@orathaic

Usually, they just get a judgment against the prisoners, then make them overpay taxes to cover the judgment.

Also, pretending money exists that really doesn't is essentially the entire business plan of Wall Street and the federal government.

The problem with private, charter, and for profit schools is they all use the public school system as the dumping ground for undesirable students. The idiots, special needs, violent students, and anything else that would lower test scores or profits get kicked out.

Sure those that are left get a better education, but it doesn't fix the problems with educating the rest.

No, marijuana usage is linked to increased rates of violent crime. Leave it to Tolstoy to think that 25% is good newsfof his pothead mivement. No, actually its not. The figure for violent criminals who regularly use drugs us much higher. Drugs m,ade someone eat a guys face. Why you trust cotporations with the legal abiluty to sell dangerous mental illness inducing recreational drugs is beyond me.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/dcf/duc.cfm

@Putin - Holy crap, dude! Were you on drugs when you wrote that? And I thought I couldn't type! Oh, and even I could see Tolstoy was being humorous/sarcastic.

Because people are going to do them anyway.

@Lando - Maybe you should say *some* people. Cause not all of us will do drugs (thank God!). :-)

My assertion is perfectly accurate, thanks. I didn't say *all* people.

People will break the law anyway so get rid of all laws.

I was just picking on you, dude. But just saying people might imply a greater number than reality would indicate. But that is to the reader to "read into it" and not your responsibility. ;-)

Putin, do you think there's a link between tattoos and violent crimes? Or how about listening to fucking terrible industrial music? Or how about anything counter culture. FFS, to substantiate your claims there needs to be a mechanism, a means, some explanation as to how the drugs lead in the individual's to commit the crimes. And don't paint all drugs with the 'addiction leads to crime' brush because, if that was the case, there'd be more coffee junkies holding up convenience stores than weed smoking burnouts.

No, regulate it so it is safe. The reason it is against the law is because it has the potential to do bad things. If it was controlled or regulated, remove some/most of the negatives it would bring a net social benefit. . This is obvious, but governments are scared to change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14/pure-ecstasy-safe-for-use_n_1597007.html

I'm with Lando here. I may nto partake, but one of the biggest issues with drugs is "quality control". If the government regulated and taxed drugs like they do alcohol and tobacco, we would have more "wholesome" (for lack of a better word) drugs on the street and the users could expect a certain reliable reaction when they bought a specific brand of pot, say. It would aslo be easier to control and keep out of kids hands if there was no need for a black market. It wouldn't stop them (as is evidenced by teen drinking) but it might make fewer teen addicts.

But with that comes the need to offer reasonably priced detoxing along the lines of "stop smoking" programs.

The down side of drugs? No different than the downside of the other two mind altering and addictive substances that are legal: alcohol and tobacco.

Weed is definitely less addictive than either of those two, that has been proven. I would say that the downside of alcohol is probably a lot worse than a good majority of the of the illegal drugs people use recreationally. And that is without any regulations on these products.

"If it was controlled or regulated, remove some/most of the negatives it would bring a net social benefit. . This is obvious,"

Because where tried, these 'changes' have failed miserably. This whole crap about regulation and legalization will solve everything. Really, where has that worked with any other dangerous, addictive product that wasn't suddenly legalized and regulated?

Nobody is going to buy the 'regulated' marijuana when the unregulated shit is stronger, which the THC content of your beloved pot has increased by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, 'regulations' about how much you can sell or produce are just going to create new black markets. As it stands, where there is 'regulated and legalized' marijuana, cartels have gotten stronger because they are the only reliable supplier. As usual drug legalizers make everything seem so simple, and yet it isn't.

"Putin, do you think there's a link between tattoos and violent crimes?"

Do you think there is a link between any cause and effect? Or are you a Humean skeptic who is just playing games here, and thinks we can't possibly know of any cause and effect, only that one thing is correlated or precedes another.

Yonni, does the fact that nearly a 1/4 of all criminals commit their violent crimes for obtaining drug money mean nothing? Or is that not cause and effect? Or are you just defending your drug habits no matter what the evidence?

Now I disagree with alcohol being worse than "a good majority" of the illicit drugs. heroinne and coke are far more physically addictive and will destroy the body within a few years far worse than alcohol. Alcoholic liver damage on the order of failure takes decades.

And while smoking has it's risks (cancer and emphysema), there is no a guaranteed damage. Cancer may or may not strike even though the odds of getting it are greatly increased.

"I would say that the downside of alcohol is probably a lot worse than a good majority of the of the illegal drugs people use recreationally."

A good majority? Really? That might not have anything to do with its legality and availability now would it?

Walk into a hospital and witness the drug seekers there, particularly the meth heads, then come back and tell me the drugs you want legalized won't hurt society.

'regulations' can say your customers have the right to sue you if your product contains rat poison. Or anti-freeze (oh that's for wine) they can say you must label a %THC measure (like the alcohol volume on drink) NOT needing to prevent high concentration THC product being sold, simply letting the customer get an idea of strong and weak strains with less experimental error.

This is safer even with the same product...

