Wouldn't it Be Better if Tobacco Were Banned?

[Haethurn]

I am 16 years old and I do not have a father because he died six days ago on Sunday. A contributing factor to his death was the fact that he was an excessive smoker who had been addicted for over fifty years and who had enzema.

My father was buried on Wednesday, May 26, on his birthday. I put copies of all of the pictures I had of him and several birthday cards in his casket, along with a piece of driftwood that said "I love you dad" that I had made when I was eight or ten years old. Since his funeral I have not cried much, but I have felt crushingly lonely and empty many a time and when I am by myself my contemplations inevitably turn to him and what a great man he was.

Besides that I have been thinking about what killed him-and it was less tobacco than it was mass production and industrialization.

From my reasoning, tobacco by itself is hardly dangerous. It is our capitalistic society that has made it the cancer-causing killer that it is today. Tobacco companies produce millions of tons of tobacco, probably in greenhouses, and they mass produce them so that they can put ten packs of cigarettes with ten cigarrettes for each pack in just one box.

When companies mass produce tobacco, people will mass buy tobacco, and when people mass buy tobacco, they will mass use tobacco, ending in mass death. Tobacco companies are similar to Nazi concentration camps-they both deal in death.

I was at a friend's house recently, and this friend is a drug user. She and her mother drink alcohol, use speed, and smoke marijuana. She is still a good person, and she respects my choice to abstain from drugs. As I was looking at the marijuana plants growing in her room I thought to myself, "It is true that marijuana has more carcinogens than tobacco, however, because it is illegal and not mass produced, there is no way that marijuana users could have access to six packs of marijuana a day. If tobacco were like this, it wouldn't be half as dangerous."

Now, bear with me here-I am not seeking to make this a reality. This is a utopian vision of mine, and is mainly philosophical in nature-I am not a zealot who fervently wants all drugs to be banned.

If the law was obligated to arrest tobacco users, and companies were not allowed to mass produce them, tobacco would be forced underground-for the direct benefit of the smokers themselves, oblivious as they might be to this. Suddenly people would be forced to nurture their little, pathetic tobacco plants for weeks before it would be ready to harvest. No more of this walking into a gas station and saying, "Alright, get me twenty packs of cigarettes, I think I'll smoke five a day and be dead when I'm 40." After caring for an illegal tobacco plant for a week or so and putting a lot of work, time, and patience into it, the return you get on your investment would be much more reasonable. Very few people would get enzema or cancer by smoking home-grown tobacco.

Now, as for alcohol, it should be legalized. The reason for this is that the methods used to make "moonshine" are very dangerous, and a lot of chemicals get in there that wouldn't be in commercially produced alcohol. It is for that reason only that in my utopia alcohol would be legal.

The problem with this all is the sin tax-as long as the government can make money off of drugs, nothing will be done about it. Smoking is also firmly established in our society; it is become a part of us, and we can not do without it. You can not keep tobacco legal for centuries and then all of a sudden say, "Okay, this isn't good anymore. If we catch any of you with cigarettes, we're going to send you to jail." Moreover, due to the preceding, banning tobacco would be a severe infringement of our freedoms. Also, my utopia assumes that the government would take the position that I take on it-it should be banned, but if you grow it yourself then I'm fine with it. Sadly, this is not a position that a government can officially take-they must be either for it or against it; no straddling the fence. Lastly, I am not sure if a small quantity of unfiltered tobacco every few days would truly be less dangerous than four packs of filtered tobacco a day. As with all utopias, they ignore the fact that nothing can be perfect: everything in life is a dilemma, a choice between two evils, one greater and one lesser.

All I know is that I wish my father could be there to see me graduate from high school, get my degree in college, and become a man. I wish that I could hug him, that I could watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire with him again, that I could talk to him, that I could see him sitting on the porch every evening when I come home from school. I wish that I weren't so lonely now.

