http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042102125.html

Well if anybody wasn't aware today we got our 4th amendment rights back because the Supreme Court declared today that warrantless vehicle searches are unconstitutional, thereby validating the existence of the 4th amendment; which 30 years ago, the supreme court delcared did not exist.

I believe this is a great victory for liberty and a seriously blow to the governments war on drugs that has accomplished absolutely nothing for the last 4 decades. The greatest losers in the war on drugs have been our civil liberties, but today the Supreme Court gave us back our 4th amendment rights (thank you!). Because rights come from government and can be taken away at a whim.

However, there is a problem, our 4th amendment rights still do not exist because of the illegal domestic spying program that Bush created and later congress made legal. This piece of legislation declares the 4th amendment non-existent, so it will be interesting to see how the supreme court rules on that one.
 

Wow, that is a good find.

I never knew about that concerning the 4th Amendment. Why would they do that, other than the war on drugs?

The Bush thing would be able to be considered unconstitutional since this amendment thing has been straightened out. I think that would be what happens next.

BTW, welcome back.
 

Hurrr.. cool I guess. I've always thought that the Bill of Rights was probably the best thing to come out the USA.
 

Impressive. Not only did SCOTUS overturn something blatantly unconstitutional, but look at the composition of those in favor. Armageddon must be at hand for there to be a decision where Scalia (a strict constructionist) and Ginsberg (a "living-document" justice) actually concur.

No, it won't. It will require arresting officers to stick to the crime they pulled the suspect over for, not grant them carte blanc to use a routine traffic stop to probe for larger violations. Law enforcement should be difficult in a society where the accused are innocent until proven guilty.

However, it will require us to be far more careful when pulled over when driving. I'd make sure your license and registration are in plain sight before the officer arrives at your window. I'd have all your passengers keep their hands in plain sight and stay still. This ruling doesn't rule out a cop performing the same unconstitutional search of your vehicle should someone in your car make a sudden (interpreted threatening) move. Stick to the script. Hand the license and registration over and stick to "yes" and "no" as much as possible. Admit to nothing and make the cop do most of the talking.
 

I prefer to simply get my shit and hand it to him, and talk to him like he's a person rather than some villain in a B-movie. But then, I am not protesting laws I don't like by opting out of participation. I guess it helps a lot when the whole interrogation is punctuated by the fact that I've done nothing wrong, or if I have vis a vis a traffic violation, I'll take responsibility for it. You don't have to play mental and emotional chess with every cop you meet if you just own up to shit you've done or stop doing shit that will pique a cop's interest. Frankly a lot of our legal system seems to encourage the guilty to seek out technicalities. So much so, that many guilty parties take mock offense at being found guilty, or technicalities being considered insufficient to skirt responsibility. For anyone that has a lot of exposure to the justice system, I think they would have observed said bizarre phenomenenon.
 

The problem with not exercising your rights is when people never exercise them, they can't handle it when a maverick comes in and starts invoking his rights:


 

So you would surrender your 4th amendment rights if given the choice?

I disagree with that position. I believe that too many men fought and died for our freedom and it would be a moral travesty to surrender our freedom to tyrants. I don't use drugs and I don't have any illegal contraband in my vehicle, so there is no need for an officer to search it, period. Neither do I have any kind of obligation to somehow "prove" my innocence to an officer who has no reason to suspect me of guilt in the first place.

Whether you have something illegal in your car or not is irrelevent, the answer should always be no. Never give consent to search your vehicle. Officers never have a good reason to search your vehicle, because that would be a violation of your constitutionally protected 4th amendment rights that so many have fought and died for.
 

The one thing you don't seem to have cottoned on to Hawaiian is that if you're friendly and casual, a cop who's pulled you over probably isn't going to want to search your car because he's not going to suspect you of doing anything wrong (there are those who will pull you over for no reason whatsoever and want to do a full search, but I wouldn't think they'd be in a majority). that's how it works over here anyway, I don't know about over there.
 

Thats not true, usually age is the main factor. If you are under 30 you are getting searched, bottom line. The thing is most people don't know their rights, so they will automatically consent to the search. Kids are especially stupid in this regard, and thus more prone to fall victim to an illegal search.

