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Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 11:33:24 -0700 From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net> Subject: Re: common sense

HipCrime wrote:

...

And rather than "dispensing drugs in clinics," why not simply scrap the drug laws entirely? People have a *right* to do as they please with their bodies. Let's hear it for common sense. It's the first decent posting I've seen to this list. -- HTTP://www.HIPCRIME.com

A question for you: In the Civil Rights era (1960's mostly), we dealt with the question of whether people had the "right" to not only choose their neighbors, but whether they could extend that logic, so once they move in, whether they could "enforce" the status quo by preventing other people from moving in if those other people didn't "fit in" somehow.

If drugs and/or other items of Vice are liberalized, there will be a tremendous marketing opportunity created, and new stores and new departments within existing stores will pop up everywhere offering the newly-liberalized goods and services. So my question is, since there are "dry" areas in the country now, where the citizens can vote to exclude alcohol sales, for example, will drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. fall within the purvey of citizen democracy as in the "dry" county example, or will there be new problems with this analogy, and will any of those new problems relate to the Civil Rights issues I mentioned previously?

History already has examples of such incidences. Alaska, California, and other states have tried various levels of legalization. To date I believe that all such experiments have ended because of federal pressure on the uncooperative states. The Indians 'right by treaty' to operate gambling casino's is another good example of a contemporary situation. Jim Choate