Obama to treat illegal drug abuse as a health issue - Fox article

[xj0hnx]

I have no problem if some moron wants to OD on drugs. I do have a problem with my tax dollars supporting their habits.

Where is there anything in the article about taxpayers supporting their habits?

 

[Tristicus]

Stay broke, poor, and in the ghetto. We'll even pay you more now for it.

 

[Sinsear]

Why treat them? Just legalize drugs, tax the dealers, and let the users die. Drug addicts are useless to society anyway. Legalized crack houses will attract the stupid to their deaths. Just have pits in the back for the bodies. Cheaper, less government spending. Everyone knows this.

You might be on to something here. The problem is that junkies need to fund their habit. And they don't tend to go get a job, but rather shoplift and burglarize homes.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Where is there anything in the article about taxpayers supporting their habits?

As soon as it becomes a "health issue" it will slowly be moved into the region of providing public assitance funds and care for drug addicts. This is just the foundation being laid down.

 

[Kappo]

My wish : legalize the drugs, and refuse to pay out MY money for drug related illnesses. Let them get their own therapy. Are we not allowed to do ANYTHING ourselves anymore, FFS?

 

[Siddhartha]

Pretty much what is going to happen.

Drug use and abuse is going to be a "right" when liberals are through with it and the tax payer are going to foot the bill via Obamcare.

The taxpayer is already paying for it.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

The taxpayer is already paying for it.

We are paying for it in attempting to remove or minimize this scourge but not to make it an acceptable "life style choice" like we did with poverty.

 

[sandorski]

The taxpayer is already paying for it.

He wants them Punished or Persecuted, Cost is just a side issue of little importance.

 

[Darwin333]

We are paying for it in attempting to remove or minimize this scourge but not to make it an acceptable "life style choice" like we did with poverty.

We are failing horribly and wasting a TON of money to fail horribly.

 

[ra990]

So many people here get wound up about "their money going to such and such"...do they have any idea how much of their money is being wasted in this completely useless and ineffective "War on Drugs"?

Where is the outrage about this?

 

[Mani]

Hopefully a step in the right direction. Most people who want the end of prohibition say they would rather drug abuse be treated as a health problem, not a criminal problem. Legalize it, and if people abuse it, push them into treatment, not jail.

Agreed - a much better long-term view being employed here rather than mindless War on Drugs rhetoric.

And for people who think this will cost us anything, take a look at current incarceration and recitivism rates for drug offenders under our current system and get a clue.

 

[xj0hnx]

As soon as it becomes a "health issue" it will slowly be moved into the region of providing public assitance funds and care for drug addicts. This is just the foundation being laid down.

Are you happy paying ten times (or more) the amount to imprison them? And more, and more to fund the war against them? All the while doing nothing to slow their use, and empowering the violent drug cartels that control them?

 

[xj0hnx]

Stay broke, poor, and in the ghetto. We'll even pay you more now for it.

Are you implying that doing drugs has something to do with being poor and living in the ghetto? I guess the laundry list of celebrities that have OD'ed didn't get that memo, or the Wall Street exec snorting blow, or the upper middle class party scene.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

We are failing horribly and wasting a TON of money to fail horribly.

I agree but laying down the foundations so drug addicts and their activist friends can work the system to end up with gaining "free drugs", disability and on public assistance is not going to solve problems either. If you don't see where this is a headed then I pitty this nation.

If a person wants to get high and do drugs well that is fine by me, no problem as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Laying down the ground work so that drug addicts can eventually end up on the government tit via Obamacare is not fine.

 

[xj0hnx]

So many people here get wound up about "their money going to such and such"...do they have any idea how much of their money is being wasted in this completely useless and ineffective "War on Drugs"?

Where is the outrage about this?

So far this year 18 billion dollars have been spent by state and federal governments fighting the war on drugs ...18 BILLION. Almost 700,000 people have been arrested so far this year alone, and over 300,000 of those are for pot.

 

[xj0hnx]

I agree but laying down the foundations so drug addicts and their activist friends can work the system to end up with gaining "free drugs", disability and on public assistance is not going to solve problems either. If you don't see where this is a headed then I pitty this nation.

You don't think that your tax dollars right now are being pilfered by those filty drug addicts? No one is proposing the idea of "free drugs". If you don't see where our continued WoD™ is headed I pity this nation.

If a person wants to get high and do drugs well that is fine by me, no problem as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Laying down the ground work so that drug addicts can eventually end up on the government tit via Obamacare is not fine.

Or get help getting off them. You're so against them you'd rather continued to spend BILLIONS, of dollars a year fighting a losing war against them then reap the benefits of decriminalization? So sad.

