The general decline in standards today

[LizzieMaine]

LizzieMaine,



You must have missed a lot of the seventies. I lived in Washington and remember government officials lamenting how dope was being smoked in almost every building in the city, Pentagon, Capitol, museums, you name it. It was everywhere. To this day I wonder how far it went.

We didn't have the sixties or the seventies here. I never saw a hippie until 1975, and he was an oddity, not a role model. None of the kids I associated with in school ever used any kind of drugs: we knew who the potheads and the glue-sniffers were, and they were, to say the least, not respected by anyone. Most of them were dropouts, no-accounts, and shiftless bums, and most of them grew up to be adult dropouts, no-accounts, and shiftless bums. Every now and then I'll pick up the paper and see that another one has dropped dead or been beaten to death in a brawl or been arrested for something, and I'll think, "gee, what a surprise."

I was raised in a family where alcohol didn't exist, let alone illegal drugs -- not because we were holier-than-thou, but because *it just wasn't done.* I never touched a drop of alcohol until I was 25, and even now I don't particularly like it. I'll have a beer occasionally, but never more than one, and I'd rather have a Coca-Cola any day. I've never touched any of the rest of it, because nobody has ever given me any reason to think that I should. And I know that if I ever even considered it, my grandmother would reach down from the hereafter and whack me into the Great Beyond with her Eternal Yardstick.

Call it hardline and out of date, but teaching a kid that drugs and alcohol abuse *aren't* an "alternative lifestyle" to be experimented with, but a deviation that can lead to an unhappy life and an early grave, can and does make a difference.

 

[sheeplady]

During the 80s, when the basketball player Len Bias died of a drug overdose his mother made the rounds at schools all across the US preaching the evils of drugs. That had an effect on me. Also, seeing all the violence around me where the drugs turned our neighborhoods into war zones was more than enough proof I needed to stay away from it. My father would always preach to us that the reason for the sudden influx of drugs was to punish the population for being too uppity and putting the community in our place to suppress any growth and make us stagnant. It worked.

I've come to hold the same view as your father- drug use in the inner city and rural areas is allowed to ruin these communities and the older I get the more I see it as being "ignored" (in the sense no real solutions are offered) because the powers to be think "those people" don't matter. Even worse- they fear if that population was mobilized and not doped up or living in the shadow of violence they'd be a force to be reckoned with. If you can't pacify a portion of the population any other way, let them be doped up or afraid to leave their house. If you're high or concerned about your safety everyday, higher order needs (like social justice, employment, education) go out the window.

And while the powers to be didn't necessarily create the problem, they are more than happy to benefit from it.

 

[Foxer55]

There is an interesting Front Line program on drugs. In one case when they are discussing cocaine it seems that in the late '60s or early '70s it was being delivered to Florida by private launches. One of the old drug dealers being interviewed says that they used to get the cops to come and help them unload the boats and help deliver the stuff it was in such voluminous quanitities and it was good for local business. That is exactly what they say in the program. Florida was just some backwater with a lot of party life going on and no one knew at the time how dangerous the stuff was. It was just another way to party.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

I've come to hold the same view as your father- drug use in the inner city and rural areas is allowed to ruin these communities and the older I get the more I see it as being "ignored" (in the sense no real solutions are offered) because the powers to be think "those people" don't matter. Even worse- they fear if that population was mobilized and not doped up or living in the shadow of violence they'd be a force to be reckoned with. If you can't pacify a portion of the population any other way, let them be doped up or afraid to leave their house. If you're high or concerned about your safety everyday, higher order needs (like social justice, employment, education) go out the window.

And while the powers to be didn't necessarily create the problem, they are more than happy to benefit from it.