I've been in this situation too many times to count. I've had 1 officer investigted and reprimanded for illegally searching my car. It's a good thing we have family friends in government and law enforcement. This idiot pulled me over for a tail light then 2 of them pretty much rushed my car and opened the door, when he opened it he reached down and magically produce a single marijuana seed from the side panel pocket on the door. Now I know this wasn't mine because I had just cleaned the car and the spot in particular I scrubbed because I had spilled soda in there earlier. But magically he was able to see a tiny little seed the instant he opened my door in the dark, and began to search my vehicle. Well basically what happened is he already had the seed and used it as a pretext to search my vehicle because he was "sure that I had something."

Well anyways our friend in Internal Affairs investigated and his partner snitched him out after they produced the dash cam.

Another time I was pulled over for speeding 6 mph over and they asked to search my car. I said no repeatedly but they kept asking, saying things like "you know we can search it anyways right?" I reasoned that if that were true he wouldn't bother asking for my permission. He kept on and on saying hes gonna bring a dog, which he did. But the dog was unable to find anything either. They had to let us go and I got the ticket completely dropped because of the officers actions; the officer was not a reliable witness and so his testimony that I was speeding was thrown out. Whats funny about this story is that later I found out my friend had coke on him at the time (I didn't know about it) it was stuffed in his underwear but the dog never found it.

All of these times I was being perfectly polite and it did nothing. Cops are looking for drugs, they always are. They are looking to bust people. They are not your friends are not trying to help you out. Their job is to find, arrest, and help convict you.
 

Please don't generalize such things when you haven't any evidence to prove such accusations. Your experience with a handful of LEO's is regrettable, but you cannot paint every officer with the same brush. Remember your logical fallacies. Some of them do want to help, some will actually cut you a break even when you have broken the law. Some understand the trials and tribulations of the average citizen.
 

Here's a former officer saying the same thing.

They profile people. That's what they're trained to do. There's even a name for this game they play on motorists. They call it "Narcotics Profiling".
 

The video Golgo linked to confirms my statements. Nuts the thing is you are older so you wouldn't know what it's like to be profiled.

People like you....I don't know what to say. I guess you are not so bad but GA is the type to be like "well if you're not breaking the law then you don't have anything to worry about." These were the same people saying if you're not a terrorist then you don't have anything to worry about with the domestic spying program. Now these very same people are in an uproar about the government naming "extremist organizations."

It's like, you welcome tyranny with open arms and thunderous applause but cry when it gets here. And I'm supposed to have sympathy for that?
 

Searching cars and gathering foreign intelligence aren't the same thing.

This ruling means absolutely nothing, police can no longer search your car without a warrant if you are outside of the car and there's no probable cause at that point in time. All it means is that if a cop wants to search your car he needs to find or make up some probable cause before he pulls you out of your vehicle. Whoop-dee-doo.
 

All I know is that I said I don't treat cops like B-movie villains and suddenly I'm supporting the domestic spying program, would voluntarily surrender my 4th amendment rights, I'm in an uproar about extremist organizations, and I welcome tyranny. I really cannot fathom what you are getting at by leaping from conclusion to conclusion based upon your hasty generalizations. Hopefully no-one is stupid enough to believe this psychotic extremist garbage, but I will extrapolate to clarify my position, if not to make it clearer why this kind of thinking is wrong.

I have consented to searches multiple times, and I have been searched without my permission. I was highly annoyed at only one search that was done without my permission by a state narcotics BPA after I was pulled over by an off-duty hilbilly that kept having to tear up tickets because he couldn't spell. In most other instances, cops were just being paranoid. I will be the first to admit some acted as though they KNEW I had drugs and was a total degenerate, and some times that was directly linked to my shitty, hostile attitude. Other times I felt I did nothing and was still grilled, and I think those cops were bad cops.

But that I know of and have been mistreated by bad cops does not align me against the police and it doesn't make me think that all cops are the same as those bad cops. I don't doubt there are many instances in which bad cops do things that they should be reprimanded for, like Golgo's video. I don't, however, come to the same conclusions as Golgo and DE that all cops are the same as a result. Just like I don't think that every kid I see wearing a death metal shirt is a degenerate anarchist vandal, like many degenerate anarchist vandals I have seen driving to work and in concerts.

