Reagan-Appointed Judge Posner Wants to Legalize Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, LSD

I have long come to the same core conclusion although I am actually far more proactive regarding the demands put on users to be productive citizens.  Addiction is a trap that is difficult for the victim to escape.  Thus intervention needs to happen.  Progressive health farms that use short session labor as part of the therapy helps achieve those ends.  Here I return to my core idea of a warm bed, a solid breakfast and four hours grooming woodland followed by a hearty lunch as a reasonable demand and reward.  After that the individual can make additional choices on his own hook.

All forms of prohibition actually serve to promote a willing criminal class to exploit the obviously vulnerable.  We learned that the first time around and we have now taken it the second time around to an absurd level.  Thus it is a good time to abandon the practice fully.

Cheap drugs for the addicted or at least well taxed drugs serve to cut out the criminal class who no longer can promote new victims.

Reagan-Appointed Judge Wants to Legalize Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, LSD

The Huffington Post  | By Ryan J. Reilly

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/richard-posner-drugs_n_5398756.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court judge nominated by former President Ronald Reagan believes that all illegal drugs should be decriminalized and regulated by the government.

Richard Posner, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, writes in The New Republic that he believes alcohol and tobacco may do more harm than illegal drugs and treats the legalization of marijuana as inevitable:

The sale and possession of marijuana are en route to being decriminalized; and I am inclined to think that cocaine, heroin, methamphetamime, LSD, and the rest of the illegal drugs should be decriminalized as well -- though not deregulated. They should be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration for safety, like other drugs, and they should be taxed heavily, like alcohol and cigarettes. Alcohol and cigarettes are “recreational” drugs, too -- and quite possibly more destructive of the users than the illegal drugs are, and, in the case of alcohol, also of acquaintances, family members, drivers, and pedestrians. The revenue from a sales tax on marijuana alone would pay for a substantial chunk of the cost of our prison system.