Comments about ‘Woman accused of selling marijuana to junior high, high school students’

In addition to the many societal costs of prohibition, it has a long history of driving the spread of harder or more dangerous drugs.

* Poppies to morphine to heroine to krokodil
* Coca to cocaine to crack
* Ephedra to ephedrine to speed to methamphetamine
* Marijuana to skunk to dangerous synthetic concoctions such as 'spice' or 'bath salts'
* Mushrooms to ecstasy to 2CB/designers

At every step the reasons for the rise in popularity of the new form of the drug are one or more of the following:

* It may easier to smuggle.
* It may be more addictive, thus compelling the buyer to return more frequently.
* It may be cheaper to produce therefore yielding more profit.
* Like a game of "whack a mole" a shutdown of producers in one area will mean business opportunities for another set of producers with a similar product.

Prohibition's distortion of the immutable laws of 'supply and demand' subsidizes organized crime, foreign terrorists, corrupt cops & politicians and feeds the prejudices of self-appointed culture warriors. So called Tough-On-Drugs politicians have happily built careers on confusing drug prohibition's horrendous collateral damage with the substances that they claim to be fighting, while the big losers in this battle are everybody else, especially taxpayers.

How come so many of us have been deluded into believing that big government is the appropriate response to non-traditional consensual vices?

Imagine if we were to chop down every single tree on the planet as a response to our failure to prevent tree-climbing accidents. That's what our misguided drug policy looks like. Isn't it time we all stood up and told the government we're tired of being beaten and jailed so that pharmaceutical companies can poison and kill us for obscene profits?

Prohibition Prevents Regulation : Legalize, Regulate and Tax!

Re: malcolmkyle | 9:29 a.m. Feb. 5, 2012
"Prohibition Prevents Regulation : Legalize, Regulate and Tax!"

The same case could be made for legalizing prostitution. You could l"Legalize, regulate and tax" it. The only thing preventing that from happening in Utah is that the majority of our citizens still believe in decency and understand the destructive nature ...... of both illegal behaviors.