I'm Just Sayin'

Would anybody be interested in free health care for every person in the United States? I mean free...really free..no insurance companies..no co-pays..unlimited health care. Free preventative care, free optical, free surgery, free medicine...everything...all of it...free...free...free. Well  you say..nothing is free...somebody has to pay for everything. And I say...yes, you are absolutely correct. But how about this...let's let the drug dealers pay for our health care. Yes...the drug dealers..you know, the guy with the hoodie on the dark corner...the mother who sells a few bags a week for extra grocery money..the college student who deals in study aids..errr a little crack or meth the side...the traffickers...the backyard cookers...let them pay.

And how would we get those folks to pay? We would simply take away their businesses by legalizing all drugs.  Hang with me a second. First and foremost...I am not advocating the use of drugs, but at the same time, the use of drugs is a personal matter and the fact that the sale and use opiates and crack, pot and meth...all those "street drugs" is illegal has not stemmed their use. What we have actually done is create a crime wave. What if we stop the war on drugs? What if we not only stop the war on drugs, but we legalize all those street drugs and sell them legally...with a substantial tax attached. While it is impossible to calculate the cost of this ineffective effort to make people stop using drugs, take a look at these numbers: the feds spent over $19 billion in 2003 for the war on drugs that's $600 a second..and that was in 2003 (Office of National Drug control Policy) State and local governments spent another $30 billion plus. If we adjust those two figures to reflect the increased spending that will occur in 2008...we are at about $55 or $60 billion. That is the money spent just to try to catch the drug dealers and users. We will spend another $40 billion or so for jails and prisons for federal drug offenders, $10 billion for police protection...hey the war on drugs is expensive and IS NOT WORKING.

We would, by taking away the high profit products of the gangs, reduce the cost to fight gang crime and reduce the costs associated with robberies and thefts by drug users who need $200 or $300 a day...sometimes more just to pay the inflated street prices for their drug of choice. OUR CRIME RATE WOULD GO DOWN! OUR INSURANCE RATES WOULD GO DOWN! THE STREETS WOULD BE SAFER!

Now then...the next thing we will have to do is  make the drugs available and tax the crap out of them...you know..tax at about the same rate we tax our legal drugs...tobacco and alcohol. How much revenue would this produce? I don't know, but I'll bet you the tax revenue would be HUGE...billions..maybe more! Then we spend the combined savings of not waging war on drugs and the tax revenue from the sale of drugs and buy socialized health care for all. Not health insurance...why would we pay the insurance companies a profit to pay out our money that we have agreed to use for health care?

If you can't stand the thought of just saying yes to drugs...please consider what you are really advocating. You are saying that you are in favor of reduced health care for America, spending billions on a war that will not work, and you are happy with America's crime rate.  An effort at rational thought can be a real jolt...be honest and relinquish your emotional obstacles...face reality....or convince me and others of like mind in this matter that we are wrong. Go ahead...give it a shot.