It's Time to Legalize Drugs

God Im lucky to live in Cali. I go to a store once a week show them my card and I take home my MEDICINE. No more agrevated liver problems. just AHHHHHH! No pain.

This is why drugs need to be legalised and guns need to be for the military only. There is no reason cops should be carrying around a gun when we have such fabulous taser technology. No one has ever died from a taser attack anyways.

600,000 cops 150,000 feds 100,000,000 potheads !

Hunzedog you the man! Incredible mathematics. I somehow filled with flourishment....

When we look at the Current conditions, cough,cough,cough... wait a minute... Are they bout to legalize drugs?

Its bout to happen y'all! Lol . The movement is in full throttle......

Prohibition of Alcohol is the best example of this situation.

Basically when alcohol was illegal, people began making it in basements and bathtubs. They sold it illegally and organize crime made a killing off the racket, both financially and figuratively.

Now the Mexican drug cartels are making US dollars manufacturing, packaging and selling the drugs to distributors. Meanwhile we're only catching the low-level dealers who only deal with maybe one ounce at a time to a few pounds. Someone else will take his place to fill the void. Territorial fights ensue, gang violence over whose turf begins for the right to sell drugs there, etc.

If you cut the head off this snake by making the drugs legal, not only will you stop wasting police manpower on arresting non-violent criminals, then you will also take the power away from the drug cartels.

Addiction should be treated as a medical problem anyway. You don't toss a prescription pill addict in jail, you get him into rehab. What's wrong with putting a heroin addict into rehab? It worked for Ray Charles.

Legalization is the best answer to the War on Drugs.

You'd think it'd be best to legalize drugs. But there is an industry keeping them illegal now.

Drug dogs cost something like $50,000 a drug to train. And something like 60% of everyone in prison today (90% of that for pot) is there because of drugs.

What are we going to do give the taxpayers their money back and say "nope we don't need it this year we legalized drugs..."???

this post is spectacular. i hope i live to see the day this will happen...

But what about the jails?

I agree, the funny thing is we all get it, the public knows what drugs are dangerous and should be regulated but the government decides to disburse commercials about marijuana. What a waste of money and time.

GNL you have been served, Bitch lapped what ever.

A lot of government jobs will be gone and cops won't have nothing to do. I totally agree with the article its time for a change. Drugs like cocaine, lsd, and meth shouldn't be legal. Marijuana and mushrooms should be and that's it.

I don't think drugs should be legalized, per se, but definitely decriminalized because this kind of behavior is outrageous and dangerous for all parties involved.

Wait so some of you are saying you'd rather have people on lsd on the street than alchohol? The reason the death rate for alchohol is so high is because it's wildly open to the public. Now if you throw in all that other stuff besides marijuana, you would have all kinds of death rates going up. You thought it was bad with people having addiction to ciggarettes and booze add cocaine and heroine to that mix and all kinds of family problems will occur. I agree with legalizing marijuana but the rest? Hell no.

I have done my research by living a life of drug use and my liver going bad that is why I have a 215 If you research that it is a medical use card in Cali. i was an addict for years I don't know why I would say that here but I beleive you guys are maybe young and have not gone through what I have and I have researched it alot. I have been a RN since I was young. I know the affects of drugs on the body. Once you need a liver transplant you will know what I am talking about. yes Aclohol is extremely bad for you.

Cocaine is already used in a medical situation. But I don't see the need for LSD,there is no medical need for it. It serves no purpose. Cannabis yes LSD heck no.Cocaine is used when people come in for lets say a bloody nose that will not clot and we have to cartarize the nose,we have have them in no medical term snort a little untill they are numb,then we burn the inside of the nose.We have other things if the nose is damaged due to cocaine use.

Too damn bad that the other 90% of Law Enforcement does not feel the same way.

We can complain etc, but the reality on the other side is that it takes a different type of personality to be a LEO. Yes, there are plenty of kids who grew up striving to be a lawman, and those may genuinely care about public welfare..... Most however do not. A large portion of LE are corrupt, non-adapting to public need, or plain old school and ignorant. And this overwhelming majority that sees the public as enemies they must defeat to uphold law and get a paycheck, greatly outnumber the just, that care for welfare of communities. Why should it take over a 100 years of drug violenc, illegality, death and utter failure to just start bringing up blogs?

The other reality- they can preach but, major lobbies fight tooth and nail to keep doing what they are doing. And the people in those lobbies, have money, power and connections. Look at how bad the California Police Chiefs Ass. and Prison Lobby shut down a bill that would have funded rehab and removed non-violent drug offenders from overcrowded Cali penal system......ehh..too bad, they didnt want it so they defeat it.

is dmt included?

yeah yeah

nice article, its been time to legalize drugs

If it grows from the ground it should be legal. BAYER made Heroin trying to synthesise Opium. Keep drug companies out of it and plants are safer than FDA approved drugs ! . its a fact

I would legalize cannabis, cocaine, mushrooms, LSD and opium. These could be regulated easily. I would most definitely not legalize Meth, under any circumstances. All the resources now being dedicated to the aforementioned drugs, should be shifted to Meth. And other things like Special K or Ketamine and PCP, are already controlled substances, so whatever black market there is on these substances should be the focus of the drug war.

