Ron Paul: Marijuana Decriminalization Interview

[tobor]

Originally Posted by CarolinaGuy

And yet cigarettes are still legal.

And alcohol, which has a LD50... is safer than marijuana, which has no lethal dose?

That's just crazy talk right there.

Agreed. Alcohol is *far* more toxic than pot. Booze is responsible for more disability and more violence than all other (yes other, booze is a drug) drugs combined. Crime is a different story. Make illegal drugs legal, and out goes 97% of the crime associated with them.

[D-FENS]

Many of us, myself included, would like to see the income tax stamped out. Taxing the sale of drugs would serve many purposes and could include replacing the income tax. Just think about how much money we could save by stopping the funding for the militarization of our police forces? The money that we spend on prosecution, defense and incarceration of non-violent drug offenders. We could control where the product comes from and ensure it's not enriching foreign Cabals and street gangs here at home. We could ensure a quality product at a reasonable rate. This would server to lower crime and accidental death associated with tainted drugs.

Ask yourself why we're not collecting taxes on 5-10% of our economy?

[pex]

2. Look at what has happened in the big tobacco and Vioxx litigation. A lot of the issues of liability revolve around 'who knew what and when?'. Same thing for marijuana - the case for the prosecution is gaining momentum about the adverse consequences of marijuana use, and this data means there's now no way on earth it will ever now be legalised. Remember, until the 1950s nobody knew that cigarettes were bad for you - in fact they were marketed on the basis of their health benefits at one time!

Are you sure? Wouldn't it be nice to have someone new to sue? Right now there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort put into suing drug lords who deal in cannabis. There's no face to cannabis.

Why don't we start talking about crippling opiate/opioid addiction while we're here...except that we dispossess plenty of controlled substances through pharmacies a year, to the public, that could be a gateway to addiction?

Everything has risks; we live in what appears to us to be an imprecise world. The government should put money into educating a rational people so they choose not to risk themselves into schizophrenia. Taking a rational instead of authoritarian approach to it might even benefit youth, who are supposedly at the greatest risk.

But that's not important. Social control is.

[unloved]

Originally Posted by jahwarrior72

tax the hell out of tobacco and alcohol and pot, and put that money to work for us.

Originally Posted by D-FENS

Taxing the sale of drugs would serve many purposes and could include replacing the income tax.

Ask yourself why we're not collecting taxes on 5-10% of our economy?

Why would you want more taxation? How about government gets the hell OUT of all of the nanny state areas in which it should not be involved, thus requiring much less of my money to operate?

[762xIan]

Modern day prohibition...alcohol failed and drugs has failed. Problem is this time around it is big business, lots of federal jobs and money is tied up in it.

My biggest beef is our loss of freedoms over this "war". Big hits on the 4th ammendment (no knock raids), we are really losing our liberty.

Another beef, mandatory minimum sentencing laws for certain ammounts of drugs, the prisons are full of many non-violent felons who are taking up space because of sentencing requirements. Many violent offenders are out after serving riduculously short sentences. FBI and DOJ statistics show that almost 70% of all violent crime is commited by......wait for it...repeat offenders!

The biggest losers in all of this is us the law abiding citizen, losing our rights.