Restricting Cold Medicine Won't Curb Meth Use (from cato.org)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Thank you. Even that alone would imply that we should let those people alone. Yes, they alone can say if that is an equal tradeoff let. Them do it...

(large edit here)

I am. How about this: All drugs should be available, over the counter, in pharmaceutical-grade form, to any adult that wants to by some?

I felt I had to address this because I've seen this attitude before. Some people believe that ANY curb on drugs is wrong and that adults should be left to their own decisionmaking process as to whether they want to use a drug or not. This includes all controlled substances as well as unlawful substances.

This post is a good example of why we should not go down that pathway.

Methamphetamine is a horrible, horrible drug. It destroys the lives of the people who use it. It destroys the lives of those next to the ones who use it. And worse yet, it can kill innocents who know nothing about it.

I'm not talking crack babies here either. Meth when it's cooking is EXTREMELY volatile and unstable. A meth lab is a bomb waiting to go off. And it could be next door to your apartment, house or even hotel room. There've been some labs which were in the back of a motor home. And you wouldn't know about the danger until after it is too late to avoid or react to it.

People are the most dangerous things on the planet. Not because we're the most intelligent. But because we're the most selfish. We do things we know are wrong. We'll do things we know can hurt us. Worse, we'll do things we know can hurt others and we'll STILL do them because we just can't bring ourselves to care about someone other than ourselves. It's ALL about us and who cares about the other guy.

Well, if you were to get your wish and the war on drugs were to end, it would probably NOT be the "other guy". It'll probably be YOU and you might kill me in the process. NO thanks. You can keep your fantasy nirvana.
 
Orig posted by carbiner: I have to disagree on education vs jail. Our education system has proven with out doubt to be a failure when it come to drugs,sex ed, and many other issues.

The welfare system in this country is pathetic and enables dope heads, and laziness.
Hi carbiner!
Not sure where you are but since Clinton and "94 gang" the welfare system in this country has pretty much been reduced and restricted to only corporate welfare. You know the big bucks for the fat cats!
Speaking of failed systems try the penial system. It's become a BIG BUSINESS in the past 10 yrears...and who's been helped?

I don't believe kids are being lied to in school about America. But the truth sometimes hurts! I wish more teachers and districts had the "cagingas" to teach the WHOLE truth about our culture and how it's been subverted.
With teachers like Jay Bennish in the class room kids will become more spiritually deprived and have nothing to believe in. Kids are being taught America is bad, to ignore morals, responsibility, family and religion, the less christianity in school, the more inmates we'll see in prison.
Just look at the results around our America

Actually it goes like this.....The more Christianity taught in public schools the MORE inmates you'll have ...because IT"S ILLEGAL! See, it's part of that Separation of Church and State thing that helps define us free Americans.
We're a democracy though some would like desperatly to have it a theocracy!


Rimrock
 
I'm all for YOU teaching christianity, judaism, or whatever, to YOUR kids if that fits in with YOUR way of keeping them from becoming the BG busting down my door to burglarize me.

What I don't want is you cramming it down MY throat. I do just fine without it.

At the risk of looking racist (anybody with any sense will see otherwise), I'll say what I know about where most crime takes place. In the inner cities where the concentration of blacks is highest. Now I'm constantly seeing the same inner city people on the news howling "Jeeeezzzus!!" the loudest and the most often.

I personally know somebody who is so catholic he believes in curses and exorcism. He's the worst kind of criminal, a violent one. And, if you must know, a drug "criminal" and an alcoholic to the point he doesn't work. He's white. He's fortunate that his family bails him out and has some money.

I might conclude, if I didn't know any better, that Jesus causes crime.

But I DO know better. The seed of crime is selfishness. And there's little that is more selfish than praying for a good thing to happen to you rather than getting up off your lazy ass and MAKING it happen.

I'm not "lucky" to have a good employer who grants me sick days for the flu or even "mental health" days. I MADE it that way by FIRST making it my business to acquire the skills to make me good at what I enjoy doing, and then walking away from any employer who prefers stupid rules to excellence.

I noticed that there are those who'd have any type of drug available OTC. I would have to think that one over. I favor legalization, but I would prefer (not that my way is the best) that the purchaser of any drug that is known to be truly detrimental to health be seen by somebody to approve continued purchase. Not by a doctor, there are too few of them so it would cost too much. Perhaps by the pharmacist.

And, finally, things have been said about the danger of meth labs in neighborhoods. Um. Wake up. If meth were legal, why would anybody need a clandestine lab? The labs would be located in industrial parks and would have names like Merck and Pfizer on them.

