Comment on LEAP to Tom Tancredo on KOA

Let's hear from folks.

Tom,

I don't know if legalizing drugs is a solution to the drug problem in the US. My sister died in March of this year - she was addicted to heroin. For years, while living in California, and after moving to Colorado, my family and I contacted the police and sheriff departments several times; we had names of her dealers and suppliers and wanted to turn them in. Law enforcement would not even take the information. California is infested with illegal aliens selling drugs and law enforcement is too busy to deal with the drug problem. I can only tell you that the drug problem is monumental in this country and I'm afraid our government is a major part of the problem in allowing it to continue. We have to ask the question.....WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR OWN PEOPLE? WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY WOULD ALLOW ILLEGAL ALIEN DRUG DEALERS TO MAKE A LIVING FROM ITS OWN CITIZENS? Thanks for this topic, it's near and dear to my heart.

Jan Herron
Evergreen, Colorado

Pot should definitely be legalized and not just for medicinal use. Pot makes people less agressive than booze with a less adverse effects to society.

Furthermore, it is my feeling that Pot has been labeled a "gateway" drug because its illegal status causes kids to have to purchase it where they may be exposed to - and possibly pressured to use - more dangerous, addictive drugs.

Lastly, it could take away business from the Mexican drug cartels, save on enforcement costs while providing industries, like our ailing tobacco industry, with a lucrative crop and create employment opptys as well as a great tax base for the US.

Brooke is right--- Mexico's leaders would welcome a US policy change that would diminish the US market for drugs....

Has anyone done a projection of tax revenue that would come from the legalization of some drugs? One of the comments on the show was the catch-22 of State and Federal organizations with their funding.

Comment: Right now there isn’t a town, city, county or state in the US, if someone wants drugs can’t get it 24/7 – 365 days a year.

Q: How many illegal stills (alcohol productions did ATF bust last year?). Is illegal alcohol production still a large problem in the US?

PS -
Good luck on your run for Gov. of Colorado!

Jan,

Sorry for your loss. A friend died two years ago from cigarette addiction and the resulting lung cancer...53 years young.

If how dangerous a drug was would the criteria to make it illegal, cigarettes and alchol are gone tomorrow. Gone only for legal sale...boot-leggig, smuggling and moonshine stills would spring up overnight.

The state thru its police dept. can not prevent personal stupidity. We can only help with public safety threats like the DUI and rapist.

John,

No tax potential studies have been done based on a 'tax per dose' concept (cigarettes are taxed by dose or per cigarette).

At a dollar a dose (one MJ cigarette), revenues would be between 3 and 10 billion. Being an illegal substance, it is difficult to know how much is consumed. Taxing cocaine at 5 dollars a gram would bring in roughly 5 billion.

Former Mexican President Fox is quoted as saying the ultimate answer to the problems of crime and violence is the legalization of drugs.

I taught "border kids" as a high school teacher on the New Mexico side of the NM/Mexico border in the mid 90s. These kids were mainly Anchor Babies, raised in the Sunland Park barrio, adjacent to El Paso, TX.

One of my students, member of a drug gang, as most were was brutally murdered by a rival drug gang. In fact, all the kids in my class were drug gang members as were their fathers, uncles, brothers many of them being housed in the Southern NM Correctional Institute.

I realized that these gangs were getting their drugs from the Mexican Drug cartels, acting as their Mules then distributing them into the US in a hideous multi-level marketing scheme.

In effect, they were born into this lifestyle and these are their values and ones they will sadly pass on to their own kids.

The objection to prohibition should be based in conservative principles.

Supporting legalization of drugs is not the same as sanctioning the use of them. This is true just as supporting legal alcohol sales is not an endorsement of public drunkenness.

Roosevelt's ending "Prohibition" only granted "respectability" to the thugs of organized crime. The repeal did not end bootlegging. With the "legal" industry came a proliferation and promotion of alcoholic products that overwhelmed the educational and religious institutions chgarged with stabilizing the "society."

This Hollywood charged celebration also obscured the fact that the "drug" industry, specifically pot was grossing more than the illegal booze trade.

And alcoholism statistics began a precipitous rise after repeal of the 18th Amendment.

In 1932 no incidence of alcoholism was reported in the elementary and middle school age groups by either educational psychologists, social psychologists or the church groups in the communities.

Since the decade of the 30's, alcoholism has become a chronic force in the decline of The American Dream.

Enforcement is effective. Organized criminals were thoroughly defeated during the decade of Prohibition by law enforcement authorities with their hands arguably tied behind their backs. Once the feds were authgorized to carry guns and given sufficiently broad authority, the Chicago mobs were quickly decimated. The most powerful thug in Chicago and Hollywood, Al Capone, went ot jail for tac evasion; but most ignore the other conviction, "prostitution." Thoise who advocate "free license" also ignore the fact that "prostitution" was a code word for drung distribution. The "girls" were basic to the drug cartels of Lucky Luciano Did anyone ever believe that whoring, an almost impossible management problem, would produce billions?

Leaders of LEAP either are poor deluded souls or something more interesting.

I do not know what history books Klemcadidle has been reading, but no one ever suggested that ending alcohol prohibition also ended the Mafia's ability to provide OTHER outlawed substances or that the alcohlism that was rampant BEFORE Proibition did not return. But to suggest as he does that organized crime was on the ropes BECAUSE of Prohibition laws is absurd.