A real pandemic

[drew562]

So what's the answer then?

I don't do the sh!t, so I don't care if it's legal or not, but as a taxpayer I'm sick of outrageous police and prison budgets spent on trying to fight the war on drugs that is proving completely ineffective. As you said courts are backed up and prisons are full, people caught with drugs are just getting a slap on the wrist, if they even see the inside of a court room, many have the charges dropped first.

Maybe if there was real punishment for the trade of illegal drugs, but I don't know how that would happen without more costs encurred by law enforcement and corrections and more burden to the taxpayer.

We’ve come along way from actually enforcing laws. I got caught with .2 of a gram of weed in 1986. I was 18 for a only a couple weeks and was stuck with a drug charge record that last until I got a Pardon 10 years ago. Had I got a slap on the hand I would probably be a criminal still to this day. Because the law give me the smack down outside of speeding tickets I’ve been a choir boy all these years

 

[LennyR]

So what's the answer then?

I don't do the sh!t, so I don't care if it's legal or not, but as a taxpayer I'm sick of outrageous police and prison budgets spent on trying to fight the war on drugs that is proving completely ineffective. As you said courts are backed up and prisons are full, people caught with drugs are just getting a slap on the wrist, if they even see the inside of a court room, many have the charges dropped first.

Maybe if there was real punishment for the trade of illegal drugs, but I don't know how that would happen without more costs encurred by law enforcement and corrections and more burden to the taxpayer.

Well I certainly don’t profess to have all the answers, but I’m not dense enough to not
t see the slippery slope we are on. One thing that pisses me off to no end is watching criminals go to jail for extended periods of time and come out still addicted ? To many bleeding heart bawl babies that worry about the harsh measures needed to get clean . To me , what better place to get clean, and how asinine and messed up to imagine a prisoner would be able to continue to get drugs , thru bleeding heart BS or by criminal acts by guards or other inmates. Cut them off , cold turkey , when they come out , that part of the problem at least is solved . We pay lip service and spend millions to pretend we are solving any problems, but the issues continue cause we are to spineless and worried about feelings to actually do anything tough. That’s something I think we should do.

 

[adamg]

Well I certainly don’t profess to have all the answers, but I’m not dense enough to not
t see the slippery slope we are on. One thing that pisses me off to no end is watching criminals go to jail for extended periods of time and come out still addicted ? To many bleeding heart bawl babies that worry about the harsh measures needed to get clean . To me , what better place to get clean, and how asinine and messed up to imagine a prisoner would be able to continue to get drugs , thru bleeding heart BS or by criminal acts by guards or other inmates. Cut them off , cold turkey , when they come out , that part of the problem at least is solved . We pay lip service and spend millions to pretend we are solving any problems, but the issues continue cause we are to spineless and worried about feelings to actually do anything tough. That’s something I think we should do.

It's the same formula everywhere in modern society. Choices and direction on things like infrastructure, social policies, criminal justice system are always set by what is easiest to swallow for voters and citizens at large. At no point does the effectiveness enter into the decision making process.

 

[Cdnfireman]

It's been less than 4 years since legalization occurred in Canada, I'm sure the use of authorized product will increase over time.

Without seeing data I have a hard time believing marijuana has increased public service costs that much, particularly when alcohol consumption/abuse is still such a huge issue.

I would hire a pot smoker any day over a drinker. The first guy goes home, gets stoned, eats a bunch of food and goes to bed, arriving for work the next day nourished and rested. The drinker drinks, may or may not eat, stays up til midnight, and shows up the next day tired and hungover.

I find it ironic the people the give marijuana such a bad rap, as often those same people have no issue whatsoever with alcohol.

There’s use, and then there’s abuse….neither the recreational pot user or the social drinker should be a problem for anyone. The drinker that shows up still pissed or hungover is as worthless as the pot user who shows up still in a fog. Big difference between those and hard drugs. Lots of the synthetic drugs are highly addictive and for certain people are addictive after the first use. Making them more available is a recipe for disaster. The older organically based drugs like cocaine and heroin are largely being replaced by the synthetics. When they are out there they are usually cut with synthetics to boost their potency and increase their profitability. Synthetics are cheaper, can be produced locally and have a way higher profit margin. They also are much more deadly due to quality control issues and the obvious lack of concern from the manufacturers and sellers about what they sell.
The solution? IMHO, individual users caught with some small personal use amount should be fined and sent to mandatory rehab, with successive charges resulting in custodial rehab. Anyone caught with quantities above personal use or considered to be manufacturing and distributing, should be executed.

 

[snopro]

So what's the answer then?

I don't do the sh!t, so I don't care if it's legal or not, but as a taxpayer I'm sick of outrageous police and prison budgets spent on trying to fight the war on drugs that is proving completely ineffective. As you said courts are backed up and prisons are full, people caught with drugs are just getting a slap on the wrist, if they even see the inside of a court room, many have the charges dropped first.

Maybe if there was real punishment for the trade of illegal drugs, but I don't know how that would happen without more costs encurred by law enforcement and corrections and more burden to the taxpayer.

Theres more to the cost of drugs to the taxpayers and prison costs, etc. What about the cost to the health care system? Most of these safe sites the left has set up need full time paramedics to administer life saving treatments or rides to hospitals. I believe the solution is harsher penalties. Rather have crackheads in prison than on the streets robbing and causing violence. If theres one thing we know in all of this is that if its the governments idea then its probably the wrong idea.

