Automated Conservative Response: Why just add another psychoactive substance for young people to use and destroy their lives?

Fine, I’ll trade you weed for alcohol. Oh wait, we tried making alcohol illegal already? How’d that work? Not so well, you say? But then, it’s different for pot. Because, well, you know. Because.

California could have used his help a couple months ago, where the hell was he then?

I mean, does anyone honestly think legalizing pot would make America worse? The two main lobbies who were against Prop 19 in CA: Prison Guards union, and the alcoholic beverage lobby. Their motives could not be more transparent, and in the case of the former, absolutely disgusting. Less drunks, more stoners is still a net gain, folks. Alcohol is the worst drug most people will ever do.

O.o

This has to be the biggest WTF moments ever.. LOL i never expected this from Pat Robertson. Good job with being sane

I don’t understand any of it… The ‘scripts I HAVE to take are more than enough for me. But then I prefer a natural high.

Few years ago someone was suggesting making most of the common “street” drugs legal and having the FDA regulate them. It would tend to aim the law at illegal suppliers. When the FDA and any third parties got finished with them the prices would be up there…

Hell ya Pat… pass da bong.

Can’t we all just get abong??

If we legalize pot, we’ll have a whole new generation of votinh-age 18-year-olds waving peace signs and mumbling “groovy” over and over and over. But, seriously, Pat, what can explain this flash of sensibility?

To two biggest legalization supporters in the House and Senate are both Republicans. I sometimes wonder if liberals base their view of Republicans on bad stereotypical movies of the 80′s rather than reality.

ModerateMan said:
To two biggest legalization supporters in the House and Senate are both Republicans. I sometimes wonder if liberals base their view of Republicans on bad stereotypical movies of the 80’s rather than reality.

They’re libertarians, in reality. There’s just that unwritten Constitutional Amendment that you can’t be elected without the letter D or R next to your name, so they obliged.

Fact: You need revenue this is revenue! State control issue not government control issue!

ModerateMan said:
To two biggest legalization supporters in the House and Senate are both Republicans. I sometimes wonder if liberals base their view of Republicans on bad stereotypical movies of the 80’s rather than reality.

Although, unlike their colleagues, at least those two are consistently conservative: smaller government, period. Not smaller government in your paycheck, bigger government in your bedroom, or vis versa, which is really what R and D offer.

njoy-d-ride said:
I don’t understand any of it… The ’scripts I HAVE to take are more than enough for me. But then I prefer a natural high.

Few years ago someone was suggesting making most of the common “street” drugs legal and having the FDA regulate them. It would tend to aim the law at illegal suppliers. When the FDA and any third parties got finished with them the prices would be up there…

Sense makes not you. Natural = chemically synthesized pills made in large laboratories, Unnatural = grows from the ground?

First the democrats are mustering up some spine to get some key legislation passed during the lame duck and now robertson is advocating decriminalization of marijuana?>!>!>! holy shit im starting to get scared did we just step through the twilight zone.

@moderateman..”I sometimes wonder if liberals base their view of Republicans on bad stereotypical movies of the 80’s rather than reality.”

ha ha nice try. everybody knows libertarians and rethugs are a different breed, cut from the same cloth, but still different. Rethuglicans are scum of the earth and they prove it everyday. trying to fillibuster 911 relief funding because its payed for by closing a loophole that gives transnational corporations tax breaks,,.is just one more example, another brick in the wall that is the GOP.

Francis, when you do you plan to correct your story about Neil Cavuto committing “Racism with a Scale”?

It’s a lie:

http://johnnydollar.us/files/101219fhwirb.php

I don’t know much about Pat Robertson except that he has said some outlandish things in the past, but he makes a good argument here in that the criminalization of marijuana has been proven to be as big a failure as was prohibition. Why? One cannot legislate morality (although it is possible to legislate ethics.)

It has been a struggle for me as a conservative person to take a position on drugs, in general, but I could argue that legalizing all drugs would be the best thing. Here’s why:

Each year, the Department of Justice publishes a report entitled “Crime in America.” In reading this annual document (which is free for the asking, if you’re interested), one finds that ~65% of all crimes in the United States are drug related.

