TMF

Yeah, and this is the slippery slope everyone talks about. The precedent is set that they can arbitrarily restrict things they think are bad for you. They'll just keep doing this until I'm having to mine my own salt and harvest my own coffee beans. Booze will be their target soon enough, which is why I'm making my own now.

So? God means different things to different people, and He is called by many names in thousands of languages that exist and have long been dead. Even an atheist can recognize that he came from somewhere, such as the Big Bang or nature. Why can't that be their God? What about folks who believe in both? I think your original question is putting your own subjective spin on what you believe God is versus what others might believe. That's all well and good, until we start talking about who has what rights based on their beliefs. That is dangerous territory and suggests to me something sinister as opposed to a general respect for the liberties of your fellow man.

Yes and yes.

The same could be said about folks who think "assault" weapons and machineguns should be legal to own. Even in the firearm community it's often considered crazy to suggest we should be able to own machineguns without registration, yet no one can explain why. I'm not gonna change my mind just because the majority believe something, nor am I gonna keep that opinion to myself. When we challenge conventional thinking it makes people ask questions, like "is this law logical and just?" Folks should put more thought into their beliefs than simply saying "well it's against the law, will always be against the law so let us just accept it and change the subject."

I'm gonna give this a try. Sounded like a neat concept, extracting from the barrels.

I musta missed something?

Well, believe it or not this falls under a Secret Service function. The Secret Service falls under the DHS, so there is nothing unusual about this.

Well there's a place in Clarksville that just got busted which was being run by some Chinese folks; Coach is suing them for $2 mil.

That will certainly set a precedent where doctors won't want to put their careers on the line for something so silly.

I don't think anyone believes criminal activity will stop if drugs were legalized, just criminal activity related to drug dealing. It would be no different than the prohibition on alcohol. There were criminal empires built during prohibition that ceased to exist when booze was legalized. Why is someone "off-kilter" to suggest legalization other drugs would have the same effect? It just isn't logical. Furthermore, why should I care that people who haven't taken the time to think critically and logically on a subject think I'm a crackpot simply because I disagree with the unfounded assumptions of the masses? Someone make a sheep comment please. Drugs are bad, m'kay. That's all I'm getting when we talk about why they should be illegal. That just isn't enough for me to justify a law or hundreds of billions of dollars in an ineffective "war" to stem the flow of them into our society.

Yeah, I figured it wasn't much. My wife had a surgery earlier this year and I recall the narcs were nothing at all.... like cheap as a bottle of aspirin for a month supply. The costly stuff were the specialty pills, like anti nausea.

There's a huge difference between a drug that has been produced after decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars invested versus a simple narcotic. Generic painkillers are pretty damn cheap unless you're getting them in an emergency room where 800mg Motrin costs 10000% more than what it costs at Walgreens. And let me add to answer your libertarian comment, I've been to plenty of countries where you can pick up just about any medication that otherwise requires a prescription here in the states. Guess what, there ain't blood flowing in the streets due to it. There's narcotic pain killers sitting right there on the shelf next to the Tylenol and conveniently across the aisle from the cipro. I'm sure people abuse them and take other drugs that are harmful, but who cares? That's their effing business. Why am I supposed to care when the same people who would abuse oxy if they could get it are huffing gas behind Winn Dixie because they can't? They're gonna be turds either way; why restrict them from safer types of poison?

Well then booze is destructive too, yet we have plenty of threads here promoting the drinking and making of it. I smoked pot when I was younger and can tell you the only dangerous part of using pot was buying it. I have no problem with marijuana. It's just a plant. It never made me do anything crazy. I can't say the same about booze. If it was legalized I still couldn't use it because of work. Even still, I have kids, so smoking pot wouldn't be an option anyway, legal or not. Someday when I'm elderly I'll probably pick it up again. I can't think of a reason why I wouldn't. I don't think that makes me a bad person, lazy or a degenerate addict. I can't figure how it is worse than someone who occasionally drinks.

