The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree?

[QXD]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

To me, this attempt to relax the death penalty is just to allow the Burmese Drug Barons to step into SG with all the fanfare of a VVIP and none of the embarrassing questions.

Seriously, not the first time MIW has engaged in double talk. LKY's 1 man 3 vote proposal got hijacked into the GRC system, Hairdo Lim's talk of having Whale's in the IR turn out to be gambling lingo for big-money gamblers and not the aquatic.

Now all this hoo-ha about relaxing the death penalty is just another form of bull shit PAP style.

 

[neddy]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

Like gambling, Singapore like drug money but not drugs.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

For the poor, crime offers a way out of situation they're in. And with drugs means lower starting capital too. Anyways, my stance is not this rich/poor thing but the unnecessary tough stance on drug "offenders."

Poverty is the main driving factor for most crimes, gangland or individual. Whoever one blames or not is not my concern. Sometimes people get into bad situations because of bravado, not because of money.

So would they jail a 14 yr old kid for smoking weed? This punishment for weed is totally out of sync with the times. Society should move on. If people have the chance or opportunity to do something constructive or meaningful in their lives, they would not waste it on drugs, and perhaps thats the question for marijuana - it does not lay to waste the user (unless that person spends more than half his awake hours on it), you come back to yourself after the effect wears off. If a person was motivated by sports, academics, misic, or some other creative works - time spent stoned on pot would only be a fraction of one's time. Marijuana should be legalized! Saves people from jail, and the nation's money and resources.

Cheers!

FYi they have different penalities for different types of drugs did you know that? For example 15g of heroin is a death sentence but not 15g of weed. That's the difference.

As for you writing about how weed doesn't lay waste to ppl's lives unless they spend lots of time on it and so on all this is just based on your own conjecture. You ought to put forth a better argument. Why would legalizing it save ppl from jail? Oh yes cos then weed smokers can smoke it openly and thus are saved from jail.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

I think arguing with Jah would be hard because he/she seems to have a "just follow law" mentality. "You know it's agaist the law, just don't do it."

The thing is, life is not like that. Chewing gum is banned in Singapore but I still smuggle them in from time to time. Illegal parking is illegal but people do it anyway. Riding on the front seat of a car without a seat belt is illegal but people do it anyway. Gay sex is a punishable offence in Singapore but gays still have sex among themselves.

What has this anything to do with drugs? The key point here is morality and "victimless crimes."

People have different moral standards, that is simply the fact of life. For a muslim, drinking is a terrible sin but for others, it is just another beverage. For some, illegal parking as long as it does bother anyone shouldn't be punishable, but to others, immidiate stomp and call police.

Drugs is first and formost a moral issue. Some people think drugs are immoral. But the thing is, "drugs" have been a part of life since forever. If someone is truly morally against drugs, then we should ban alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and HFCS as well. People should wake up and realize that enforcing morality is never a good idea. It creates hypocracy and unnecessary crime when people don't share the same moral code.

Secondly, drugs are in essence a "victimless crime". It is between a willing buyer and a willing seller. No one is a victim. Then people will argue about drugs affect people around you. But here's the catch. Alcohol has the same effect. Some families are ruined because of alcoholism. But instead of focusing on banning alcohol, we treat each cases individually. We don't come to the conclusion alcohol use = alcoholism = violence. We have alcohol regulation and we don't bother about people who use alchol responsibly.


Now that being said, below is one of the reason why most drug offenders that are jailed are the poor and minority.



Epic and expensive legal team is epic.

Yes thanks for stating the obvious. Yeah not flushing the toilet in public is illegal but ppl do it. Hell ppl still steal, rob, rape, fight in singapore. You're not even driving at the point.

I believe there is a specific term to call those illegal drugs and please you should not compare them to taking panadol pills. You sure ppl should not enforce morality? Tell you something. In some parts of the world they marry child brides. They have sex with very young girls. They have different morality standards from most of us. Why not you go the extra mile and allow that in here? Shouldn't singapore allow that now? Sex and marriage with minors.


FYI there are different penalities for different drug usages. You carry more than 15g of heroin. You get killed. It doesn't apply to carrying 15g of extasy for eg. Ppl that are addicted to heroin can actually forgo everything else like food, sleep, sex just to get their next hit.

Overall your argument isn't compelling. You want drugs to be legalized because somehow you claim these laws are placed there to indirectly jail and discriminate poor ppl and the minority. If you want to talk about laws discriminating the poor then we should follow your logic and do away with all laws after all rich ppl get it better than poor ppl. Give you an example. Take woffles wu's case on the car driving incident. If the person involved wasn't waffles wu but some poor guy i don't think he would get a $1000 dollar fine he would have been jailed. Yeah it sure discriminates this poor shmuck doesn't it? If we followed your line of reasoning and thinking hey let's do away with this car driving law of getting someone to falsify that he was the driver. Ok we should do away with this law correct? After all the poor guy gets discriminated. If we follow your line of thinking. The fact of the matter is this laws worldwide do favor the rich and powerful. It's just a fact of life. On the drugs affecting some minorities already been discussed. If a person from the majority race gets a lighter sentence then perhaps we can talk. You or was it the other guy were going on that minorities doesn't just mean racial ones but minorities in other respects.

