More Casinos Maine? NO NO NO NO NO!

Trying to control others people actions have a cost and one hell of a large cost in ruin lives.

We already have a larger percent of our citizens behind bars then any other first world country by far and in fact most third world countries also.

We could grant free college education to all our citizens if we stop throwing people in prison for drugs crimes.

Thirty nine thousands or so Mexico deaths every year could be stop at once and the fuel for street gangs would be greatly reduce in the US.

There in nothing moral RexRed about your wish to try to keep using the state to enforce your moral values on your neighbors at such a cost.

Are you sure you are not trying to impose your immoral lack of values on people? In order for people to peruse happiness in equality there needs to be laws that insure domestic tranquility.

When gangsters and thugs break these laws should we pin a medal on them? When companies offer shoddy rip off services should we favor them over honest and fair business practices?

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Are you sure you are not trying to impose your immoral lack of values on people? In order for people to peruse happiness in equality there needs to be laws that insure domestic tranquility.

When gangsters and thugs break these laws should we pin a medal on them? When companies offer shoddy rip off services should we favor them over honest and fair business practices?

Well locking up all those people is unlikely to had stopped one person from getting their hands on any kind drugs they desire.

Kind of pointless and even "sinful" to ruin lives for no gain other then providing jobs for those in the criminal justice system.

Those gangsters and thugs are as likely as not to be young men with families who our crazy laws had produce what look like very good money with no education needed or very young men who are drawn into the gang life that our laws made possible before they reach adult judgment levels.

Somehow I would think that instead of spending the hundreds of billions to lock these young men up we would be far better off doing always with the economic nick produced by making drugs illegal and instead spending the billions on offering them a better and legal future.

You are comparing crimes with third party victims to crimes where the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same.

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. Hurting yourself unnecessarily is not sinful, just stupid.

We should lock people up to protect them from others, not from themselves.

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.

Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.

To some degree that is true, no man is an island. But the degree to which they harm society is simply not comparable to rape and can largely be alleviated by regulation and taxation.

When these activities are criminalized it also harms society. Alcohol prohibition led to organized crime, criminalization of prostitution makes a job for pimps and increases sex trafficking.

Independent sex workers harm themselves and society much less than having this all take place in an unregulated criminal underworld.

If you really are open to evaluating your position you may want to take a look at the example of Portugal as they pursued a very successful harm reduction program that included decriminalization.

In short, they started treating drug use as a health issue, and not a crime issue. Their results speak for themselves:

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Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

From another article about the Cato paper:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

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In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.

Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.

Have you ever been to Amsterdam? Well I have. Many drugs are legal there. Yet, you can still be knifed walking down the street at night in fact there is a high probability of that in many parts of the city. There is lewd and public drunkenness. And you are stopped on the corner and the Illegal drugs are still offered openly for sale. Also they have one of the largest black markets in the world. Legalization did nothing to stop organized crime.

http://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2001/mar/04/amsterdam-child-sex-trade-goes-deeper-underground/

"Child protection advocates report that the problem seems to have diminished in recent years, thanks largely to the efforts of a core group of dedicated policemen."

Are you saying if we legalize child prostitution so one will want it anymore? Ridiculous. If we give people all the drugs they want they won't do them anymore?

What you say is simply not true... you give drug addicts a foot and they take a yard... Are we going to legalize robbery and sex crimes of every nature?

Also Mexico might take offense considering they have used the excuse of the reason why the cartels exist is because of the demand in the US...

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Also Mexico might take offense considering they have used the excuse of the reason why the cartels exist is because of the demand in the US...

Why would Mexico take offense?

And, please explain what you think Mexico should do about the fact a much wealthier country sends its criminals tons of money and assault rifles to satisfy its appetite for the drugs it made illegal.

do not disagree with Mexico's stance but I don't agree with it either. It takes two to tango.

no man is an island

I

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do not disagree with Mexico's stance but I don't agree with it either. It takes two to tango.

Without our crazy drug laws there would be no such problem in Mexico.

A poor third world country have not a hope in this universe with dealing with the problem that we had cause them.