You're No Hero

[Goat Whisperer]

Your mom isn't in a position to give valid statistics for anything more than the one place she works. You can't make broad sweeping generalizations about the rest of the country based on data from one location, it's scientifically invalid.

Her drug rehab is a very common version of most other non-profit drug rehabs. There are also many of them throughout the country.

 

[Tangerine]

She hasn't had the current statistics in a while. She isn't in charge of knowing them. They were the current statistics about a year ago and then just from experience with her clients she knows that the majority are there because otherwise they would be in prison.

No her's would be different because it is a state funded non-profit. But the majority of drug users go to non-profits because they don't charge money, and most people can not afford the big time expensive ones rich kids go to.

The majority of drug rehabs are non-profit, and the majority of there clients are there because otherwise they would go to prison.

I am not saying all rehabs are 90% cliental that are there because of prison (just as my mom's rehab), however, I am saying that a large percentage of people in drug rehabs are there because otherwise they would go to prison. If it was legalized, the majority of recovering addicts would drop out.

That's assuming the rehab in a post-legalization world was the same thing. With better funding and more availability we could have vastly more effective programs, and more incentives for people to make use of them.

I would guess that being state-run, the people in your Mom's clinic are SENTENCED to be there. There are many other ways to get to people caught in the cycle of drug abuse and guide them into rehab. Unfortunately, we can't say how effective it is because our entire system is based on a "lock them all up" mentality. I don't know how many addicts you've ever personally known, but I've known several - from several different walks of life. Every one that I have known feels shame and pain from their addiction, and desperately want the strength to change. But they felt powerless and left out because all anyone ever wanted to do for them was put them in handcuffs.

Maybe it's time we try a different approach to helping people - because the CURRENT one is an epic
failure.


You know, when we had someone campaigning on "Hope" and "Change" - this was exactly the kind of bold thinking I hoped we'd hear. Sadly, nothing has changed at all - and I have no hope that it will.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

My point is this:

The majority of recovering drug addicts are only there because otherwise they would go to prison. If we legalize drugs, they would have no legal reason to stay in treatment, and therefore drop out. And any future addicts would probably never go to rehab. The drug problem would get much worse. This would cause the more poor people to become even more poor as they get more wrapped up in drugs. And the rich people would become more rich because they would take advantage of people's addictions to their products. The poverty lines between the rich and the poor would deepen; the whole idea of our country, which is that each man is born with equal opportunity, would be destroyed; and it would become that much more difficult for any person born in a poor neighborhood to claw their way out.

It isn’t that you can’t see the solution. It is that you can’t see the problem. The problem lies deep within the poor. Parents that are too busy earning a living to teach their kids how to be responsible. By doing this, it would help the rich and send the poor deeper into drugs, addiction, and zero known opportunity (the opportunity is there, they just don't know it)



By legalizing drugs, it would help the economy for the middle and upper classes, however, it would make everything much much worse for the lower.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

That's assuming the rehab in a post-legalization world was the same thing. With better funding and more availability we could have vastly more effective programs, and more incentives for people to make use of them.

I would guess that being state-run, the people in your Mom's clinic are SENTENCED to be there. There are many other ways to get to people caught in the cycle of drug abuse and guide them into rehab. Unfortunately, we can't say how effective it is because our entire system is based on a "lock them all up" mentality. I don't know how many addicts you've ever personally known, but I've known several - from several different walks of life. Every one that I have known feels shame and pain from their addiction, and desperately want the strength to change. But they felt powerless and left out because all anyone ever wanted to do for them was put them in handcuffs.

Maybe it's time we try a different approach to helping people - because the CURRENT one is an epic
failure.


You know, when we had someone campaigning on "Hope" and "Change" - this was exactly the kind of bold thinking I hoped we'd hear. Sadly, nothing has changed at all - and I have no hope that it will.

I think you've lost sight of the original purpose of this debate.

Do you really think legalizing drugs will help anything?

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Like I said, it would help our economy, but only for the rich and powerful. In the end, do you think we, here at the top, would be willing to give enough back to help people with drug addictions? Especially if we are getting rich off of them being addicted?