 

[Sinsear]

Are you implying that doing drugs has something to do with being poor and living in the ghetto? I guess the laundry list of celebrities that have OD'ed didn't get that memo, or the Wall Street exec snorting blow, or the upper middle class party scene.

Junkies come from all walks of life.

 

[xj0hnx]

Junkies come from all walks of life.

They sure do.

 

[Darwin333]

Again, your solution to this and every fucking thing else is to do nothing.

People are doctor shopping and getting way more meds than they need, this is a way of keeping track of who prescribed what, not a means of intimidating doctors.

I have chronic back pain that fortunately I can live with most of the time without any meds at all. Two years ago it got pretty bad though and I got to experience the "juggling act" that the doctors go through to CYA (cover their asses) as well as meet people with much worse conditions than I have.

It has gotten so bad that people are FORCED to become criminals to simply get medication their doctors should have, and would have, prescribed in the first place. Instead the doctors are afraid of being accused of handing out too many pain meds so they usually pass you to another doctor who passes you to another doctor etc...

The can, and do, prescribe shit like Cymbalta for pain all day long (check out the withdrawal symptoms of that crap and PLEASE tell me its better than opiates) but a 65 year old woman who can barely stand can't get decent medication because doctors fear an investigation which is basically a career ending event regardless of the outcome.

Yup, system working just fine....

 

[Darwin333]

Junkies come from all walks of life.

So you consider a very large portion of the US population junkies?

 

[Darwin333]

I agree but laying down the foundations so drug addicts and their activist friends can work the system to end up with gaining "free drugs", disability and on public assistance is not going to solve problems either. If you don't see where this is a headed then I pitty this nation.

If a person wants to get high and do drugs well that is fine by me, no problem as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Laying down the ground work so that drug addicts can eventually end up on the government tit via Obamacare is not fine.

I don't agree with Obamacare one bit but you don't seem to understand that these people are already on the government tit. Of course you probably don't consider someone being in jail as being on the government tit but it doesn't dismiss the costs (which you seem to have a problem with) associated with it.

Even worse, when those people get out of jail they are even more reliant on the "government tit" because their conviction makes it extremely difficult to find a decent job so back onto the government tit they go.

The current plan is FOR everything you say you are against.

Stop arresting users
Offer treatment to those who WANT help (budget 1/4 of the money we used to spend incarcerating the very same people)
Spend the other 3/4 on some other bullshit program that at least doesn't involve using fucking SWAT teams to kick down some potheads door, shoot his corgie and terrorize his kids and wife

Junkies are gonna be junkies regardless of the legality. Thats what makes them junkies. Stop fucking with normal people because of the dumbass junkies. Last I checked there are plenty of laws on the books to deal with the bad things some junkies do, throw the book at em but for fucks sake stop messing with contributing members of society and turning them into people who have little choice but to be on the governments tit or be criminals.

 

[umbrella39]

That will make drug use go up. They will become enablers as liberals always do.

As far as fools go... you are the king.

 

[xj0hnx]

I have chronic back pain that fortunately I can live with most of the time without any meds at all. Two years ago it got pretty bad though and I got to experience the "juggling act" that the doctors go through to CYA (cover their asses) as well as meet people with much worse conditions than I have.

It has gotten so bad that people are FORCED to become criminals to simply get medication their doctors should have, and would have, prescribed in the first place. Instead the doctors are afraid of being accused of handing out too many pain meds so they usually pass you to another doctor who passes you to another doctor etc...

The can, and do, prescribe shit like Cymbalta for pain all day long (check out the withdrawal symptoms of that crap and PLEASE tell me its better than opiates) but a 65 year old woman who can barely stand can't get decent medication because doctors fear an investigation which is basically a career ending event regardless of the outcome.

Yup, system working just fine....

Sounds familiar. Funny how they will fill kids to the rim with Riddlin, Prozac, Lithium, antidepressants, depressants, stimulants, but they paramilitarize police forces to fight a drug that keeps people out of pain or smoke a joint. Interesting country we live in.

 

[piasabird]

Just legalize drugs. It will do away with the black market for drugs.

 

[NoWhereM]

It used to be that drug addiction or alcoholism was a criteria for obtaining SSI. That was changed in 1996. http://library.findlaw.com/1996/May/1/128577.html

I knew an old woman who was on SSI for drug addiction at the time. After they changed the law she was still getting her SSI, they just changed her disability from drug addiction to mental defect. I have a feeling many people who are addicted to drugs are still able to obtain SSI in the same way.