Phriedae, and Drug prohibition created the drug
lords. (was (ironically) Re: HIJACKED - update)
>I agree with both of you: Dave says "no market, no industry"; Mike says "no
> prohibition, no market" - therefore no industry. I once read a an article
> that maintained that you could break down the known drugs into two broad
> categories: Those that approx. 90% of a given population could take/use
> without becoming addicted, with the other 10% experiencing varying degrees
> of addiction, and vice versa. The proposal was that the (mostly)
> non-addictive drugs should not be regulated, and that the (mostly)
> addictive
> drugs should, with the legal bent being that society would endeavor to
> help
> users overcome their addiction (to either kind) and that the illegal
> distributors of the regulated kind would face penalties. Apparently in
> those
> western societies that have de-criminalized drugs, most people that use
> are
> content with the readily available "soft" drugs and cap their use with
> those. I don't have a problem with any of that.
>
> I don't think that amounts to liberalism (raving or not), conservatism
> (nut
> job or not) or liberalism (bleeding heart or not). I think it's just
> common
> sense analysis of what works and what doesn't. Basically the courts have
> consistently ruled that a legislative body may regulate any behavior they
> choose as long as the regulation is not in conflict with those rights
> granted by the Constitution. There is, however, a growing argument that an
> individual has a constitutional right to do whatever he wishes so long as
> it
> does inherently cause or has a significant likelihood of causing a "real
> and
> measureable harm", an idea/term with which the courts have long been used
> to
> working and defining.
>
> Having said that, I'm guessing the mods were probably speaking of the
> broad
> topic of "the dangers or lack of, of travelling in Mexico" when they said
> save it 'til Fridaye, and that a politically-tinged discussion of the
> North
> American Drug Trade (Its Constitutionality, Causes and Effects) is not
> quite
> what they had in mind. But that of course is up to them.
>
> Cya,
> Robert
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