I know a lot of good cops that genuinely want to make streets safer and improve their communities for their kids, relatives, friends. I want to help those cops. If I can abolish some initial hostility or uncertainty by being open, I will. If I feel a cop has a boner for me and just wants to bullshit me and pull some weirdo power fetish on me, I'll run my rights. But I haven't done anything wrong and don't plan on it, and I don't have any weirdo power fetish that prevents me from giving a cop reasonable access to alleviate his suspicions. Yes, it's a cop's job to search for drugs, and I don't begrudge him that, just like I don't begrudge a gas station worker for telling me that a soda costs $1. Yes, they could just let me have it scot-free and have many times, but that doesn't mean that I can come to expect that I will be forever immune to being charged.

And just as a side note, I highly doubt anyone died thinking "this is for the fourth amendment", and even if they had, that does not produce any impetus in my person to support it as a result. Many people have died for stupid or corrupt causes, and pulling that "many have fought and died" cliche looks as though you are shoring up a weak position.
 

That's a former officer? I don't mean to sound critical, but he doesn't seem terribly bright. Regardless, there's nothing that he says that isn't anecdotal.

I was young once, and I was never profiled. Perhaps I just don't look like the type of person they're looking for?

Is this directed at me? I can't fathom why.

Bottom line, I know, without a doubt, that some cops are not out to get you. Some cops are just trying to earn a living. To say that they're all just out to get you is ridiculous.
 

Yeah. In one video, it shows a tape of him pulling over a guy in his patrol car from when he was on the force and busting a guy on a drug posession because he consented to a vehicle search.

Barry is an 8-year veteran beginning his Texas law enforcement career as a police dispatcher for the Gladewater Police Department. He was soon hired by the Big Sandy Police Department where he trained his own narcotic detector dog and soon became one of the top highway interdiction officers in East Texas. Although Barry had less than five miles of highway to practice seizing narcotics, he held a county record of nearly 100 drug arrests and a record marijuana seizure.

Barry was quickly recognized and contacted by the Permian Basin Drug Task Force located in Odessa, Texas which had jurisdiction in nineteen surrounding counties. Here Barry received extensive training and worked joint operations with the ATF, DEA, FBI, U.S. Military and Border Patrol. Barry is well trained in all interdiction methods including undercover operations, reversal operations, search warrants, K-9's, traffic stops and public transportation narcotics interdiction (buses and airplanes.)

His talents were soon noticed and he began traveling the State of Texas teaching narcotics interdiction classes to various police academies and agencies. The standard agreement between Barry and the host agency was to pay wages and all expenses for a two or three day class which included an eight hour shift of Barry demonstrating his interdiction skills. If Barry failed to make a drug arrest in the eight hour shift, he forfeited all monies and the class was free. Barry never had to give any money back.

After 2 years with the Permian Basin Drug Task Force, Barry was contacted by his earlier employer, Gladewater Police Department, to become head of their narcotics division. Barry's desire to return home and bring his training back to East Texas resulted in a two year stint with the G.P.D. where Barry once again became the leading drug enforcement officer.

Political pressures including arresting the mayor's son for methamphetamine, a city councilman for marijuana, and outperforming the DEA and local task force caused Barry to quit law enforcement and become a successful entrepreneur. During his career, Barry had accumulated an impressive record of over 300 felony narcotics arrests, 500 misdemeanor narcotics arrests, the seizure of over fifty vehicles and millions in cash and assets.

Barry now admits during his tour of duty in the war on drugs his conscience often bothered him while seeing everyday, hard working, non-violent citizens torn from their children and spouses and placed in jail during a raid or traffic stop.

He explains, "I knew what I was doing was wrong but my need for fame, adrenaline and peer acceptance overrode my good conscience." Barry now realizes this is a war on people not a war on drugs. He explains "This war on people is a failed policy. We have more prisoners of this war in jail then ever before yet even the DEA admits we have more potent drugs and a larger supply of drugs available than ever before."

After leaving law enforcement, Barry began building small businesses for a living. He is the former owner of 3 car dealerships, a tire shop, a nightclub, a limousine service,a cage fighting company, and is CEO/founder of nevergetbusted.com. Barry continued his education by returning to college and joining the debate team where he uses these skills to educate against propaganda.

