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That was insulting the founding fathers? I have more respect for them than for any American alive today (with the exception of that bastard on your 20 dollar bill). They got it right, the people who followed, went and screwed it up

Yes, you struck a nerve, there is nothing worse in my book than someone as ridicilous as to make a statement such as this:
Welcome to the middle ages my friend, you'll be staying there for as long as you live. We'd still be living in caves if humanity thought this way. So yes, that mentality made me more than a little bit angry. As for my methodology, at least I have one, at least I'm making an attempt to make this world more hospitable, I try to offer people something more than delusions of freedom in complacency and apathy.

My previous post was not an insult on you, but your mentality, this one on the other hand is and feel free to take it that way

Andrew Jackson (the guy on the 20)  was a little late in the running to be a founding father. Hes just on the bill because of his work in the war of 1812.

By the way this was supposed to be about drugs.

Private Property = Drugs
Government taking property -> Bad
That's how we got where we are

That's why little kids should be allowed to own rocket launchers and heavy machineguns, too!

Someone has to protect liberty, if they don't have parents with those heavy machine guns then most likely they should. Plus its not as if it matters to you, you can just sit back and let everything sort itself out

You confuse patience with inaction.  I am very patient.  That does not mean that I am doing nothing.  To the contrary, I work to better this world in my own ways.  I also trust that the power that made this world and set things in motion knows what it's doing in the long term.

We are also off topic yet again, so please dispense with the personal digs.

Need? Absolutely not.
Want? Hardly.

Anarchy is only chaotic in the minds of those who define order as government.

wait was devlar just defending gun ownership or was he being a male reproductive organ?

Don't back-peddle on my account

The government should never be able to take your property unless you freely give it, that includes drugs

And don't try to goad me into taking the thread off-topic again with personal attack rhetoric.

The government has a job to regulate hazardous substances.  Drugs are hazardous.  Anyone who thinks Cocaine or PCP isn't dangerous is an idiot.  The government also regulates prescription drugs and determines what is safe for human consumption and what is not.  Certain chemicals are extremely dangerous, addictive, or both.  Regulating the availability and useage of such things is in the interest of protecting the public good.  Like it or not, that IS one of government's functions.  Although the execution of that function is usually somewhat questionable there are reasons for laws against drugs to exist and frankly I'm glad they do.  I've seen how they destroy lives.  A very good friend of mine has a cousin who lives in poverty and squallor because of constant drug use and a druggie alcoholic husband who spends more time in jail than out.  She's also on welfare and WIC to take care of her two kids, so that means she's on the public dole and can't get off.  All this "private property" rhetoric is lack of sense in action and a complete reality disconnect.  I invite you to visit a crackhouse some time to see what it's really like to be hooked on this garbage.  Drugs enslave you, and control you, and rule your life once you get hooked.  This fact is irrefutable to anyone who's actually dealt with drug addicts or been one themself.

Personally I wish alcohol was regulated a lot more.  I've seen what drunk drivers do to people, and while the hard drugs may destroy your life quicker alcohol does it legally.

We restrict the freedom of many due to the stupidity of the few, GREAT IDEA!
And here simple little me thought that collective punishment was a human rights violation

People have choices to make in life, if they chose the wrong ones they should have to live with the consequences of their own actions. If they want to become junkies that's their initial choice to do the drug, and its their choice not to seek help for their problem. You cannot punish the whole of society for that, nor should you even have the authority to do so.

The problem is when the actions are no longer just self-destructive.  Their family, their children, people they rob and murder for drug money... all of this is connected.  No man is an island, and there are no victimless crimes.

Which is why they have their family and their friend to help ensure that they don't get on drugs, or to help them get off if they get in too deep into drugs

It's not as easy as you say.I had a family member hooked on coke.He would sell our belongings,steal and lie to get it.We all tried our hardest to get him off it,but no matter what we did he continued to snort it.They become a differant person and will not listen to reason.We need the government regulations on these drugs and the dealers need to be punished.They need to be taken by force,because thier sure as hell not gonna just hand it over.Those heavy drugs kill,and mess up other lives.I've been through it personally,and the thought of those dealers having any of the rights you mentioned is absurd!
      As for the comment on collective punishment and violation of human rights.So it doesn't matter if someone's killed by a drunk driver or shot by an illegal firearm,or drugs for that matter.That's what these laws are trying to prevent.It happens-they make law to prevent from happening again!    

