Should Barack Obama and Cindy McCain be in Jail?

Webb shows the human cost: "Even as I write these words, it is virtually certain that somewhere on the streets of Washington D.C. an eighteen year-old white kid from the Maryland or North Virginia suburbs is buying a stash of drugs from an eighteen year-old black kid. The white kid is going to take that stash back to the suburbs and make some quick money by selling it to other kids." He will grow up and grow out of it, and one day -- as a wealthy professional -- he will "look back on his drug use just as recreational and joke about it … just one more little rebellion on the way to adulthood."

But the black kid "will enter a hell from which he may never recover." He is likely to be arrested, and to go to prison. "Prison life will change the black kid, harden him, mess up his mind, and redefine his self-image. And after he is released from prison, the black kid will be dragging an invisible ball and chain behind him for the rest of his life … By the time the white kid reaches fifty years of age, he may well be a judge. By the time the black kid reaches fifty, he will likely be permanently unemployable, will be ineligible for many government assistance programs, and will not even be able to vote." Barack Obama only narrowly missed this fate. He would not be the Great Black Hope he deserves to be; he wouldn't even be allowed to cast a ballot in 2008.
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what a bunch of BS. Anyone without a college degree is a nigger in this country. If you get hit with a drug offense other than possession, you can't recieve financial aid for college. thats what happened to me, and obviously I'm white.

fucking white mans guilt, makes me sick. The people who write this crap are just holding black folks back
 
^^exactly!

since her article is about the DC area, why doesn't she take a trip to the home of the most successful black people in the country, Prince Georges County Maryland. ask them how they got there

and while she's there, why doesn't she talk to the mayor of Berwyn Height. His dogs were killed last week because the SWAT team got trigger happy when they raided his house because someone had delivered pot to his address. oh, he's white btw, and the fucking mayor of the town

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/05/ST2008080503214.html
 
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The War on drugs is a magnificent farce. If that costly joke was finally ended, life for our citizens who use drugs would improve tremendously. First of all, the substances would be regulated and monitored, and the amount of accidental overdoses would practically diminish. Also, the drug trade would be taken out of the hands of gangs and spooky cartels, and new jobs and opportunities would arise for many---while drug-related violence would end. And to those who say that legalizing drugs would hike up the number of addicts tremendously, I disagree. I think in many cases it would be the opposite. Legalizing dope, for example, would definitely destroy the heroin chic aspect. Instead of 15- Year old chimmy chummy being intrigued by bad-ass heroin addict rock start types---chimmy chummy would hear stories of old man Crothers nodding out on the porch getting his fix . The coolness factor thus eliminated, and the over exposure of it making it not cool at all.

I am not a naive jerk-off. As an addict, I have experienced the horror that drugs can reek on one's life. However, I believe that criminalizing drugs has only made the problem a much worse one.

But, of course, we know, the government has probably made a lot more than 40 billion off selling the drugs clandestinely to us than it did spending on the drug war. It is common knowledge that the US funded the Contras by selling coke during the crack epidemic.


but anyway peace


but anyway peace.
 
But, of course, we know, the government has probably made a lot more than 40 billion off selling the drugs clandestinely to us than it did spending on the drug war. It is common knowledge that the US funded the Contras by selling coke during the crack epidemic.
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ahh meenn brotha!
 
I have a hopeful sort of feeling that if Obama gets the vote he will try to change the "Nation's" stance on drugs...maybe soften things up a bit so not quite so many long-haired hippies get their asses reamed in prison.

Agree with the legalisation - all drugs should be legal. yes, some of them are dangerous poisons which can destroy lives. yes, they exist in this world both as sources of pleasure and self-destruction for those who encounter them. too fucking bad. vipers and poisonous frogs also exist. no point in making them illegal just because a few lost souls want to play with them!
 
Well said ControlDenied!!! I feel that most substances should be legal especially whole plant forms of medicine before its extracted or sythesized by man. We need an alternative from hard drugs such as nicotine, alcohol, and perscription benzo's and pain killers, as well as a general true understanding what these substances really do instead of what they are perceved to do. I've never voted in my life but will start off with OBAMA!! I personally love the guy and his wife and for all what they stand for is a clear vision of a new/real/like it was america for all once again. Obama has a vision and because of his use of drugs he has that vision. Obama is real and America needs a REAL Presidient!!
 
Here is my problem with the drug war. Everyday people of different races and backgrounds are using drugs. Now our government chooses to imprison someone for a violation of a drug law. These people aren't bad just because they used drugs and once you have a felony record or been in prison it is almost impossible to get a job or live a good life. So now lets pretend if Obama or Clinton or whoever would have got caught doing drugs. Their life would have been fucked and we may have never seen them to live up to their potential because of the drug war. The US is arresting so many good people due to the drug war and preventing these people from reaching their potential. If Clinton would have gotten charged for weed possession we may have never had him as a president. The US is losing some of it best future thinkers due to the drug war. Hell we may have a future noble peace prize winner or maybe the best heart surgeon in the world in this country but he or she will never get to achieve that because the drug war took that away from them. What a losing situation for the US.
 