And I will never forget that on the day fifty years of smoking killed my father, when I got up and went into the kitchen in the afternoon, I will never forget when my father came in, threw a pack of cigarettes to me, and said, "Throw them in the trash. I quit." Smoking may have killed him, but he won the fight in the end. He died smoke-free, a non-smoker, a free man.

I guess this is just one of those things that we all have to deal with. Yes, mass production of tobacco is one of the main things about it that kills people-but what is there that people can realistically do about it? Nothing. It's just something that we can do nothing about-like a tornado, an earthquake, or a flash flood. All we can do is try and salvage the wreckage.

[samsara15]

I like the idea that people can make their own choices. Even on drugs, and even when they are bad choices. That kill them. My father died of throat cancer when he was 73, from smoking cigars. Nonetheless, I don't think he was too pleased about it. But I don't think he would have banned cigars.

[Haethurn]

Originally posted by samsara15, I like the idea that people can make their own choices.  Even on drugs, and even when they are bad choices. That kill them.  My father died of throat cancer when he was 73, from smoking cigars.  Nonetheless, I don't think he was too pleased about it.  But I don't think he would have banned cigars.

Yes, I know this. I only wish that tobacco were banned when it was first discovered, in the Age of Discovery. Now that the industrial framework has been built up, it is impossible to go back. We have to accept that tobacco is going to be mass produced, and that people are going to use more of it than they should. I would not support banning tobacco today, but it should have been banned centuries ago when there was still a chance to stop it.

Yes, many people have lost their fathers to cancer caused by smoking, but I feel alone in that my father died when I was 16, and that I saw his body when he died while mowing the lawn, and that I went up to it, and kissed his purple, bloated face, something that I will never forget, something that will always haunt me. I have two years of high school left, and I don't have my dad to see me through them. I'm assuming that your father died when you were already well into adulthood, but I'm only a teenager and I have to deal with only having my mom-and she's not as smart as my dad, I can't talk to her like I could talk to my dad. I wish so badly that he could have died just a few more years later-I know that I need him, and I know that he would have loved so much to see me graduate, because he thought the whole world of me-the sun rose and set on me in his eyes. And I hardly realized it until now, but in my eyes the sun rose and set on my dad.

[Suburbanite]

I think cig companies should have even more pressue on them. I do enjoy cigars a lot though.

Sorry guys. Despite the trajic early demises of people we know, I lost an aunt just a few weeks ago to a cigarette related illness, cigs should not be illegal. If someone want to take the risk and smoke, that's his or her business. I smoked for twenty years before I was able to kick the habit. If I contract cancer or some other cigarette related illness, it's not the manufacturers problem. I put those coffin nails between my lips, lit it, and inhaled. MY DECISION.

[Suburbanite]

I think that they need to clean the product up to pure tobacco. It is unethical to sell additives with questionable side effects.

[Leopard]

Originally posted by dave654, Sorry guys. Despite the trajic early demises of people we know, I lost an aunt just a few weeks ago to a cigarette related illness, cigs should not be illegal. If someone want to take the risk and smoke, that's his or her business. I smoked for twenty years before I was able to kick the habit. If I contract cancer or some other cigarette related illness, it's not the manufacturers problem. I put those coffin nails between my lips, lit it, and inhaled. MY DECISION.

exactly - same with all drugs. Either we are free individuals with the right to decide for ourselves how we treat our bodies, or, we are slaves to others. This is my body. I will choose what to eat, drink, smoke, and if I have the opportunity to end my life rather than face horrible pain & suffering - then that is my right also.

suburbanite:

I think that they need to clean the product up to pure tobacco. It is unethical to sell additives with questionable side effects.

it is not unethical unless they proclaim that they are not adding anything to the cigarettes (this is fraud). It is up to the consumers to let the manufacturers wht they desire in their products - more/less nicotine, more/les additives, or whatever. It is our responsibility to protect ourselves and our bodies from potentially harmful products if we so desire.

michael

PS: sorry to hear about your loss. That is indeed a tough thing to go through at 16. I lost my mother about 7 years ago to emphasima<sp?> from smoking - but I do not 'blame' anyone but her, and I do not judge her decision to smoke. She enjoyed it while she did it and took the well-known risk associated with smoking. She was an individual adult and lived (and died) by her decision as we all should.