You know, all along I've been thinking of this in moral terms when I should have been thinking of this from a tactical standpoint.  Skynet is right.  Stoners make easy prey!  Woot!

Yet countries with little to no drug control have the smallest drug related crimes. The second you take out the prohibitive appeal of drugs people seem to lose interest in doing them

If your family cannot control your actions, and they lie and steal from you then what are the chances that the government, which is an impersonal entity, will have better chances?
You lost the war on drugs and hurt your people because of it, while most of the rest of the world stop treating it like a major problem and won

I would not call turning a blind eye to a problem a win...

Hmmm... How about the people who are actually doing the drugs take person responsibility for their actions? Huh? Oh, yes, I forgot... Americans... A scapegoat is always needed. Let's blame the dealers, or the drugs themselves for our problems. Let's blame firearms or the manufactures, because hey, those substances and bullets simply force their way into your body with magic, don't they? No human aid, what so ever.

The simple fact of the matter is that these problems are solely the fault of the ones taking the drugs. If they had any intelligence, or will power, they would either be able to control themselves or would not have begun in the first place. Such people are pitiful specimens of the human race with or without questionable substances, and the fact that they die is merely a small piece of natural selection that is still intact in this horrid civilization. If we were not all raised to be stupid is this cultureless society, such laws would not have to be in place to "protect" us.

I don't really care if they die - it's who they take with them before they go.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  
Benjamin Franklin

Punishing the whole for the mistakes of the few is never the answer. Its amazing how you can fear drug addicts but not fear the state in taking away your life or your liberty. As Phoenix so facetiously pointed out, drug addicts are considerably less organized therefore less of a threat.

If you have a problem with who they take with them before they die then improve the living conditions in your country so no one wants to use drugs as a form of escapism. Putting these people (yes, drug addicts are people) into holding cells for the rest of their lives and branding them as criminals only adds to the problem, it doesn't solve it. In that regard I totally agree with dev/null.

We live in a society that creates needs, creates needs for consumer goods, creates needs to a ton of shit we don't need and degrades people for not fulfilling those artificial needs. You are not a human being unless you need a job, you need a house, you need a 300 horsepower car, you need a girlfriend with big titties, you need massive electric sexual devices and an assortment of other crap that is of absolutely no use to you. Are we overly surprised that people want to escape this with drugs and alcohol?

Who said I wasn't?  But I've come closer to having either taken away by the crazed drug addict than the State has ever gotten.  Guess who's higher up on my list?

And please don't bring up the "pressures of society."  If you can't tune out advertising, spork you and good ridence - please continue to kill yourself with drugs, et al, and stop polluting the genetic make-up of humanity.

So let me get this straight an average person can tune out the pressures of society yet cannot tune out the pressure of taking drugs and needs the government to prevent him from doing so?? Sounds like a massive double standard to me

Now you're putting words into my mouth - when did I say to not do drugs?    By all means go ahead and do what you want, but keep it to yourself.  The instant you become a strung out junkie rolling people for your next fix  (and don't tell me it doesn't happen - maybe not always but often enough and no I don't have a link to a study to prove anything I just said) you've become a menace to the rest of society and need to be put down.
Anyway, if you want to take a look at your social contract, you will find that many of your personal freedoms are forfeit to live in this society for the good of the society at large.  The right to personal freedom is awfully vague and leaves lots of holes to be filled - if you take away my right to free software, like Doom 3, I will kill you.  Yes, I deserve free software that much.  It's my right and don't try to take it away. (facetious, yes) Etc.  The ideals you say are correct in form, but not function.  
And form always follows function.

You made me ramble again, damnit.

