patrick.net

FortWayne says

Nancy has passed away

If only there were a hell for her to rot in for all the death and destruction she created with her "war on drugs".

Dan8267 says

FortWayne says

Nancy has passed away

If only there were a hell for her to rot in for all the death and destruction she created with her "war on drugs".

You are not being nice. The war on drugs was one of her plus points.

Dan8267 says

If only there were a hell for her to rot in for all the death and destruction she created with her "war on drugs".

Drugs have ruined many more lives and killed a lot more people than the "war on drugs". You'd understand that if you weren't a pothead Dan.

FortWayne says

Drugs have ruined many more lives and killed a lot more people than the "war on drugs".

So has religion. Besides, the war on drugs has done nothing to save any of those victims. All it has done is made victims of many innocent people including children.

Furthermore, drug abuse is fundamentally a medical and social problem. Locking people up in cages is counter-productive.

FortWayne says

You'd understand that if you weren't a pothead Dan.

I've never done an illegal drug in my life, including marijuana, and I wouldn't even if it were legal. So, are you man enough to apologize and admit your are wrong in your assumptions? I didn't think so.

Maybe if you weren't so fucked up by the pseudo-morality of religion and conservatism, you'd understand that a man can be against an injustice that does not personally affect him. I'm white, but I believe that black lives matter. I'm straight, but I believe in marriage equality. I'm a man, but I believe in equality under law for all persons regardless of gender. I believe in all these things because I'm a decent human being. That's something you'll never understand.

Dan8267 says

So has religion. Besides, the war on drugs has done nothing to save any of those victims. All it has done is made victims of many innocent people including children.

No Dan, it saved a lot of lives. Those people who did not take up drugs because of this, people who were taken off drugs because of this... those are saved lives. Drugs don't come without consequences, they ruin people. Addictions really ruin people, it controls them, it sucks their life and their choices away. It's plague upon human race.

Dan8267 says

I've never done an illegal drug in my life, including marijuana, and I wouldn't even if it were legal.

Well, that is why you don't know how it fucks people up. You've made a good choice not doing drugs. Because I've lost 2 of my great friends, drugs ruined their lives. One is still in prison, other one is dead. I'm telling you Dan, it fucks people up big time. They got most of their drugs legally through pharmacy as a gateway drug, later moved on to Heroin. It's not that cool innocent thing that people pretend it is. And I hope you one day will understand just how bad this shit is for humanity. And just to clarify, the one who is in prison isn't arrested because he did drugs, but because addiction caused him to spend all his money on drugs, lose his job, and start committing theft and other much worse crimes to afford drugs.

There are idiots that want to criticize drugs & users.
These are the same people that don't have a clue about how many different chemicals are in their bodies
that are not naturally occurring. They may not know that tests can be run to see just how fucked up they have allowed themselves to become.Of course their loved ones don't matter,either. And they have done nothing to stop chemical degradation of the environment?
They may not survive their pretzel logic value systems.

I've got to get back to researching the phrase.Critical thinking.

anonymous says

Gambling, Eating, Sex, Shopping, Other People, etc. why stop at drugs?

It doesn't affect people same way drugs do. Drugs take over and control persons life and ruin it. You can save your uninformed view for another day, comparing food to drugs is idiocy dude.

You could call addiction one of Nature's Last Laughs at the human race. Humans have managed to recognize drugs and exploit them to survive, proliferate, and overrun the planet.

Addiction is like a slow, infiltrating virus that affects members of the population variably, at different rates, and to different degrees, rather than a raging plague that kills addicts outright. Most addicts still manage to live to reproduce, while dragging everybody around them down in some manner on the road to the tombstone. Finding any abrupt end to addiction based on rapid, eliminating genetics is unlikely. The slow, Monte Carlo math of genetic interleaving adaptation may be the only real outcome. Genes just consider the ubiquitous presence of drugs part of the environment and adapt around them.

Drugs that prove deadly can have beneficial effects as well. Many medicines have thresholds, beneath which they are therapeutic and above which they are toxic.