[gr8fuldaniel]

If anyone wants to be free it is as easy as letting go and as hard as defying gravity for 5 minutes. Tobacco addiction is insidious, it possesses ones mind and body. I was hopelessly addicted from the time I was a kid. I was finally able to quit smoking 15 months after I stopped drinking and using drugs. I used a 12 step program. Making it illegal seems like a pretty good idea sometimes, kinda like seat belt or helmet laws that protect us from ourselves and the environment. It will probably never happen because cigarettes kill us before we can collect Social Security, thats good for Alan Greenspan. The goverment is complicit in our death because cigarette taxes are about 50% of each pack sold. A lot of cashola greases the palms of politicians through tobacco lobbyists. I have lost about 50 close friends and family and 2 AA sponsors to cigarette poisoning. It keeps me smober. I was hopelessly addicted but there is hope if you are willing to do whatever it takes to stop. Once I got 1 day clean I told myself if I can not smoke for 1 day I can do it for 2 days, with Gods help. But not by my own power, forget it. Back to the legal part... It would take a paradigm shift in government to provide programs that support tobacco victims rather than cigar chomping corporate criminal gluttons that are literally poisoning us.
This article Oregon Suicide Law Challenged Makes our sheperds look like wolves. Politicians are such hypocrites. They send us to war to die for no good reason. They forbid women the freedom choice for their own bodies(this is so there is plenty of fodder for the bloated war machine). I dont know why they want us to suffer with addictions. Opiate the masses, dumbus down so we dont rise up against the establishment. And if we are dying from cancer they must want to keep us alive so we can fatten up the pharmaceutical racketeers. I know I dont want to spend my last few months in this world all doped up on opiates. I watched my friend and sponsor die a slow and painful death. I dont want to ever smoke again in my life, and I probably wont, if I just dont light up today.

[Milton Bradley]

"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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1919 The 18th Amendment banned commerce in alcohol on a national level. The violent and corrupt "Roaring Twenties" ensued.

1933 The people had had enough. The 21st Amendment repealed the Volstead Act, ending Constitutional authority for Prohibition.

1937 Prohibitionists disguised the Marihuana Tax Act as a revenue bill and banned an entire plant species through regulation enforcement. The narcotics bureaucracy had found a gateway drug law.

1961 The UN adopted the Single Convention Treaty on Narcotic Drugs, opening the way for more stringent enforcement. The CIA went into Vietnam and heroin began to flow into America from Asia.

1968 The U.S. signed the Treaty. In the grips of the Vietnam War and the "generation gap," federal policy continued to harden.

1969 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Drug control authority was eventually written into a "scheduling" hoax that extended prohibition enforcement. Under this system, drugs are not officially 'prohibited'; they're 'illicit'. But people still go to prison for using them.

1970 Congressman George Bush joined the growing majority of office holders who opposed mandatory minimum sentences "because they remove a great deal of the court's discretion."

1972 President Richard Nixon appointed a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The panel, known as the Shafer Commission, called for decriminalizing marijuana and a policy of control based on medical risk, so Nixon denounced its report and declared a"War on Drugs". Nixon's war faltered amid a cloud of curruption when he resigned office during his second term, while facing impeachment charges.

1978 President Jimmy Carter publicly advocated decriminalizing up to an ounce of marihuana in his statement to Congress on drug policy, but behind the scenes moved to steer the Drug War back on course.

1980 Drug warrior Ronald Reagan assumed office and brought the military industrial comples into the battlefield. The CIA went to Central America and cocaine began to flow back to our cities.

1984 Reagan announced: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" and promptly militarized the Drug War. Zero tolerance became the stepping stone to widespread implementation of urine testing. His 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act went farther, adding property forfeiture law under Nancy's rallying cry: "Just say no."

