meth

[Gunthr]

If I go home and drink beer & smoke cigarettes, BOTH physically addictive , perhaps with a few corporate America happy pills (physically addictive prescription meds) what business is it of yours?... why would you care if I did the same, but drank a 12 pack of "opiate brew"? or "Coke with Coke"?

I'm just looking for a legal buzz, similar to the strength of alcohol, why do you care? - xMarine

ahhh, now i know where you are coming from ...you are  a nouveau libertarian ie,  a conservative who wants to smoke pot...

there is a huge gap of logic missing from your reasoning.   opiates are highly addictive substances in which the addict quickly acquires a tolerance for the drug which requires higher and higher doses for comparable effects.  

Very very soon after your new legislation allowing opiate brews (and, which i think not so coincidentally, would allow you to smoke pot legally ) you would have people buying or stealing huge truckloads of the stuff to extract the opiate because they would not be satisfied with your 12 pack, and many many more who just don't want the hassle and continue to use their regular heroin or opiate suppliers.  you haven't reduced addiction.  you haven't reduced crime.  you've just found an easy 7-11 way of introducing everybody to opiates and addiction.  all so that you can use pot.

[Curval]

Amazing how many posters can, on the one hand, state that governments have no right to dictate whether or not you can legally own a deadly weapon and on the other hand happily cede to government the right to tell them what chemicals they can and cannot put into their own body's.

At least lazs is consistant in his approach.

[Brenjen]

Addicts can only be helped if they want help. If you try to force help onto them you'll only drive them deeper into their addiction. Rehabs fail to help the addict about 95% of the time according to their own records; unfortunately the best way to get off dope is to be separated from the source & that usually means one of two things: The addict wakes up one morning & decides they've had enough & moves away from the dealers they know & starts fresh OR They go to jail for a long time & dry out that way.

 I know a guy who swears by rehab, funny thing though; he's been a crack head for years & the longest he's ever dried out was about 24 months. Yet he keeps saying that rehab is the answer when it hasn't been so far. I keep telling him it's a matter of will power & self control, if you don't have any & you like the dope you're doomed.

[Yknurd]

If you legalize drugs then the terrorists win!!!!111ONE

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by JB88
i need to ask you for your help.

i have a cousin that i love very much who i am sad to say has become a longterm meth addict.  

i need to find a way to help her help herself.

all that i can give to her is my love and my affection and my mind and my faith and my energy and the belief that she deserves to be loved and believed in no matter what.

what i am wondering...do any of you have any thoughts, experiences, ideas resources or directions that might help in helping her to achieve this goal?

can she be saved?  have others come back from this hell?  is it at least possible?

it's been years since i have seen her, but it is breaking my families heart to know that she is out there dying slowly like this when our memories of her are so filled with her light.

she lives in the dallas area.

anything you can think of will be so very appreciated... i promise that i will try to keep an open mind.

please and thank you.

88

Request for help.

Originally posted by Vudak
If you cut her out of your life, don't plan on seeing her again.  She will die.

She needs help, and you need a long fuse right about now.  (Changing the locks is a good idea, though...)  

I've had many, many, many friends on everything from coke to meth to heroin.  A few are in limbo, a few are in the ground, one made it clean.  It is tough, but the guy who made it was the one least likely to.

I'm in Charlotte right now, about to drive 12 hours back.  But if you want, PM me and I'll send you my information.  I can probably organize a phone call between my friend who made it and anyone you'd like to talk to him, including your cousin.

Also, a friend of mine just graduated (only Bachelors so far) specializing in this sort of thing...  I'm sure she would be willing to help as best she can,too.

Best option proposed yet.   <> Vudak.

[lazs2]

mav.. as was said.. if govrenment charged outrageous amounts of tax and fees on legal drugs then there would still be a drug dealer population.

What jobs could meth heads do?   I was very successful in construction.. many jobs a meth head could do till he or she fried..  many are doing em now.  

You are correct that they should not be on the road tho.. I agree.   PCP?  I was a garbage can of drug use and I wouldn't do it... didn't like it.   would do heroin before I would do pot etc... drug addicts have preferences like everyone else...

I also drank like any alcoholic the entire time.  

since I had access to vast amounts of drugs... I think that I can state from my experiance that...