Now, more than ever, drug-related crimes have become increasingly violent. In Mexico, last year, there were 30,100 murders perpetrated in relation to crimes and in Juarrez, they average 9 murders per day! I don’t have the figures to quote, but in the United States, if there were no drug crimes, the taxpayers would save Billions of dollars each year, and these monies could be used in much better ways.

So, it becomes obvious that the “War on Drugs” has been probably the most dismal of all failures of all government programs.

Drugs are relatively cheap to produce, and if drugs were legalized, they could be distributed at local pharmacies, and provided free of charge to registered addicts. The days of being mugged by a junkie would be over. The days of young women prostituting themselves to feed their habits would be over. The days of families losing their homes because theire drug-addicted relative spent all their money on drugs would be over.

With the monies saved in fighting an unwinnable war on drugs, the government could open rehabilitation centers for those addicts who wanted to take advantage of them and the taxpayer would STILL end up winners on the deal. One place where rehab centers could be opened are at the military bases that were closed down years ago–the buildings are sitting there unused and empty. Private contracting firms could be employed by the government to serve and maintain these facilities, and this would produce more jobs (although hopefully not so many).

Back to the issue of marijuana: It’s ALWAYS been about taxation. The Marijuana Stamp Act (a LONG time ago) made marijuana illegal because the government couldn’t figure out a way to levy taxes on its growers. Marijuana, after all, is a WEED.

While Pat Robertson might not really want to legalize weed, he brings up the idea that it should be.

Just4thefax said:
Fact: You need revenue this is revenue! State control issue not government control issue!

I agree. STATES should have purview over this and the Marijuana Stamp Act should be repealed, which would enable state governments to do what they will.

njoy-d-ride said:
Few years ago someone was suggesting making most of the common “street” drugs legal and having the FDA regulate them.

By my comments above, I was not saying that I wanted the FDA–and Federal government in general–to grow. Maybe some of the paper shufflers could just get reassigned. (But, you may have enough people volunteering their time for a project like this that would make it even less expensive. I somehow believe many of you would volunteer to be “tasters.”)

I think Pat Robertson is a terrible human being, especially after blaming 9-11 on gay people, but he’s right on this. He’s still a terrible human being, and I don’t like him anymore than I did previously, but his argument here is absolutely on the mark.

Well, he’s old, it was perhaps an unintended moment of clarity of which he has a 50% chance of remembering it by tomorrow. Or, he wants a chance at the money available that faith-based prison rehab/training/counseling groups receive.

Now if he can finally admit that trickle down economics, deregulations, and the ownership society were failed policies, too, then we’d be getting somewhere.

mattgordonmd said:
Well, he’s old, it was perhaps an unintended moment of clarity of which he has a 50% chance of remembering it by tomorrow

Or maybe he’s just stumbled on a cure for the onset of glaucoma he’s experiencing.

Pat Roberts must be (is) a pothead!

I don’t care about Pat, I’m not taking it at face value. Why would he approve of the “great devil’s”action. Wonder what will come down on the people smoking weed? earthquakes, tsunami, tornado, or different types of disaster. May be he smoked dope while bashing earthquake victims, Islam, Gays, blaming Americans for 9/11. His secret is finally out, he is a dope smoker, he was high when making all those statement. I bet the weed made him say Marijuana should be legalised, when he wakes up he would repent. But what the heck, he decides what he thinks is right or wrong. POS.

It’s amazing that this is one thing that almost everybody can agree on. if it is for liberty or economical reasons, most people feel it is the right thing to do.

Sadly, the politicians are still too scared to touch it. I believe every top political candidate in California this last election did not support prop 19 and making marijuana legal.

“I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

My goodness, the smartest most intelligent thing that Robertson has ever said.

A Kim Bo said:
Or maybe he’s just stumbled on a cure for the onset of glaucoma he’s experiencing.

Fact: Typical liberal! See definition of a liberal here!
http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberals

I’ve said for years that our “war on drugs” has been an expensive, disastrous failure.

We cram our jails full of people guilty of the innocuous offense of having marijuana and put them slap into the midst of hardened criminals. It’s a life changing issue. And it is just butt stupid.

That’s not to mention giving people a criminal record ( a DRUG record ) that folows them for the rest of their lives and ruins any chance they may have had to succeed.

We desperately need to re-think this.

Harry Flashman said:
I’ve said for years that our “war on drugs” has been an expensive, disastrous failure.