Late 1980s Democrats and Republicans vied to out do each other in criminalizing and punishing drug users. As Vice President and later as President George Bush supported the return of Mandatory Minimum prison sentences. Physical evidence was replaced by sentencing guidelines. No knock search warrants, hearsay evidence, and high-tech surveillance systems extended the realm of thought-crime into conspiracy laws.

Early 1990s Baby Boom President Bill "I didn't inhale" Clinton campaigned on MTV, stating "The punishment should fit the crime." Once in office, he reversed gear and pursued yet another round of escalations in the Drug War, including, for the first time ever, the death penalty for growing marihuana in the 1994 Federal Crime Bill.

1995 The 10 millionth marijuana arrest since 1965 occurred in Ohio when Tod McCormick, a medical marijuana patient with a Dutch prescription, was pulled over in an illegal roadside search. A national survey found that 95% of police officers believed the US to be losing the Drug War.

1996 More than 60% of federal prisoners are locked up for drug offenses. While mandatory minimum sentences require that drug offenders serve full term sentences, mandatory release programs put violent felons back out on the streets to reduce prison crowding. Marijuana arrests are at an all time high, and citizens of California and Arizona vote overwhelmingly to legalize medical marijuana. Federal policy continues to lose support when appointed officials threaten to arrest doctors and patients.

1997 Business as usual. The Clinton administration begins the year with an all-out assault on doctors and patients for medical marijuana until a court orders them to desist. Malicious prosecution continues. The rate of incarceration for African American males hits a new record high, as does federal spending on the failed drug war. A new war is beginning to be waged on tobacco users. The National Istitute on Health reports that needle exchanges clearly save lives, and congress instantly forbids it from relaxing the ban on clean needles. Oregon legislators vote to recriminalize cannabis use, and a voters' referendum is launched to block it from taking effect.

1998 When confronted with scientific proof that needle exchange reduces infectuous disease without increasing drug use, Janet Reno and Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey decide to ignore the results and continue the ban. Clinton launches a multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign that uses federal tax money to purchase advertising time and space for the private sector's leading advocate of prohibition, the PDFA (Partnership for a Drug Free America). Congress takes time from its investigations of Clinton to pass ever more repressive legislation. Numerous new studies vindicate the medical marijuana reform position, and voters in five states pass initiatives at the ballot box to legalize it. Faced with an overwhelming favorable vote, Congress directly intervenes to block the vote count in Washington DC. At the same time, Oregon voters overturn the state legislature's attempt to reinstate criminal penalties for marijuana, and Arizona voters vote to medicalize all controlled substances (illegal drugs). California votes its leading drug warrior, Dan Lungren, out of office by a huge majority. Teenage use of all drugs levels off nationally.

1999 Public revulsion at the hypocrisy of the federal government is at a record high. Yet another drug warrior is elected speaker of the house, and Congress fights in court to suppress the count of the Washington DC popular vote to legalize marijuana for medical use.

None of this has had a substantial effect in reducing drug use or making the public more safe - only in reducing respect for human rights. The Drug War is an abject failure, and it is time for America to cut its losses and change political course to solve its problems.


Just some interesting information documented at http://mega.nu:8080/ampp/

[gr8fuldaniel]

Shards O GlassIf there were this kind of honesty in the tobacco industry, if they listed all the ingredients, put skull and bones on each pack, if obituaries named cause of death as cigarette related (did you know there is arsenic in cigarettes) if there were no tobacco products a lot of crimes would go away and Doctors could focus on cures for serious maladies rather than unnecesary, self-inflicted (yet, with accomplices) disease. Cigarettes are not necessary for human beings; however try telling that to the poor guy thats Jonesing for a tobacco fix. Did you know 1 drop of nicotene will kill anybody? I didnt say can kill, I said WILL KILL . The nicotene is carefully measured out for each cig, for max addicting power. Nicotene creates a need for itself. Insidious. Cigarettes probably kill more people than religion, maybe even more than Imperialist government. When government is partner to the drug dealer you have a killing machine.