While living his civilian life, Barry continually noticed the abuse of law enforcement growing worse. Barry himself was unjustifiably arrested 5 times and became the target of a botched civil raid which left bruises on his 13 year old daughter. One of his arrests includes him being jailed for theft in 2006. After being released from jail, Barry learned the "theft" charge stemmed from him not returning Jeepers Creepers I and Jeepers Creepers II on time to a local video rental store. The charges were dropped after the media aired the story. Barry admits he might have deserved jail time for his choice of movies but not for being late on a return. The other four arrests were just as unreasonable and led to charges being dropped or being found not guilty by a jury.

After experiencing these crazy searches and arrests, it was clear to Barry the courts were doing nothing to protect him and others of their 4th amendment rights which promises to protect citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. This is when Barry decided to release a series of DVDs and writings (beginning with Never Get Busted Again Traffic Stops Volume I) to help parents, students, teachers, bankers, laborers and other citizens from going to jail for something as unreasonable as marijuana possession.

Probably.

Well, according to Barry, who is an expert on narcotics interdiction, many of them are. Hell, he should know. He was a pro at doing it, trained them how to do it, and was frequently sought for consultation/training due to his expertise and experience.
 

This is a prime example of cherry picking. You ignore thousands of cops that say they're not out to get anyone and are just trying to do their jobs, and you choose to accept the one unique cop who was obviously putting it upon himself to pursue an agenda. How do these two relate? Oh yeah, the cop happens to be spouting your personal philosophy. Funny how a cop gains instant credibility with you, after years of being called a liar and a fraud.

Golgo13's Guide to Reputable Sources

Thousands of Cops Representing Themselves: That's not how I operate.

WRONG!

One Cop With A Unique, Remarkable Record of Drug Pursuit: All cops do what I did.

CHECK!

 

This is a prime example of cherry picking. You claim cops aren't out to get people, but when officers come forward to blow the whistle and claim that they are, you choose to ignore them to pursue an agenda. So why aren't anything the whistleblowers have to say valid? Oh yeah, they just happen to not be spouting your personal philosophy. Funny how a cop instantly loses credibility with you, after years of being called a model officer and an example for others.
 

It's more likely that this specific cop was biased and his friends were biased as well. More specifically, since he was the trainer, he assumes that everyone is going to adhere to his styles, when in all reality, the trainees will listen to about half and put into practice maybe another half of that.

The problem is that you're trying to use a single anecdotal source who uses 2nd hand accounts to prove that ALL cops are essentially out to get you. It's one thing to say that a lot of cops are this way, but to say that ALL cops are out for themselves is reckless and disrespectful to the ones that actually try to do do an honest job. As with most stories of this nature, nobody pays any attention to the good experiences, but the bad expereicnes are told repeadely to everyone they meet.
 

I'm not saying that all cops are like that. It's just that several of them are. Many, in fact. Every experience that I, my friends, or my friends' friends have had with LEOs has been consistent with Barry's training regime.

Might have something due to the fact that we're all in Texas where he did most of his interdiction training.

They aren't lying when they say they'll use whatever they can against you in the court of law.
 

Once you're in court, they have to commit, otherwise they'll be made to look foolish. I can see why they would throw everything at you in those cases. But without probable cause (real probable cause) I know many LEO's that will not give you a second look except to write you a warning and wish you a good day.
 

Any cop who tries to search your vehicle is out to get you.

Not all cops are bad, but most of them are misguided. They believe that what they are doing is right and good, and somehow helping the community. They are wrong.
 

In the literal sense, ok. But by the same token, if your car is being searched, then you have already done something wrong. Perhaps it's not worthy of having your vehicle searched, but you did something to give them an excuse to pull you over.

So you think that cops serve no purpose?
 

Not necessarily, cops can makeup reasons. As I demonstrated in the DUI thread it's impossible for you to drive perfectly, physically impossible. No human being can do it and it's questionable whether even an automated computer-controlled system would be able to. But even if you do get pulled over for speeding or missing tail light -- what the hell does that have to do with searching your vehicle? Just write the ticket and thats it, you have no legitimate reason to search the vehicle, even if you suspect drug possession.