Even when offered for free... some people will not do drugs or do them addictively.    Some people, a small percentage will do them to the point of addiction no matter if they are free or extremely difficult to get.   Anyone around me could do as much as they wanted..   of a dozen people.. maybe one did as much as I did... 3 more did the drugs to excess...  3 maybe to what would be considered "recreational" and not problematic and the rest.... the rest ignored em after trying em a few times.

The addicts we have now are the ones we would have if we legalized drugs...  the addicts that are yet to come will come if the drugs are legal or not.

lazs

[rpm]

Wow, xMarine. You and I are miles apart on some issues but together on this one.

I saw the "seize your budget" fiasco happen around here. They tried to spin it in the press as a good thing. All it did was allow the politicians to waste huge piles of $$$ and syphon off what was left for their buddies. Now they look at our S.O. as a profit maker for the county.

I might be poorly mistaken, but I thought their job was enforce the law, not fund the county budget. We are buying old buildings, spending insane amounts of money to refurbish them and then having to abandon the projects alltogether because the buildings are not suitable for their intended purpose.  i.e. Bought an old garage from a commissioner's brother in law and converted it into EMS station that ambulances would'nt fit inside... $750,000 oops.

[john9001]

Originally posted by rpm

I might be poorly mistaken, but I thought their job was enforce the law, not fund the county budget. We are buying old buildings, spending insane amounts of money to refurbish them and then having to abandon the projects alltogether because the buildings are not suitable for their intended purpose.  i.e. Bought an old garage from a commissioner's brother in law and converted it into EMS station that ambulances would'nt fit inside... $750,000 oops.

cops are just armed tax collectors, speeding tax, stop sign tax, red light tax, burned out tail light tax, expired tag tax, expired inspection sticker tax, etc.

[culero]

Originally posted by Maverick
SNIP
I follow the argument about losing the black market. I can even understand that position and why you would think that's a great idea. I don't necessarily believe it will work out, heck there is a black market in LEGAL substances like alcohol and tobacco right now. Making drugs legal but regulating them will not eliminate the black market but it will decrease the size of it pretty dramatically, assuming the legal price of those substances is very low.

I'd be very happy if we could reduce the size of the drug black market by about the same percentage we reduced the alcohol black market after repealing prohibition.

As to the idea that you can keep violent criminals in prison permanently, bovine scatology there.
snip

Bad choice of words on my part. But, for example, I would like to see someone who's sentenced to 30 years for murder serve the whole 30 years, and certainly emptying half of our current cells would allow that.

snip
If you think legalizing drugs will eliminate all crime related to it, again you need to put down the pipe. Look to alcohol and even tobacco. There are still people breaking into stores and even stealing from others to get money to buy a LEGAL substance. Do you think that will not be the case when Joe addict runs out of money (assuming he even has some kind of job to earn any at all) and decides to go right to the source to get their fix?

I reckon Joe Addict does that now, and will continue to do so about as much as he does now. But I reckon many Joe Dealers will be put out of business, and that means a reduction in the amount of violence he commits in my community as a part of his normal day-to-day business activity.

As to some of your other questions:

Jobs - same jobs addicts have now, except being drug dealers since that industry will be crippled.

Driving - the same addicts that drive now still will. I'm all for DUI being punished severely, including mandatory drug testing after release.

New recruits to drug use due to easier access - I agree this is a danger. However, my instinct is that most folks who want to do this kind of stuff now already do. In any case, I'd like to see taxes paid by suppliers and users pay for the abatement campaigns to dissuade people from becoming users, instead of you and I paying for that.



snip
Lastly can someone please explain to me exactly what the benefit to society an addict is? If we are going to �open the doors� to these drugs, meth, heroin, cocaine in both forms, pcp what is the benefit to society other than ending the �war on drugs�? What do you think those substances are going to provide for the nation, I really want to know.

I agree that addicts are a burden. But I also think that ending the current "War On Drugs" will make it easier to get addicts out into the sunlight and treated for their disease.

Think about that. Currently, if you have an alcohol problem, there's little to stop you from getting help. But if you're an addict, you have to admit to being a criminal before getting help. That's a roadblock I'd like to remove.

