Alcohol and caffeine are drugs. They’re just government-sanctioned. Funny how “small gov’t constitutional conservatives” are so willing to obey their federal overseers when it relates to intoxicants. 

End the “War” on someDrugs, undoubtedly the most costly worthless public policy of the last 100 years. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions spent (factoring in incarceration costs and the monetary/social effects) for negligible results.

And no, I don’t support Ron Paul.

 There are two reasons “Fair and Balanced” Fox News includes such lunatic-left d-cRAT socialist nitwits (pardon the redundancy) as williams and beckel on their commentary shows: 1. comic relief (obviously) from the serious discussions of others, and 2. to show rational people what insanity and total bs these lunatics mindlessly and endlessly spew forth.

Once again, beckel serves his purpose.

Billo the clown is back at his moroic self again.

Billdo should know about “some wine into a woman as fast as I can. Preferably, intravenously”

 Your redundancy is pardoned. You could be mildly amusing, yet you’re a bit too base and moronic for your trolling attempt to appear remotely legitimate. However, I think if you hone your skills and use the odd capital letter (outside of ‘d-cRAT’), you’re still in with a chance.

Right! This coming from a Becky fanatic.

Funny that you try to put things in the context that you do…  I have met more conservatives that look to legalize drugs than liberals…  but then again I usually don’t discuss politics to much with liberals…  as a matter of being courteous and spending quality time with people.  

It is not hard to see the amount of crime and the cost to society in the moneys spent on the so called war on drugs, the amounts for contradiction and seizure, the incarceration of offenders, the lost taxes on the to the underground economy…  and what has this war gained  for us?  I would say it has greatly added to violent crime in this country as people commit crime to feed their habits, and the drug overlords fight to protect and grow their empires.  The so called war has been a failure and the only people who have benefited from it are the criminals who profit from the illegal drug trade…

I would ask, who do you want regulating the drugs that people are obviously using in this country, a well regulated and taxed industry, or the criminal empires that are the only ones controlling the drugs in our society today…  The problem is not going away, and it is more than apparent that we will never win it, so what is the most rational way to deal with the reality of drugs in our society?

I personally don’t think anyone should regulate weed. It’s been proven that the government cannot do that. You could grow it anywhere & sell it under the table without anyone knowing. I just think it should be made legal so we don’t target inner city minorities & put them in prison for it. That’s basically all we could do for now. Hopefully one day they will come up with THC pills so that it could be regulated & taxed one day, but until then, the government needs to realize that you can’t regulate marijuana no matter how hard they try.

The two biggest takeaways I get from watching clips of the 5 on Mediaite is that Bob Beckel knows how to party and Dana Perino is as stupid as I suspected her to be.

 THC pills have been available for years.

And they are regulated by medical prescriptions.

They are not available as entertainment, just like medical morphine.

You are an asshole plain and simple. This is why most Americans hate the tea party, so why dont you crawl back under that rock you and all the other tea baggers came from.

True, but pill form is the only type of marijuana derivative that could be regulated. If government were to make that available to the public, then maybe they would have a chance to regulate it. I’m sure most people would rather go to a pharmacist for THC pills than thru a drug dealer for something that could be laced & makes you cough out your lungs.

What killed whitney houston?

 Two quick points before we run out of “reply” buttons on the thread.

First, those who know me know I am pretty liberal on most issues, but strongly oppose the issue of drug legalization.

Second, I think the issue of drug legalization CANNOT be taken only as a local level issue but it is much larger as an international level. For instance, coca cultivation is legal in Bolivia but their market is not their local market. At the same time, “legal” age alcohol consumption in many countries is 18 yrs. old, yet in the USA it is set at 21 then we have teenagers going out of the states to booze their heads off.

In short, I don’t agree with my liberal compas on this one.
Not out of any higher-than-thou airs, but because I don’t see any practical benefits.

According to BillO’s logic, Rush Limbaugh has been suicidal for most of his career. Republicans are hanging on the every word of a mentally ill man.

Mr. Beckel you are right that drug abusers don’t what to kill themselves, 100% right, It is that they just don’t care if they kill themselves, that is how important that next fix is to them, That next up, that next down, Drugs are so important to them that they just don’t care if they kill themselves, or some one else to get their high.

Drugs or Alcohol addiction, , They just don’t care.

So do you like the fact America is the world’s #1 police state? We have an incarceration rate that doubles that of Iran, North Korea, & China. The closest anyone comes to matching us is Russia which is 5/7 of our rate. Most of this is a result of simple drug possession, not distribution but mere possession.

 You forgot smoking tobacco.

We need to get rid of these LBRULS chain smoking in public places.

/snark off

 No. I don’t support the levels of incarceration for drug possession offenses in the USA either. As I said, the issue is much more complicated.

China has a ZERO tolerance policy towards drugs because of their own recent history. Read about the opium wars.
An user gets mandatory “re-hab” A dealer gets executed.

Follow me for a second. Even with such harsh penalties, there are some enterprising morons thinking they can get away making a fast buck.

But again, let’s not compare and treat all drugs as equal as Billdo is doing here.