And I didn't say cops serve no purpose, I said they are misguided like a lot of people. Basically anybody who supports the drug war (vast majority of the US population) is misguided. They believe that:

A) It is working
B) It is helping

Of course any 20-30 minute research on the subject would point in the other direction, as our last 3 drug czars have also indicated. The drug war experiment did not work and drugs won. The drug war has done nothing to improve life in this country, absolutely nothing.

But people don't realize that because they are largely ignorant to the facts. Cops invariably fall into this category, however there are some who realize that the whole thing is totally pointless and do it anyways (similar to a soldier who believes the war in Afghanistan is probably lost but goes anyways).
 

If a cop intends to pull you over, you're going to get pulled over. He's going to get you on something.

Follow anyone around long enough and you'll have them on something, no matter how slight, irrelevant, or anally retentive. The painted lines could disappear on the road since they're faded ito oblivion and then the road makes a sharp but brief curve outward and back in again and he pulls you over for crossing the (almost completely invisible) line.

You pass a yield sign that has a tree completely eclipsing it and don't yield. You can be pulled over.

It's endless when you think about it.
 

I dunno what it is about police in this state, but here's another amusing anecdote:

Police handcuff news crew covering traffic accident

Another one from Vegas:

Army Iraq War Verteran/Soldier beaten at McCarran Airport
 

It's fairly obvious to anyone that isn't a paranoid sociopath that this is not a problem with LEOs, this is a problem with laws.
You are a liar, I never once said this guy wasn't credible. You simply do not like being busted as the prejudiced PoS that you are, so you are now trying to project your qualities onto me. I will not allow it. I have already stated in no uncertain terms that there are cops out there that are bad cops. There are cops that abuse their power, that use their position to maximize misery, and are all-around dickheads. I also said that this does not represent the majority of cops--which you contested via this anecdote.

You picked a DEA wunderkind out of a crowd of cops and are claiming that he's a perfect example of your personal philosophy that all cops are bulldogging narcs. This is called argument via exception and vivid exception, where you take the most outlandish, over-the-top example you can find and try to retroactively apply it to the majority of a group. The vast majority of patrolmen do not boast this guy's stats by a longshot, and they sure as hell don't make civilian careers out of weaseling drivers out of their rights only to turn full 180 and open up a practice to help drug users avoid law enforcement. To say that he is at all representative of Joe Everycop is obviously a blatant intellectual dishonesty to anyone that isn't deluded. Otherwise, I fully expect an aspiring member of the DEA to be a drug-oriented police officer that actively pursues drug stops. Apparently you think all cops are involved with the DEA? In Texas, they likely have a much higher percentage, due to the fact that we share a border with the biggest drug artery of the United States.

I have never claimed that I thought all cops are good people or that there are no bad apples. And frankly, the reason that you lie and retort as though I am some rabid apologist that would discredit a cop because he has said something negative about the system is because these are the only types of people that you can silence. Reasonable men with a realisitic view of a working system are unassailable via anecdotes of dirty cops, and claims that bad experiences indicate massive system failure, because they've accounted for them, and admit they are possible. They simply don't think that bad experiences and bad cops means that a system is broken. This in turn puts the burden of proof upon you that it is broken, and it is a burden that you cannot substantiate. The system is working, better than any other comparable system in the world.

You simply cannot accept any responsibility for your behavior in your circumstances, that would have led to you being harassed. Thus, you project all the hostility and anger you feel towards law enforcement, onto cops. Perhaps it's because you feel you're much smarter than cops. Perhaps its that you feel you're above the law, because you're smarter than the average person. Regardless, you obviously have an unreasonable hostility towards law enforcement, and sorry no matter what kind of fantastic vivid exception you can pull out of your ass I still don't have problems these problems with cops you claim are replete and neither does anybody in my family. It's fairly obvious that the problem here is you. You even have a story where one of your buddies is wielding a weapon in the middle of the street, and you were angry at the police for "harassing" you. As though a person brandishing a weapon wouldn't be a POI to a cop. And please, spare me your MJ defense of "knives have many uses, material and functional!" Your buddy wasn't using a butter knife at his dinner table, he had a Bowie knife out in the middle of the fucking street.

I mean, look at your company. The guy who got busted for DUI, and used a lawyer to weasel out of it is trying to preach to the forum that the methods LEOs use to pull over drivers is bullshit and doesn't work. Obviously it does, if DE is having to lawyer up every year to keep himself from getting kicked out of the military. Do you see the pattern of failure to accept responsibility yet?
 

