lots of good points.  thanx for sharing!

AMEN  DG!  Thanks for this post.  I have read this before but I think it needs to keep going around and around!  Some of these 'new' parents don't need parenting classes they need this item!!!

spam code: lzy hm !  lazy - hmmmmmmmm!

very simplistic, but drugs use has always been a human condition. Read history regarding drug use and you will learn that every single group and society have used drugs.

decriminalize, Legalize, regulate, tax

Yup..legalizing, regulating,  and taxing sure worked for alcohol and tobacco didn't it?  The government is the only one who benefits from that little set of laws.  And they'd be the only ones to benefit from legalizing any of the other drugs.

Drugs may have always been around but not to the degree and not as common as they are now.  When I was in high school, if we heard about someone smoking marijuana we were shocked.  Now days people in high school are shocked that not everyone has at least tried it.  Big difference.

Murph...what on earth is that picture all about?  Msemily and I are puzzled.

Nancy,

Who benefits from the Drug Wars paychecks?

Where do those checks get their funding?

Maybe they could be funded by licensing and taxes.

Licensing and taxes pay for the investigations that lead to the enforcement of Smokes and Booze laws.

Stop borrowing from My Social Security to pay for drug wars (and whore wars). License and tax drugs and whores..

Sure Tk..make it legal to have a society of drug addicted people running around, hanging out in YOUR neighborhood, sitting in YOUR emergency rooms, eating up YOUR SS, so that the government can tax and regulate them.  Right..see how well it works now with alcohol and tobacco.  Don't keep that genie in the bottle..let it out along with the genies that already cost our society a bundle.

You people keep talking about choking off the drug lords..you've got to be kidding.  When prohibition was eliminated did the crooks go out of business?  Nope..they moved on to drugs and other illegal activities.  If you make drugs legal do you honeslty think you will stop them?  The criminal element will always find a way to make money off of misery...it's their special talent.

Make your minds.  Do you want the government to make money off of drugs....do you want the gangs and drug lords to lose money...are you wanting this for the good of society or is your concern for your monetary gain?  Every time someone refutes these arguments people shift their reasons for wanting to leaglize drugs.  I'm telling you that the only people who will gain from that move is the government.  And down the road, you will pay.  And you'll pay dearly.  You're concerned that you caught your underage kids smoking cigarettes?  Wait til you make it legal for them to buy drugs with no consequences.  Unfortunately, the consequences will be there..they just might not be evident to you at the time.

Legal drugs or illegal drugs, where do you think people will get the money to buy them when they're addicted and can't work?

By the way...stop trying to destroy MY grandkids and great grandkids future to satisfy YOUR agenda.

(damn..I've got to retire so I can sit here all day and argue.  this working thing really interferes with blogging.)

Alcohol running went out of business. At the end of prohibition.

Crime wasn't eliminated, because crime is not caused by alcohol or drugs. It is caused by greedy criminals. You make this point quite eloquently in your own post. Now that bootleggers have moved to drug running. Let's license and tax drugs. Let them move onto, Oh, hows about Wii machines.

Alcohol legalization has not increased the number of alcoholics, hobos, bums or indigent sleeping in the street. As a counselor. You must know that there is much more to addiction than just the chemical ingredients.

Opiates are a safe drug. No organ damage what so ever. It is the manufacturing processed used in the illegal drug trade that is the problem. The most glaring problems produced by illegal drugs.

Are caused by the unregulated manufacturing of the drugs and the resulting contamination and poor quality of the drugs.

Although there are no real consequences for illegal drug use or driving under the influence for the likes of Paris Hilton. The same consequence destroy the financial lives of the middle class and poor.

I appreciate the fact that there are diversion plans. But the fact that there has been an arrest ends many careers. Destroys the financial future of many. Perhaps it is these consequences that along with the inflated cost of drugs due to prohibition that cause crime.

You think I am on to something. Do you think I have discovered a cause and effect that has gone un notices for almost a century.

I don't think so. The same reasoning applied to the legalization of Alcohol.

Nancy,

By the way. I thought you were a fiscal conservative?  :>)

How about emptying out the prisons of folk who shouldn't be there?  We don't need to legalize heroin to do that (although making heroin more available for medical purposes has much to recommend it.)

.

I'd trade cannabis legalization for tobacco in a heartbeat (though I've never used either.) 