Putin, you seem to think it is the place of authorities to control behaviour of individuals, taking that power away from peers, families, and communities (whether work, gaming, church, or sports, we are all part of several communities)

Government can try but ultimately people will be more influenced by their immediate relationships. And given the demonstrated information the weed is pess damaging than alcohol you can't be consistant without either calling for the banning of both or the legalization/regulation of both. (or prohibition of alcohol AND the regulation of weed)

That is may not be perfectly easy does not mean the long-term benefits to society will outweigh the shortterm bumps which we would have to adjust to.

'nearly a 1/4 of all criminals commit their violent crimes for
obtaining drug money mean nothing' - that doesn't mean you need to criminalise drug users; anyone who is commiting violent crime to support a drug habit is likely an addict with a medical problem. I notice you call them criminals, that means they will find it hard to get a job; the cause? Oh the system says they are criminals - thus criminalisation logically has a causal relationship with violent drug crime. Of course NOBODY is saying we want to decriminalize violence. So the correlation doesn't matter - we can still lock up the violent for being violent.... That might even be an incentive to avoid violence since they're not a criminal until they commit a crime, but if they're a drug user and already criminalised they have nothing to lose...

Your logic is failing.

"Government can try but ultimately people will be more influenced by their immediate relationships. And given the demonstrated information the weed is pess damaging than alcohol you can't be consistant without either calling for the banning of both or the legalization/regulation of both. (or prohibition of alcohol AND the regulation of weed) "

Right, so I take you're for deregulated food products too, right. The government can't come in and tell people that this or that food is a public health concern, we should stop eating it. We can't tell people to wear bicycle helmets. We can't tell people to not play lawn darts. The whole idea of a government concerning itself with the safety of its citizens goes out the window.

And naturally it's ok for your church or corporations to tell you to do something, but once the government does so, it's over the line.

If communities were actually effective at doing *any* of this, you might have a point. Instead we have urban decay, and suburban non-communities whose whole purpose is allowing people to live away from people while exploiting the jobs and infrastructure of cities. Unleashing legal drugs when we just spent the better part of two decades doing things like cleaning up the crack epidemic that destroyed many communities, is absurd and irresponsible. And the only thing motivating for is a libertine desire to be free of any responsibilities whatsoever.

No, your logic is failing. The claim is that drugs are 'victimless' and don't increase violence. Might like I suppose casinos are 'victimless' and supposedly don't lead to increased crime. Yet whenever you're presented with statistics to the contrary, you claim my logic is failing.

As I said elsewhere, people aren't in prison for simply using or possessing drugs. They're in prison for selling drugs, for violent offenses, or for having a long rap sheat where possession might be one of the charges. Drug users aren't being 'criminalized', more often than not simple users are mandated treatment as their 'sentence'.

But stop pretending that having more people on drugs doesn't lead to a more dangerous, crime prone society, where people are not thinking rationally and apt to do dangerous and/or criminal things to feed their addictions.

I think the failing in these arguments is often that we use the term drug to describe so many different things.
Again, I say you need to look at the individual drugs and tell me what mechanism there are that make the pot head more dangerous than the coffee addict. Why is the burnout more likely to commit a violent crime than the mr. Joe 6 pack?

I think there are other issues with smoking pot but until you can explain the correlation the it's nothing more than that. A nifty fact to throw around with no substance.

You wanna know why we don't legalise drugs? Let's look at the recent Fast & Furious and ask ourselves if there would have been a need (or for that matter, an opportunity) to commit that cluster fuck if drugs were legal and the "drug lords" of Central and South America could just pay simple import tariffs to get there goods on store shelves next to the liquor and the tobacco products. It may sound like a conspiracy theory here, but big brother loves to tell people what they can and can't do. At the same time, the big business friends of big rother can make money selling guns to big brother who then sells/gives them to the same people who are fighting on the other side of the drug war.

So the only reason people on drugs commit crimes is they 'can't find a job' because they're a criminal. And naturally you have proof of that. Oh wait I forgot, the legalizers never need proof of any of their claims.

And yes, it has been shown that PER user, the damage done from alcohol (at least in the UK) is more costly to society than smoking weed.

From street violence, to alcohol rleated diseases, to absences from work, to physical addiction and withdrawal (you can die from alcohol withdrawal, or overdosing, there are literally no recorded death of marjuana overdose, anywhere, the toxic dose is more than you can physically smoke - it may be possible to overdose on THC if you injected in straight into your veins, but we don't know what a fatal does would be - i think they have failed to kill lab animals with massive doses)

The death rate from suicide associated with anti-depressants (per user) higher than the death rate associated with ecstacy (again per user)

There are lots of 'safe' drugs which don't get the same news coverage because they are legal... Infact i believe someone went to the trouble of visualising it: www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/visualising-the-guardian-datablog/

"Again, I say you need to look at the individual drugs and tell me what mechanism there are that make the pot head more dangerous than the coffee addict."

You never answered my question about what is an example of an example mechanism of cause & effect you believe in. I have no interest in debating someone who just shouts out 'correlation doesn't equal causation' after every post. My guess is stereotypes about potheads being 'passive' is sufficient for you to believe that potheads aren't more apt to commit crimes. Except the statistics show otherwise.