While it's true that the drug laws encourage cops to violate our constitutional rights, that still doesn't excuse the behavior.

War encourages war crimes. I can't name a single soldier who's been to Iraq that wasn't scared shitless behind their 50 cal or 240b, after the first firefight ask anyone they were ready to shoot anything that moved after that point -- including children. It's the situation that causes this mentality no doubt -- when you are fearing for your life you mind works in a different manner than while you are at home.

Cops are put into the same situation. Instead of being the protectors of our constitutional rights, they become the violators. Really the laws themselves are to blame for most of it, but that still does not absolve officers of any responsibility whatsoever. While it sucks that our irrational and backwards laws put officers in this position, they too bear some responsibility for their actions. The drug war simply cannot be conducted without violating peoples 4th amendment rights -- in essence the drug war is not compatible with the 4th amendment, and therefore the constitution. So in order the prosecute the war on drugs officers have to find ways around the 4th amendment, which they routinely do (and are trained to do).

Your characterization assumes that the officers we are referring to are "truly" evil, in that they know what they are doing is wrong. Usually thats not the case, most officers are what we call "true believers" in that they believe that they are doing the right thing. Government propaganda and brainwashing are responsible for the vast majority of that, yourself being a prime example. But not to worry, you are like the average citizen, who is completely unaware of the fact that the drug war does not work (most people think it is working).

Although I don't really see how you could use that excuse anymore. I mean seriously, you can't keep claiming ignorance after we bring this to your attention again and again in every thread. At some point you are going to have to acknowledge or admit that you are fully aware of the fact that the drug war does not work but support it anyways (see my thread on welfare for a good example of your logic).

No, what we are saying is that most cops who are primarily involved with the drug war routinely violate peoples 4th amendment rights in a variety of ways -- and are often trained to do so. We are mainly referring to the "Drug Task Forces" and "Narcotics Officers" who are the main culprits. The average officer will only violate 4th amendment rights when it comes to illegally searching someones vehicle -- but in most cases they don't have to, because they usually obtain consent from a largely ignorant populace. In 90% of the cases people don't know their rights and will voluntarily consent to a search.

Where is your evidence that the drug war is working? This statement contradicts all known data that we have available on the drug war, not to mention common sense. If the drug war was working it wouldn't be getting worse each year, and would have some tangible effect on either the demand or availability of drugs, which it hasn't (unless increasing demand and availability is a goal, then it's been a tremendous success).

I should accept responsibility for an illegal search and violation of my 4th amendment constitutionally guranteed rights because of an unrelated arrest years prior in another state? I don't think so. Ad hominem is not a valid debate tactic, by the way.
 

I have not referred to the War on Drugs, and have no plans of doing so. Pronouns or conceptualizations in which you understood me to be speaking about the war on drugs have been misread. Do not attempt to force this discussion into that quagmire. The entire topic and measures of the War on Drugs relative "success" are arbitrary and pointless. Suffice it to say that it is ongoing, and performing its function to the government's satisfaction. If you think it is not serving its intended function, you are more than welcome to outline its intended function as you see it and detail how it is not meeting said function. You will not engage me in such a discussion, as I do not summarize the function of the War on Drugs with a success-failure bifurcation based solely on crunching costs. I have no desire to invest large portions of my time into such a pointless excursion.
[quote=DE]
These seem grossly aberrant.
 

It's only "pointless" because it contradicts your unfalsifiable position. You have defined "a point" as anything that agrees with you, and thus anything that calls into question your reasoning is "pointless."

I would have to state that the purpose of a drug war should be to reduce the amount of drugs or drug use in the country, but that simply follows another (false) premise that drugs cause violence, crime, and death. In that regard, the war on drugs has been a spectacular failure.

So tell me, what other measure might we use to determine whether a program is working or not? The simple fact that it exists? In that case free health care is a huge success and the fact that we are expanding free health care to include everyone is evidence of that assertion.

But don't ask GA to apply his retarded logic consistently. If he were forced to do that, he would simply be unable to hold his current views - it would be a logical impossibility.

