-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 06:32 8/26/97 -0400, you wrote: [...]
It's this attitude that creates most of the drug 'problem' for society. It's not the drugs. People can function fine while enjoying their hits of beer, weed, coke or whatever. It's the ciminalisation of some drugs and the attitude of people like William H. Geiger III that make the drug user outcasts from society.
You are making unfounded assumptions of my position on drug use.
I really could care less about someone who uses drugs on a recreational basis and is able to buy his drugs with his/her/its *own* money. I
it is a total waste for those who prefer to spend their life drooling in a corner with a needle in their arm and/or crack pipe in their hand. Even so if they or their families are wealthy enough to support this behavior more power to them.
What I strongly object to is my hard earned $$$ being stolen from me to support this behavior either in the form of taxes spent on Welfare & SS or (for the more ambitious junkie) stolen/robbed directly.
As a Libertarian I am all for the legalization of drugs. Our current politicians seem incapable of learning from the past that
I see that I did. No problem, plenty of new stuff here to keep the argument going... think prohibition
never works and causes more problems than it solves (Econmics 101 supply & demand).
I suppose you believe that a drug addict has no one to blame but himself, and that he should take _all_ of the blame. I don't. They certainly deserve some credit for the mess they're in, but not entirely. Bad luck has a lot to do with it as well. Just like getting blown off a cliff by the wind. You shouldn't have been there, you should have been strong enough not be blown off, etc.... Also, it being the druggie's fault or not, treating him as an outcast is not going to solve the problem. It'll only make it worse. For him, and for the rest of us. What works much better is treating his addiction more like a disease. This is what we do in The Netherlands. We have few junkies living in the street, rarely does a granny get her head blown off for a nickle and a dime. Also the mortality rate under the junkies is very low, although I suspect you don't see that as a good thing. The 'drug problem' as it exists in most places in this world is the result of the mindboggeling numbers of people living in tiny spaces. It is a problem of us all, so the bill ends up with us all. Procecuting the addict only serves to drive up that bill. Killing him is certainly the cheap option, but a healthy society takes care of it's members, even if they mess up so spectacularly. Several programs, in The Netherlands and Switzerland and probably other places, have shown that by far the cheapest and least painful solution for all is just to give the man his drugs. In fact, Switzerland is doing just that with it's heroin addicts. As it turns out most of them get some sort of life back together, a lot even manage to get and hold jobs and thus become productive citizens dispite their addiction.
I also believe, as a Libertarian, that I have the "GOD given right" to defend myself, my family, and my property, with deadly force if needed (and I am the one who gets to decide when such force is needed not some bureaucrat in DC).
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