Addicts are the victims of this ongoing double edged sword. However, like genetic recessive characteristics, since the benefits to the population overall are beneficial, the few that suffer the liabilities might just be the sacrificial lambs to the species advantage.

Drugs exploit the vulnerabilities of our biochemistry passively, in contradistinction to our desire to control them.

Ceffer says

Most addicts still manage to live to reproduce, while dragging everybody around them down on the road to the tombstone.

The amazing thing is what a short time hard drugs in all their variations have been a central part of our society--one day it's XTC, the next poppers, then crack, et al. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, both of which had long histories of accepted use in social settings, for thousands of years in the case of alcohol dating back to what we call Biblical times, and the practically ubiquitous daily use of tobacco, hard drugs just kind of came out of nowhere--I was already out of college when drugs hit the ground running in the mid to late 60's and they've never stopped since then. Opium, heroin, even arsenic were available for the asking in the 19th century, but towards the end of the century their dangers were recognized and they were made controlled substances. In recent years I visited my former high school English teacher, then in his 90's and wheelchair bound but still sound of mind--he had all the yearbooks from 1951 through 1980 when he retired and it was fun to look through them; I found the first reference to drugs in the 1968 yearbook when someone referred to lighting up a joint--sounds just like today and that was 48 years ago. On a trip to LA in 1971 to attend my cousin's wedding, we'd see on every on and off ramp legions of shabby, strung out young people hitchhiking with their thumbs out, all probably from perfectly good homes but under the thrall of drugs and the counterculture which rejected straight society. Outside a restaurant a group of hippies were talking among themselves about a friend who had tested positive for hepatitis and they should get themselves tested. This was 45 years ago and it sounds perfectly modern. There's no telling how many of those transient young women in those groups fell prey to the predators who were stalking the California freeways in those years. Sexual sadist Randy Kraft, small of stature, would disable his often much stronger victims by offering them drugs laced with seditives--he is known to have murdered and sexually mutilated at least 64 young men, several of them in the military, whom he picked up between 1974 and 1983 on California and Oregon freeways then throw their bodies in plain sight onto the freeway while his car was still moving. He was finally apprehended after being stopped for a minor traffic offence in 1983 with the dead body of a marine sitting in the passenger's seat, he was trying to find a suitable place to dispose of him--he's been on death row since 1990. It would be impossible to calculate the financial and psychological damage to society and the families where drugs were the constant in some disaster be it a horrendous crime, wreck, or just the daily drag of putting up with an addicted person.

FortWayne says

No Dan, it saved a lot of lives. Those people who did not take up drugs because of this, people who were taken off drugs because of this... those are saved lives.

Bullshit. Forbidden fruit is the sweetest and all the drug lord crime results from the war on drugs. Furthermore, all "those people" took up drugs, just ones arbitrarily on the other side of the legal line like alcohol and prescription drugs.

You really need to start putting facts before your political agendas.

FortWayne says

Dan8267 says

I've never done an illegal drug in my life, including marijuana, and I wouldn't even if it were legal.

Well, that is why you don't know how it fucks people up.

So have you taken drugs. If so, by your own reasoning, you're fucked up and your opinion does not count. If not, then also by your own reasoning, you don't know anything and your opinion does not count.

FortWayne says

And just to clarify, the one who is in prison isn't arrested because he did drugs, but because addiction caused him to spend all his money on drugs, lose his job, and start committing theft and other much worse crimes to afford drugs.

The same can be said of alcohol, prescription drugs, and religion. If you want to ban things that sometimes "lead to crime", then the very first thing that must be banned is religion. Remember 911? That's just one of billions of crimes committed by followers of the Abrahamic religions.

FortWayne says

anonymous says

Gambling, Eating, Sex, Shopping, Other People, etc. why stop at drugs?

It doesn't affect people same way drugs do. Drugs take over and control persons life and ruin it.

And gambling, alcohol, and religion don't? You don't know shit if you believe that.