"Suffice it to say that it is ongoing, and performing its function to the government's satisfaction"

Yes I agree, free health care is doing just that!
 

"The doctrine of stare decisis does not require us to approve routine constitutional violations."

That's some good wit right there
 

Since the existence of drugs denotes a complete failure of the War on Drugs, does the existence of crime denote a complete failure on the part of the police force? I ask, because one of your many personal attacks involves consistency of logic. Let me know.
 

If crime prevention failed to reduce crime then yes I would have to say we should consider other alternatives.

Let's take murder for example. Murder is wrong in and of itself. The same cannot be said about drug use. Drugs are ammoral, the consequences of drug use depend entirely on the user. If I get drunk and kill somebody we don't blame the alcohol.

Let's take the original prohibition as another example. The stated goal was to prevent people from drinking -- the problem was that it did not prevent people from drinking. Would you argue that the 1st prohibition was working? Why or why not?

If making murder illegal somehow caused even more murders then we might have to reconsider that law. No evidence indicates that this is the case. With drugs, we have seen that since the drug war began even more people use drugs than ever before, with no end in sight. Drugs won.

Just like the "War on Poverty." That was a spectacular failure and did absolutely nothing to reduce poverty in this country.
 

Would you say that correlation is causation? So, if drug use has increased since the War on Drugs started, it would "obviously" be the fault of the War? I'm asking, because that's what you seem to be telling me to believe.

Equally, I am a little concerned with your consistency of logic. You say that "if crime prevention failed to reduce crime" you would oppose it, when in fact law enforcement has never at any point halted crime in the history of man. Oh wait, I guess China's policy on drug trafficking is more effective than the American one...what is their course of action, again? Oh right, the death penalty.

Would you support the death penalty in the War on Drugs?
 

It would be obvious at that point that the War on Drugs does not reduce drug use in any way, shape, or form, and instead creates warzones and is a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars.

Of course not, since drug use is a victimless crime, much like drinking coffee or alcohol. Chinas crime rate in general is lower than the US, which brings us back to the drug war not being conducive to liberty and a free society. The two are mutually exclusive.

We could also regulate peoples diets and force them to excercise, and this would certainly reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease (which is the leading cause of death in the United States). But once again we see that like the drug war, this would not be conducive to liberty and a free society. If the punishment for speeding was death there would also be a lot less speeders, however if the reward for speeding was possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, the two would balance each other out. This is exactly what you see with the drug war. If certain death is not a deterrent, as is the case with Mexican gangsters, why would jail time be?

GA, I know that you are not interested in using consistent logic, you never have been and it's unlikely you ever will be. You are comfortable with using inconsistent, self-contradictory logic, which is why it's impossible to debate with someone like you. Rational discussion cannot take place under such circumstances. It is simply impossible.

For example I noticed you failed to answer any of my questions yet bizarrely still demand that yours be answered. Did the original prohibition work and if so should we continue it and ban alcohol again? Why or why not?
 

Why is it that the behaviour of one copper who is perceived to have done the wrong thing is allowed to tarnish the rest of the force? I doubt anyone on this board would settle for such generalisations about ethnic groups or subcultures so why should we have to put up with that sort of rubbish?
 

If you check my earlier posts, you see such sentiment expressed. The summary of response was to in turn lie about my position and attempt to redirect the discussion elsewhere.
 

The entire concept behind both is to reduce the target problem. In the case of the war on drugs, it owes its existence to the theory that implementing the drug war would decrease the availibility of drugs and make it more prohibitive to acquire them so more people will have less opportunity to make the wrong choices.

In the early '70s if the French connection had piqued your interest in smack, heroin costed $30 per bag and was 5% pure drug. Today heroin is availible in every city in the U.S. and it costs $4 per bag and is 80 - 90% pure. Adjusting for inflation, the same money that would have bought 5% pure lethal pleasure in 1970 gets you 140% more today.

Heroin is over 600 times cheaper than it was before war on drugs. It's cheaper than a 6-pack and easier to get since dealers don't check ID.

So by any measure the war on drugs has been a miserable failure wasting tax dollars, creating new criminals, and destroying lives by keeping non-violent drug offenders in jail - at best.

What the feds have accomplished by spending our money and taking away our freedom is the creation of a black market which begets violence because that's the only way to solve disputes in the black market which is a boon for organized crime.