Reasoning and logic. They are good things. They really are.
 
And, finally, things have been said about the danger of meth labs in neighborhoods. Um. Wake up. If meth were legal, why would anybody need a clandestine lab? The labs would be located in industrial parks and would have names like Merck and Pfizer on them.

I was about to say that, yes.

Meth is not exactly the kind of thing that would encourage small-business manufacture - one tab is like another tab like another tab. In a free-market [i.e. undisturbed by the DEA/FDA/whoever] system, a big company making meth in a factory by the ton and truckload would win against a trailer-home manufacturer any time. The reason trailer-homes are used now is simply because they need to keep it small to hide it.
 
Sick time is for those events that mean hospitalization or surgury. Not for a cold or the flu.
Sorry but you don't get to decide what my sick days are for. My employer is the one that makes that determination and I am that one that makes the choice to take a sick day or not.

There's an old saying about colds. If you take cold medicine for your cold, you'll get well in about 7 days. If you do nothing, it'll take a week. I find this to be true after many many many years of exposure and experience. Also, the bug that causes a cold is a virus. We have NOTHING in our pharmacoia that works on viruses. Ergo, the medications do nothing to help cure the cold. Rather, as you stated, they mask the symptoms so that the ill person can go be a modern-day equivalent of Typoid Mary.

Because "old saying" are more important than continuously researched medical science? The "bug" that causes the common cold is not a single virus; there are various viruses that can cause the mild infection that leads to it. You're also wrong in claiming that we have nothing that works on viruses; while they technically cannot be killed simply because they don't always qualify as "life" by scientific definition they are most certainly susceptible to various forms of treatments. Symptoms can be masked that prevent the spread of the viruses, the biochemical reactions that take place within our cells that specific viruses need to survive and replicate can be altered which slows or halts their progress, and our immune systems can be assisted in taking care of the viruses on their own. Ergo, medications do in fact help to cure the common cold.

Viruses can be tough to beat but they are not invincible.

No thank you. Please stay home if you are ill. I certainly don't want a cold or the flu and the thought of someone sneezing on my hamburger is repulsive.

I'll go to work unless I'm either a danger to myself or others. I can be ill without risking infecting anyone else. Please don't assume that all medical conditions are the same.


Eventually these employers will run out of employees. Think about it. Any employer who is so cheap as to not allow his employees to be sick deserves to be put out of business. Employees who let their employer treat them like this DESERVE whatever they get and if that means they get treated like dirt, then.....

You just said "]Sick time is for those events that mean hospitalization or surgury. Not for a cold or the flu." and now you're saying that employers who follow that logic should be out of business.

Try Absynth. Banned in the U.S. yet it's just an alcohol.
Little correction. Absinth is not banned in the US. The production, sale, or importation of anything containing thujone is illegal but possession itself is not. It also also not "just an alcohol". In reality the absinthe I've bought from Germany has such a low thujone content that at best you'll get a slightly different booze buzz but true absinthe is a very different experience than simply getting drunk or high.




I think for now I'll stay out of the christianity in school argument :p Unless someone else wants to claim that I'll be seeing a jail cell soon because the ten commandments weren't posted in the classroom. :rolleyes:
 
And, finally, things have been said about the danger of meth labs in neighborhoods. Um. Wake up. If meth were legal, why would anybody need a clandestine lab? The labs would be located in industrial parks and would have names like Merck and Pfizer on them.

It is thoughts such as this that ensures the Libertarian Party will never be anything but a boil on the American Political machine's rear.
 
It is thoughts such as this that ensures the Libertarian Party will never be anything but a boil on the American Political machine's rear.
Care to contradict the argument?

Or do you have any evidence whatsoever to suggest that the prohibition of meth solves any problems moreso than would the legalization and medical regulation would?
 
This nation does not want legalization of drugs. The War on Drugs is not a ploy to make money for police departments, blah, blah, blah.

I feel Ima pretty liberal guy in certain areas. As a cop, I honestly support the legalization of Marijuana. However, meth is a horse of a different color. There are a lot fo people who do not do it because uts illegal, as is the case with a lot of drugs. Some people are simply afraid of being arrested. Thats is a deterrenst, as is the point in the first place.
 
