Vices Are Not Crimes

"One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Michael Phelps, Hypocrisy, & American Drug Policy
Boycott Killoggs

Vices Are Not Crimes by Lysander Spooner, 1875

I. A Vindication Of Moral Liberty

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.

Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

In vices, the very essence of crime --- that is, the design to injure the person or property of another --- is wanting.

It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.

Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
continued...

I dare you to read the whole thing.
DWR: Pete Guither Thursday, February 12, 2009

The next time someone says "Well, if you want to legalize drugs, why don't you just legalize murder while you're at it?", I want to strap them down and force them to read this...

... but their reading comprehension would probably fail catastrophically,

and then I'd be stuck with a vegetable strapped to a chair.

so have we the last 8 years with Boosh...

PHELPS SCANDAL EXPOSES TWO-SIDED DRUG ATTITUDES
We as Americans are inconsistent when it comes to marijuana issues. When marijuana is connected to whites, it is recreational. With blacks, it is destructive.

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I was thinking in a "discussion" about jury nullification being criticized by Liberals because the rednecks abused it getting lynch mobs out of jail. So using it for growers is somehow taboo. These people actually cast votes and drive cars, I kid you not. They obediently sit on the jury and hope the judge gives them an autograph. Never think of questioning why the defendant doesn't say it helped his spasms or it was grown for sick seniors and sanctioned and blessed by the city of Morro Bay. The difference is NO VICTIM. Therefore NO CRIME using Ganja. Big list of Victims hung by the neck until dead. But they see no difference? Free Speech unless it makes people nervous or it cost you a sponsorship or grade. States rights unless the DEA gets permission from the drug bizczar. Judges reading cop chicken-scratch in case they need a little warrant tweaking to justify raiding sleeping grannies on snitch testimony.

When I have doubt, feeling blue, think the world is full of wingnuts without a clue. I turn to the good book, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Seems the core of being an American is dwindling away in censored foster care schools and the nanny state, molding the minds of the youth. To shed intellect for brute strength, prime beef beer and processed kelloggs. Football boot-camp primers. To grow up with cameras and strip searches, pisstastes and the constant feeling of guilt, shame based obedience. Questioning is a sure sign of dissidence, someone to keep an eye on. Possible candidate for drug intervention, ritalin cocktail to quiet those annoying questions and conscience. Cardasian Justice, guilty till proven innocent. You must be one of them. Yup, sure am. I've kept this old Spooner quote since the gitgo 40 years ago. DdC

"There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws."
-- Lysander Spooner, 1852

Jury Nullification

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If the drug worriers were right why do they lie?
Tell your kids about perjury and propaganda.
The fact of the matter is that the Drug Czar as currently constituted. He's required by law to lie.

New drug czar

Drug Czar was coined by Joe Blieden / czar (zär) noun

☆ 1. an emperor: title of any of the former emperors of Russia and, at various times, the sovereigns of other Slavic nations

☆ 2. any person having great or unlimited power; autocrat

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Government patents cannabinoids? No Medical Value?
The U.S. Government is so sure that there's no such thing as medical marijuana, they decided to patent it.

"In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

The Counterculture Colonel
Dr. James S. Ketchum oversaw a secret research program that tested an array of mind-bending drugs on American GIs, including an exceptionally potent form of synthetic marijuana.

Pot Potency? Drug Czar blissfully unfazed by facts
It ain't your grandaddy's pot...

"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

(Mérdinol) is Synthetic Sabotage
"Marinol, the synthetic THC marketed in the States, In a recent study, the scientists gave patients 20 mg of Marinol by mouth to see if it increased their appetite. Not only could they not detect much appetite-increasing effect, but they learned the interesting fact that, in one-third of people who take Marinol by mouth, you have no blood levels at all. The drug is so poorly bio-available it's surprising that it got onto the market. There may well be some reason to believe that there are individuals in our government who are interested in getting Marinol on the market to diminish the pressure for marijuana smokers."
John P Morgan MD, Professor of Pharmacology,
University of New York Medical School,
At the 10th International Conference on Drug Policy, 1996, USA

Whoâ??s Getting Rich Off Prohibition? Prop 5 YES

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