I completely understand your concern and it does have some validity to it. Makes sense to me. My mom is tired of ringing up customers buying lobster and frozen shrimp and using their EBT card. People abuse government handout programs. The thing is that government doesn't operate under a structured priority list to solve our problems (we're doing this first, and only after that's fixed will we tackle this, then this, then that) and if it's ok to legalize drugs only after handout programs are cleaned up, drug legalization will never happen. A lot of these issues are intertwined with many moving parts, but just because it's harder to move one part (cleaning up handout programs) doesn't mean you stop progress on everything else.mamabearCali wrote:This is my concern about legalizing drugs. When those drugs were legal we did not have the large saftey net that we do now. If you chose to spend your life on drugs then you felt the consequences of your choices as you did not have $$ for food and housing. Live as yiu choose, but don't expect me to pay for your drugs and your food if you make such foolish decisions.
Now if we can address that, then I think that we could do better to decriminalize some of it and out the other stuff (the explosive stuff like meth or other super dangerous ones) in the confiscation/treatment category. The war on drugs though has been wholly ineffective and at minimum we need to change tactics.
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Absolutely. That just comes under basic freedom of speech. Don't let anyone guilt you into not speaking up for your position. The uphill battle is that many people that have those positions (no drug use, no gay marriage, etc) don't stop at decrying such behavior; they want to outright ban such practices. While you have a softer approach to the issues, how do you craft your message so that you can still speak your position without getting lumped in with the banners? And once you have crafted that message, how do you defend it against the social conservatives that say you're a soft RINO and want you out of the Republican party? This is why I like the Libertarian party. I can be with a group of like-minded people on the issues and one part of that group isn't trying to kick the other part out.mamabearCali wrote:I want to add that if we are going to act in the interests of "freedom" then if they are free to do drugs I wish to retain my right to say that drug abuse is dangerous, foolish, and ill advised of people intending on living more an 22 years. It has seemed to me that those so often crying freedom freedom for gay marriage/ drug use want to curtail my freedom of speech to decry such behavior.
Live as you want but don't force me to pay for it or to give you a gold star for your choices.
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