Bingo! I didn't really want to take this convo there but you really can't avoid it when discussing how it all came to this. These were once vibrant communities full of people who marched and demanded social change during the Civil Rights Movement. As soon as those goals were accomplished...Bam! All the communities flooded with drugs. A coincidence? I think not. If the people that live in these communities don't have the resources such as planes and boats to bring these drugs into the country, then WHO did? I remember those crack babies of the 80s, they're now all grown and responsible for a new generation of criminals. You can't birth a generation of crack babies and not expect it to have any ill effects. The whole thing is just one big mess and unlike the majority of the people on this board I witnessed it first hand so I see the influx of drugs for what it really is.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

There is an interesting Front Line program on drugs. In one case when they are discussing cocaine it seems that in the late '60s or early '70s it was being delivered to Florida by private launches. One of the old drug dealers being interviewed says that they used to get the cops to come and help them unload the boats and help deliver the stuff it was in such voluminous quanitities and it was good for local business. That is exactly what they say in the program. Florida was just some backwater with a lot of party life going on and no one knew at the time how dangerous the stuff was. It was just another way to party.

Yeah, there is a special called "Cocaine Cowboys" about drug kingpins in FL during that time. One of them just got gunned down in her native Columbia, Griselda Blanco. These drugs were brought here and went straight to inner city communities and wrecked them.

 

[Foxer55]

CaramelSmoothie,

..."Cocaine Cowboys"...

Yeah, that's it! Wow, the revelations in that thing are astonishing.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

At some point, someone has to make sure that wall gets built and secured. Some politicians can be trusted while others are actually working against that. The trick is to sort out the ones who are against our best interest---and get rid of them.

Politicians don't run this country, big business does.

Then we need to hire a big business to build the wall and staff it with guards. That actually sounds like a better idea. You can more easily fire a contractor than you could fire a government bureau for inaction.

Oh, so what you're suggesting here is to hire a big business to build a wall to secure the border that THEIR cheap labor uses to comes across? LOL.

op2:

 

[jamespowers]

Yes. If they choose to do something that will cause themselves harm and possibly death that is their choice. So long as their behavior doesn't hurt me or anyone but themselves, it makes no difference to me. Legalizing murder is an absurd suggestion. The key difference is that murder harms an innocent person. Drug use harms the user alone. It is not within my purview to force others to live in ways I believe are right or acceptable, nor is it acceptable to me to instigate the use of government force for the same ends. I do not wish to be limited or commanded in the ways in which someone else or some group of other persons believes I should live. As such I cannot attempt to dictate how others choose to live. If they wish to take drugs, drink in excess, or partake of any other self-damaging behavior that is their prerogative. So long as it does not harm the persons or property of others, it is fine by me.

It always harms innocent people who get between dopeheads and their next fix whether it is legal or not. There will be property damage, there will be crime and there will be a resulting ghettoization of areas near the dope dens. That hurts innocent people who live in the area and even drives up insurance rates because there are far more claims due to their dopeheaded activities. People alwasy think that they aren't harming anyone but they don't realize that in a modern society we are all interconnected. We share costs, living areas and wokr places. Dopeheads screw all this up. If we lived in a hunter gatherer society then you could say fine---go out in the jungle and act stupid. That doesn't bother me a bit.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It always harms innocent people who get between dopeheads and their next fix whether it is legal or not. There will be property damage, there will be crime and there will be a resulting ghettoization of areas near the dope dens. That hurts innocent people who live in the area and even drives up insurance rates because there are far more claims due to their dopeheaded activities. People alwasy think that they aren't harming anyone but they don't realize that in a modern society we are all interconnected. We share costs, living areas and wokr places. Dopeheads screw all this up. If we lived in a hunter gatherer society then you could say fine---go out in the jungle and act stupid. That doesn't bother me a bit.

This is what it comes down to to me. When I first moved into this neighborhood, the house next door was owned by one of these fishermen who used to make the little runs down to New Bedford. And when he got back it was party time -- with drugs drugs and more drugs. You never knew what to expect. One day I smelled a horrendous reek out back -- and there was a dead two-and-a-half-foot dogfish they'd thrown out in the yard for laughs during one of their more harmless little binges. Another time I heard a series of explosions, like somebody was setting off a mortar in the middle of the street -- well, they were. High out of their skulls, they were shooting off full-sized fireworks right in the middle of the street, in a closely-packed residential neighborhood full of wood-frame houses. Some of them they were shooting horizontally just for additional laughs. And on and on it went.

Finally the owner of the house had a little too much and was taken out feet first wrapped in a plastic bag. And as cold-blooded as it might sound, I was glad to see him go.

 

[jamespowers]

We didn't have the sixties or the seventies here. I never saw a hippie until 1975, and he was an oddity, not a role model. None of the kids I associated with in school ever used any kind of drugs: we knew who the potheads and the glue-sniffers were, and they were, to say the least, not respected by anyone. Most of them were dropouts, no-accounts, and shiftless bums, and most of them grew up to be adult dropouts, no-accounts, and shiftless bums. Every now and then I'll pick up the paper and see that another one has dropped dead or been beaten to death in a brawl or been arrested for something, and I'll think, "gee, what a surprise."

I was raised in a family where alcohol didn't exist, let alone illegal drugs -- not because we were holier-than-thou, but because *it just wasn't done.* I never touched a drop of alcohol until I was 25, and even now I don't particularly like it. I'll have a beer occasionally, but never more than one, and I'd rather have a Coca-Cola any day. I've never touched any of the rest of it, because nobody has ever given me any reason to think that I should. And I know that if I ever even considered it, my grandmother would reach down from the hereafter and whack me into the Great Beyond with her Eternal Yardstick.

Call it hardline and out of date, but teaching a kid that drugs and alcohol abuse *aren't* an "alternative lifestyle" to be experimented with, but a deviation that can lead to an unhappy life and an early grave, can and does make a difference.

That was more or less how it was out here. We knew the burnouts, the dope haeds and the ne'er do wells. They were not looked up to because we knew exactly where they were going to end up. Never touched the stuff because I knew better and everyone around me knew better.
Communities that get taken over by drug use and crime have no one else but themselves to blame. They gave in and if it was a concerted outside effort, and I am not saying that it ever was, then they just played right into the hands of people using them.
Deviants will always be with us but we should NEVER let them become the norm or even close. They will drag society down with them. Ghettos are created as people who actually work and produce goods for a living run away for more normal surroundings and the cities like Detroit and Flint rot on the vine.

 

[jamespowers]

This is what it comes down to to me. When I first moved into this neighborhood, the house next door was owned by one of these fishermen who used to make the little runs down to New Bedford. And when he got back it was party time -- with drugs drugs and more drugs. You never knew what to expect. One day I smelled a horrendous reek out back -- and there was a dead two-and-a-half-foot dogfish they'd thrown out in the yard for laughs during one of their more harmless little binges. Another time I heard a series of explosions, like somebody was setting off a mortar in the middle of the street -- well, they were. High out of their skulls, they were shooting off full-sized fireworks right in the middle of the street, in a closely-packed residential neighborhood full of wood-frame houses. Some of them they were shooting horizontally just for additional laughs. And on and on it went.

Finally the owner of the house had a little too much and was taken out feet first wrapped in a plastic bag. And as cold-blooded as it might sound, I was glad to see him go.

Well, fortunately these dopeheads usually don't last too long. There was a case where you ran a high risk of property loss/damage, lost a decent quality of life in the neighborhood and had to deal with general tomfoolery. This is the ancillary dreck that dopeheads bring to a neighborhood. Legalize it and they won't hurt anyone or be a problem?! Right. They are a danger to themselves and everyone around them. If you are in such a situation and your finances don't allow you to run away fast then you are certainly effected.
I am glad the guy was paid his wages of sin.

 

[LizzieMaine]

But I will say, as obnoxious as that bunch was, even they never stooped to stealing my mop.

 

[Foxer55]

I dunno...guns or pot...seems like they went for pot.

Pot tourism in Colo.? Marijuana regulators OK idea

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...xOvmPw?docId=9402d6ea61024a958115b48c4d03b1fe

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

It always harms innocent people who get between dopeheads and their next fix whether it is legal or not. There will be property damage, there will be crime and there will be a resulting ghettoization of areas near the dope dens. That hurts innocent people who live in the area and even drives up insurance rates because there are far more claims due to their dopeheaded activities. People alwasy think that they aren't harming anyone but they don't realize that in a modern society we are all interconnected. We share costs, living areas and wokr places. Dopeheads screw all this up. If we lived in a hunter gatherer society then you could say fine---go out in the jungle and act stupid. That doesn't bother me a bit.

[video=youtube;bU82kpfSilQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU82kpfSilQ[/video]

Two brothers who were celebrating a $75,000 winning lottery ticket by purchasing marijuana and meth accidentally blew up their house on Friday, said Sgt. Bruce Watts of the Wichita Police Department. The explosion sent one of the brothers – a 27-year-old – to the hospital, where he remains in serious but stable condition with second-degree burns on his hands, arms and chest. The other brother was sent to jail, Watts said.

The brothers were in a house in the 100 block of North Nevada Court, near Douglas and West Street, about 7 p.m. Friday, Watts said. One of the brothers went to the kitchen to refuel the butane torches they planned to use to light their bongs. He emptied a couple of large cans of butane lighter fluid, leaking butane into the air.

“The butane vapor reached the pilot light in the furnace, and as you might expect, ka-boom,” Watts said. The victim was wearing a lottery T-shirt during the explosion. The victim’s girlfriend loaded him and some children into a car and took him to the Via Christi Hospital on St. Francis emergency room, where she dropped him off and left. Officers went to the house with a warrant, where the other brother ran out, admitting he had marijuana and methamphetamine. He was arrested.



Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/02/16/2678987/brothers-celebrate-lottery-win.html#storylink=cpy

 

[jamespowers]

[video=youtube;bU82kpfSilQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU82kpfSilQ[/video]

Two brothers who were celebrating a $75,000 winning lottery ticket by purchasing marijuana and meth accidentally blew up their house on Friday, said Sgt. Bruce Watts of the Wichita Police Department. The explosion sent one of the brothers – a 27-year-old – to the hospital, where he remains in serious but stable condition with second-degree burns on his hands, arms and chest. The other brother was sent to jail, Watts said.

The brothers were in a house in the 100 block of North Nevada Court, near Douglas and West Street, about 7 p.m. Friday, Watts said. One of the brothers went to the kitchen to refuel the butane torches they planned to use to light their bongs. He emptied a couple of large cans of butane lighter fluid, leaking butane into the air.

“The butane vapor reached the pilot light in the furnace, and as you might expect, ka-boom,” Watts said. The victim was wearing a lottery T-shirt during the explosion. The victim’s girlfriend loaded him and some children into a car and took him to the Via Christi Hospital on St. Francis emergency room, where she dropped him off and left. Officers went to the house with a warrant, where the other brother ran out, admitting he had marijuana and methamphetamine. He was arrested.



Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/02/16/2678987/brothers-celebrate-lottery-win.html#storylink=cpy

Complete moron Dopeheads

 

[jamespowers]

I dunno...guns or pot...seems like they went for pot.

Pot tourism in Colo.? Marijuana regulators OK idea

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...xOvmPw?docId=9402d6ea61024a958115b48c4d03b1fe

Denver will turn into a ghetto and the neighboring states will get the Feds to come in a closs them down in the long run.

 

[Feraud]

It always harms innocent people who get between dopeheads and their next fix whether it is legal or not. There will be property damage, there will be crime and there will be a resulting ghettoization of areas near the dope dens. That hurts innocent people who live in the area and even drives up insurance rates because there are far more claims due to their dopeheaded activities. People alwasy think that they aren't harming anyone but they don't realize that in a modern society we are all interconnected. We share costs, living areas and wokr places. Dopeheads screw all this up. If we lived in a hunter gatherer society then you could say fine---go out in the jungle and act stupid. That doesn't bother me a bit.

We are all connected and this is something the users don't want to understand. They try to frame the argument as if potheads simply sit home with weed and a bag of chips. The truth is these idiots self medicate then go out into society.
Drug users are extremely selfish people.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

We are all connected and this is something the users don't want to understand. They try to frame the argument as if potheads simply sit home with weed and a bag of chips. The truth is these idiots self medicate then go out into society.
Drug users are extremely selfish people.

Not only that, but also the events that led up to their purchase of their drugs. Dealers and smugglers kill each other and innocent bystanders getting their wares to market.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I`m not going to tell you about the role of the CIA in bringing drugs to America or what government officials protected the drug importers around Mena Arkansas because you wouldn`t believe me. But the information is not hard to find, not now that it`s too late to do anything about it.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

op2: