.....to scads of stolen merchandise. The Seattle Times today reports on a huge stolen merchandise ring involving Seattle homeless drug addicts and transients ripping off downtown and neighborhood merchants. It was masterminded by a Pike Street pawnshop owner who lives on Mercer Island, and his daughter and son-in-law. The thieves got little dribbles of drug money in return for the stolen goods, which the ringleaders kept for personal use or sold on eBay. Remember: drug use is a victimless crime. Just like prostitution.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 15, 2006 11:33 AM | Email ThisHow dare you paint these people in such a dim light! They are simply striking out because they are oppressed by the evil forces of a cold and uncaring capitalistic society. They eare the heroes here, not the cops!
Posted by: pbj on September 15, 2006 12:10 PMI can see the movie. Pawn (Robin Hood) Owners help the sick and oppressed in society, rebel against the oppressive and evil (Sheriff of Nottingham) working class, by taking back the ill gotten gains of the oppressors. Senn Penn can play the the pawn shop owner.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 12:24 PMIt is. Theft, however, is not. Not every drug user steals, obviously. Should we ban alcohol because some people insist on drinking and driving?
Posted by: brett on September 15, 2006 12:28 PMApparently your liberal kin think differently. They don't like the drunks in Pioneer Square, so thay have banned Malt Liquor sales in several areas.
Posted by: pbj on September 15, 2006 12:36 PMCalifornia women kills her child with meth milk
ORONA, Calif. - The retrial of a woman accused of killing her infant son with methamphetamine-laced breast milk began with a prosecutor telling jurors she knew her drug use could be lethal and the defense suggesting the woman's roommate may have been responsible for the death.
Amy Leanne Prien, 34, is accused of murdering 3-month-old Jacob Wesley Smith in January 2002. She was convicted of second-degree murder in 2003, but an appeals court overturned the conviction last September, citing flawed jury instructions from the trial judge.
The prosecution was believed to be the first of its kind in California.
In her opening statements Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Allison Nelson told jurors that Prien would often breast feed Jacob after smoking Methamphetamine in her bedroom.
"There's no doubt the defendant is a Meth addict and that she transmitted Meth to her child through the method of breast milk," Nelson said.
http://www.drug-rehabs.org/content.php?cid=3546&state=California
Tell the foster children in my house that drug use is victimless crime. The parents are meth heads living in their car. The older brother is neglected, the younger one beat into ICU at children's. Dad's in jail, mom's brain is fried so she is unable to care for the kids.
Victimless????? I got two victims in my house you moron.
Get an f'in clue.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 01:07 PMTell me again what that has to do with smoking pot?
Posted by: brett on September 15, 2006 01:12 PMWhat about the Pollice officer her was killed by a woman who was high on cocaine recently in Seattle?
Posted by: TrueSoldier on September 15, 2006 01:14 PMSo the drugs have nothing to do with people living in their car, unable to hold a job, control themselves so as not to beat a 4 month old, stealing to fed the drug habit, using the money for drugs not baby food, so high they leave filthy diapers the babies on for days.
Drugs have nothing to do with that?
Are you really that disconnected from reality? Are you trying to justify your own drug use?
What is it? That you can not see the evidence, that the parents and children might have had a chance at some semblance of normality if drugs were not in equation? That the drugs are a driver in the whole situation?
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 01:50 PMAre you really that disconnected from reality? Are you trying to justify your own drinking?
What is it -- that you can't see that parents and children might have a chance at some semblance of normality if alcohol wasn't in the equation? That alcohol is a driver in the whole situation?
Posted by: brett on September 15, 2006 01:55 PMI am not the one claiming that substance (drugs, alcohol, pot, huffing) abuse has no victims you are.
I am saying that substance abuse has victims.
I have shown you a situation where substance abuse has victims, the story in this thread is about the victims of those that abuse drugs.
You've made a claim > drug use is a victimless crime, back it up.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 02:23 PMI am not the one claiming that substance (drugs, alcohol, pot, huffing) abuse has no victims you are.
I am saying that substance abuse has victims.
I have shown you a situation where substance abuse has victims, the story in this thread is about the victims of those that abuse drugs.
You've made a claim > drug use is a victimless crime, back it up.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 02:23 PMWhat about guns? Crimes committed with guns have victims - why shouldn't they be banned?
I think the answer is that we hold people, not inanimate objects, responsible for the choices they make. Guns don't make choices, and neither do drugs. People do.
> the story in this thread is about the victims of those that abuse drugs.
Not drugs. Those that abuse them.
Posted by: brett on September 15, 2006 03:20 PMYour analog is spurious and ludicrous on the face of it, and frankly stupid as all hell.
A gun doesn't alter the brain chemistry of the user, drugs do. Meth use permanently damages the brains of the user with the first use.
Drugs of all kinds affect a persons reasoning, drugs are addictive, changing a normal persons behavior patterns. Persons under the influence of drugs do things they would not do when sober. In the case of heroin, meth, cocaine, and others the alteration is permanent, that even the sober state is abnormal.
Again you're the one who made the statement, and refuses to back it up.
I not only have two victims of drug abuse in my how I spent years on the fire department dealing with the victims of drug abuse.
Show me some evidence that drugs had no part in the beating of a 4 month old child. Or that drug had no part in the motive for the thefts in the story.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 03:40 PMMy beef here is not with a libertarian approach to drug laws. My specific beef is with Brett statement:
drug use is a victimless crime
I am up to your challenge, I in large part libertarian in outlook but in the case of the libertarian approach to drug laws there is a fatal flaw.
There are victims to drug use other than the user.
Which is where the libertarian argument for legalizing drugs breaks down.
Your individual rights are limited when then affect another's rights. I can carry my gun and never have an impact on anyone else except when I stop a crime from occurring, in fact people are seldom aware they are standing next to someone who is carrying.
No one can use drugs without impact their family and society. Drug use even "recreationally" will affect a persons ability to be productive, their ability to be responsible for their family, and eventually they will come looking for a handout. Now their drug use is affecting my property, the produce of my time and labor taken in the form of taxes to care for them because of their drug use.
And we haven't even got to the children of drug users.
I am all for individual sovereignty, however drug use never affects only the individual user it eventually becomes a matter for society to deal with. Which is why the libertarian approach falls apart in the case of drug use.
Posted by: JCM on September 15, 2006 07:21 PMComing Into Los Angeles
Words and Music by Arlo Guthrie
Coming in from London
From over the pole
Flying in a big airliner
Chickens flying everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?
CHORUS:
Coming into Los Angeles
Bringing in a couple of keys
Don't touch my bags if you please
Mister Customs Man
There's a guy with a ticket to Mexico
No, he couldn't look much stranger
Walking in the hall with his things and all
Smiling, said he was the Lone Ranger
CHORUS
Hip woman walking on a moving floor
Tripping on the escalator
There's a man in the line
And she's blowing his mind
Thinking that he's already made her
CHORUS
Coming in from London
From over the pole
Flying in a big airliner
Chickens flying everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?
CHORUS
You can't make policy based on the exception. I would contend that your case or the guy smoking a little pot in is Mom's basement is the exception. More common is the loser pot head, who can't focus on anything but scoring his next bag.
I am biased, I've seen too much human misery and wreckage from drug use. While it is true that someone can use pot or alcohol infrequently with minimal long term effects, it also true that a single use of Meth, coke, LSD and a long list of substances have long term impacts with one use.
I agree in the ideal situation drug would be legally available. However given human nature, and the toxic affect of most drugs, wide spread availability would lead to wide spread abuse. Given the brain damage that occurs with a single use of Meth do you really want folks being able to experiment?
As soon as someone under the influence appears in public, it is no longer an individual issue. When the choice to use drugs has any impact on the public, and that includes the bums in Pioneer square it is not an issue of individual liberty.
Medicinal use is different, and under the control of a physical, and to correct an abnormal physical or mental condition. Recreational drug use alters normal physiology, and is therefore fundamentally different. THC studies have been inconclusive which is why cannabis in not used by physicians. All the anecdotes of various patients benefits testimony is not science.
Ideally I would agree with you, legalize drugs. However I would have extremely harsh penalties for abuse. Any person under the influence in public of anything would go away for a long time, driving under the influence would go away for even longer, injure someone under influence let's start at 20-25 years, kill someone under the influence go away for life period.
Allow employers to set drug policy for the work place, and cut the ADA "disease" protections, if drug use affects the work place in any way, and I mean if a guy is late because he is hung over, the employer can instantly terminate them.
The point is this; I really don't give a rats ass what mind altering substance someone uses. That is their choice. But as soon as that choice affects anyone else, and I mean just having to look at a drunk lying on the street, the consequences should be severe immediate and long lasting.
Part of having individual liberties is also the individuals duty to respect others liberties. Human nature trends against that duty. Which is why society has laws, to reinforce that duty for the individual. Not only does a drug user make a bad choice, the user alters his state of mind, further degrading his inhibition regarding the respect for others liberties and rights.
Posted by: JCM on September 16, 2006 08:06 AMhow about it sam? under a viaduct tonight for you & your family? love your neighbor? liberal tolerance and diversity? Tent city in YOUR backyard? guess not, eh?
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on September 17, 2006 11:30 AM