Most drug addicts steal to support their addiction. Letting drug addicts out of prison will only lead to more crime. Addicts do low level crime such as residential and commercial burglary's. California may be letting 20,000+ low level inmates out of prison soon due to money. These are the drug addicts that commit low level crime. Crime will go up and most of these low life's will be back in prison with-in a year or two of their release. If you legalize drugs were do you think these addicts will get the money to buy their drugs. They will steal from you and me to support their habit. Most inmates were giving some type of diversion program so i don't feel sorry for them. they have made their bed.Now lets let them sleep in it.

Most drug addicts steal to support their addiction.

.

We'll try the Socratic method.  "Why?"

My last comment was a question for you.  Assuming for the moment that drug addicts steal to provide their drugs, *WHY* is that true?  Is it also true that most nicotine addicts and alcoholics likewise steal?

.

Tobacco does indeed take your ability to reason away.    Ever since the earliest surgeon general reports, it's been known that tobacco use will lead to death for a significant number of users.  (Not true of cannabis, by the way.)

Hey I'm all for making tobacco illegal. I quit 6 years ago, smoked 3 packs a day for 20 years.I never went to jail while smoking, I cant say the same about alcohol. come on you know what the difference between the two are.

Sure I know the reason, Gube, and it's the reason why those addicted to alcohol and tobacco generally don't have to steal.    Do *YOU* know the reason?

It is very difficult to recognize a heroin addict. Until of course. He runs out. Rush the perfect example.

How many pot heads snatch a 12 pack from Circle K and run. Cigs lifted all the time.

Crime is occupation for the lazy and immoral or the desperate.. It is not a result of an addiction to drugs.

I will take some form of medication for the rest of my life. If not for insurance. What would my alternatives be. I most certainly would be desperate.

I have at times wondered if life would be easier if my left arm would be amputated. That is a desperation the result of pain. Not of the drugs that I take to relieve the pain.

The oilfields would be safer with cannabis breaks than with beer breaks, though.

your point?

Bulls#!*!  I'd show you a picture, but I don't need the trouble.  Again, having been in business for many many years, we found that drugs were at the root of the majority accidents by our employees.  If drugs are legal, who is going to insure businesses?  Liability insurance is already through the roof! 

BTW RF, beer breaks aren't legal either.  Get caught on the lease with a can/bottle of beer in your ice chest/water can, get fired. 

My point, dg.  If they can stop beer breaks, they can stop cannabis breaks too.  Dril just wants to paint a picture that the eeevil weed is objectively worse than legal drugs.  It isn't.

.

To name just one difference (yet again):  You can walk into almost any well-equipped liquor store with a $20 and walk out with a lethal dose of alcohol.  A lethal dose of cannabis has to be baled and dropped on you.

Drill,

Unless you specifically recognize alcohol as a drug. Labeling the testing done in the oilfields as drug testing. Is a misstatement of the facts.

The testing for the oilfield includes a test for alcohol. The test has it's greatest impact in that it prevents the application for a job by the likes of the old trouble maker.

By legalization and taxing of drugs. I under no circumstance would allow those that are under the influence of a drug to work in situation where they would harm themselves or others. I would promote a greater degree of test. Starting with the Kern County School District and through the ranks of all grade levels, school employees in Kern County. We had Cops arrested for steroids and Meth use this year. I am assuming that it was behavior problems on the job that brought their troubles to light.

I would suggest that not only employees must test while on th job. So should employers.

If your employee or employer should register at one of the licensed drug stores. It would draw attention to them and it would make it much more difficult for them to either work or drive while under the influence.

So in conclusion. The drug test made for a safer work force because it not only stopped the consumption of alcohol at the work site. Which had been a fact of life in the oilfields.

It in fact actually stopped the alcoholic from applying for the job in the first place.

So you see. Some one WAS confusing the facts.

Gube,

That is an excuse. Fact is that the district, county and City offices are elected offices. And those holding those positions do so for financial reasons. Those positions pay 100's of times in benefits not related to salary.

No one fights any government Union. Because of the number of votes involved. And unlike a great deal of the public. Government employees vote in droves.

The legalization of drugs by other countries has not been the panacea most legalization proponents would like us to believe.  Of course, for every argument I find against legalization of drugs, someone will find 10 for.  None the less, I'm not gullible enough to buy it. 

http://www.druglibrary.org/...

Having a very recent experience in which high doses of narcotic pain medication was required, I KNOW after a short period of time what they can do to you.  I Praise God that I don't have an addiction problem.  The withdrawal process, though not the hell some go through, was QUITE unpleasant! 