A quick look at history shows that the answer to that would be a "No."

 

[Tangerine]

I think you've lost sight of the original purpose of this debate.

Do you really think legalizing drugs will help anything?

I absolutely believe legalizing drug would help LOTS of things.

1) It would save billions of dollars of government waste. The prison system - especially now that much of it is a for-profit industry - is quite corrupt and wasteful. There is a major financial incentive to keep the prisons full. That is in no way helping anyone stay off of drugs.

2) It would eliminate a huge crime element in our country. The street-level drug dealing is by far the major source of violent crime in America. Eliminate the turf wars, the gang control, the cop vs. dealer violence, etc, you have much safer streets in our country.

3) It would cause a serious change in the social climate in the poorest neighborhoods. For many, many kids growing up in that environment the only role models are the dealers. they have the money, the guns, the power, the girls and the glory. They also have a life expectancy of less than 30 years. If drug dealers weren't the idols of the neighborhoods, maybe inner-city kids could and would find others to inspire them and make them believe they have other options.

4) We could finally get SERIOUS about treating those who are addicted. I know you truly believe that people only ever go to rehab because they are forced to, but it's simply NOT the truth. You cannot assume that everyone addicted to drugs WANTS to be, CHOSE to be, and will fight any and all attempts to end their addiction. There are lots and lots of great ideas and programs that have shown great success in some of the hardest-hit drug-infested areas of the country. But they have no funding and no support - because the police/court/prison system would lose their financial gravy train. With the billions saved by legalizing drugs - just a small portion of those funds could boost these programs to hugely successful levels.

5) We could finally free up our police and courts to be agressive about REAL crime. I would much rather see police patroling the neighborhoods and being PRESENT rather than buying an ounce of crack to make another misdemeanor arrest for the sake of boosting crime statistics.

I'm also puzzled as to how you arrive at the conclusion that only the "middle class" would benefit from legalization? The money wasted locking UP poor citizens is exactly the money we NEED to revitalize their neighborhoods, schools, and infrastructure. The benefits to the poor communities with additional hundreds of billions to spend would be immense.

 

[Tangerine]

Like I said, it would help our economy, but only for the rich and powerful. In the end, do you think we, here at the top, would be willing to give enough back to help people with drug addictions? Especially if we are getting rich off of them being addicted?

A quick look at history shows that the answer to that would be a "No."

How exactly would it help the "rich and powerful" How would we "get rich" off them being addicted?

 

[Goat Whisperer]

How exactly would it help the "rich and powerful" How would we "get rich" off them being addicted?

Who do you expect to start selling the drugs? If their not illegal anymore, someone is going to start manufacturing them, someone with the money to get a business started.

 

[Tangerine]

Who do you expect to start selling the drugs? If their not illegal anymore, someone is going to start manufacturing them, someone with the money to get a business started.

The federal government. NOT private enterprise.

You do also realize that the "legal" drug trade of prescription meds VASTLY outweighs the illegal drug trade in dollars, right? Even if we allowed the current drug manufacturers to sell tightly-regulated "street drugs" - that business would be a tiny percentage of what they already gross.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

1) It would save billions of dollars of government waste. The prison system - especially now that much of it is a for-profit industry - is quite corrupt and wasteful. There is a major financial incentive to keep the prisons full. That is in no way helping anyone stay off of drugs.

There are other ways to fix this problem. First, non-violent crimes, such as drug possession, should only result in a prison sentences if they are repeat offenders and refuse to participate in a drug rehabilitation program. But simply ignoring the problem, and saying "Too many people are going to prison for this, so we should just make it legal" won't work. If 80% of people in prison were there because of murder, would we legalize murder?

2) It would eliminate a huge crime element in our country. The street-level drug dealing is by far the major source of violent crime in America. Eliminate the turf wars, the gang control, the cop vs. dealer violence, etc, you have much safer streets in our country.

True, but we should eliminate this problem, without making a different problem worse. Legalizing drugs would make crime rates, directly dealing with drugs, go down. However, it would make general drug addiction much worse of a problem, and in doing so make problems such as burglary worse, as less people are willing to work to support their drug problems.