Milton Bradley Quote:
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.

I concur, for the most part, But the ideology that government is reaping huge profit from the private sector, for the elite sector, at grave expense (financial and health)of the masses that just want to feel OK. The government is party to mind control,NOW, because of the relation to tobacco. This is a horrible evil. Do you realize that even after the shoe bomber, airports still allow cigarette lighters on passenger flights? but not nail clippers. This is
because of the tobacco lobbyists insisting that their addicts NEED a cigarette right after a flight. So who is regulating who. Its obvious the Corporation is KING in America now. Our sacred White House has sold us out time after time in the name of profit.

[Osborn F Enready]

To quote Aaron Russo, Libertarian Presidential Nominee contender.

"All our freedom, all the time."

Our country was based on personal responsibility, not nanny state ideals. Each man, each person, each individual is responsible for themselves, their decisions, their ideals and beliefs. I elect a President to protect my rights, enforce the constitution, and REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

The will of the people is not to be nursed by a moral authority, to be told what is right and wrong, to be told what they can and can't do of their own free will, unless they violate the laws of the Constitution by infringing anothers rights, or committing fraud.

I feel for Haethurn, and I can sympathize with how she feels. I lost my mother right before I graduted High School to the grip of cancer. I have watched my father smoke my entire life, and he has been smoking since he was 9 years old. (Born in 1933, when smoking was more than just accepted, it was promoted, AND a part of military rations.) No man, No person, NO BEING, has the right to forbid any person from nourishing, medically treating, or consuming any vegetable, drug, food, or substance THEY willingly choose to consume of their own free will.

I am a man, I am a free man, no matter what my government feels inclined to dictate. You may make a law, you may pass an amendment, but both would be a violation of the Constitution, in concept and tradition. Review the effect of prohibition, analyze what has been learned, and then look at how our government has lied and perpetrated the greatest violation against our own citizens, the War on Drugs. This in itself shows the folly of attempting to regulate the cravings, the desire, the appetite of free men. Volumes have been written, as many more will I am sure, however none I think say it better than the following examples....

The lessons of Prohibition in Hindsight....
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRAR...ies/nc/nc2a.htm

D.A.R.E. Program Report:
http://civilliberty.about.com/gi/dynamic/o...s.org/DARE.html

ACTUAL FACTS about the War on Drugs:
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/



EDUCATE YOURSELVES AMERICA, it is the only way we can learn in the existing system, if you don't prescribe to the general commercial network concensus.

Liberty is our founding, most essential goal of OUR government. It was the selling point that started the revolution for independence, the fuel for our founding, and the single MOST important guideline they sought to preserve in the writing of the Constituion. This has been the focus of destruction for the Establishment that has reigned power for the last 154 years in this country through the process of bi-partisan politics, and ensuring the power stay in the hands of the two major political parties through criteria manipulation for validity of debate qualification.

It is time to rediscover our roots America, the roots that have fed and nourished this society into the huge flowering tree of personal achievement, personal success, and personal empowerment that are being choked off by the Establishment, for the profit of the few, and the oppression of the many. We need to fortify our foundation of government, we need to reestablish our goals of our system, our goals of society, our goals as a people, to restore liberty, and strive for a government who seeks to empower the INDIVIDUALS, and not the Establishment.

"All our freedom, all the time!"