The war on drugs creates the black market which increases profits for those willing to take the risks to supply them, which there is no shortage of. We create people like Pablo Escobar by having drugs illegal in the first place. It's a multibillion dollar business. It's unstoppable because of the amounts of money involved. You can wipe out an entire network and they'll be replaced overnight due to the profit motive.
 

I find it ironic that right above my quote about "correlation is causation", you note that drugs have become more available and cheaper. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that the War on Drugs is what has caused this? That somehow, federal attempts at preventing drug use and abuse has actually done the reverse? Or are you simply looking at the increase of prices and availability, and making a presumption based on posteriori that if the War on Drugs had not existed, that drugs would have stayed at the same relative cost?

If the murder rate triples in a particular city, does that mean that the local law enforcement has failed policy? Does it mean something law enforcement has done has in turn caused people to go out and murder?

I just want to know, because it wasn't too long ago that someone argued directly that if someone had gotten into a wreck with pot there was no means of determining that pot was involved because it lasts 30 days in a system. So basically, even with someone's THC levels in the stratosphere, it was supposedly intellectually dishonest to state that person's wreck was caused by retarded motor function. It seems like the goalposts for what is intellectually honest is getting moved rather conveniently, here.

Continuing, there are many drugs that will stay illegal even if we elect to legalize pot. PCP, etc. are not social drugs, they practically require a padded prison to offer any guarantee of avoiding major damage to self or others. If we make those drugs illegal, and they in turn become more expensive, does that mean that we have failed in policy?
 

Before we continue any further, I want you to explain to me what you think a black market is, how they arise, and the supply/demand mechanism in relation to commodity pricing.

If we can clear up any misconceptions here then the rest should come much easier.
 

Very amusing. In turn, I demand you produce reliable data in graph form dictating what the prices of various illegal substances would have been without prohibition "driving" prices. I also want a 5 page paper on why and how legalizing some drugs will abolish the black market or significantly lower usage of said drugs, and how this is a net benefit to a society that depends on its citizens for a workforce and also insures their health.

You never provide any graphs or data for what the availability would have been without illegalization, but you still claim to know how much there would have been in this alternate universe. And according to you, it would have been much less. I'm not in the business of pursuing alternate universes and peering into their day-to-day happenings, but while you're doing it or talking with people that do, you should be able to formulate some numbers when you put your heads together, right? Let me see them. If you don't want to share your numbers, then you certainly cannot expect a reasonable man to believe that you know what would have happened if cocaine weren't made illegal, and that the result means the War on Drugs is a failure.

And if you insist on attempting to redirect into "LOLZ GENOCIDE EVERYBODY EXPECTS THIS DUE TO THE IRREFUTABLE LAWS OF BLACKMARKETNOMICS", please read up on crime and punishment. China doesn't have half the drug problem that the U. S. does with the same drugs and half the LEO personnel, because they execute motherfuckers they catch with them. The War On Drugs is seeing a crisis of conscience, in that some people do not feel that it is pursuing appropriate goals. This makes apprehension and the like much harder. I consider this a success of U. S. policy, not a failure. Ultimately, we are not a country of solid black-and-white.
 

Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, a fictitious place known as "Portugal" decriminalized all drugs.

Let's face it GA, there is no such thing as "providing evidence" that contradicts your opinion, because by definition, such evidence cannot exist. We've already demonstrated that your position is unfalsifiable. It is impossible, even in principle, to prove you wrong. You have defined "evidence" in the same way that Kent Hovind defined "evolution," and thus according to him there is still no evidence for evolution, nor could there ever be. To date, nobody has collected on his $250,000 offer to find evidence for evolution. Your position is identical to the infamous Young Earth Creationist.

I've just given you the proof that you asked for, even though you of course show no such courtesy when asked to support your own position. What will happen next is, invariably, unfailingly, unalterably, unchangeably, irrefutably, a shifting of the goal post. This much is 100% certain, as predictable as the rise of the sun tommorow.

How the moderators and administration have not caught on to your silly little game thus far is beyond me. If it's not clear at this point that you are not doing anything besides covering your ears and screaming "lalalalalalalalalalalala" then somebody needs an eye exam. You are trolling, stop it.