We have been getting our ass kicked for 50 years. We have ruined millions of lives through arrest and incarceration. Are we learning our lesson? Apparently not.
Manchin’s comment that this will keep fentanyl off the street is absolutely ridiculous as every year since it was moved to schedule 1 from schedule 2 the US has had more fentanyl deaths than the year before.
When will we learn? When will politicians use data instead of their (incorrect) gut?
Never. Portugal decriminalized drugs decades ago, and has seen their addiction/OD cases drop. If politicians haven’t learned by now, it’s because they don’t want to.
:grrrr:
I’ve been hoping to see pot removed from the list entirely…
Imposing harsher penalties doesn’t have a good track record. Bad news.
I’m a bit ignorant so don’t take this as truth, but isn’t fentanyl use usually due to overprescription of painkillers which leads to dependence, and when it’s taken away (or tolerance requires more than prescribed), they turn to heroin/fentanyl?
Seems that we should focus on the cause and not punish the problem.
And of course, it’s insane that pot is still illegal when drugs like alcohol and tobacco are just fine.
Of course you’re right. Instead we arrest people, force addicts to use black market products with no regulation, and create larger and larger and more and more sophisticated cartels to subvert our War On Drugs.
This issue is also the reason police have become so militarized which is the reason they keep killing poor people in the streets for routine stops and petty crime. It’s the root of a lot of our social ills.
Are you talking about 2020 or 1920? Your post sounds an awful lot like something that would have been said during Prohibition.
Yes, the War On Drugs is effectively a repeat of a failed public policy.
more people have died from alcohol than any other drug combined, likely similar stats for cigarettes.
I guess this will ensure that Biden never gets his second term.
using drugs didnt make people criminals.
We made people into criminals by defining their drug use as criminal.
I regularly call alcohol a ‘plague on society’.
Then again, a fair number of my friends and family would like to see alcohol and tobacco illegal as well, so that argument doesn’t help…
Pointing out how absolutely terrible prohibition was from a violence standpoint has some chance.
If they started from scratch today on deciding what’s legit, there’s no way alcohol would be legal and pot would be illegal.
Trump Jr says hold my beer, imo
