Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jun 2008
Source: Hingham Journal (MA)
Copyright: 2008 Hingham Journal
Contact:  http://www2.townonline.com/hingham/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3806
Author: Sam Kopper

FEWER LAWS - TOUGHER SENTENCES

Hingham - I don't worry about conservative or liberal labels. In the last two
months I've ideas from the far left and from the far right.
Doctrinaire people bore me. Here comes my Libertarian side. Some,
perhaps most Libertarian positions are right leaning; others are quite
left. They'd like government completely out of almost all regulation
of business and education funding, but they also want "the state" out
of our personal lives. It's the later position that resonates with
me.

The Federal government and every state should review of all laws
governing personal behavior, deleting every "victimless crime" statute
from the books. They (we) should then review the remaining victim
crimes and toughen up the sentences. We'd be a lot better off with
fewer laws and heavier punishment for the ones left standing. Getting
rid of laws that have nothing to do with hurting people would, among
other benefits, provide our police and courts with more resources to
reduce hard crime and free up a lot of room in our prisons to hold the
thugs, rapists, and murderers for more years. I have zero sympathy for
people who purposefully hurt others.

Here's my short list of laws to be shredded, just to start with: drug
prohibition laws, prostitution laws, and overly restrictive
marriage/family structure laws.

. Drug Laws - They don't work. Worse, they actually create real crime
(robbery, murder, etc.), they distract law enforcement from hard
crime, and they actually aid and abet terrorism.

Make no mistake: I am not espousing a change that would encourage more
drug use. To the contrary, smarter drug laws would likely result in
less drug use, most importantly, among young people. No doubt, using
any mind-altering drugs in childhood or during education is to be
discouraged and hopefully completely prevented, precisely as we
discourage the use of alcohol in the early stage of life. Making drugs
legal would allow control and regulation of certain substances that,
face it, a lot of adults enjoy harmlessly.

Marijuana should be legalized, for three simple reasons: It's
relatively harmless, especially compared to alcohol. There are three
kinds of drunks (alcohol abusers): happy, morose, and angry. None of
them should drive or fly but happy drunks harm no one. Morose drunks
can harm themselves. Angry drunks are dangerous, often hurting others.
But I defy you to find an "angry pothead." A person high on pot alone
(not in combination with alcohol or other aggression-creating hard
drugs) is happy, loving, peaceful, slow, and looking for ice cream. Is
it possible to abuse marijuana? Of course it is. Compulsive people can
abuse anything! Marathoners can drink so much water, over-hydrating,
they kill themselves. Food? A third of Americans are over-weight or
obese. They abuse food. Let's outlaw water and food!

Marajuana does not, of itself, lead to harder drugs, any more than
mother's milk. Pharmacologically, marijuana simply does not lead to
cocaine, heroin, or meth. In fact, alcohol may open brain receptors
for the harder drugs more than pot.

Pot only leads to harder drugs because it is illegal! Put yourself in
the drug-smugglers' and dealers' places. Marketing 101: like all
business people, they want the highest profit for the lowest risk and
cost. Pot is bulky, smelly, and therefore harder to transport. It
provides less profit per pound, by far. So, as an illegal drug
marketer, what's your strategy? Introduce your client to the harmless
stuff and then up-sell them to the high margin lower risk (to the drug
dealer) hard stuff? The inexperienced young person thinks, "Damn, this
pot stuff is nice, not at all what the prohibitionists said it would
be; so perhaps they were exaggerating about coke, smack, meth, and
crack." And they're on their way.

Legalize pot; end its gateway status. Further, by legalizing it, we
can control its distribution and use much more effectively. We could
tax it, put the proceeds towards paying off Bush's historic national
debt and also use the funds to provide help for abusers of the real
drugs, the hard stuff. I would legalize marijuana for sure and perhaps
cocaine and heroin. Marajuana is harmless. Coke and smack are horribly
harmful and I only suggest legalizing them in order to bring them
under society's control

. Prostitution: Again, the "oldest profession" never will go away 
because it's all about the most basic human drive, and, again, 
business: willing supplier/willing customer. As with the drug 
problem, its very illegality, combined with the timeless immutable 
fact that the "demand" will always be there, mean that organized 
crime will fill that need. Result: it's a seamy underworld and people 
get hurt, bad!

Is the exploitation of women an issue here? Absolutely. The fact that
some women are forced into prostitution through various unfair and
tragic circumstances is a whole set of separate issues outside and
beyond prostitution and those issues must be addressed. But, you know
as well as the sun rises in the east that once those other issues are
fixed, there will still remain some women (oh, yeah and by the way,
some men) who still choose do perform that service.

As the system works today, whether the prostitute freely chooses the
field or is forced into it, she is usually a virtual slave to an
organized crime or gang-connected pimp. Her life is under constant
threat and her profits are mostly stolen.

Is it sad and tragic when married men go to prostitutes? Certainly,
but again that brings up a whole separate set of unrelated issues that
need addressing in the personal-sector with personal and marriage
counseling, etc

. Marriage/family structure laws: Why is it "straight society's"
business whether men want to marry men, women marry women, or three
women want to marry one man? These are simply zero threat to
"traditional" marriage. In a time when 50 percent of marriages fail
for scads of reasons completely unrelated to homosexuality or
lesbianism, what possible harm do Dave and Maria suffer when Hank and
George or Ellen and Carly marry?

This recent Texas fracas - the single issue there should be
exploitation and abuse of underage girls and boys, period, not plural
marriage. They're separate issues! If throwback Mormons, Muslims, or
hippies want those sorts of marital relationships, let 'em have it. If
you don't like, don't join in.

All of this is all about freedom, focus, and resource-allocation.
Let's relieve our police, courts, and prisons of petty distractions,
let them deal with the real problems; and allow each other to live as
we wish while not hurting others. We have no more right to stick our
hypocritical Puritanical noses into each other's lives than we as a
nation have the right to police and determine government policy for
all of planet Earth.
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MAP posted-by: Steve Heath