I took your comment to mean that you felt legalization and regulation wouldn't drop prices, therefore eliminating the argument that a black market wouldn't thrive. I used the banning of booze and subsequent legalization of it. Drugs are actually very, very cheap. It is the nature of the trade that drives up prices. If it was legalized, even with government regulations, the price would likely drop. Even if it stayed about the same or cost more, at least it would come from a reliable source. This is why there isn't much of an underground booze industry; it still exists but is beyond minuscule compared to the legal trade.

That assumes people value the law more than their own livelihood. I don't believe that at all. I don't think pot is destructive, but the reason I don't smoke it has nothing to do with the law. In fact, possession of pot is hardly worse than a speeding ticket. If it was legalized tomorrow I'd still have to worry about drug testing at work, so I don't see how responsible folks would suddenly risk their career over getting high. People openly do it in California, Washington and Colorado. I doubt there are any productive members of society who have lost their careers to weed.

So then why are people going to liquor stores to buy booze as opposed to hitting up their local moonshiner? No doubt about it, legalization will remove the more dangerous chemical compounds and the criminal enterprises which thrive on illegal vices, unless you believe there are still people being machinegunned on the streets of Chicago over the booze trade.

Exactly, and it makes young people toss out everything they previously thought about a particular drug as they now feel everything they've been told is a lie. It's like the preacher's daughter that stays locked up and told that boys are the devil. Eventually they figure out what they were told was a lie, then they go over the deep end on penises. We should educate people on facts, not emotions and half truths.

No drug is harmless. Even small doses of Motrin can kill you. In my younger days I'm sure I pushed the limit on how much alcohol one could co some without dying. That is no less dangerous than if I snorted a bunch of coke and chased it with acid. I just chose to never take the hard stuff. I still don't judge those who did. Folks who are addicted to coke and meth to the point it screws up their life are no different in my book than someone who does the same with booze or gambling. Not my business for any of that to be illegal though. It ain't my business.

There's gotta be more to the story. If not, had this been me they would have eventually gotten a very good reason to put me behind bars. There would never be an opportunity for a lawsuit. Since when is clenching your cheeks in public PC for a butt search? Maybe he had to poop. If a girl acts like she's holding her bladder does that mean her vagina is open for search? Just stoopid.

So should we make gasoline and spray paint illegal too? For the children....

And what do you suppose would be different if it was legalized?

Kinda backwards, eh? I might wanna buy a dime bag of a harmless plant that grows naturally, but in order to get it I would have to consort with potentially dangerous drug dealers. I'm glad the gov is looking out for me.

Huffing gas and spray paint is pretty destructive to one's health, yet I can still get a gallon of gas for less than a gallon of milk. Any half wit with access to the Internet can take legally bought items and turn them into dangerous drugs (or bombs). I'm not convinced those types of people would be clean no matter what you outlawed. They will always be a skid mark in society's undies. Why criminalize an inanimate object for the sins of the person who abuses it? They will be an addicted waste of oxygen either way, committing crimes to support their habit and doing nothing to be productive, however, decriminalizing the inanimate object comes with a cheaper price tag to society. A least then we could focus on locking up the lawbreakers who commit crimes with actual victims as opposed to prosecuting people for having certain chemicals.

The one that had me checking myself for holes was about 10 years ago in Iraq. We had just finished up a hit and were loading back up on the trucks. Our assault force was an Iraqi SWAT unit I was advising, so I was riding to/from target in the back of their trucks with them. I had got an accountability thumbs up from each truck and was about to get into the back of the one I was in. One of the Iraqis got up to help me in and extended his hand out. His other hand was on the pistol grip of his AK and I guess his finger was on the trigger. When he went to pull me up he squeezed the trigger and put a burst of full auto right between my legs. He went back to being a regular cop the next day. Another one I was on a hit where the terp had a ND and shot a cop in the leg. Other one was on a range where one Soldier shot another one in the arm while clearing his weapon.

That's good to hear; I've seen a lot of stuff online regarding it not turning out right. I figured it might be to a flawed process or spoilage. Do you add anything to stabilize it or do you just do juice/sugar/water/yeast/ferment then bottle? I was thinking about bottling some without the sulfites added just to see how long it would stay. Also, how drinkable would you describe yours at the end of fermentation?