You are right, the existing ones will continue to use. IMO, the three strilkes provision will not deter them while they are still using. It would not have stopped me. You are 100% correct in saying rehab only works for those who want it to, but the effort has to be made to providing those rehab beds. The primary focus should be preventing someone from getting that first experience that leads to a life time addiction.

Exactly.
But, the three strikes law would not be meant to stop them. It would give them the opportunity to get help. If they won't take it then the three strikes law will only serve to get them out of society after thier fair share of tries at rehab.
I think properly educating younger people would eventually bring the new addicts down to a trickle. Thus, I feel a system like this could actually help this country stop drug use.

Personally, I would take it to two strikes. The addicts I knew could not care less about the consequences.

Good point. You maybe correct.

Amen

In the 18 Century, U.S. government was our servant.
In the 21st, it is our master.

Be realistic, if I had some illegal smoke twice as potent as anything you could buy at Walgreens legally who you gonna buy from sucka? And if you don't buy my stash I'm goona pop a cap in yo ass!! Do you really believe one word of legalizing drugs? The criminals find ways around everything. Just because legalizing booze cut off the mob profits in the 30's you can't equate that to the mega-powerful world wide drug cartels of today. It ill never happen.

There's absolutely no point in speculating about what it would be like.
For most of American history, drugs were legal.
And there were far, far, far fewer problems then, than there are now.
We could debate that.
But Doctor Milton Friedman, the economist that got a Nobel Prize, patiently explains, the economics of prohibition are the detriment. Prohibitions do more harm than the prohibited drugs would do, if possession of them were decriminalized.
That's a different matter.

Yes, I believe.

I believe that, just like with the end of prohibition, decriminalization would dry up the market for illegal drugs like leaves dry up in November. And with it, the use of violence as a marketing strategy & the exorbitant cost of those drugs.

And the frequency of criminal activity by addicts to support those exorbitantly expensive habits would plummet.

I don’t see how any other outcome is even possible.

Drug addiction is primarily a public heath issue. Trying to handle it primarily as a crimminal issue, as we have here in the U.S.A., has turned into a complete disaster.

It's done nothing but over-crowed our jails and prisons.

I don't either.
The economic principles are quite elemental; supply & demand.
I believe that's Dr. Friedman's point.

Quote:

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I wish that were the worst of it.
For now it may be.
Last I heard (the stats can lag a year or two) we've got hundreds of thousands of non-violent prisoners of Drug War behind bars.
What a foolish & counterproductive misapplication of scarce resources.

But narco-trafficers are a product of the prohibition.
And narco-terrorism is a reality.
The reports I've heard indicate Afghanistan appears poised for a record heroin poppy crop this year.
And this is a powerful funding source for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and criminal enterprises around the world.

Putting Al Capone out of bidness was easy. The toughest part was ratify the 21st Amendment.

If we don't put the drug thugs out of business, we will suffer the consequences (if we are fortunate enough to survive them).