Stossel on Legalizing Drugs: What Does Society Gain by Maintaining the Prohibition?

I once heard a presentation by a psychiatrist who was arguing against dropping the prohibition against many illegal substances. He laid out a number of arguments. He said that if these substances were no longer legal they would become widely and easily available. He claimed that the worst effects of legalization would be felt in poorer and generally minority inhabited neighborhoods. There were other arguments as well. In those days I spent my working days with heroin, cocaine and Vicodin addicts. And my natural curiosity often lead me to question them about how and where the obtained their drugs. From these talks with these men and women on the front lines of the war on drugs I knew that everything this shrink argued would happen with the legalization of the drugs was already happening. They are widely and easily available. When I was a kid in the Fifties and Sixties that was not so but it has become so in spite of tens of billions of dollars wasted by our government in the over-hyped war on drugs. Poorer and minority neighborhoods are suffering already disproportionately. if you want heroin, at present, you pretty much have to go into a poor and/or minority neighborhood to find it. The police will spend the money and resources to root suppliers out of better neighborhoods. They are never going to expend such resources in a poor neighborhood. It might even be possible that legalization will remove some of the blight from poor neighborhoods.
Personally, I have no desire to use even marijuana. But I am tired of seeing so much public money wasted with nothing to show for it.

Even Tom Friedman Can talk Sense

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Victoria Jackson Thinks: "There's A Communist Living in the White House!!"

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More Sweetness and Light from the Left

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Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Question is Not 'Did the Dems Buy a Vote for H C Bill?' but "Did They Buy ANOTHER One?'

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Bach Fugue BWV998

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$7 a Gallon Gas ???

Below is from the site JustOneMinute

"While Congress busies itself not passing the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, they can also go ahead and not deal with this:

"To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.

"To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase, according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

"The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010."

One of the best comments on this post said: "So we win the trifecta: we raise the prices of American-made products, we lose American jobs, and we cause a net increase of greenhouse gas emissions! But hey -- we feel good about ourselves for "saving the planet"!"

I was alerted to the this by Pundit and Pundette's little section on the right hand side titled 'Today's Recommended reads' that often leads me to interesting things I would have never otherwise known about.

Bunning Sniped at by Cherry Picking CNN Report and Hiding the Decline

The real economic story is inflation and how the MSM is trying to ignore it. Like the GW pseudo-scientists, the MSM thinks it can hide the decline.


If this report from CNN had been fair they would have also shown a sad story of a struggling family who might lose their home because of the inflation caused by unchecked and unbacked government spending. There will be more and more such examples since the money supply is growing too large with no sound economic basis. There will be more and more families unable to both make house payments and pay for groceries and utilities. I see the month by month inflation in food prices that the Bush deficits topped by Obamonomics has inevitibly created.
Or they could have used an illustration of a family who's income is based on the breadwinner working for the government of California. They could have then talked about how many tens of thousands of jobs are going to dry up because there are not going to be enough tax dollars to continue to pay all those workers at unsustainably high levels. They could also mention that not as many state employees are needed since the taxes to pay for those workers have driven businesses out of the state, requiring fewer workers. One could probably find a sad little family to illustrate any point of view or most any narrative. So a responsible journalist might be expected to give more examples or give objective reasons for keeping the story so shallow and narrowly focused. That unless it is just the standard MSM policy that states that if it makes Obama look bad they will not show it. (I think I picked up that line about not making Obi look bad from a Naked Emberor News piece from Pan Keyes that I saw somewhere on the net yesterday.)

Tuba Skinny Busking On Bedford Avenue

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Tina Fey: Too Sexy for the Net??

Bach Fugue in A minor -- Julian Bream

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Andrew Breitbart Interviewed by Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen

from 2-18-2010


The dispute with Dyson and Maher that Andy Bright refers to can be found here.

I Shall Be Released --- Mama Cass, Mary Travers & Joni Mitchell

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After You've Gone -- Tuba Skinny

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