Try to understand that my view is the same as yours regarding the worth of these drugs and the problem they represent. I just believe we'd be better able to abate the problems by dealing with them in different ways than we do now.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Again, even if everything else were to work (huge if, in fact a massive if), my issue with "regulating" these "recreational" drugs is that our government can't properly and efficiently regulate drugs needed to treat disease and injury. We have people who suffer and die because the FDA can't handle what they have now. People with diseases and injuries, as opposed to people who feel they deserve a crutch to deal with reality, are already suffering and paying absurd prices for drugs they need to LIVE, and people think it is possible for the government to regulate "recreational" drugs and not screw that up? I don't think so.

[Maverick]

Laz and Culero,

Thanks much for the discussion. I mean it.

Laz,

I have to bow to your experience here as you have it first hand. My experience was from dealing with those who were usually at the end or bottom of their addiction when they became real problems and could not be ignored. The others who rarely were a problem since the tribe was closed mouth about it, were the herion addicts in the Pascua Yaqui reservation that is actually in the city limits of Tucson. They were about as laid back as you could get but they lived in squalor because they had zero ambition other than putting a needle in their arm.

I�m not sure I would want one working on my car or doing anything particularly technical. I certainly don�t want someone under the influence driving.

Culero,


I'd be very happy if we could reduce the size of the drug black market by about the same percentage we reduced the alcohol black market after repealing prohibition.

I agree that this would be a good thing. I�m not sure it would work as well as all that is concerned but I agree it would be interesting to find out.

Bad choice of words on my part. But, for example, I would like to see someone who's sentenced to 30 years for murder serve the whole 30 years, and certainly emptying half of our current cells would allow that.

I have to disagree with you here again because it�s the sentencing guidelines as well as good time vs nad time that determines the length of stay for an inmate. You�d still require a rewrite of the penal code and have serious constitutional issue, like we already have with mandatory sentencing.

New recruits to drug use due to easier access - I agree this is a danger. However, my instinct is that most folks who want to do this kind of stuff now already do. In any case, I'd like to see taxes paid by suppliers and users pay for the abatement campaigns to dissuade people from becoming users, instead of you and I paying for that.

This hits on one of the things that I feel would be a major problem here. There is a significant amount of binge drinking going on near the University and the same frame of mind that pulls folks into doing that kind of behavior may bring them into using the newly legal substances, creating a new surge in addiction. Like anything else that�s new, there will be quite a few folks who just HAVE to try it. If they had Marine�s concept to get it from they wouldn�t have to go far to get the substances and start using them, just like alcohol. I�d be happy to be wrong there but I don�t believe I am.

I don�t have the answers I just have questions and I�m really not sure I want to see the experiment in action.

[Toad]

Well, it's not the buffoons at the FDA that would regulate recreational drugs.

It'd be the buffoons at ATF that regulate recreational drugs, just like they do now with alcohol.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by Toad
Well, it's not the buffoons at the FDA that would regulate recreational drugs.

It'd be the buffoons at ATF that regulate recreational drugs, just like they do now with alcohol.

What could possibly go wrong?

EXACTLY!

It's BATFE now though. I guess.

[Xargos]

I would allow them all the drugs they wanted in prison too.

lazs

HELL NO, we barley maintain control of our prisons as is.  One of reasons officers don't have as much problems as they could with inmates is because the inmates know if they really got on our nerves we would shake their rooms down at 3 in the morning.  There are more drugs in prison then there is on the streets already.

People really don't understand how little control we have over our prisons, the inmates could take them over at any time, if they really wanted to.

[Gunthr]

decriminalizing meth, crack and heroin is tantamount to saying that the state will provide free meth, crack, and heroin to citizens.  Why?

meth, crack and heroin addicts are unemployable, socially pathological mental and physical wrecks.  who would want one working for them even if they were able to get into work?  

that begs the question; where then will American addicts get money to buy their government's drugs and pay the taxes that will supposedly be levied on them?  Answer: same place they do now.  

Unless America gives the stuff away for free to its citizens and relieves addicts of paying taxes, you haven't reduced crime.  But what you have done is to create another huge govermental bureaucracy to oversee and manage a collosal distribution system of addictive drugs to our citizens.  

Then, when the addicts  eventually sicken and are dying, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab, which amounts to "universal health care" except its only for addicts.  and of course welfare will support the children.  You have taken the country a step closer to socialism.