I pride myself on my ability to make you ramble ^_^

I'm not going to tell you it doesn't happen, I'm simply going to tell you it happens more often in places that prohibit the use of the drugs and that deal with addicts punitively.

As for my social contract, my rights are taken away but not for the good of the society but rather  for the advancement of a particular class in society. I never had a right to free software, since that is someone else's property. The holes aren't there and the lines are very easy to define

The pushers need to be punished, but the addicts need to be treated.  I agree that simple incarceration is not going to break the cycle.  Drug treatment programs are not much better though.  They have a less than 10% success rate.  I applaud that they have even 10% though, considering how addictive hard drugs are.  The problem is that people who get hooked on drugs usually live in areas where they are readily available, and cannot afford to live anywhere else.  Not all who get hooked are completely to blame either.  After all, you have people out there lying to them, telling them it's harmless, and real education either comes too late or is not available at all.  Once that first hit is taken it's nearly impossible to get off.  I don't like the natural selection model when it comes to victims of circumstance either.  Talk about punishing indiscriminantly.

Let's face reality here as well.  Illegal drugs are a commodity, and selling them is a business.  Devlar, if you're so anti-capitalism then you should be denigrating the drug trade for its methods instead of protecting the addicts' private property "rights".  After all, dealers are out there pushing a bad product and care a lot less about destroying someone's life with it than any megacorp does with theirs.  I see the dealers driving around in their pimpmobiles, wearing their gold, and living it up while their "customers" are going nuts looking for the next hit, and how to pay for it.  That's not even capitalism, that's extortion.  You addict someone at an early age so they HAVE to buy what you have, then like a parasite you suck them dry and throw them away once they're of no use to you.  I'm sorry, but that's evil if I've ever seen it, and I've seen a lot of evil in my time.

Drugs did not always exist, nor must they always exist.  The only solution to this problem is to eliminate it at the source.  Cut off the head and the body dies.  Eliminate the drugs and the supply chain and the demand will dry up once the supply has been gone for a while.   That's not as easy in practice as it sounds of course, and as long as it can remain a political issue to pander votes with then they will keep poor people addicted and in a drug-induced squallor as long as it suits them.  Legalizing hard drugs will not solve the problem, it will only make it "acceptible".  It excuses the unexcusable and writes off induced suffering to the status of a "lifestyle".  I call that abandonment.  People think that I'm apathetic toward humanity, yet all I'm seeing from people who write this off as an invasion of private property rights is completely apathy to the people suffering here.  This will only end when society wakes up and turns its collective back on foolish vices and destructive behavior.  I have little faith that will happen any time soon.

I've said quite repeatedly I'm not anti-capitalism, I'm a liberitarian first and foremost, redistribution I agree with but I think it has to be given freely. I'm pro-capitalism, I just think capitalism doesn't exist anymore since corporations have become the dominant force in society. Competition is dead, therefore capitalism is dead also.

Here's where we agree, these leaches have to be dealt with, BUT, the system set up to fight the "war on drugs" is exactly what is creating these leaches in the first place. If capitalism worked in this regard, drugs would be found at every local shop and not dealt out by criminals who fund their criminal activities with them. Even better you could tax the drugs being sold in the shops and fund rehabilitation programs rather than funding criminal elements. Through prohibition we are only forcing money into the hands of criminals (or Kenedys) and not dealing with the problem. Legalization and full nationwide distribution is the only way you are ever going to be able to solve the problem. I hate to admit it but desensitization works

id jusy like to say while im drunk that anything that gives you a buzz is good. god made grain so we could make whiskey. you have no idea how hard it was for me to type this.

The only "high" I'll ever need is my love for my mate.  Nothing else in this universe or any other could come close to that.  <3

Drugs increase a country's dependency rate, the higher the dependency rate, the higher amount of tax we pay, the economy hurts because of it.  It is not economically viable for drugs to be used legally or illegally.  Also, I've noticed that every "druggie" that I know is significantly less intelligent than myself and others who do not do such things.  Drugs have negatively influenced everyone, whether you do them or not.  It's simply a waste of life and time.