Did Ron Paul just say he would legalize heroin?

Did I miss something? :rofl:

are Heroine addicts. Just a guess. Plus HES BAT SHIT CRAZY!

and johnson is supporting medical marijuana

Doesn't sound that crazy to me.

...Wonder Woman fetish.

Spelling alert

I think it's right. :shrug:

Oops

:dunce:

In the utter bullshit War on Drugs, Drugs won. The Constitution lost.

He said whether or not drugs (narcotics, etc.) are illegal or legal should be left up to the states -- not the federal government.

(I tend to agree with him.)

Heroine, like Wonder Woman, well he did not address that specifically.

Heroes??

Excellently played.

GIVE ME FACTUAL INFO AND I'LL EMAIL IT TO ALL MY GOP FRIENDS. THANKS

I'm sure it will be on youtube soon.

where the Feds get the authority to tell you which plants you can grow and what you can do with them.

Why is that so laughable a thought? It would eliminate a crime epidemic that plagues our country, it would provide a great source of tax revenue, and would mean a number of drug addicts could either be productive, tax paying citizens, or get their addiction treated.

Just because it comes from Ron Paul doesn't mean that it's a bad idea:shrug:

For one, the number of uses decrease when a drug is legalized, the price also drops to rock bottom, most of the little funds generated is put back in treatment facilities and worse is the job loss that would result from legalization. Yes its going to be a plus for the individual users but its not going to generate a net tax revenue.

Yeah, I think that tax revenue will be no problem.

so, as far as it all goes - treating drug abuse as a health problem rather than a law enforcement problem is the better strategy - this was supposedly Obama's stance too - not legalization or decriminalization, but harm reduction.

that's considered the most effective and smartest way to deal with the problem of addiction in society - as shown by Portugal and other nations' work in this area - when drugs are decriminalized, costs of drug use go down - health costs, law enforcement costs and a decrease in use.

but America is wedded to bad policy in this area and has a strong Puritan streak that demands punishment for certain things that are really medical and social issues - so the rational thing to do is not even considered here - too many irrational people vote for bad ideas.

percent of opiate addicts during the patent medicine era, when opiates were legal.

i'm for legalization, but there's no evidence legalizing things decreases their use.

so, yes, there is evidence - recent evidence, not information from the earlier part of this century.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

Decriminalizing drugs in Portugal is considered a successful policy.

in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

the same thing in Amsterdam with treating cannabis as a non-issue - usage among teenagers and everyone else in the population is lower than it is in the U.S. (per capita.)

no strong evidence that decriminalization of anything decreases its usage.

that depends, as a said before, on a multitude of other factors.

the data I have seen suggests otherwise.

data on alcohol & tobacco & legal prescription drugs.

use levels & legality/illegality have no one-to-one correlation. it all depends on other factors, including, price, availability, socioeconomic conditions, cultural attitude toward the drug, etc.

the other factor is generational; e.g. where drug use is established, it goes in waves or cycles, e.g. crack use boomed in the 80s, then declined as younger kids saw bad effects & rejected crack or chose other drugs instead. cycles in heroin/cocaine use are well-identified in the literature. also in needle use v. smoking v. snorting, same kind of generational effects.

as portugal's legalization is only about 10 years old there's not much basis on which to make any generalizations about lasting trends. and the shift is within that generational effect, e.g. it's not a reduction in general drug use, but in opiate use. general drug use has *increased* among youth, at least by this study:

portugal Changes in lifetime prevalence of drug use among students aged 16-18 (Tavares et al. 2005)

any drug 1999: 12.3% 2003: 17.7%
marijuana 1999: 9.4% 2003: 15.1%
heroin: 1999: 2.5% 2003: 1.8%

The data suggest that the heroin market has declined but that cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy markets have expanded (due to international and/or domestic reasons). Our key informants had two major views on the causes. One contends that the overall drug market has increased directly as a result of decriminalization. The other contends that the drug market has either remained the same or increased independently of the reform. From the former, decriminalization has facilitated more drug use and hence an expansion of the market.

