This Is Your Race On Drugs: Conway, Paul Clash Over Drug Enforcement In Kentucky

You want to know what drugged-up voters from Kentucky's drug-plagued rural district care about? Drugs.

You'd have to be pretty thoroughly tweaked out to believe Rand Paul would be an effective (or adequate) politician, much less a United States Senator.

The War on Drugs is an abominable failure...just like Rand Paul.

I notice that although Paul wants to cite the failure of the "government solution," he seems to suggest no other alternatives. Meth addiction has created some pretty nasty problems in rural communities, and just crossing your fingers and hoping some other solution prevents itself is not gonna fix them.

Conflating meth and marijuana is laughable but typical of the skewed, often insane policy realities spinning from the artificially extreme povs emanating from the spin-lost mouths of candidates and soon-to-be elected officials.
Kentucky's FOP should wean itself from its hardcore addiction to Federal DEA money and easy-peasy marijuana busts and focus on meth and hillbilly heroin...The state, meanwhile, should legalize marijuana and open up cultivation for itself and Rethug-temporized states like NJ for the big money. Conflating meth and marijuana is laughable but typical of the skewed, often insane policy realities spinning from the artificially extreme povs emanating from the spin-lost mouths of candidates and soon-to-be elected officials.
Kentucky's FOP should wean itself from its hardcore addiction to Federal DEA money and easy-peasy marijuana busts and focus on meth and hillbilly heroin...The state, meanwhile, should legalize marijuana and open up cultivation for itself and Rethug-temporized states like NJ for the big money.

Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing, that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business, and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.

Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism; Both Leftists and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be anything he wants to be, or can for the "greater good", be "re-educated" into being. Leftists therefore think little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.

Fake conservatives and Prohibitionists dance hand in hand with every possible type of criminal one can imagine.

An unholy alliance of ignorance, greed and hate which works to destroy all our hard fought freedoms, wealth and security.

We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco alcohol, heroin amphetamines, cocaine, various prescription drugs and even food. Our answer to them should always be: "Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!"

Nobody wants to see an end to prohibition because they want to use drugs. They wish to see proper legalized regulation because they are witnessing, on a daily basis, the dangers and futility of prohibition. 'Legalized Regulation' won't be the complete answer to all our drug problems, but it'll greatly ameliorate the crime and violence on our streets, and only then can we provide effective education and treatment.

The whole nonsense of 'a disaster will happen if we end prohibition' sentiment sums up the delusional 'chicken little' stance of those who foolishly insist on continuing down this blind alley. As if a disaster isn’t already happening. As if prohibition has ever worked.

To support prohibition is such a strange mind-set. In fact, It's outrageous insanity! --Literally not one prohibitionist argument survives scrutiny. Not one!

The only people that believe prohibition is working are the ones making a living by enforcing laws in it's name, and those amassing huge fortunes on the black market profits. This situation is wholly unsustainable, and as history has shown us, conditions will continue to deteriorate until we finally, just like our forefathers, see sense and revert back to tried and tested methods of regulation. None of these substances, legal or illegal, are ever going to go away, but we CAN decide to implement policies that do far more good than harm.

During alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. Young men died every day on inner-city streets while battling over turf. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have gone on treatment. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally the economy collapsed. Sound familiar?

In an underground drug market, criminals and terrorists, needing an incentive to risk their own lives and liberty, grossly inflate prices which are further driven higher to pay those who 'take a cut' like corrupt law enforcement officials who are paid many times their wages to look the other way. This forces many users to become dealers themselves in order to afford their own consumption. This whole vicious circle turns ad infinitum. You literally couldn't dream up a worse scenario even if your life depended on it. For the second time within a century, we've carelessly lost "love's labour," and, "with the hue of dungeons and the scowl of night," have wantonly created our own worst nightmare.

So should the safety and freedom of the rest of us be compromised because of the few who cannot control themselves?

Many of us no longer think it should!

It does not matter what Paul says while seeking election; he will vote in lockstep with all the other Republicans...it's what they do.

But I was shocked to hear Conway conflate marijuana and meth. It sounds like he thinks we aren't locking up enough pot smokers. I'm from Kentucky and I always vote. I'd never vote for a right wing nut like Paul but I guess I'll sit this one out. No way am I going to vote for somebody that wants to put me in jail(I have had depression problems for decades and anti-depressants have proved worthless for me as they do for most people.) Congrads Jack, that's the only way you could have lost my vote(you did). But maybe if you're right wing enough Rebublicans will vote for you. Good luck with that strategy.

Let's skip the issues analysis. Which candidate is cuter?

(Randy Paul) said he is opposed to the legalization of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.

and

Paul wants to cut federal funding for undercover drug investigations and drug treatment programs.

Lock them druggies up, and throw away the key. Mandatory sentences! That has always been the "progressive" Democrat position. See: Tip O'Neal.

Before quickly jerking their knees, I wish the Dems, first, would gather some projections of revenue and costs with legal hemp/marijuana cultivation within the Commonwealth.
Even conservatively the profits would be staggering…Add tourism increases to the tumescent agricultural ghost of lost tobacco money and I grow weak-kneed.

Yeah know...the D's are just amazing. They are innately able to take the wrong position for all the wrong reasons. Is Paul right on the drug issue? Sure. The amount of money, not only saved but that could be made, by legalizing many drugs should be a no-brainer for people. Both Mexico and Canada are on a path to either decriminalize or legalize drugs. Why? Because it is obvious that the "war on drugs" is an abyssmal failure which is nothing more than a money pit swallowing up hundreds of billions of USD for no good reason.

But the D's looked at the polling numbers and felt that this was an issue they could make hay with regardless if it was the correct position or not. It goes a long way to explaining why, now that the D's are in power, they feel the best way to end war is to escalate it, the best way to fix the broken health care marketplace is to institute reforms which mandates that people buy insurance in the broken marketplace and why Wall Street is handled with kid gloves while the close to 20% of Americans whom are unemployed/underemployed are told to go eat cake.

Do I want to see Paul in the US Senate? Hell no, he is a neanderthal. But the drug issue is probably the only issue on which he has taken the correct position. And the D's in opposition are looking like craven opportunists whom only want to get elected for the sake of being in power and all the percs which go along with it...

Rand Paul's on drugs?

This is nothing but politics. Legalize it. I'm life long hard core Dem and this disgusts me. There are other things you can go at Paul with. The war on drugs is an epic failure.

Not only do we spend countless and untold dollars on the drug war itself but all of the money that people spend on the actual drugs ultimately end up outside of the country. We are funding the people we are paying to fight. What??? It's like a twisted pretzel...

Randal Paul doesn't have a problem with the actual drug enforcement policy - because he never gets far enough to engage with actual policies. His simplistic tinker-toy philosophy is obsessed with where the funding comes from - federal bad! Like a caveman reacting to fire, he cringes and shouts and wants nothing to do with local tax dollars that have made their way to Washington and are somehow making their way back.

"Local good! Federal bad! Ugh!" That's your Randal Paul "philisophy" in a nutshell, with plenty of room left over in that tiny space.

The reason we never get rid of the drugs problem is that there is no drugs problem, there is only a prohibition problem. People have God-given liberty to accept God's gift, the psychoactive plants. Government violates the human and civil rights of the people by repressing said liberty. Once you call the problem by its correct name, the solution is obvious. Don't reform prohibition, just repeal it. The way forward is to repeal the Controlled Substances Act, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and other drug laws.