The War on Drugs is not a ploy to make money for police departments
Well, it certainly didn't start out that way. Unfortunately, that is exactly what it has turned into in Jurisdiction after Jurisdiction.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Rich
 
This nation does not want legalization of drugs. The War on Drugs is not a ploy to make money for police departments, blah, blah, blah.
I disagree on both counts. There are only two types of people that are against the legalization of drugs:

1. Those that don't understand prohibition.

2. Those that profit from prohibition.

I feel Ima pretty liberal guy in certain areas. As a cop, I honestly support the legalization of Marijuana. However, meth is a horse of a different color. There are a lot fo people who do not do it because uts illegal, as is the case with a lot of drugs. Some people are simply afraid of being arrested. Thats is a deterrenst, as is the point in the first place.
Yes, meth is indeed a horse of a different color. But keeping it illegal does not keep people from doing it. The same way that banning guns does not keep a criminal from getting a gun, banning meth does not keep a meth addict from getting it. It only makes it more difficult and requires him to put his money into a black market supported by gangs and organized crime to get his meth and guns.

Morphine is as dangerous and addictive as meth yet is schedule 2 and prescribed by physicians. There is still an illegal drug trade with morphine but it's heavily regulated and the majority of money spent on it goes to legal enterprises.

For christs sake, I am NOT suggesting that meth be sold at liquor stores next to the Miller Lite. If meth were accessible through a physician without the risk of going to jail then fewer people would be getting it from the meth labs set up by gang and mob branches in residental neighborhoods.


Prohibition does not work. Not for guns, not for booze, not for porn, and not for drugs. It does. Not. Work.
 
Rich, with all due respect, I completely disagree. I have see a few, VERY few, abuses of the seizure system, but all in all, I support the asset seizure and forfeiture way of doing things,

Jail time is a rarity anymore in the WOD, and what little is handed down does not frighten many of the people. What does scare them is having their Escalade or Navigator seized, and driven by a detective.
 
I have said this before, and will say it again. The War on Drugs is a war the American People want. It is a worthy cause, and I feel we are winning, one battle at a time. I will continue to fight it until Im told I can no longer.

In my little town, our drug arrests and seizures have decreased immensely. Guess what? So have property crimes, which are nine times out of ten, drug related. This has all come from two fronts...1, the cops out there racking the arrests up, making the seizures, doing the paperwork, and 2, the passage of the Nik Green Pseudoephedrine laws.
 
How do you figure that it's what they want? Because they're told lies about how marijuana is such a horrible and dangerous drug that it supports terrorism and makes kids shoot each other? Or is it because both corrupt political parties are full of the same people that want to ban guns for the same reason that you want drugs to be kept illegal?

Prohibition didn't work with alcohol. It's not working with guns. It's not working with any other drug.

Once again, you nor anyone else has any right whatsoever to tell me what I can or cannot put into my own body. Anything less that complete personal ownership of my own body goes against the very concepts of freedom that we all love in the constitution.
 
Well, unitl the WOD is made illegal, I do have the right to tell you what you can and cannot put in your body, and I will continue to do so. As a matter of fact, I have to get dressed to go to work to do exactly that.
 
Well, unitl the WOD is made illegal, I do have the right to tell you what you can and cannot put in your body, and I will continue to do so. As a matter of fact, I have to get dressed to go to work to do exactly that.
BOOOO!!!HISSSS!!!:eek: :mad:
 
I have said this before, and will say it again. The War on Drugs is a war the American People want.
Irrelevant. This is not a democracy. It's a constitutional republic, and neither the feds nor the states have constitutional authority to ban drugs.
It is a worthy cause, and I feel we are winning, one battle at a time.
Arbitrary searches and seizures would dramatically reduce crime, too. Why don't you consider that a worthy cause as well?
 
And, finally, things have been said about the danger of meth labs in neighborhoods. Um. Wake up. If meth were legal, why would anybody need a clandestine lab? The labs would be located in industrial parks and would have names like Merck and Pfizer on them.

This is a fantasy. If meth were legal do you really think that the big drug labs would be making something that people can make for THEMSELVES? For almost NOTHING? Out of "cold medicine"?

Think about this... People take medications designed for livestock because they either can't GET or can't AFFORD medicines made for humans. Do you really believe that people will be any different when it comes to recreational drugs? Hell, people brew their own BEER and distill their own booze because it's cheaper than buying it. Drugs will be no different.

And you know that some enterprising pimp will knock together a methlab in his garage because he can make the stuff and sell it cheaper than Merck/Phizer/et al. How? Because he doesn't have 14 CEO's and a corporate Lear Jet along with a Corporate retreat in the Bahamas to pay for. He's only got his pimpmobile and an apartment in the profit chain. Ergo, cheaper rec drugs but the same old problem with hazardous materials and potential explosions killing the school kids at the bus stop.

Or were you perhaps believing that Merck and friends will somehow get a ban on the availability of OTC cold medicines in order to protect their markets and patents? If so, how is that any different that what I've described already?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top