3) It would cause a serious change in the social climate in the poorest neighborhoods. For many, many kids growing up in that environment the only role models are the dealers. they have the money, the guns, the power, the girls and the glory. They also have a life expectancy of less than 30 years. If drug dealers weren't the idols of the neighborhoods, maybe inner-city kids could and would find others to inspire them and make them believe they have other options.

The benefits of this would definitely not outweigh the negatives of more drug addictions.

4) We could finally get SERIOUS about treating those who are addicted. I know you truly believe that people only ever go to rehab because they are forced to, but it's simply NOT the truth. You cannot assume that everyone addicted to drugs WANTS to be, CHOSE to be, and will fight any and all attempts to end their addiction. There are lots and lots of great ideas and programs that have shown great success in some of the hardest-hit drug-infested areas of the country. But they have no funding and no support - because the police/court/prison system would lose their financial gravy train. With the billions saved by legalizing drugs - just a small portion of those funds could boost these programs to hugely successful levels.

I didn't say people only go to rehab because they are forced too, but they mainly do. They find different motivation for staying in rehab after a few months or years of it. We can not make a person change with force, but we can make some of them want to change with force. I know that most people addicted to drugs don't want to be, but if we make it easier for them to be that way, they will stay that way. Let me make an example:

We're in a desert, it's a terrible, awful desert, many people are trapped in, that don't want to be. However, there is a huge mountain, and on the otherside of that mountain, is great acres of lush land, geen pastures, fresh water, etc. If we can find the strength to climb the mountain, then we will finally be free, on the otherside. However, many people try, and can't make it past the first, and most difficult part of the climb, and many others have the strength too, but just don't realize it. So we start forcing some people to start the climb. Giving them tools to learn how to climb, how to become stronger. Over time, they gain motivation, tools, and confidence in themselves to climb the mountain, and begin really doing it by themselves; and it is at this point they become strong enough to finish the climb. But if we hadn't forced them to start, they never would have gotten that far.

5) We could finally free up our police and courts to be agressive about REAL crime. I would much rather see police patroling the neighborhoods and being PRESENT rather than buying an ounce of crack to make another misdemeanor arrest for the sake of boosting crime statistics.

And real crime would increase. As I mentioned before, burglary rates would go up.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

The federal government. NOT private enterprise.

You do also realize that the "legal" drug trade of prescription meds VASTLY outweighs the illegal drug trade in dollars, right? Even if we allowed the current drug manufacturers to sell tightly-regulated "street drugs" - that business would be a tiny percentage of what they already gross.

This would also cause a governmental hypocrisy. The government would be saying "Drugs are bad" to kids, but when they get older, "Hey, buy some drugs from us."

By the way, this is socialism.

 

[Tangerine]

Every bit of your case is based on the assumption that legalizing drugs would automatically increase the number of addicts, and those addicts would commit crimes to feed their habits. Both of these ideas are completely unfounded and nothing but speculation. In fact, in places where drugs have been decriminalized, the evidence shows exactly the opposite - that addiction rates DROPPED. Threat of arrest is not the only thing that keeps people from using drugs. You are implying that removing that threat means people would suddenly decide to start using drugs simply because they can. Do you also believe that if we made TOUGHER drug laws and put MORE user in prison that the addiction rates would go down?

 

[Tangerine]

This would also cause a governmental hypocrisy. The government would be saying "Drugs are bad" to kids, but when they get older, "Hey, buy some drugs from us."

By the way, this is socialism.

Kinda like when we say "Smoking is bad" or "Drinking is bad" and then we take in billions and billions in tax revenue from them?

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Kinda like when we say "Smoking is bad" or "Drinking is bad" and then we take in billions and billions in tax revenue from them?

In this case people are almost instantly addicted. And the government doesn't have sole rights to sell cigarettes or alcohol.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Every bit of your case is based on the assumption that legalizing drugs would automatically increase the number of addicts, and those addicts would commit crimes to feed their habits. Both of these ideas are completely unfounded and nothing but speculation. In fact, in places where drugs have been decriminalized, the evidence shows exactly the opposite - that addiction rates DROPPED. Threat of arrest is not the only thing that keeps people from using drugs. You are implying that removing that threat means people would suddenly decide to start using drugs simply because they can. Do you also believe that if we made TOUGHER drug laws and put MORE user in prison that the addiction rates would go down?