All it has done is made victims of many innocent people including children. Injured by a flash bang grenade a narc through in his room during a 'raid' to neutralize dangerous toddlers.

Gambling, Eating, Sex, Shopping, Other People, etc. why stop at drugs? Oh I thought the comment was about Nancy, my bad.

anonymous says

Gambling Addiction - Enlighten me how this does not ruin lives - I gotta hear this

What does this have to do with drugs? What are you trying hard to outdo Dan on dumb correlations that have no relevance to the subject? You and Dan should get together, like twins separated at birth.

Dan8267 says

And gambling, alcohol, and religion don't? You don't know shit if you believe that.

What does voices you hear in your head have to do with the topic?

FortWayne says

anonymous says

Gambling Addiction - Enlighten me how this does not ruin lives - I gotta hear this

What does this have to do with drugs?

FortWayne says

Dan8267 says

And gambling, alcohol, and religion don't? You don't know shit if you believe that.

What does voices you hear in your head have to do with the topic?

Are you really that stupid or just faking it. Gambling, alcohol, and religion have been responsible for billions of crimes. And you're arguing that the war on drugs is justified because crime caused by the outlawing of drugs exist? Crime would go down if drugs were decriminalized. Addicts would be able to get help if drugs were decriminalized. They would also be able to get jobs so they wouldn't resort to a life of crime. Not to mention all the innocent people killed or injured by the war on drugs either through gang violence or police violence.

Reality does not confirm your delusions.

It's too bad she had to go to HELL to be with Ronnie.

FortWayne says

Drugs have ruined many more lives and killed a lot more people than the "war on drugs". You'd understand that if you weren't a pothead Dan.

There is no war on drugs, as you cannot kill, arrest, or incarcerate a drug.

The War on Us cost me a family member. My cousin was a good kid, and if he lived in Colorado or California, he would still be alive today.

FortWayne says

And just to clarify, the one who is in prison isn't arrested because he did drugs, but because addiction caused him to spend all his money on drugs, lose his job, and start committing theft and other much worse crimes to afford drugs.

You don't understand the concept of causation. The price of your friends heroin is what made the crime necessary. Legal mass produced heroin, while still very bad for you, would have saved him from the need to rob anyone.

FortWayne says

It doesn't affect people same way drugs do. Drugs take over and control persons life and ruin it. You can save your uninformed view for another day, comparing food to drugs is idiocy dude.

What about the people that go blind, or lose a foot from diabetes? You think they were in control when they decided to keep downing Big Gulps and Super Sizing every meal?

A friend of mine had a divorce that was directly triggered by his gambling addiction.

FortWayne says

What does this have to do with drugs? What are you trying hard to outdo Dan on dumb correlations that have no relevance to the subject? You and Dan should get together, like twins separated at birth.

FortWayne says

Drugs don't come without consequences, they ruin people. Addictions really ruin people

I don't believe in dancing on someone's grave, and I hope Nancy Reagen is in a better place. But to be a puppet for such a disastrous human rights travesty will reign a certain amount of shit on you even in death...

NuttBoxer says

You don't understand the concept of causation. The price of your friends heroin is what made the crime necessary. Legal mass produced heroin, while still very bad for you, would have saved him from the need to rob anyone.

I know very well how it works. Drugs will never be cheap even if legal. But it'll fuck people up just as much if not more. Because we all know that the more you allow and support something, the more you'll have of it. Guns are legal (you liberals bitch on that one all the time), they are everywhere. Drugs become legal = they'll be everywhere, along with millions more addictions and problems.

Drugs should and must be banned, drug dealers who sell to children should be shot on sight!

NuttBoxer says

What about the people that go blind, or lose a foot from diabetes? You think they were in control when they decided to keep downing Big Gulps and Super Sizing every meal?

A friend of mine had a divorce that was directly triggered by his gambling addiction.

One thing at a time, can't solve every problem if you worry about everything.

FortWayne says

Drugs should and must be banned, drug dealers who sell to children should be shot on sight!