But the aforementioned drugs can all be justified for various reasons, including religious and spiritual. But Meth is by far the worst of all drugs in its ability to quickly destroy an individual and an entire family.

I smoke weed I will tell any body I smoke weed it is a naturle herb any thing man made is a controled substance that should be kept that way. Free the herb that heals. There is no place that crack or cocane is safe Herion is just as bad as the pills the give out and Meth just rots the brain. Yea I know I did not use proper punctuaion I'm still working on the spelling part Best of luck in your world

Free the weed!

if the government taxed it like cigarettes it would pay off the national debt in ten years. however if they did that there are many many people who would'nt be able to pay there bills anymore. we cant please everyone all at the same time, it's going to be a constant battle.
either way i'd trust a pot head way before i'd trust a drunk or crack head. which would you want as your neighbor?

a weird thought i had similar to this (probably during some experimentation with recreational marijuana use), involved the persons licensed to sell the wider range of drugs being regulated heavily..in place of the customer profiling that would definitely take place if this plan was instituted. cops trolling the establishments, undercutting any investigative techniques, was the first thing that came to mind reading this proposal. but owners and staff could proudly take the heat and political scrutiny with their personal drug testing and moderation of sales to habitual buyers. a sort of encompassing of both extremes, of those with substance abuse problems interacting at the apex of use/transaction with regimented sub-culture of the sobriety enabled. the sub-culture perhaps rising out of the legislative trailblazing. or at least the opportunity to bring the ailment in to the light of day for everyone to confront. it could even be considered that off duty cops(or cops that are up for review and need brownie points) could earn extra income and experience serving behind the registers - heading off any on-duty profiling with awkward retailer responsibility. but with the range of substances sold, i think theres a risk of mixing social work with sales. a high amount of oversight would be inevitable in some form. a positive that might arise - a replacement by drug scoring of the exhaustive process most associate now with the DMV.

I would say it is time, that way we can stay comatose and numb to the things around us, " if we want. "

It's silly that it takes a cop getting shot in the face a few times for him to think weed should be legal.

and who wants to drink bootleg booze when the stuff you get at the store tastes so gooood

I don't think allowing all drugs to be legal is not the way to go. Cannabis yes but cocaine and others no thank you. I have seen to many people come in OD. i not seen that with cannabis but coke and H I have seen many familys destroyed because of that stuff.

EDIT: I have seen my own family be distroyed by alcohol and drugs LSD WAS used meaning past tence we other things for alcohol abuse that are not as addicting. I have done acid in the way past and I know what it does,so I am not ignorant. I just think lets try to get canabis legalize before we go and get other more addictive stuff legalized. if we as pot users go and say hey what about coke,LSD and what not you are just demeaning the ones that just want to use pot for medical use. Sorry but I am saying this as an RN.

Very good point about the difference between street dealers and indoor dealers. I didn't realize I was so far removed from the outdoor part of society. I had not thought of the motivation to conduct business in the open like that would be to minimize loss. I figured it was to serve the influx of strangers...probably both reasons and more.

Illegalizing a substance does not put it in less demand. Because the free market cannot offer the substance, the criminal element gladly takes the profits on the black market. This empowers them, emboldens them, and enriches them. So, the question reveals itself... why do we uphold the system that supports violence and criminals? We certainly can't count on individuals to stop buying the products, so the only other option is to LEGALIZE and REGULATE these substances in the same way we regulate tobacco and alcohol. The free market will eliminate the need for drug cartels. The economy will improve and industries will be created. People will feel less oppressed because their govt isn't telling them what they can or cannot put in their adult bodies. Prohibition is not the answer; it is the problem.

Prohibition does not or has not worked, and after these past scores of years it is so glaringly obvious that it is downright laughable.
Why the continued denial by our government of the need for legal and regulatory controls, is beyond any comprehensible reason in my opinion.

The government has to stop trying to protect us from ourselves by making substanses illegal. By doing that they lead desperate people right to desperate criminals selling the substanses people in pain are looking for.
So as this story indicates outlawing drugs hurts those the government seeks to protect, plus those that are forced to protect the citizens from harm because of outlawing drugs.
Without the drug laws we'd have helped eliminate outlaws selling drugs to users.

I think this article is very well thought out and well executed. Thank you xiola for posting it and I agree with everything contained in it. I agree with the police officers who want to end the war on drugs and use their resources to combat other crimes.

Great post!

Some places are relaxing the laws a bit, like Columbia, MO. A big collage town, the home of MU. Too many smart kids loosing their full ride scholarships worth thousands of dollars because police maybe found a roach in their car. So they voted on legalization up to an once. You can't buy it or sell it, but you can possess it.

This is all too true, also a common victim of drug violence is the innocent bystander who gets caught in a cross-fire between police and drug dealers, or even rival drug dealers.

The violence and destructive behaviors tied to drug dealing would stop with legalization, since all one would need to do to get them is go to the store.

I think that harder drugs need more regulation and should not be sold in stores. Drugs like Marijuana however should be regulated like beer and sold to those above the age of 21.