More people would begin using drugs more often, causing less people to want to work less often. But still want to support there drug addiction while not working, will cause them to have more serious offenses then just possesion of drugs, such as burglary, and felonies from their (accidental murder during murder, etc)

Were are your statistics? And what makes you believe that they would be the same on a national level then on just a small area's level? (annoying as fuck when people can't just go with what your saying, huh?)

No. I think imposing more forcible rehabs and more access to rehabs will cause addiction rates to go down, that and fixing the poverty in the U.S. are the only things that will truly effect addiction rates in a positive way.

 

[Tangerine]

In this case people are almost instantly addicted. And the government doesn't have sole rights to sell cigarettes or alcohol.

No evidence exists of "instant addiction" for any drug other than crack cocaine.

Nicotine is far more addictive than most every narcotic available.

 

[alice in chains]

nicotine is definitely proven to be more difficult to overcome than heroin addiction.

 

[Accountable]

My point is this:

The majority of recovering drug addicts are only there because otherwise they would go to prison. If we legalize drugs, they would have no legal reason to stay in treatment, and therefore drop out. And any future addicts would probably never go to rehab. The drug problem would get much worse. This would cause the more poor people to become even more poor as they get more wrapped up in drugs. And the rich people would become more rich because they would take advantage of people's addictions to their products. The poverty lines between the rich and the poor would deepen; the whole idea of our country, which is that each man is born with equal opportunity, would be destroyed; and it would become that much more difficult for any person born in a poor neighborhood to claw their way out.

Whenever I read your opinions I feel a little better about our future. Intelligent and logical.
You've obviously given this a lot of thought to unravel the situation this far, but I don't think you've taken it far enough. In your static example, sure addicts would continue to use and things would spiral down, but why have people become addicts in the first place? Giving people methadone does nothing for the situation people go back to after leaving the clinic. The problems are still there; the drugs are still there; the prisons are still there. I haven't read the whole thread. Has anyone asked yet how many of the "recovering" addicts are recovering for the 2nd, 3rd or more times?

It isn’t that you can’t see the solution. It is that you can’t see the problem. The problem lies deep within the poor. Parents that are too busy earning a living to teach their kids how to be responsible. By doing this, it would help the rich and send the poor deeper into drugs, addiction, and zero known opportunity (the opportunity is there, they just don't know it)

By legalizing drugs, it would help the economy for the middle and upper classes, however, it would make everything much much worse for the lower.

I love that first line and I'm stealing it. :thumbup
Consider that the drug addiction problem is a symptom of an even larger problem. Right now, poor kids are growing up with parents who are so busy being responsible earning a living that they don't have time to teach their kids how to be responsible (pause for a moment and ask how responsible is that?). These kids have no role model in the home (because they - or more likely she - are working) so they look to the most visible role models in the neighborhood. All too often, the most financially successful adults are the illegal drug dealers.
Getting close to these role models almost certainly leads to drug use and then addiction.

Legalizing drugs will take away these role models, and the easy access to the addictive drugs the role models provide. The streets will be safer. Kids will have to look somewhere less flashy for their role models - maybe to their teachers or local store owners.

So it's possible that legalizing drugs might make addictive drugs less accessible to the poor, and actually lower addiction rates rather than increasing them.

 

[Alien Allen]

My whole premise is based on the fact that poor kids feel their only future is in dealing drugs. There is a culture that tells em there is nothing much else worth striving for. We have ignored our past. Alcohol was demonized and banned. All that did was create a cash cow for the mob and along with it the violence that followed.

We do not take addiction of any kind seriously enough in this country. Just say no does not work and is not enough. Besides at the rate our govt is growing we can not afford this assinine pseudo war on drugs that is not winnable.

Some things you just can not legislate and drug us is one. You need peer pressure and parents that are involved to curb it. Just making it illegal does not work as is clearly evidenced.

 

[Dana]

For the record. This will be my last post in this thread.