Then shouldn't the cop who shot a sleeping 7-year-old girl and then framed her grandmother also be shot on sight?

It's time to legalize pot. Not the other crap drugs.

FortWayne says

I know very well how it works. Drugs will never be cheap even if legal. But it'll fuck people up just as much if not more. Because we all know that the more you allow and support something, the more you'll have of it. Guns are legal (you liberals bitch on that one all the time), they are everywhere. Drugs become legal = they'll be everywhere, along with millions more addictions and problems.

Drugs should and must be banned, drug dealers who sell to children should be shot on sight!

Just to be clear, I played sports most of my life, try to eat organic/local as much as possible, and don't want to put anything in my body that will ruin my health. But that's my choice as an adult to make, and no one has the right to make it for me. Nor will someone trying to force me to make that choice be successful. As I'm sure you are well aware, people don't kick addictions until they admit they need help. And help is almost always from family and friends, not bureaucracy.

You stating drugs will never be cheap shows you don't understand the causation between black markets and high prices. Check the price of cannabis since it's has become legalized across a number of states. I know for a fact(yes I can provide links), that outdoor cannabis prices have dropped dramatically in Northern Cal over the past several years. In Mexico they've almost stopped growing because the unit price is no longer worth the risk.

Sugar is the gateway drug. Parents get their kids hooked on that shit from a young age, and it wreaks havoc on their bodies. I don't eat sugar, but I contribute $500 per month to the Great American Health Insurance Club

Alcohol is literally toxic. Thats why they call poisoning yourself to varying degrees, intoxicated. If you drink enough alcohol, you will die. The majority of emergency room visits are alcohol related. Criminal defense lawyers have a steady flow of business for people who committed violent crimes, and the story always begins with "well i was drinking , and see what happened was,,,,,,"

Tobacco is deadly. Its gross, and provides no benefit. Addictive as hell with the Nicotine

Cannabis is a medicinal plant. It is an anti-inflammatory, with a litany of benefits and various applications. It can be grown outdoors rather easily, meaning absent bad government, one could obtain cannabis simply by growing it themselves, or purchasing at prices similar to any other crop (corn, tobacco, tomatoes). The only processing required is to dry it out, in smoking it. Cannabanoids are fat soluble, so one can ingest it alongside a fat (butter is common)

On a HARM scale measuring bothh addictive-ness and physical harm, cannabis is completely safe, and not very addictive if at all. The opposite end of those legal substances alcohol, tobacco, and sugar.

Yet as a freedom loving, small localized government desiring, hard working American, your encouraged to drink and smoke, while pouring sugar in your gas tank. And im left to pay for it. But if you want to choose for yourself as an adult to utilize the medical benefits of cannabis, you're a highly sought after criminal.

The one thing this thread has demonstrated is that Nancy Reagan will forever be remembered for the harm she caused with her war on drugs. If only she could experience first hand all the pain and suffering her victims endured.

errc says

Alcohol is literally toxic

It's also a macro-nutrient, puzzle on that...

errc says

Alcohol is literally toxic.

And has been an acceptable part of society for literally thousands of years. That's why Prohibition, which came at the end of the Temperance Movement, was a failure, although it was a gold mine for Tin Pan Alley between 1920 and 1933. Hard drugs hit society less than 50 years ago and don't have a long history--heroin, opium and even arsenic had been available for the asking during most of the 19th century, but towards the end of the century their lethal properties caused them to become controlled substances as they are to this day.

errc says

Tobacco is deadly. Its gross, and provides no benefit.

And yet another substance with a long history and acceptance in society. In another article I saw tobacco referred to as the drug of the worker and the warrior--many professional people found their ability to concentrate aided by tobacco at the same time it was killing them. Walt Disney smoked all his life and died at only 65, my father at 58. In the 50's, packages of Camels were given to the residents of selected VA hospitals by a TV show whose name I can't remember. Hard drugs are largely the choice of the slacker and free-loader as portrayed in the 1970 movie Joe.

errc says

Yet as a freedom loving, small localized government desiring, hard working American, your encouraged to drink and smoke, while pouring sugar in your gas tank. And im left to pay for it. But if you want to choose for yourself as an adult to utilize the medical benefits of cannabis, you're a highly sought after criminal

Sounds good to me.