Now, to further advance the topic, do you know how dealers pretend they are just users and not dealers?

The reason the we have more people incarcerated is because, Iran, North Korea, & China, execute their criminals.

Now how about the political reeducation camps of N. Korea?

Also as a percentage of the population N. Korea has more of it’s citizens in prison, political prison, and reducation, camps than the U.S.

So they execute more people than the number of people they incarcerate? I’m sure you could prove that, right?

What about countries like Canada? They’re very comparable to the United States, but their incarceration rate is nowhere near ours. A lot of that has to do with the fact they don’t aggressively go after drug users/dealers like we do.

When you can prove the number of people they incarcerate is less than the numbers the U.S. does.

Those countries seem to consider those numbers Classified State Secrets.

Ok,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

Your turn.

america is a huge market for marijuana, especially for the murderous cartels of mexico. It’s actually one of their best ways of making money. Legalize weed and you take the power away from terrorist-esque sociopaths and into the hands of legal businesses.

 That is part of the problem.

The cartels have figured out the shipping routes sometimes are even more valuable than a bale of weed.

Think profit and volume. Why would anyone try to move a truck load of weed when a few bricks or even a few ounces of meth are just as profitable?

Drug cartels are not stupid.

China
In 2001 the incarceration rate in China was 111 per 100,000[citation needed] (sentenced prisoners only).

Exercise caution before relying upon unsourced claims.

China has also violated the right of Tibetans and continues to do so. Authorities have committed extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial detentions. Any support for Tibetan independence is criminal, violent or not.

The Chinese government has active control over the information in China. Much of what the government says is not reality. People are unable to speak out against the government without punishment. All communication is heavily monitored.

US Department of State. 2010. 2009 Human Rights Report: Introduction2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/frontmatter/135936.htm

China executes more people than any other country in the world.

The ‘Lectric Law Library. 2005.’Lectric Law Library’s stacks People’s Republic Of China’s Criminal Justice System. web site accssed April 11 2010. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/int10.htm

Ok, and how does that prove the point you wre trying to make?

 Re: Canada.

Once again, we are not talking about the same population and market.

No dealer is going to risk his biz trying to cross the USA attempting to sell into a smaller market when the largest market is right in the USA.

In a way this is somewhat similar to what drug legalization proponents say, -tax the product and watch people not buying it- The risk for the dealer increases as well as the cost for the customer, then we have a smaller market based on price alone.

Chins doesn’t provide accurate numbers, of political incarcerations or executions, are you that slow?

You could grow marijuana just as easily in Canada as you can in the USA. A common myh is ha marijuana is transpored by drug dealers from other countries. The fact is that most marijuana is own locally.

How slow are you? I asked you to prove that another country has an incarceration rate higher than ours (like you claimed) and you failed.

First things first, decriminalize pot and allow people to grow their own (set limits to two plants or something so you have recourse if someone starts a grow-op in their garage.)  Secondly, treat drug addition like alcoholism instead of a felony.  You will save a fortune on enforcement and the burden of people in prison who shouldn’t be there. (Unfortunately the lobbyists for privatized prisons would argue against this because full prisons mean more money.)  Just a thought….

What a thoughtful question. What do you think?

 Re: weed growing
 
Again. Let’s differentiate between the aficionado and the pro.

Yes. Anyone could grow weed at home. Anyone can brew beer at home. Anyone can bake a cake at home. The difference is in the scale and costs associated with the enterprise and the public perception across the world.

If the USA where to allow large scale marihuana growth for internal consumption and maybe exports, the USA becomes a drug dealer, financing its budget through taxes collected from drug users.

Some badge of honor it will be.

- I have to go. Laters.

 Makes sense.

Particularly because education should be the first step preventing any type of addiction.

It was nice chatting but marijuana doesn’t make for a cry good export drug. Aside from it being illegal, it goes off a very potent smell & dries up within weeks. Peace ou.

My interest is solely about getting the criminals out of the drug trade, not about anything else.  We have been fighting this so called war for over 50 years now and the only thing we have accomplished is the strengthening of criminal networks in our society, much as prohibition did earlier in our history.  Drugs are with us, they are not going anywhere, and in fact are creating sub cultures in our society that we will lose completely if we do not take a more reasoned approach to these problems… Think about our inner cities and the fact that we have never been able to address the problems our citizens face there.  I am not saying that they are all created by the drug culture, but I would suggest that the drug cultures that you find in these areas does inhibit our efforts to fix these problems…  Legalize them all and control the distribution, shut down the criminal element involved just as we did with alcohol..  

How many people are murdered each year in connection with illegal drugs in our country?  How is this going to change if we keep pursuing the failed policies of the last 50 years?

And your claim is from Wiki which tags the information as unreliable.

You’re backtracking & still unable to provide a counterpoint.

That’s not necessarily true.  Most addicts don’t even get a pleasurable high after a long period of abuse.  At a certain point, they seek their fix just to combat damn-near intolerable withdrawal symptoms.  In fact, most overdoses are accidental.  Most often, OD’s result from a relapsing addict using their normal dose after their tolerance level has dropped from a period of non-use.

Most addicts don’t want to die and are non-violent.  Please quit spreading harmful misinformation.

