[Unsound]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I love how they tie "Personal Freedom" to the growing and use of drugs. Love it!

How is it not a matter of personal freedom?

[OnTheIce]

Unsound Unsound:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I love how they tie "Personal Freedom" to the growing and use of drugs. Love it!

How is it not a matter of personal freedom?

Because you don't get to do whatever you want in the name of "freedom". We do have laws to abide by.

[Curtman]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Unsound Unsound:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I love how they tie "Personal Freedom" to the growing and use of drugs. Love it!

How is it not a matter of personal freedom?

Because you don't get to do whatever you want in the name of "freedom". We do have laws to abide by.

Usually those laws protect public safety instead of diminish it like prohibition does. There's no victim, there's no crime. Just an endless cycle of incarceration and poverty.

[OnTheIce]

Curtman Curtman:

Usually those laws protect public safety instead of diminish it like prohibition does. There's no victim, there's no crime. Just an endless cycle of incarceration and poverty.

Yes, drugs pose no safety hazard to the user or those around them. They are harmless substances controlled by the government just to diminish us of our freedoms.

With legal drugs, we'd all be successful, poverty would be gone and our jails would be empty. Bliss.

[Curtman]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Curtman Curtman:

Usually those laws protect public safety instead of diminish it like prohibition does. There's no victim, there's no crime. Just an endless cycle of incarceration and poverty.

Yes, drugs pose no safety hazard to the user or those around them. They are harmless substances controlled by the government just to diminish us of our freedoms.

With legal drugs, we'd all be successful, poverty would be gone and our jails would be empty. Bliss.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. We'd still want dangerous criminals in jail. Just not the ones who are only a threat to themselves. We'd treat them with our health system instead of our criminal justice system and have a chance at success.

[Unsound]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Unsound Unsound:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I love how they tie "Personal Freedom" to the growing and use of drugs. Love it!

How is it not a matter of personal freedom?

Because you don't get to do whatever you want in the name of "freedom". We do have laws to abide by.

So.... if the government decided to ban reading the bible... that's ok because it's a law and should be abided?

[Unsound]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Curtman Curtman:

Usually those laws protect public safety instead of diminish it like prohibition does. There's no victim, there's no crime. Just an endless cycle of incarceration and poverty.

Yes, drugs pose no safety hazard to the user or those around them. They are harmless substances controlled by the government just to diminish us of our freedoms.

With legal drugs, we'd all be successful, poverty would be gone and our jails would be empty. Bliss.

Theere are a great many legal substances that pose safety hazards to those who use them and those around them. Should all vehicles be governed so they can't go faster than the highest legal speed limit? Should booze with it's myriad detriments to health and society be banned? Should motorbikes be banned? What about dangerous sports? Pesticides that are used merely to make yards look good rather than for legitimate agriculture?

Free speech obviously needs to be banned. Just look at how many people around the world are harmed on a daily basis because others say whatever they want.

[Curtman]

American Correctional Association Endorses Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Reform

$1:

The largest prison and corrections association threw its weight behind mandatory minimum sentencing reform this week, offering support for a plan to overhaul parts of the justice system at both the state and federal levels.

At its annual conference in Maryland, members of the American Correctional Association adopted a resolution addressing the need to step back from a penal code that regularly forces federal and state judges to hand down harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes.

“ACA’s members know from long and first-hand experience that crowding within correctional systems increases violence, threatens overall security within a facility, and hampers rehabilitation efforts," ACA president and Mississippi Department of Corrections commissioner Chris Epps said in a statement.

"Prisons are full of nonviolent offenders serving lengthy and mandatory minimum sentences," Epps continued. "Our members work hard every day to keep staff, inmates, and the public safe, but the current system is unsustainable. The solution must come from lawmakers, and it must target the long sentences that got us in this mess in the first place. Legislators, prosecutors and judges need to differentiate between who we are afraid of and who we are just mad at and then sentence each appropriately.”
...
“Prison staff know better than anyone how urgently this country needs mandatory minimum sentencing reform," she said in a statement. "When we force judges to lock up thousands of nonviolent offenders for decades, prisons fill up fast and keep getting fuller. This is counterproductive, not to mention hugely expensive for taxpayers. The ACA is just the latest addition to a long, bipartisan list of people supporting mandatory minimum sentencing reform. The time has never been better for lawmakers to heed these voices and fix the problem.”

[Curtman]

$1:

5. (1) No person shall traffic in a substance included in Schedule I, II, III or IV or in any substance represented or held out by that person to be such a substance.
(3) Every person who contravenes subsection (1) or (2)
(a) subject to paragraph (a.1), if the subject matter of the offence is a substance included in Schedule I or II, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life, and
(ii) to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of two years if
(C) the person used the services of a person under the age of 18 years, or involved such a person, in committing the offence;

[Curtman]

82 percent say U.S. ‘losing’ War on Drugs

$1:

Eighty-two percent of Americans believe the government is “losing” its four-decade-old “War on Drugs” according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released on Sunday.

The poll, which normally carries a conservative tilt, found that must 4 percent believe the anti-drug war is being won. Thirteen percent of those surveyed were undecided.

“Americans continue to overwhelmingly believe that the so-called War on Drugs is failing, but they are more divided on how much the United States should be spending on it,” Rasmussen concluded.

The survey was conducted Aug.12-13, and involved interviews with 1,000 American adults, and has a margin-of-error of plus/minus 3.1 percent.

The survey found that 44 percent of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, with 42 percent opposed and 14 percent undecided or offering no opinion.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed feel there are too many people in America’s prisons. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week an effort to scale back the number of strict minimum sentences imposed for non-violent, low-level drug offenders.

According to the Rasmussen poll, 51 percent agree with Holder’s approach, 25 percent disagree, with 24 percent undecided.

The poll’s failure finding, when Americans were asked about the War on Drugs, is the highest yet reached by a national survey. A recent Pew Research poll found that two-thirds of those surveyed believe the multi-billion-dollar effort, begun during the Nixon Administration, is a failure.

[OnTheIce]

Unsound Unsound:

Theere are a great many legal substances that pose safety hazards to those who use them and those around them. Should all vehicles be governed so they can't go faster than the highest legal speed limit? Should booze with it's myriad detriments to health and society be banned? Should motorbikes be banned? What about dangerous sports? Pesticides that are used merely to make yards look good rather than for legitimate agriculture?

Free speech obviously needs to be banned. Just look at how many people around the world are harmed on a daily basis because others say whatever they want.

So where do you draw the line? Consider that we also live in a Country with a publicly funded health care system.

Why not just drop all laws against everything then? Let people buy heroin or crack at the local Mac's Milk and let the chips fall where they may. Let people drive 200km on any road they want.

Humans make stupid choices and some are too stupid to think for themselves to provide direction on what's good and what's bad. Americans are eating themselves to death and Canadians aren't too far behind. Are we supposed to have complete faith in a society that can't do the basics in life right to make all the right decisions without some direction?

[Curtman]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Unsound Unsound:

Theere are a great many legal substances that pose safety hazards to those who use them and those around them. Should all vehicles be governed so they can't go faster than the highest legal speed limit? Should booze with it's myriad detriments to health and society be banned? Should motorbikes be banned? What about dangerous sports? Pesticides that are used merely to make yards look good rather than for legitimate agriculture?

Free speech obviously needs to be banned. Just look at how many people around the world are harmed on a daily basis because others say whatever they want.

So where do you draw the line? Consider that we also live in a Country with a publicly funded health care system.

Why not just drop all laws against everything then? Let people buy heroin or crack at the local Mac's Milk and let the chips fall where they may. Let people drive 200km on any road they want.

They do that now. Do you really believe the only thing stopping people from doing heroin or crack is the law? Give your head a shake.

[Curtman]

U.S. Orders More Steps to Curb Stiff Drug Sentences

$1:

The Obama administration on Thursday expanded its effort to curtail severe penalties for low-level federal drug offenses, ordering prosecutors to refile charges against defendants in pending cases and strip out any references to specific quantities of illicit substances that would trigger mandatory minimum sentencing laws.
...
On Thursday, the Justice Department ordered prosecutors to apply the new policy retroactively to defendants who are already in the system but have not yet been sentenced. It was not immediately clear how many pending federal drug cases would be affected.

In cases where a defendant has been charged but guilt has not yet been determined, prosecutors will be directed to file replacement criminal complaints to eliminate references to specific quantities of drugs that would trigger a mandatory minimum sentence were the defendant to be convicted, according to a three-page Justice Department memorandum from Mr. Holder to federal prosecutors.

Mr. Holder’s memorandum says that for cases in which a defendant has already been found guilty but no sentence has yet been imposed, prosecutors have discretion about whether to apply the new policy.

The war on drugs is a failure.