[gr8fuldaniel]

I dont think total anarchy is the answer either. I am just calling for government to knock off accepting bribes. I believe smaller government is better but to just look the other way when someone is robbing a bank or killing his neighbor or genocide via con-trails, pollution, war, kool-aid poisoning, Tylenol tampering, and cigarettes. Freedom is good until it tresspasses on the freedom, health, and life of another.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Philip Morris USA states in its ads that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema. In fact, cigarettes kill more people than AIDS, murder, suicide, fires, car accidents, alcohol, and illegal drugs combined.[11]
Must see this
Here are some key facts:
80% of smokers begin before age 18, 90% begin before age 20[3] and 2000 young people become regular smokers every day.[4]
Marlboro, Philip Morris USA's top brand, is the most heavily advertised brand in the United States[5] and the most preferred by youth smokers.[6]
Philip Morris USA sells more cigarettes than any other U.S. cigarette manufacturer,[7] controlling more than 50% of the total U.S. cigarette market.[8]
Philip Morris USA adds chemicals including ammonium hydroxide to its tobacco products.[9]
Ammonium hydroxide, commonly known as ammonia, boosts the impact of nicotine.[10]

[Osborn F Enready]

Your trying to overlay YOUR facts, over the facts that founded this entire nation, government, and idealism that ALLOWS you the comfort to make that choice. I never said anything about anarchy.

[jose]

Haethurn, i'm sorry to hear you lost your dad, that must be really hard for someone at 16 years of age. my condolences

[Leopard]

Originally posted by gr8fuldaniel, I dont think total anarchy is the answer either. I am just calling for government to knock off accepting bribes. I believe smaller government is better but to just look the other way when someone is robbing a bank or killing his neighbor or genocide via con-trails, pollution, war, kool-aid poisoning, Tylenol tampering, and cigarettes. Freedom is good until it tresspasses on the freedom, health, and life of another.

the problem here is that you make the assumption that those people in government are different in some way than the rest of us. They are humans, with families, desires, sins, and all the frailties that make us human. Unfortunately, the government has been asceeded<sp?> power from the citizens that even the citizens agree that no one should have: the 'legitimate' power to steal another's property, to murder, to hinder anothers choices when making decisions about their own lives.

You say 'anarchy' as if it is an awful thing, yet you do not even understand it, or human action. It is fear based upon ignorance. So you choose a government built on coercion, destruction of human rights, murder, theft, etc. In the face of this, what could possibly be worse?

michael

[Milton Bradley]

Repealing unconstitutional laws would not create anarchy.


If anything, it would would compell those authorities with jurisdiction to rule in such matters [State/Local] to pass legislation on these issues to keep the constituency happy.


It would also allow room for dissent.


There would certainly be places that would outlaw drug use, ad others that wouldn't.


Thats the way this country was supposed to work.


Ironically, it was the cumbersom way that ouur constitution required laws to be passed that started this whole process of subverting constitutional law.


Do we have a Department of Irony in this country?

[Ralph38449]

The problem is that then someone else would have to be taxed.

Just look at how much smmokers are paying in taxes.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Quote Leopard: the problem here is that you make the assumption that those people in government are different in some way than the rest of us. They are humans, with families, desires, sins, and all the frailties that make us human.

I am not talking about the pencil pushers. I am talking about policy makers, the establishment and greedy lawmakers. The guys who are supposed to be concerned with simple human rights, our health and national defense. We have terrorists cells masquerading as corporations who are rewriting our Bill of Rights and our Constitution.

Yes, I am very different...I have never accepted billions of dollars to look the other way while corporate criminals kill millions of people. That the victims give their obligatory permission (Yes, it is our freedom to alienate ourselves from our rights) doesn't make it ok. We do have alienable rights. If I pick up and smoke a cigarette, it owns me until God comes (with my permission) to save me. For me to smoke is like having sex with a gorilla... It aint over til the Gorilla says its over. Yhey put some powerful shit in tobacco that creates a need for itself. Thank God I am free today. I have been free of cigarettes since December 8, 1995. I worship that day.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Leopard, Quote; You say 'anarchy' as if it is an awful thing, yet you do not even understand it...
Well, I looked it up again and it aint any better than it used to be, is it?...
1. Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion.
Spread anarchy and terror all around. --Cowper.
2. Hence, confusion or disorder, in general.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
anarchy
n : a state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government) [syn: lawlessness]

This paints pictures of Mayhem, looting, riots, and chaos
Am I missing anything? Do you know something I dont?