 

[ferniesnow]

Consequences go a long way to rehabilitating people. Back in the day, the razor strap on the back side for petty shoplifting normally kept kids on the straight and narrow.
This day and age, they only talk about consequences (both Trudope and Biden) and everybody knows there are no actions. The cartels are successful. Why? because they dish out consequences. Some are harsh but they get the job done.
The wishy-washy way the left wants to treat the problem is to cave and make it better/easier for the addict. With the high number of deaths from OD, when are they going to wake up and start getting tough on drugs?

 

[Cyle]

It's really not that hard to solve the crime issue Canada has, just too many soft lefties who don't want harsh penalties. The long prison sentences don't work, most prisons are a revolving door and each time they just learn how to become a better criminal, never mind that they can still get drugs in prison too. There should not be any prison sentence greater then 5 years, it should be automatic death penalty, same with these people who visit 10, 20 times, 3 strikes and you're out regardless of what it is. It might take a year or two but crime would become incredibly rare because people would actually be scared of getting caught, or most criminals would be dead either one is a good solution.

Drugs is a harder solution. Drugs dealers and makers absolutely should be killed but the drug addicts I think there should be good options to help them get clean. If it actually works in gradually weening them off the drugs by giving them a safe supply, I think that is a good solution. Safe injections sites absolutely not though, why would you enable them to shoot up whatever they want?

 

[Cyle]

Theres more to the cost of drugs to the taxpayers and prison costs, etc. What about the cost to the health care system? Most of these safe sites the left has set up need full time paramedics to administer life saving treatments or rides to hospitals. I believe the solution is harsher penalties. Rather have crackheads in prison than on the streets robbing and causing violence. If theres one thing we know in all of this is that if its the governments idea then its probably the wrong idea.

I doubt a safe injection site is more costly. Having ambulances called non stop to OD's has got to cost way more.

 

[freeflorider]

This is why we need to stop sending them. Problems will go away.

 

[mclean]

So with Taylor Hawkins dying in Bogota, makes you wonder if it was fentanyl

 

[tmo1620]

Not sure with the billions of dollars the cartel have why they are smuggling it all the way here then. Why not produce it here in a lab. Oh yah they tried and it’s crap. Why is coke only produced in South America? Because that’s where it grows.
Synthetic opioids are not the same as some guy jumping up in down on gas filled bags of mash. It’s the real deal,government has failed as a pot dealer. only they could screw that up. All the crap in our stores are out of date and the smokers I know buy from the private guys.

That has nothing to do with it lol. They tried to and it’s crap ? Lol, they never tried to build indoor cocoa plant greenhouses, never once in the history of organized crime lmao, your clueless. The reason the organized crime doesn’t do it here is that it is very hard to hide hundreds of acres of indoor cocoa plants. One fully mature cocoa plant produces less than a quarter to half gram of coke, it’s not like marijuana where a well grown mature female weed plant can yield 1/4-1/2 of a pound of dried flower. You need 10’s of thousands of cocoa plants to yield a worth while harvest, you have any idea the size of building and property you would need? Imagine a 100 acre wheat field covered in a building and then multiply that by 1000’s of buildings and that would give you what the cartels have. As far as the refining process of raw coke product it can be done in a shed in the slums of Peru which is where most raw coke product is refined, so in a lab it would be done much better and efficiently as you could use heat and pressures to streamline the process and yield less losses. Opium…. Well you can grow opium poppies in lots of different places around the world, the climate to support poppy fields exists in the USA, South America, Africa, Asia etc. not hard to grow that plant. All the big pharma either outsource the raw opium product from approved countries legal farms designated for opiate pill production or have their own gov’t approved poppy farmers right in the United States. Heroin, OxyContin , Percocet, codeine etc are all made from a raw opium product to start. Pill production is obviously a completely different process than refined heroin but none the less the same base drug. Pills are 90% filler material and sophisticated labs allow precise potency of each pill to be achieved, where as pure heroin is well…. Pure and tougher to judge dose. By your logic your saying outdoor pot would be better than indoor? Not a chance in hell

 

[freeflorider]

Yah that exactly what I’m saying…..(sarcasm) trust me in know how it’s made and how it works. that or maybe I’m not paying attention when I’m spending months in places like Columbia,peru,Panama, ecuador,Bolivia. Thank for the lesson though.

 

[Tchetek]

It's been less than 4 years since legalization occurred in Canada, I'm sure the use of authorized product will increase over time.

Without seeing data I have a hard time believing marijuana has increased public service costs that much, particularly when alcohol consumption/abuse is still such a huge issue.

I would hire a pot smoker any day over a drinker. The first guy goes home, gets stoned, eats a bunch of food and goes to bed, arriving for work the next day nourished and rested. The drinker drinks, may or may not eat, stays up til midnight, and shows up the next day tired and hungover.

I find it ironic the people the give marijuana such a bad rap, as often those same people have no issue whatsoever with alcohol.

The legal weed sucks ass compared to the guys that know what they are doing.

And over priced!

The government can’t do anything right! The Black market isn’t going away.

 

[pano-dude]

The legal weed sucks ass compared to the guys that know what they are doing.

And over priced!

The government can’t do anything right! The Black market isn’t going away.

There are good legal growers but you are right the best weed comes from small growers with a passion for growing the best
product they can.

 

[tmo1620]

There are good legal growers but you are right the best weed comes from small growers with a passion for growing the best
product they can.

Small batch craft style cannabis has always been the best