We cram our jails full of people guilty of the innocuous offense of having marijuana and put them slap into the midst of hardened criminals. It’s a life changing issue. And it is just butt stupid.

That’s not to mention giving people a criminal record ( a DRUG record ) that folows them for the rest of their lives and ruins any chance they may have had to succeed.

We desperately need to re-think this.

Yup. Our prison system is a joke. It’s the fucking Puritans masquerading as conservatives that promote these ridiculous laws.

Publius219 said:
Yup. Our prison system is a joke. It’s the fucking Puritans masquerading as conservatives that promote these ridiculous laws.

Add to that the ever-increasing role of prison privatization and you have yourself a whole mess of happy.

njoy-d-ride said:
Few years ago someone was suggesting making most of the common “street” drugs legal and having the FDA regulate them. It would tend to aim the law at illegal suppliers. When the FDA and any third parties got finished with them the prices would be up there…

Well, one could argue that, at an average of $250 dollars an ounce, the price of marijuana is already pretty high up there.

Legalization and regulation do have their benefits. First, if drugs are regulated, hospitals won’t have to worry about treating drug users getting sick from tainted supply or accidental overdose (which is largely caused by ignorance of potency) as much. That would definitely help ease health care costs. Second, it would make it easier to provide clean needles to IV drug users, thereby reducing the transmission of blood-bourne illnesses, like HIV. Third, it would knock out a serious amount of income collected by the drug cartels running amok in Mexico.

The fact of the matter is, prohibition or not, there will always be drug users. We can deal with this realistically, by minimizing the problems this social inevitability causes, or we can remain on the idealistic path of no-tolerance.

Be careful giving Pat too much gredit for common, good sense. I believe Mr. Robertson is very connected to an organization called “Church Army”. Church Army is making a ton of money from a bogus effort to rehabilitate and house and feed addicts and alcoholics in our neighborhoods. I’ve seen it first hand and it is a money making scam. Pat can’t make that money if his little puppets end-up in prison. I believe decriminalization to be a logical approach, as well. However, Pat Robertson is lobbying for a self seeking purpose, kids. His organization is killing people.

Wasn’t one of Robertson’s sons arrested for heroin use–more than once? What’s next? Legalized smack for everyone?

Aside from weed, subsidize drug addicts? What BS! If they want help kicking their habit, we pay plenty in tax dollars for treatment programs. Just give them their ‘drugs’ and all their problems will magically disappear? What kind of f*cking bubble do you live in? Join the rest of us in the ‘real world’. Shut down the damn border, gee there’s a simple start.

Harry Flashman said:
I’ve said for years that our “war on drugs” has been an expensive, disastrous failure.

We cram our jails full of people guilty of the innocuous offense of having marijuana and put them slap into the midst of hardened criminals. It’s a life changing issue. And it is just butt stupid.

That’s not to mention giving people a criminal record ( a DRUG record ) that folows them for the rest of their lives and ruins any chance they may have had to succeed.

We desperately need to re-think this.

i agree and also it isn’t a war. Because as Publius219 said before, wars end. This conflict didn’t. Our Gov is fighting this war agaisnt its own citizens, rather than reallocating their resources to fight the root of the problem..

Ask the Dutch, how pot is treating them..

KiKi said:
Join the rest of us in the ‘real world’. Shut down the damn border, gee there’s a simple start.

For other reasons, I agree the border should/MUST be sealed, but if drugs are decriminalized, the drug lords have no income from the US. While I may be reluctant to admit the US is not able to win a “war,” the so-called “war on drugs” was lost the day it started. It’s the same thing as prohibition, just a different vehicle to “feel good land.”

Robertson has become an idiot.

There’s a lot of it going around.

Prohibition of anything that people are willing to buy doesn’t work for the same reason that prohibiting falling objects doesn’t work: it attempts to repeal a law of nature, in the case of illegal drugs, the law of Supply and Demand. In the case of prohibition, the price of a good rises until the price justifies the risks posed by enforcement of the prohibition. Even in Iran, where possession of heroin carries a death sentence, people are willing to risk death if the rewards are sufficient.

Let’s not forget the medical marijuana industry. Many medical growers opposed Prop. 19 because of how private growth would cut into their profits.