Do you sometimes find yourself questioning the proposition that politicians are liars and thieves? Don’t. With rare exceptions, that is exactly what they are.
I can say this with assurance because of the current debate in the hallowed halls of those windbags about “sequestration,” the confusing term they use to suggest spending cuts, by which they mean spending the same or more, but not as much as they originally threatened. Continue reading
Gerard Casey, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College in Dublin, Ireland, and an Adjunct Scholar at the Mises Institute, has written a concise, excellently sourced treatise promoting the political philosophy he labels “libertarian anarchy”. Continue reading
This was origionally published in http://thebackbencher.co.uk/
Drug legalisiation does not increase usage
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/02/the-case-for-the-legalisation-of-drugs/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/
When Portugal decriminalised drug usage 10 years ago many worried drug usage would rise, it hasn’t. In fact it has fallen by 50%. People take drugs regardless of legality or illegality, but many also take them because it is cool and rebellious, making it legal instantly removes this incentive to take drugs.
Drugs are less harmful than many other legal substances
Alcohol is more dangerous than heroin, crack or ecstasy according to Professor David Nutt a leading drug expert http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1325472/Professor-David-Nutt-Alcohol-harmful-heroin-crack-Ecstasy.html
According to the Governments own advisory panel on drugs, ecstacy is less harmful than riding a horse http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4537874/Ecstasy-no-more-dangerous-than-horse-riding.html
It is frankly hypocritical to say drugs should be illegal as they are dangerous yet things that are more dangerous like alcohol should be legal. Either you want both legal or both illegal you cannot have it both ways
Making drugs illegal makes them more dangerous
When you buy a product from a shop it may come with a warranty, if you buy food and it turns out to be gone off you can take it back and complain. With drugs you can’t, there are no stamps of approval, you do not know what has gone into it. Unscrupulous dealers mix the drugs they have with many other things to stretch out the supplies they have and make more profit. If drugs were legal those that tried to do this would go out of business or be arrested, as it is if you take drugs currently you are at risk of getting something even worse.
Making drugs illegal helps organised crime
When legitimate business can’t sell something who does? The answer is of course criminals. Just like alcohol prohibition enriched mob bosses such as Al Capone drug prohibition means that organised crime including terrorist groups can easily earn money by dealing drugs. If drugs were legal a huge arm of
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8319249.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/selling-drugs-fund-terror-al-qaeda-linked-cocaine/story?id=9373341#.UIK3XWfWqSo
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/drug-trafficking-and-the-financing-of-terrorism.html
Police spend millions of pounds and 20% of their on chasing drugs and drug dealers instead of dealing with serious crimes
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/02/the-case-for-the-legalisation-of-drugs/
20% of police time is spent on drugs, imagine how many more murders, rapes, burglaries etc the police could deal with if they didn’t have to waste so much time and money tracking down drug users and dealers
Americans can’t seem to shake the 1960s. It haunts our politics and presidential campaigns. It’s echoed in ideological battles in the Weekly Standard, National Review, New York Review of Books and the Nation, and in countless heated websites and blogs. The issues raised by the sixties always reappear when the U.S. regularly engages in real wars, which only incites verbal clashes over the meaning of American Exceptionalism and its imperial stretch. Continue reading
I love tattoos.
My mother? Not so much.
“What do you want one for? What’s the point?” she always asks. I finally have an answer for her.
Magic. Continue reading