on alcohol: if you think how many people and how much and how often drink:

basically it is the word REGULAR.

Adults – mostly all of us- drink on regular basis.
More or less.
Figures are staggering.

Typical young man drinks couple of times a week and drinks heavily once a week. Not everybody, not in any country, i mean like an average, Joe Doe.

and we have statistics as well.

Now my point:

alcohol is widely used

but compared to its consumption figures damage that is done is not so big!!!!

So we have to keep in mind this: what kind of damage alcohol brings

Alcohol kills brain cells, we all know it. Pot on the contrary does not kill brain cells: it only sorta massages them.

The diagrams in drug war facts speak for themselves but we also have to think on our own.

man it is all reality.

See, i get my education in USSR,

my grandfather went to the Highest party School in the 50s, in Moscow,

through my whole life it happened that i was slightly exposed to the highest ranks of sovdep and Chinese leadeship: member of a family, who was a doctor treated krushev’s children, a girlfriend was a granddaughter of second in command to MAO

it is all very strange how my life got twisted around those figures.

Well, u may ask WHY i mention?

But you probably figured it out yourself.

It was a ground creating to the answer to your question.

What do i think:

i think Golitsyn is a must read for ANY sociology, history, or anything like this course in college and a must taught subject in high schools

I have exact confirmations to all his ideas coming from my life experience.

He just put in english things that we were taught since grade 1 in school: world communist class struggle in the west will deepen, revolution will take place, soviet military is NUMBER ONE and so on.

See what i mean?

And since i had a chance to have a grasp of mentality of people in high circles of sovdep:
it corresponded as well.

Soviet -Chinese split: 100% right. I have a friend who’s grand father traveled to China in th 50-60 on a special mission. he also made my friends learn Art of War!!!

Chinese girlfriend used to live in Moscow. KGB was workin with her for years: they persued her to go for a visit to Beijing(80s)

then she met me and wo-ala )) told them to f***k off))) i can imagine how they hated me: i am proud of course.

Grey terror: sure.

Just remember WHEN 9-11 took place: right in the middle of dot.com debacle. U will appriciate the timing i am sure

My friend is probably the number one researcher on Golitsyn matter in the World. He is also in the list of prominent American anticommunists. I am proud to know him. You probably read his page too. I put some links)))

Things that he tells are sufficiently more insightfully the anything else on the matter.

Bottom line:

around 6 month ago i was shocked when he told me exactly how situation will develop:

economic problems will go overboard, a war in the middle east, more economic disasters, gray terror attacks, possible extermination of up to 100 mil of Americans, Chinese and kremlenoids divide USA territory.

These are their PLANS. I know they have it.

But we may and should stop them.

So lets plant the seeds: we actually may save the world this time. I am not exagerating.

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k8/newUseDepend/newUseDepend.htm

I don’t doubt that the reason you want to keep drugs illegal is because you want to prevent what addicts do to themselves, but again, we know for a fact that most users are not addicts and don’t destroy themselves.

We both know that tens of thousands of people every year kill themselves with alcohol. Now, if you don’t think alcohol should be illegal, you need to ask yourself why. For me, it’s the exact same reason I think drugs should be legal and recreational driving should be legal and pre-marital sex and adultery should be legal. Simply because some people destroy their lives doing risky things, the rights of the responsibly acting individual should not be infringed upon. Again, one of the things that make freedom so beautiful is that it’s dangerous. It requires that we be the best people we can be. When our personal freedom is limited, the government is saying, “Not only can’t you make good decisions, but you don’t even have to worry about it anymore. We’ll make them for you.”

We have a government that tells sick people who find their best relief from marijuana that they can’t use it because some people abuse it. That logic isn’t applied to morphine. That’s because with something like the War on Drugs, it’s impossible to be logical. It’s impossible for people who are loyal to a failed idea to be logical. It’s true with communism and it’s true with the War on (Some) Drugs. The essence of the drug war is that more government is good, that government can save the individual from the bad decisions the individual will most likely make if he or she tries drugs.

But wait! The government has found year after year that an individual is LESS likely to make bad decisions than good decisions if he or she tries drugs. Again, there is no logic that can work on a policy loyalist.

If we want to reduce drug abuse, then using our resources wisely (meaning that a wise person abandons approaches that don’t work), while respecting the rights of the vast majority of individuals who use drugs responsibly, is the only approach that makes any sense practically. And it’s the only approach that philosophically embraces American ideals (valuing the rights of the individual as much or more than that of the collective). It’s sad that many countries in Europe have embraced those ideals in regard to drugs, while the U.S. acts like a socialist nanny-state.

Here are some links I hope you explore in no particular order.