Hell we may have a future noble peace prize winner or maybe the best heart surgeon in the world in this country but he or she will never get to achieve that because the drug war took that away from them. What a losing situation for the US.
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You (the US) already have a drug using Nobel lauriate in Kary Mullis, who received the Nobel prize for medicine because of his development of PCR (without which modern genetic investigation techniques simply wouldn't exist) - he has even publically stated that without his use of LSD he might never have come up with the ideas at the heart of PCR. For all that, if the 'war on drugs' proponents had their way, he'd have been ineligable for research grants etc because of his use of the very thing that inspired one of the great achievements of the 20th century.

When you consider that Francis Crick (another Nobel prize winner) has even admitted that his use of LSD (as an experimental research compound, before it was criminalized in the UK) played some role in the development of the ideas that eventually lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA, drug use has played a pivotal role in the development of the science of genetics (and who knows how many others by people less forthcoming about their drug use) yet the war on drugs proponents would rather have such people as ex-cons rather than Nobel prizewinners etc.

Somehow, the phrase "cutting your nose off to spite your face" seems sadly inadequate to describe such a stupid approach to what is actually a social problem (& should never have been criminalized ).


PS At least with Obama you potentially have an understanding person in charge of your country regarding drug use; in the UK we have the complete opposite in Gordon Brown who is intending to be the first primeminister to ignore/overrule the opinion of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and increase the penalties (well return them to what they were a couple of years ago) for cannabis.

And to think I was stupid enough to actually think he might be an improvement on Tony Blair :!
 
to be fair, both the PCR and structure of DNA were on the verge of being done by others, those guys just got there first. So LSD wasn't the inspiration, but maybe a little catalyst that lowered the activation energy just enough to make it happen a little bit sooner than the other group(s).

Kary Mullis also made lots of other drugs when he was @ Berkeley as a grad student. There's a nice list of scientists who've imbibed on wikipedia.
 
Exactly just imagine if these people would have gotten arrested for lsd possession or distribution before making their discovery. The world would have lost valuable information because these people would never have had a chance to do their research because they were locked up. I'm know a kid at my school that was very good in math but got caught with some tabs, now he lost his scholarship and may be going to jail rather than college. Who knows maybe if this kid would have never got caught he may have discovered a new theorem in the field of mathematics or something great in physics. The drug war makes it look like everyone who does drugs are just trash and that is far from the truth.
 
1. I am sick of hearing the racial defense when it comes to drugs. The issue is NOT RACISM, it is PERSECUTION FOR DRUG USE. The WHOLE racial argument is complete manipulation of the facts on both ends, and is just distracting people from thinking clearly.

2. This war is going to end eventually. Too many people admit it is wrong. I was arrested for heroin possession last year, and the cop let me go. He talked with me for a bit and said he thinks it should be legalized because "we aren't winning and just running in circles, we arrest the users not the pushers, so we get nowhere". He didn't tell me i was free, he just said he'd be "in touch" and then never contacted me again. I got lucky, but it shouldnt have to be this way.
 
yeah here's my 2 cents on the war on drugs, even if its a bit off topic. you can't trust drugs in the hands of half the population, and that's why they're illegal. cause some mom somewhere is gonna want some crack instead of food for her kid, or junkies living on the streets will do anything to get a fix (ie, robbing your house if you live in the area). of course the black market would be entirely dead, which would in fact reduce crime a lot, but no government wants to take blame for higher crack baby rates or junkies tripling in numbers, even if that wouldn't happen. there would probably be barely any change, like Amsterdam. if you don't wanna do drugs cause you know the bad side, because its legal won't change your mind. the exact same thing as users, because its illegal won't change change your mind. there should definitely be a mid-way policy tho the current situation is fucked. i did an entire paper on the war on drugs in my first year haha. gotta love pick your topic.

*edit yea haven't slept yet
 
From what I've seen, it's not quite a racism issue, but it's correlated. It's more of a poverty issue, and the poverty rate is lowest among white people, I believe, though at present I don't have any statistics.
 
The drug war is an abuse of human rights, plain and simple. I am glad the DEA focuses on Heroin, Cocaine, and Meth for the most part, because those are drugs with high potential with abuse, but the same goes for alcohol. If people are allowed unfetterred access to alcohol and cigarettes, why not all drugs?

Fuck the DEA for taking down Pickard. He was doing society a damn service.

Obama needs to win the election. If you are in any of those conservative states, rally your ass off for Obama. McCain would spell the end to the environment and our rights. What if he appointed some more conservative supreme court justices. Damn scary.
 
yeah here's my 2 cents on the war on drugs, even if its a bit off topic. you can't trust drugs in the hands of half the population, and that's why they're illegal.
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you're right in a way, but the reason they are illegal (at least here in the states) is stems back to blatant racism... at least for opiates (chinese), coke (black), cannabis (mexican).
 
youarewhatyouis said:
what a bunch of BS. Anyone without a college degree is a nigger in this country. If you get hit with a drug offense other than possession, you can't recieve financial aid for college. thats what happened to me, and obviously I'm white.

fucking white mans guilt, makes me sick. The people who write this crap are just holding black folks back
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I'm glad you don't get financial aid. Drug dealers don't deserve financial aid. If you needed it that bad you shouldn't have been involved in selling drugs. I'm glad there is now more money for those of us who are wise enough to use it advantageously.
 
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