OFF: "musicians made drug use look tempting?" ^_~ =koff=

[M Holmes]

Ted Jackson jr. s2h2 writes:

> > Of course we don't really have a libertarian party (well, not one that
> > currently has more than eight members) as opposed to think-tanks, so
> > maybe there's nowhere else for them to go.
> >
> We have one, but it's woefully powerless.  Still, the upcoming
> elections might provide a bit of a jolt to the system.
> Independent-party candidates are coming out of the woodwork, and a
> guy like Trump could finance his own election campaign
> single-handedly...

Hmmmm, nothing I've seen of Trump impresses me than he's any sort of
liberty advocate of any flavour. McCain looks a little more interesting,
though his party contains more than a few of the loons we've been
discussing.

> > > Yet nowadays they are only to
> > > happy to make criminals out of people over weed.  I live in a state
> > > with pretty much the harshest drug laws in the US!
> >
> > My sympathies. It's worst effects are the repeal of liberties on a
> > casual basis in order to "win" the Drug War. I have in mind stuff like
> > confiscation without conviction - something that's now being hawked by
> > New Nanny drug warriors in Scotland.
> >
> Fight it, man!  We Americans just rolled over and let them do it.

I'd like to but New Nanny here are as convinced as any Puritan has ever
been that they know what's good for us. They've yet to see a problem
they don't think can be solved by banning something or making it
compulsory - though their leader has a new trick: rigging the rules of
the timiest elections so that the result is ordained beforehand. You;d
be amazed in just how many ways the rules of an election can be varied
in order to get the "right" result.

> I
> do expect, though, that the supreme Court will eventually knock it
> down...

Good luck!

> Agreed, but what mystifies me is how these prohibitions are allowed
> to start?  Well, nowadays I understand it, as Americans refuse to
> vote [currently around 45% voter participation in national
> elections--sometimes much less in smaller ones] It must make you
> Europeans shake your heads in disgust.  Why is it that you all are
> smart enough to use the political process while only a small handful
> of us do?

Actually more and more of us are shaking our heads in disgust and not
voting here too. I've routinely gone in and written "None of the Above!"
on my ballot papers so that they have to write me off as a spoiled paper
rather than accuse me of apathy.

>  Unfortunately I believe that
> > the US has some sort of Prohibition virus and it'll simply be replaced
> > by another one that's more guaranteed to affect "them".
> >
> I think that's true.  An extension of the 'frontier mentality?'
>
> > What's listed as a killer on every packet and used almost solely by the
> > lower orders? Watch this space...
> >
> Not quite.  Tobacco use is pretty high in Canada, and almost no
> poverty there, and cigs cost a freakin' fortune in Canada.

Canada isn't yet part of the US and they don't seem to have
Prohibitiophilia to anything like the same extent. I do believe that in
ten to fifteen years in the US, marijuana will be legal and nicotine
Prohibited.

> > Drugs are now an industry bigger than oil. They're also a damn site
> > politically easier to tax at punitive 90% rates than is petrol. You
> > could almost abolish income tax and still put every drug dealer in the
> > land out of business overnight.
>
> Exactly right.  But see, the US gov't would then have to admit
> defeat, and they hate doing that.  Tehy just have to be right about
> everything...

Now *that* sounds familiar.

[Pro-gunners in the US...]

> Good luck!  It would be a hard sell.  Most of 'em only want to
> protect their own personal freedom...

Yep, for everyone else it's Freedom to Do What You're Told. That's
becoming very familiar here too.

FoFP