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

http://www.hoover.org/bios/mcnamara.html

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/index2.htm

http://www.reason.com/staff/show/128.html

(radical_moderate: thanks!)

the more i read into this stuff – have you ever read Edward Jay Epstein’s book Deception: the War Between the CIA and KGB, good book! – the more i read this stuff the more freaked out i get.

but the more freaked out i get the more i suspect i’m giving in to conspiracy theory thinking. what do you think? i’ve never actually talked to another person about this!

i suppose you smoked weed, well, me too, i actually used to like it up until i got bored with it when i had unlimited supply

so these days i just exercise outdoors and go to techno parties 100% sober cause i hate alcoholic intoxication and dont do any stupid drugs at all

i like girls thought and they seem not to hate me either)))))

Bezmenov recorded it in 1984. It, the demoralization phase, was ALREADY OVER.

Today is 2008. Phase of DESTABILISATION is getting almost done: check out

the markets,

gas prices,

banks,

So:

Today drug trafficking is
ONLY ABOUT KILLING YOU WITH ANTHRAX

even money is no issue any more

organized crime also is long ago under kgb command

so lets PRAY

I am also involved in the chronic Pain Community where interference by the DEA in the Doctor/Patient relationship has grown increasingly intrusive. So much so that a friend’s sister, who has terminal cancer, has limited access to pain medications because she may become “addicted.”

So it is not only illicit drugs that the Government wants to “protect” us from, but also from certain prescription drugs that they feel may be abused.

There are 2 bills waiting a vote in the House of Representatives, S.980, & H.R. 6353 that will severely limit American’s access to telemedicine (hurting, in particular rural communities) and will impact our ability to make medical choices vis a vis prescription drugs. Both of these Bills have bipartisan sponsers, although S.980 is the brainchild of that Idiot Dianne Feinstein. I suggest anyone interested in Liberty should write their Congressman and urge them to vote NO on these restrictive Bills.

One more thing dan, I suppose that I didn’t make it quite clear, but I think that the number of hard core addicts has remained constant for decades, while the numbers of Americans who try drugs or use drugs “recreastionally”
may flucuate. I honestly don’t see millions of Americans, if drug use is decriminalized, becoming hard-core drug addicts, just as most Americans don’t become drunks because alcohol is readily available.

Brillant posts btw, LJM.

There are presumably other ways to get weapons into this country, especially given the immigration routes.

JLM – look man, here’s the thing. I know and you know that everyone can get drugs if they look hard enough. Have you ever gotten caught? I haven’t; the closest I got was a detective in NYC one night who flashed his badge and said “don’t you think you should just go home? it’s pretty late.” True story. The issue isn’t the ability to take drugs if you want to. And even if it was legal, plenty of people would be able to get them outside the confines of the law. You don’t think there’d still be meth labs, people growing weed, people bringing in cocaine? At the point of legality it simply becomes a matter of price: government regulation, industrial production, farming, employees, lawyers, brokers, marketers – all these cost money in the USA. There will always be cheaper ways to get it, and presumably these people will be breaking the law. Yes, perhaps they won’t go to jail, I grant you that. But if I may be so bold, what is the prison population of the USA? 2 million people? 2 million out of 300 million? Frankly that indicates to me that these people are assholes. I know for a fact that the justice system is very lenient with drug offenders with personal use quantities on them (for example, my brother is a heroin addict). I’m also a lawyer.

Second of all, the regulations would not, as some argue, make the product clean – surely it Would make some of it clean, but honestly when have you ever taken bad drugs? I think I’ve maybe smoked PCP weed like twice. When you get coke cut with something else, 999% of the time it’s just bad coke – it doesn’t have friggin rat poison in it.

I can take care of myself, and I trust my own abilities. I also therefore presume that other people can do the same. But I know plenty – p.l.e.n.t.y. – of people whom drugs have distorted, which have clearly stunted their development. People are shitheads – look, you think I’M a shithead. I know addicts who’ve ruined their own lives and the lives of those around them. Just because you can’t enforce the problem away doesn’t mean the law ought not reflect an appreciation for the damage drugs, themselves, do. Since I live in a *society* of people, and not on an island of my own, I do think I have some interest in whether to go from illegality and enforcement to legality and… who knows what?

One fundamental problem with the Amsterdam comparison is that Amsterdam is a *tiny* insignificant little country. America has 300 million people – and did you look at those charts? Did you notice that the trend lines go down, and then around about 1991 they start going back up again, especially for marijuana? Know what that’s about? Did you ever hear the album The Chronic?

Look, I realize we aren’t going to agree about this. I only provided that link because I decided to look up statistics to be a good sport – and I went to the DEA because when I tried to look up that recent WHO study I couldn’t find it. In my opinion, based on my experience with drugs and with people, I’ll stick by my basic sense that the power of drugs’ attraction will prove to be very bad indeed if legalized, and I prefer to not radically experiment with society just on the basis of your commitment to freedom and some studies of 10,000 people. Sorry.