“As a result Portugal at the moment resembles a place of tolerance for drug use – where crime is completely permitted.” R1

From the latter perspective decriminalization is deemed to have had a limited impact upon the drug market itself. Drug market changes particularly in cocaine trafficking are deemed to have occurred independently of the decriminalization. Instead they are attributed to geopolitical reasons, including Portugal’s geographic location and changing drug patterns in Europe.

http://www.idpc.net/sites/default/files/library/BFDPP_BP_14_EffectsOfDecriminalisation_EN.pdf.pdf

the conclusion (not just the one quote that demonstrates one opinion from the article - you failed to include the viewpoint that contradicted this quote within the same section) is this:

Conclusions

The statistical indicators suggest that since the decriminalization in July 2001, the following developments have occurred:

Increased use of cannabis.
Decreased use of heroin.
Increased uptake of treatment.
Reduction in drug related deaths.

Decriminalization has enabled earlier intervention and more targeted and therapeutic responses to drug users, increased collaboration across a network of services and the increased attention to adopting policies that work.

-- this is exactly the conclusion I noted as well.

Which indicates a net positive - cannabis use is nothing like heroin use, in terms of social and individual costs - whether part of this is due to cyclical patterns is useful to note but the article declines to relate such information because, apparently, it does not seem relevant to their overall assessment and the conclusion indicates that decriminalization has had a beneficial effect on Portuguese society within the constraints of time available to analyze its impact on that nation.

And the reality remains that the U.S. has greater usage of both cannabis and cocaine while maintaining a failed drug policy for generations - which, would seem to indicate a failed policy in light of other tactics that have yielded better results. Of course, our lack of adequate health care, a refusal to acknowledge the usefulness for society of a social safety net for those with problems - those things no doubt have an impact on the health and social costs of a failed drug policy too.

The article clearly states that heroin use decreased, marijuana use increased, & there was probably an increase in ecstasy & cocaine use as well.

"The data suggest that the heroin market has declined but that cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy markets have expanded"

And as i stated previously, there are identifiable waves in drug use that can explain a .7% reduction in heroin use regardless of legalization. I'm in favor of legalization for the harm/crime reduction aspect, but there's no strong evidence that legalization in & of itself reduces drug use. That depends on other factors.

It'll give people more choice in where to live.

while legalizing smack, he'd also be stripping US female citizens of their human, civil, and Constitutional rights, so that each state can vote on rights (just like Prop H8!), and criminalize pregnancy terminations, no exceptions.

But not to worry, once that woman is forced against her will to give birth, she's gonna need money, so his support for legalized prostitution will come in real handy then.

He doesn't seem to grasp the concept that heroin is largely produced in countries that are tied to terrorism. Do we really need to be legally helping terrorists funnel cash?!

In nations across the world since at least the 1960s - so removing the illegality would hurt terrorists and the covert ops who love them.

if you categorize our ruling class as "terrorists" (which they were) drugs have been financing covert ops since the birth of the republic, since many of our leading lights made their fortunes running opium and many of our great institutions were financed on opium money.

Still, I think we ought to start with just legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana, and adopt a harm reduction approach to stuff like heroin.

Legalization of ALL drugs is very, very high up in the Libertarian Party's playbook.

A Libertarian is a Republican with a bag of weed. Aside from their stance on drugs, there's no real difference between the two.

Basically he is for decriminalizing all drugs. As for the heroin comment... he was asked if he would decriminalize heroin and he would. He went on to explain that prohibition of alcohol was a fiasco as is the war on drugs. He then asked the audience "How many of you would run out and shoot up on heroin if it were decriminalized?" No one raised their hand and he acknowledged that there is no need to have the government "Protect" us from something that everyone basically wouldn't do.

I agree with him. We spend billions trying to stop drug use and it doesn't work. Those that want to use them will...

We should use the money to educate and help those that need it. Other countries that have taken this route have seen the use of drugs drop significantly.

One of the few things I agree with him on.

Peace,

YM

He said we spend nothing on rehabilitation...it's like drug addicts are a profit - maker for the state (See how many private prisons exist). Now, he was totally against driving while high, but that's another story. "If people didn't have to drive across 2 counties to get their fix,and could get help when they wanted to kick, we'd have 1/10 the crime" I believe him. Decriminalize.
As a nurse, I can just say,drug addiction isn't a choice,it's an illness and should be treated as such.

When he puts a spike into his vein
And he tells ya, things aren't quite the same
When he's rushing on his run
And he feels just like Jesus' son


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE