Because there is a never ending supply of both, let alone the consitutional issues.

That being the case, how many people would you like to see imprisoned until you can say success has been achieved? 1,000,000? 10,000,000?

How would you like to pay for all that rehab and incarceration?

I cut and highlighted those points, because they show exactly the problem in California.

Under the old Proposition 1, the Legislature can't increase taxes. Tax increases can only come from the voters. But everybody knows that the Government wants more of your money to spend. So how do you do that?

Simple, you increase "fees". After all, any idiot knows that a fee is a fee, it is not a tax.

Look at Vehicle Registration, where fees alone are $105. Not including the fee for a smog check. Just looking at this list of fees is sickening:

Current Registration: 31.00
Current California Highway Patrol: 22.00
Current Vehicle License Fee: 20.00
Current County Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies Fee: 1.00
Current Fingerprint ID Fee: 1.00
Current Auto Theft and/or DUI Crime Deterrence Program: 1.00
Current Air Quality Management District: 6.00
Current South Coast Air Basin: 1.00
Alt Fuel/Tech Reg Fee: 3.00
Non-Resident Original Service Fee: 18.00
Reflectorized License Plate Fee: 1.00

Not a tax listed. $31 for registration, $74 in fees.

Realists do not trust the legislature? Well, they have every right not to. Even when ordered to return "excess fees collected", they did everything in their power to resist. When they wanted to increase the gas tax, they created a new fee, and then increase that. This way they avoid the law, and do whatever they want to anyways.

Why increase our tax burden if we don't have to? Simply complying with our Constitution could enable more market friendly public policies that can lower our tax burden.

How does your viewpoint account for our Ninth Amendment?

Drug abuse is a poison that is destroying our nation, and our people.

Most tragically, our youth.

And it has nothing to do with numbers. Drugs are bad, evil, and must be rooted out. Not encouraged with legalization.

And I am talking as a father, who is seeing his own son's life destroyed by drugs. He is currently in jail for the 3rd time. 21 years old, and every incident was done under the influence of drugs.

He was arrested this weekend for possession of burglary tools and marijuanna. He has no job, no income, but had enough money to buy his god-damned pot.

His parole has been revoked, I will not see him for over a year.

Now ask me again, how many is enough? Until the cancer in this country is removed.

I see this as a crime. And I treat it as such. You might as well ask me "how many rapists should we lock up", or "how many murderers should we lock up". Because the answer is the same. All of them.

Alot of social spending is spent cleaning up after drug use.

__________________
January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

Maybe if you spent less time asking why our prisons have so many criminals, and started asking the criminals why committed crimes, it would be less of an issue.

__________________
January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

There are interesting statistics on that matter.

18% of federal inmates state they did their crime to obtain money for drugs.

40% of college rapes occur when the offender is useing drugs.

26% of those in federal custonde state they were on drugs at the time their crime was comitted.

Of those prisoners with mental health issues, 64% report a history of drug abuse.

Of the drugs reported having been used before the crime, 16% report the drug was cocaine based. 15% report that it was marijuanna.

Thirty-two percent of mothers in state prison reported committing their crime to get drugs or money for drugs, compared to 19% of fathers.

In 2002, jail inmates convicted of robbery (56%), weapons violations (56%), burglary (55%), or motor vehicle theft (55%) were most likely to have reported to be using drugs at the time of the offense.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Drugs and Crime Facts: Drug Use and Crime

Need I say any more? Or are the brain-dead going to try and continue to hijack this topic away from it's intended focus, and continue to aim it back to the foolish concept of legalization?

No, it's not. It's the use of drugs is part of the human condition, and human nature. The reclassification of use into statuatory abuse is a huge part of this 'problem' you're trying to paint.No, the mindset is 'evil' that considers inanimate chemical substances capable of being 'evil'. It is beyone rationality to attribute human characteristics to them. THAT is the biggest part of the problem.I see drug abuse, sales, physical degradation every shift I work, and it has made it crystal clear to me that believing prohibition could ever work is the height of irrationality.

Did prohibition keep your son from trying drugs?
Did it keep him from developing a habit?
Did it get him medical assistance, or did it land him in jail?

How effective does that sound?Possession of burglary tools is and should be a crime, but I have never once arrested anyone who was stealing to support a pot habit, so I consider that secondary to the real offense.All courtesy of the prohibitionist mindset and the WOD.There is no cancer afflicting our country. Just the desire to punish and stigmatize people where medical assistance is what's necessary.That's utterly irrational. Comparing self initiated intoxication with violent crimes purposefully committed against others is devoid of all reason.

No, that has nothing to do with the question I asked, or to whom it was intended.

Yes. You would need to show in any meaningful way how those figures support your position, given that your position will maintain the conditions that create those very same statistics.

I would submit that the brain-dead here are those who want to keep trying what we've been failing at for almost 100 years now.

The fools want to keep trying what has been shown to be laughably, tragically ineffective since it's inception but they think something different will occur if they just try harder.

You may have a point; but Prohibition was proven to be even more expensive than a laissez-faire attitude toward individual liberty.

What is your opinion on the specifically enumerated federal power to Regulate Commerce among the several States of the Union? The only delegated power to Prohibit forms of Commerce among the several States was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment to the supreme code law of the land. Why are we wasting money on a boondoggle that has no basis for authority in our Constitution?

Eliminating official poverty in our republic, through market friendly means, could have the effect of improving our standard of living, in the same manner that spending that same taxpayer money on a drug war, does not.

OK, this topic seems to have been totally derailed by the pothead legalization clique. Which is only fitting, since that is the kind of trash that has destroyed California, and is wokring on the rest of the nation.

They can't hold meaningfull conversations, all they do is parot over and over again "prohibition fails".

OK, this topic os now dead. SO why not move along and kill another topic with your meaninless insanity.

The reason the government in California wants pot legalized is so that more of its citizens will be too doped up to realize they have run the state into the ground.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

The point was that we might not have a budget shortfall in California, if the general government of the Union, simply Regulates Commerce among the several States of the Union, as specifically enumerated in our Constitution so that even those of the republican doctrine can understand it.

Perhaps a lack of the refer madness is what is the problem with those of the opposing viewpoint?

There was never any really good reason to criminalize a drug that was in the US Pharmacopoeia until the 1940's.

Its better to be "run into the ground" with massive surpluses than with massive deficits.