Ironman says

1) Nobody gets addicted to alcohol since it's legal.....

2) Since it's legalized, it's less costly, so users don't have to spend a lot of money to get drunk.....

3) Legalized alcohol consumption never lead to someone losing their job, caused a divorce, or destroyed their finances..

4) Since alcohol was legalized, the need for rehab centers has completely gone away, nobody goes in for treatment for addiction of alcohol....

All true, but alcoholism was pretty much limited to adults, not a lot of it going around in junior high and high schools or destoying inner cities because of alcohol wars as in Prohibition. What was needed 50 years ago was a whole new realm of addictions that would rope in those in their teens and early 20's. Schools in the 1970's, the first full decade of hard drug use, turned into drug plagued madhouses. Cities became war zones over drug using and selling. Over the past 46 years, hard drugs have insinuated themselves into every molecule of human existence and to what advantage? Also, if they are legalized, will there be a legal age limit as on alcohol, like 18 or 21? If there is, what about those, say 14 to 17, do you think they will not still try to obtain drugs illegally as they do now?

DieBankOfAmericaPhukkingDie says

Will the Reagan Library have a NANCY and FRANK Pavilion now?

Nancy's grave will have a tape playing 24/24. It will be loud slurping, slobbering sounds with "oooh" and "ahhh!" "deeper" with the distant sound of Reagan's demented voice echoing down hallways.

Ironman says

So since alcohol was legalized:

1) Nobody gets addicted to alcohol since it's legal.....

2) Since it's legalized, it's less costly, so users don't have to spend a lot of money to get drunk.....

3) Legalized alcohol consumption never lead to someone losing their job, caused a divorce, or destroyed their finances..

4) Since alcohol was legalized, the need for rehab centers has completely gone away, nobody goes in for treatment for addiction of alcohol....

Oh wait....

But if we legalize street drugs, that will be "different" this time....

Absolutely won't be any different. You and FortWayne are making the same false assumption that legalizing/illegalizing a substance affects a person's level of addiction, and their choice to be an addict. This corollary is blatantly false. If it were true we could eliminate obesity and heart disease by making a law that everyone must eat vegetables as half their daily caloric intake. Reality is it would just make a bacon double cheeseburger cost $40 a pop, and it would be sold in a back alley by some dude who may or may not have made it with ground rat.

NuttBoxer says

If it were true we could eliminate obesity and heart disease by making a law that everyone must eat vegetables as half their daily caloric intake. Reality is it would just make a bacon double cheeseburger cost $40 a pop, and it would be sold in a back alley by some dude who may or may not have made it with ground rat.

Exactly. And it's totally hypocritical that conservatives had a pissy-fit when Michelle Obama merely encouraged parents to feed veggies to their kids, yet they have no problem with big government controlling what people put in their blood system when it comes to drugs because it's in the people's best self-interests.

If saving lives trumps individual liberty, then what you eat should be state-mandated and all fast food outlawed. As should tobacco and alcohol. From Live Science magazine

Data from the World Health Organization suggests there were 250,000 deaths worldwide due to illicit drug use in 2004, compared with 2.25 million due to alcohol, and 5.1 million due to tobacco.

And that's worldwide deaths, not just the U.S. Let's look at those statistics. From Popular Science

So, illegal drugs kill about 3 per 100,000 Americans or 9,300 Americans per year. Meanwhile, prescription drugs kill about four times as many. Actually, much more because "unspecified" almost definitely means some kind of prescription drug as overdoses of illegal drugs certainly get recorded for legal and crime fighting reasons. Why didn't Nancy Reagan wage a war on Big Pharma? Oh, because they have money.

Furthermore, one in five deaths in America are related to obesity. That's over half a million deaths a year!

Obesity is associated with nearly 1 in 5 US deaths, according to a study published online August 15 in the American Journal of Public Health. The new data suggest obesity's toll on Americans is more than 3 times previous estimates.

In research that counters previous studies of the effect of obesity on American life spans, Ryan K. Masters, PhD, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, and colleagues report that overweight and obesity were associated with 18.2% of all deaths among adults from 1986 through 2006 in the United States. Previous estimates of the effect of obesity on mortality, published in Demography in 2009, established an obesity-related death rate of approximately 5%.

So anyone trying to justify making drugs illegal in order to save lives is an utter hypocrite if they don't also insist on making all the following illegal...
- Chick-fil-A
- soda
- sweet tea
- high fructose corn syrup
- beer
- bacon
- deep fried anything
- the entire American South's diet
- everything served in Wisconsin

Oh, and anyone caught consuming any of the above has to be arrested, body cavity searched, imprisoned for years, strip search during imprisonment, put on parole, and prevented from getting any decent, above minimum-wage job ever again in their lives. We'll call it the War on Fat.

Ironman says

I know it's false... my list was total sarcasm.... But some people here think legalizing street drugs will make all issues of crime, overdoses and abuse go away... it won't, just like it didn't for alcohol...

Definitely agree. The one thing legalization will do is remove the facade that government is responsible to cure drug addiction. As a Protestant it hurts me to say this, but that change will push church accountability to serve their local community to the forefront. We have failed miserably when it comes to assisting the poor and defenseless, one of Christ's most important mandates.

I just want to give respectful credit for two things Nancy Reagan did, that she doesn't always get enough credit for.

To understand the loyalty and success of her marriage to President Reagan, and to understand his success in his career, you have to understand that they worked together as a team, each with a distinct role and sphere of influence. I disagreed with some of President Reagan's policy decisions, for example regarding HIV and AIDS, but I don't blame her for those. Legally, she didn't have the authority to countermand his decisions, and personally, she was loyal and would not undermine his authority by criticizing him publicly. I don't know what private conversations they may have had, but I think he was probably immovable on some issues. I credit Nancy for using her sphere of influence to do what she could without undermining her husband and their marriage.

Nancy took charge of the White House, including designing beautiful new china and getting it donated so it didn't cost taxpayers a penny (somehow the media failed to give her credit for that, calling it too fancy and failing to thank her for the fact that the public received it as a gift). She also hired as decorators a gay male couple, whom she invited to stay in the Lincoln bedroom, and they did. In that way, without undermining her husband (who had invited a lesbian couple to stay in his home decades before btw), she put a human face on the Americans most at risk of getting HIV. She did that at a time when others (including the Pope and Pat Buchanan) were doing the opposite, or ignoring HIV entirely (usually including, publicly, the POTUS, though he and Nancy did privately call France to help their friend Rock Hudson). Also, American historians credit her rightly with helping to secure the publication of President Buchanan's letters showing that he was gay. Statisticians can tell you how many Presidents were probably gay, but the reason historians can tell you a name is partly because of Nancy Reagan. In today's celebrity culture, seemingly anything attached to somebody famous can get attention, but back in those days the letters of a long dead President whom most people hadn't even heard of might not have got much attention if she hadn't helped in her capacity of promoting the White House and its history.

P N Dr Lo R says

All true, but alcoholism was pretty much limited to adults

Not true. Plenty of teenagers used to become alcoholics before, and still do this day.

NuttBoxer says

Absolutely won't be any different. You and FortWayne are making the same false assumption that legalizing/illegalizing a substance affects a person's level of addiction, and their choice to be an addict.

Because they do affect it. Availability creates opportunity. If there is less, than less people are addicted to it. Only reason more people are not fucked up, is because it is hard to get and is illegal.

P N Dr Lo R says

Sounds good to me

Must be way over the hill. Cannabis is much safer than alcohol or tobacco, but you can look up the proof for yourself.

Also, why should anyone subsidize others bad choices with regard to health habits? If your dad died of lung cancer because he smoked his whole life, why should that have to be someone else's problem?