The Goat Pen

All three pose a significant enough issue to the well-being of society to be restricted.

I'm generally not for a lifting of the ban on on opiates or major amphetamines like cocaine or meth.

Pot? Okay. Should have remained legal. While ecstasy has an amphetamine backbone, incidence of addiction is fairly rare and impact on society is low, so its legalization is something an argument could be made for.

And with most drugs, simple personal possession should be decriminalized. You don't usually reform an addict by putting them in jail. Ironically, in some cases, their access to their drug of choice may actually be increased while serving time.

Agreed.

Ironically, in some cases, their access to their drug of choice may actually be increased while serving time.

True. Even the knowledge that the drug of choice was probably smuggled into the prison via a swallowed balloon that passed through someone's colon and had to be fished out of a toilet full of feces doesn't dissuade many inmates from buying and using it anyway.

Not to go off on a conspiracy theory, but I just can't see how the government isn't involved in the heroin and cocaine trade. When the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan, they completely eradicated poppy production. Not sure why, it seems like they would've been more than happy to make money on the addictions of the hated western heathen, but for whatever reason, they stopped it completely. Soon as we moved in, the poppy production began again. Not saying that's why we went in (although I'm sure some people probably think that), but it can't be a coincidence that the heroin started flowing again only after we had come in. You can't tell me that various spooks around the world aren't facilitating and profiting from the production of heroin and cocaine everywhere we have any presence, which is pretty much everywhere...

This is from Breitbart, of all places...

Post 9/11 Afghanistan: Opium Cultivation, Production Increases Nearly 20-Fold

http://www.breitbart.com/national-secur ... y-20-fold/

And from the other end of the political spectrum, from the NY Times:

Tasked With Combating Opium, Afghan Officials Profit From It

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/worl ... .html?_r=0

Pretty sure when you've got Breitbart and the NY Times agreeing on something, it's not fake news...

I had never heard this about John McCain before

no idea if its true but the article has people that accuse him of being in a panic that resulted in magnifying a tragedy on the Forrestal
-------------------------------------------------

The fire started at 10:51 a.m. Saturday, July 29, 1967, as 30-year-old Lt. Cmdr. John McCain sat on the port side of the Forrestal in his A-4 Skyhawk going through preflight checks. To his right was Lt. Cmdr. Fred White, also in an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft. A Zuni rocket on another airplane accidentally fired and flew across the flight deck, passing through White’s auxiliary fuel tank and falling into the ocean. Fuel spilled onto the deck from White’s craft and ignited. McCain told his biographer, Robert Timberg, and repeats in his own book, “Faith of My Fathers,” that the rocket hit his own plane and knocked two bombs from it into the burning fuel as he scrambled out of his cockpit and raced to safety across the deck.1

There was, in fact, a single bomb—not two—that dropped to the deck. It exploded 90 seconds after the fire broke out, intensifying the blaze until it raged out of control. White and Thomas Ott, McCain’s parachute rigger, were among the first to be killed instantly or mortally injured, along with most of the firefighting crew. McCain’s plane captain, Robert Zwerlein, was one of those who suffered fatal wounds at this point.

A camera on the deck recorded images showing that the Zuni rocket struck White’s plane. The Navy report later attributed the dropped bomb to White’s plane, although the film footage does not seem to establish this definitively. However, McCain has said many times that the Zuni rocket caused the bomb (two bombs in McCain’s version) to fall from his own craft.

Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain’s craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk. These sources—who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified—agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200 ... edy_at_sea

hedge wrote:Not to go off on a conspiracy theory, but I just can't see how the government isn't involved in the heroin and cocaine trade. When the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan, they completely eradicated poppy production. Not sure why, it seems like they would've been more than happy to make money on the addictions of the hated western heathen, but for whatever reason, they stopped it completely. Soon as we moved in, the poppy production began again. Not saying that's why we went in (although I'm sure some people probably think that), but it can't be a coincidence that the heroin started flowing again only after we had come in. You can't tell me that various spooks around the world aren't facilitating and profiting from the production of heroin and cocaine everywhere we have any presence, which is pretty much everywhere...

What possible motivation would the Obama administration have in letting his intelligence agencies proliferate the production of heroin in Afghanistan and elsewhere for 8 years? I CAN imagine a scenario where we let the local Afghan tribal chiefs get rich on heroin production in return for them cooperating with us on other issues.

Well, that's still collusion. But no, I'm pretty sure that no president or cabinet level official has directly profited from the drug trade (some would disagree, I'm sure), but you get down to field agents and military personnel, i.e, people with the authority and the means to stop it if they wanted to, I would find it hard to believe that plenty of those people aren't getting their palms greased. And don't even get me started on DEA agents...

For the ultra liberal (which in this case is also libertarian) view, here's a short interview with Noam Chomsky. Makes sense...

https://chomsky.info/20020208/

[youtube]35eEljsSQfc[/youtube]

[img2]https://commentisfreewatch.files.wordpr ... table1.jpg[/img2]

New York and Florida

Hit pieces on McCain makes sense.

,

Especially during the 2008 election.

McCain was the last Republican I voted for POTUS. And even then, it was like drinking syrup of ipicac.

Try drinking Clorox instead next time

aTm wrote:
[img2]https://commentisfreewatch.files.wordpr ... table1.jpg[/img2]

Similar numbers for Christians in the Middle East. Neither Jews nor Christians have done well living under the Religion of Peace. According to that religious nutjob apologist rag, HuffPo:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/2 ... 78582.html

aTm wrote:[youtube]35eEljsSQfc[/youtube]

[img2]https://commentisfreewatch.files.wordpr ... table1.jpg[/img2]

It's like African descendants in Argentina.

Ummm, maybe she didn't think things through...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/24/de ... diana.html

AA is noticeably quiet with his harpy Image 2 horseshit on here

I don't read anything prof posts.