[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: chaosthedragon A) since CA acted the 3 strike law 10 years ago crime has decrease by 2million and saved $28 billion over the span of 10 since the law was put in place. B)The use of most drugs can and almost always lead to more violent crimes, but i do believe that drug abusers should receive drug rehabilitation rather the jail sentence, but sometimes that just wont work. C) This might sound cruel but anyone stupid enough to break the law 3 times and get caught deserves the punishments handed out. It does not matter what the crimes were, the first crime could be a mistake, the second could be court error (its rare but it does happen)But the third time is unacceptable. Laws are put in place to protect the common people and should be abide

When did "the people" empower your government with the jurisdiction to regulate consumption?


Here are a few broad quotes concerning the power of empowering the government with authority to regulate individual behavior.

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded." -Abraham Lincoln (December 1840)

Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual from his own foolishness, no serious objections can be raised against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs. These fears are not merely imaginary specters terrifying secluded doctrinaires. It is a fact that no paternal government, whether ancient or modern, ever shrank from regimenting its subjects' minds, beliefs, and opinions. If one abolishes man's freedom to determine his own consumption, one takes all freedoms away. The naive advocates of government interference with consumption delude themselves when they neglect what they disdainfully call the philosophical aspect of the problem. They unwittingly support the cause of censorship, inquisition, intolerance, and the persecution of dissenters. -Ludwig von Mises, Austrian-born NYU Professor and free market advocate, 1949

Whenever you hear a policeman, politician, or prosecutor proclaiming zero tolerance for ``drug activities'', remember this well: Fortune 500 transnational corporations, with DEA licenses, manufacture vast quantities of amphetamines and other DEA Schedule 2, 3, 4, and 5 psychoactives, perfectly legally. The drugs are transported around the country, perfectly legally, by the Postal Service, UPS, Federal Express, and other corporate shipping empires. In hospitals, cocaine and morphine (among other infamous drugs of abuse) are standard and legal anesthetic options. The military equips medics with ketamine (a phencyclidine, as is PCP) for use as an emergency general anesthetic in the field. Licensed physicians routinely prescribe many of these drugs - for example, Ritalin (a controlled amphetamine) and Percodan (containing oxycodone, a codeine analogue narcotic) - to children and to adults. Licensed pharmacists routinely dispense these drugs, perfectly legally, from the corner drugstore, and people with prescriptions bring them home and put them in their medicine cabinets, perfectly legally. In the United States, under 21 USC 841, anyone who engages in these activities without a license ``shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 10 years or more than life'' in large bulk quantities and ``shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 5 years and not more than 40 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be not less than 20 years or more than life'' in lesser bulk quantities. These sentences cannot be suspended, converted to probation, or paroled (murder, rape, mutilating assault, and other horrible violent crimes with actual individual victims, can usually be partially or fully suspended, partially or fully converted to probation, or paroled). Multimillion dollar fines can also be imposed, on top of imprisonment. In Canada, the Narcotic Control Act specifies life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking in narcotics (e.g. Percodan) - unless you have a license, in which case it is perfectly legal. What these laws mean is obvious: have the piece of paper, A-OK, lack the piece of paper, the state will destroy your life. The situation with certain firearms is quite similar, as explored in the Disarmament Agenda. These are the trappings of a vicious, intense police state. From the bookshelf: Opiates and Political Power in America: The Story of How the Drug Enforcement Administration Came to Be. by Edward Jay Epstein

Quotes provided by The Architecture of Modern Political Power


That's not the type of Police State I want to live in, and it's certainly not the "America" I pleged my allegiance too.


My allegiance is to he constitution, and the country for which it stands.