Overall your arguments aren't very convincing ones at all.

 

[Agoraphobic]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

FYi they have different penalities for different types of drugs did you know that? For example 15g of heroin is a death sentence but not 15g of weed. That's the difference.

As for you writing about how weed doesn't lay waste to ppl's lives unless they spend lots of time on it and so on all this is just based on your own conjecture. You ought to put forth a better argument. Why would legalizing it save ppl from jail? Oh yes cos then weed smokers can smoke it openly and thus are saved from jail.

Of course I know that. In any case, I don't do heroin. It's too expensive, the blokes I knew who did smack came from well-to-do families. In the west, its the rock stars who do heroin. Pot is the lay man's choice, and school kids.

Bud, I have many friends who smoke pot on weekends, evenings, when relaxing. On Mondays, they're back to work - no problem. None of them have any criminal tendencies, are responsible for the work they do, take care of their families, and don't go visit prostitutes. Anyone who thinks this bunch of blokes should be thrown in jail is totally not thinking.

As for the jail part, and coming back to the issue the thread is addressing - it is the amount of deaths from gangland turf wars in USA/Mexico that the article is really targetted at. If it were legalized, taxed, and sold via regular retail outlets, there won't be all this violence. That's what I meant when I said that legalization won't lay to waste people's llives. And these gangs aren't like your Downtown East nothing to do layabout student gangs stabbing some poly student for staring, they are made up of would-be "career-criminals" with violent ambitions. Legalize it, and a big chunk of their profitble operation is gone.

Cheers!

 

[Agoraphobic]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

....................................................................................................................................................................................................Overall your arguments aren't very convincing ones at all.

That's because it is uphill in this part of the world where most of the population do not question the authorities.

Jah, one day if possible, you should visit me in Toronto and party with me and my neighbours. One of them is what you'd call a redneck. You'd find him loud, crude, rough, but a man with big heart, kind towards children and the underprivileged. He smokes little pot, but drinks lots of beer, his wife is the pothead though. You'd change your mind about marijuana smokers.

Cheers!

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

Re: The War on Drugs is a War against the Minorities and the Poor - agree or disagree

Of course I know that. In any case, I don't do heroin. It's too expensive, the blokes I knew who did smack came from well-to-do families. In the west, its the rock stars who do heroin. Pot is the lay man's choice, and school kids.

Bud, I have many friends who smoke pot on weekends, evenings, when relaxing. On Mondays, they're back to work - no problem. None of them have any criminal tendencies, are responsible for the work they do, take care of their families, and don't go visit prostitutes. Anyone who thinks this bunch of blokes should be thrown in jail is totally not thinking.

As for the jail part, and coming back to the issue the thread is addressing - it is the amount of deaths from gangland turf wars in USA/Mexico that the article is really targetted at. If it were legalized, taxed, and sold via regular retail outlets, there won't be all this violence. That's what I meant when I said that legalization won't lay to waste people's llives. And these gangs aren't like your Downtown East nothing to do layabout student gangs stabbing some poly student for staring, they are made up of would-be "career-criminals" with violent ambitions. Legalize it, and a big chunk of their profitble operation is gone.

Cheers!

Firstly didn't i mention that we should not compare the US with SG? Also pls not all drugs get you the death sentence. It's only heroine and probably cocaine that get you the death sentence in sg and i believe with a few other drugs it's a higher amount but i don't think weed gets you the death sentence. Probably a long jail term. That's in singapore's context. I think we will talk about the US drug situation in another thread or some other time.

That's because it is uphill in this part of the world where most of the population do not question the authorities.

Jah, one day if possible, you should visit me in Toronto and party with me and my neighbours. One of them is what you'd call a redneck. You'd find him loud, crude, rough, but a man with big heart, kind towards children and the underprivileged. He smokes little pot, but drinks lots of beer, his wife is the pothead though. You'd change your mind about marijuana smokers.

Cheers!

What makes you think i hate weed smokers? Also the topic at hand is about minorities taking drugs and somehow the government is targetting them in sg's context.

We're also talking about harmful drugs. Mind you the word drug is a very general and encompassing term. You take panadol you're also taking drugs. Please in this case when we talk about drugs it means stuff like heroin, crack the real harmful stuff and the stuff that gets you a death penalty if you excceed a certain amount here in singapore. Anyway it's not only the US or Singapore that bans these drugs. It's banned in many many places. I don't think you can carry a less harmful drug like weed in ozzie or in thailand or in cambodia or in canada or even import it to holland. The fact of the matter is many countries the world over ban these drugs.

Also on point telling me about how nice this or that drug user is. Certainly doesn't help the case at all. There are robbers and thieves that are kind hearted, nice to children and great ppl i am sure but so what? The logic does apply to drug users.