And You cannot prove you point with original information as China doesn’t publish those number.

You take a Wiki citation and want to treat it as vested information, when it is far from such, Because it supports You meme, When with just a little further investigation, It becomes clear that China underreported it’s incarceration rates.

So If your numbers are correct, post first source citation, preferably from Chinese Government Sources.

There isn’t, Because China treats those numbers as a state secret, and Classifies those numbers.

Now I used a Government Source in my citation, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls…Which is more reliable by magnitudes than You Wiki….

Now, exactly where did I say addicts were violent? Or Want to die?

What I said was that they didn’t care, Their mind is on the next fix what ever the cost, and they don’t care that they will die, The fix and the High, is paramount, no matter what the cost, and you are far from right about addicts not being violent.

Just get in the way of a junkie and His need for the next fix, He will rob, commit battery, and murder to get the drugs or money for that next fix, and that doesn’t even start on, The carnage they create on the Highways driving under the influence, or the violence created in society by the Drug Gangs providing those products to the addicts.

Bobby Beckel, is proficient with embellishments…as are most political and media pundits.   I was reading PDR’s and robbing drug stores back in the 50′s and 60′s after graduating from alcohol (my gateway drug) to barbiturates and amphetamines…the latter became my choice.  Several associates died (never in my immediate presence), but it was all part of the drug drama.  Most in my circle, watched their parents ravage and kill themselves with alcohol, so drugs became a logical choice as part of our own rebellion and stupidity. You can put a Dr P(h)ILL, in every classroom and in every home, provide drug users with quarter million dollar treatments, and barely scratch the surface of cures.  Not gonna happen.  That;s why you don’t see Dr P(h)ILL, picking his dope fiends out of the social dredges where hope is nil.  The American Pharmaceutical Cartels and Alcohol Cartels, are well entrenched into the social fabric.  Their power and wealth, are ABSOLUTE.  Their “pushers”, belong to  the the most prestigious fraternities…government, medical (psychiatry, psychology, dental, general practicioners), and monster media.  For every cure, a thousand will perish.  My only experience with death is an overdose where I did flatline, and while I didn’t see any bright lights, the feeling of moving from this reality to one of vacant peace was quite pleasant.  It taught me a new respect for death, and less respect for the living.  Not a death wish per se, but the knowledge that eternal sleep has its merits.  Whitney Houston, became weary of our corrupted reality, and now she has eternal peace.  We will never comprehend the reasons, because we are far too preoccupied with our own insignificant mortality.

May I ask, why not?

You said that they didn’t care.  Having worked with addicts in the treatment sense, that’s flat-out false.  Most do care about living but many are afraid of seeking treatment because being a drug addict is seen as a weakness and, in many cases, criminal.

As I said, most addicts are not violent.  While there are some that may steal and rob people for money or drugs, they are a significant minority.  Those that kill for drugs are extremely rare.  Murders surrounding drugs more often have to do with money.  You’re relying on a gross stereotype that’s largely based on popular culture.  It’s this stereotype that you’re perpetuating that keeps many addicts from seeking treatment.

Most addicts, believe it or not, are functional members of society.  They’re not all like the ones you find on Intervention.   

As to driving under the influence, you don’t have to be an addict to do that.  In fact, most people who commit DUIs are not addicts.  And towards drug gangs, addicts are not responsible for the actions of cartels.  Drug cartels are the way they are because that’s the nature of the black market.  Violence is the nature of any business that deals with illegal products and activities.  If drugs were available legally, there would be no drug cartels.

I don’t recall Bill or Bob having a degree in phsycology so both of them are speculating which means both of them should STF up.  If it weren’t for speculation most ‘news’ media, left and right wouldn’t have a job.  Edward R. Murrow must be rolling in his grave.  FACTS gentlemen, look it up in the dictionary. That’s F-A-C-T.  I want speculation I’ll watch the local weather forecaster.

And your government citation doesn’t prove your point either. You’re backtracking again.

And You have provided no reliable citation.

Yeah I did, your ego just won’t accept it.

Juan Williams isn’t a lunatic liberal as you have claim comonsense liberal. Beckel is a beeding heart liberal must liberal at Fox News I think he is right on since he was abuser I would take his advice over O’Reilly along with Dr. Drew as well.

All claims which are baseless and lies Bob isn’t speculating he abused drugs & alcohol so he knows what he is talking about. Bill is trying to make it a teaching lesson but I believe unless you know you shouldn’t be talking Bill. Edward R. Murrow doesn’t know what he was talking about as FCC chairmen saying TV was a vast wasteland which that claim is lie TV isn’t vast wasteland which is fact I can fine almost anything on TV so Mr. Murrow is clearly wrong.

I will take Beckel word he can speak on issue and O’Reilly should have Bob on to talk about drug abusers since he abused drugs for a long time. Bill wants media to make it a teaching moment I don’t think it’s there job to do that should be the parents to make it a teaching moment just my opinion. 

 Bill just wants to keep it a black thing. Good thing Mt Rush didn’t accidentally cash his chips in with the hillbilly heroin. He only took it to hearing loss.