It all depends on whether we wish to make the problem larger, smaller or try to maintain it.  During prohibition, alcoholism decreased. 

Drill,

I will test positive for cocaine and opiates among other drugs for the rest of my life. But I am not under the influence of those drugs.

The problem you speak of isn't that the pot smoker is under the influence on Monday.

The problem is that no one wants to do tests that will check for being under the influence of pot. (as compared to a test that seeks the presence of pot).

I will state this. Driving under the influence of alcohol or any drug is not a matter of a drug or alcohol level. It is a subjective test done by the officer. This subjective test can reign supreme over a test that shows a alcohol level under .08.

http://www.cato.org/pub_dis...

Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became "organized"; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. No measurable gains were made in productivity or reduced absenteeism. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition.

"Opiates are a safe drug." Until they run out.  Theft is one of the biggest money raisers among heroin addicts.  When people say they use opiates but aren't under the influence of them, I say, stop taking them cold turkey and see what influence they have over your thought process.

Like most topics on the blogs, this one has been beaten into the ground.  Not one person has ever had their mind changed by anything said here.  What I'd like to see is some real education on the subject of drug, alcohol, and other substances instead of a bunch of people who read articles written by like minded people.   The saying that "If you're doing all the talking you're only hearing what you already know" could be turned around to say"if you never listen to people who ARE educated in this area, you'll only believe what you already believe."

You folks know my stand on this and there's not a lot I can add.  Do what you want, use what you want, smoke what you want, drink what you want, teach your kids all those substances are ok they just need to be legalized, taxed, and controlled.  Justify, rationalize, and glamourize. 

I'll be there when you or your kids need to go through a substance abuse program.

Heroin should be dirt-cheap.  It's the illegality that drives the prices up, and the theft problem.

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Unregulated prostitution probably runs a close second in raising the cash, raising all sorts of side issues there, too.  Stopping alcohol intake suddenly *ALSO* has a deleterious effect on the thought process in the alcoholic.  So, on a lesser level, does stopping nicotine intake.

.

I'm not advocating the use of heroin, alcohol, tobacco or any other dangerous drugs.  But the harm in the first comes mainly from its illegality, in the second two from the lack of safer legal choices.

So if heroin was made legal, and was dirt cheap, that would curtail most of the theft and the disaster the addiction causes?  Tk says opiate addiction doesn't damage the body.  I have to ask, when was the last time you saw abcesses and pus pockets from skin popping?  When was the last time you had a woman show you the veins that ruptured and caused open running sores due to shooting up?  Not all opiate addicts use tidy little pills to get their high...most use needles.

Needle exchange you say?  Right.  Sounds good until an addict starts going through withdrawels and they're out of "exchanged" needles.  You honestly think they'll wait to use til they can get to a needle exchange place.

When I took a job in a methadone clinic I wondred what the heck I was there for.  It wasn't really what I was trained to do, I wasn't doing groups,  and I didn't even know if I approved of it.  But it was a job..and in the field...so I took it.  It wasn't until later that I realized why I was put there.  It was so that I would be more humble.  So that I wouldn't be judgemental.  It was so that, down the road, in other jobs I would have an understanding of an addiction that was always called "the worst" thing one could do.  I've seen people unbelievably sick and in terrible pain, along with the sores.  When they're suffering that much they'll do anything to get thier fix.

Please, don't try to tell me that heroin should be legalized.

Hey Blue. You sure your Brother in law isn't selling dope? Maximum monthly income from all sources for a single disabled person is 856/month. Couple is 1502. And you are not eligible for food stamps in  California if you receive SSI

What is SSI?

SSI, or Supplemental Security Income, is a federal program that provides monthly cash payments to people in need. SSI is for people who are 65 or older, as well as for blind or disabled people of any age, including children.

To qualify you also must have little or no income and few resources. This means that the value of the things you own must be less than $2,000 if you are single or less than $3,000 if you are married. The value of your home does not count. Usually, the value of your car does not count. And the value of certain other resources, such as a burial plot, may not count either.

To get SSI, you also must apply for any other cash benefits you may be able to get.

You must live in the United States or the Northern Mariana Islands to get SSI. If you are not a U.S. citizen, but you are a resident, you still may be able to get SSI. For more information, ask for a copy of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) For Noncitizens (Publication No. 05-11051).

The state of California adds money to the federal payment. The single payment you get in the beginning of each month includes both the federal SSI payment and your supplement from California.