It is difficult to deny the positive, and lasting effects that a non-correctional approach to dealing with illegal drug use has on community health. It is an all around better alternative to locking up offenders, from a treatment perspective, an economic perspective, and a family and community perspective.

Perhaps an expansion of the use of drug courts could be a compromise amongst differing opinioned parties as to a useful solution to the vexing problem of how to respond to the problem of a burgeoning chronic substance abuse population that is wasting away in jails and prisons at taxpayer expense. Read the brief below.

“These are tight budget times in Virginia, and one place the House of Delegates is scrimping in the next biennial budget is on drug courts. Doing so would be a false economy likely to cost state taxpayers more in the end.

House negotiators should restore the money during budget talks with senators to hash out a compromise 2008-10 state spending plan.

Charlottesville Daily Progress political columnist Bob Gibson drew public attention to a House Appropriations Committee cut of almost $6 million from 14 of Virginia’s 29 drug courts.

Gibson quoted committee member Watkins Abbitt, who said federal grants for the program had disappeared, and “It is one of the luxuries I don’t think we can afford.” He pointed out that judges can order drug offenders to get treatment as a requirement of probation.

But Virginia’s drug courts do much more.

Nonviolent addicts diverted to the drug court docket can avoid jail time by agreeing to treatment supervised by a judge, with increasingly severe sanctions attached for participants who slip up.

They have to be drug free for 12 months before graduating. A Virginia Tech study several years ago found that more than two-thirds of 261 participants did graduate, and only 7 percent reoffended.

The program proved its worth. Albemarle Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding argued in a letter to Abbitt: “Obviously, if an offender can overcome their addiction they are much less likely to commit not only a drug offense but other offenses that are typical of an offender trying to support a habit.”

The courts are not a luxury, but a cost-effective barrier against crime.

— The Roanoke Times”

Yes, you guys need us. You are infiltrated with corruption and it smells. We could all leave the party and leave it in total ruins or we can stay and you can work with us to return our govt to a Constitutional Republic like our forefathers planned. Your choice.

I am closing with that in no manner does the Ron Paul Candidacy represent any measure of the direction that I think our nation needs to head towards.

Is there some truth? Yes. However I refuse to swallow the entire pill.

The problems associated with drug abuse and prostituion won’t simply go away as a result of decriminalization.

If they were legal activities, they still would pose public and community health challenges, just like alcohol,the obesity epidemic, cigarette smoking, etc. Punishing people for victimless (albeit unhealthy) vices and locking them away in jails and prisons does nothing for doing away with the problem. The threat of imprisonment actually drives a wedge between those who want to help and the people they think who need it.

I hope you and other skeptics of Ron Paul would find that candidates like him are not all interested in creating a rampant drug culture or adding to the lasciviousness of American culture. We are simply interested in taking these issues out of the realm of the federal government, and allowing them to be worked out at the state and local level.

I have enjoyed our exchange today. Thanks for sharing.

I accept your input on what we should do. However I continue to accept the input of other societies that get more bang for the buck when it comes to health care. Do we need to completely follow their lead? No. However if we can not come up with a better way on our own, then let us follow the previously beaten trail that seems to be better then the path we have been following thus far.

As for your comment about crime safety? I was only responding to your (and Ron Paul’s) proposal. We can make the problem go away by just making the problem legal as you propose (Legalizing prostitution and drug usage.)

I have worked in medical centers, home health care agencies, long term care, the correction healthcare industry, and in managed care.

I can tell you that none of the main players in the the equation (Providers serving patients and being paid by payors)realistically believe that federal government mandates which would require universal healthcare coverage is a good thing.

All report extreme dissatisfaction and overhead that has a huge devaluing effect in the cost benefit analysis. That, coupled with the inability to sustain taxpayer funding for such an ill-advised scheme pretty much makes universal healthcare a no brainer as a something to avoid at all costs if you want to really provide best value healthcare while making it sustainable in a free market environment.

ell you what, while we are at it, all Americans require food, shelter, and clothing to be able to live. The majority require cars to be able to get to work. We should immediately begin drafting policies for the federal government to provide these necessities to those Americans who don’t have them as well as providing universal healthcare.

This line of thinking that within a free society, our Federal Government enacts policies that it must provide for those who can’t provide for themselves is a tell tale sign that the people being governed are no longer free.

There are plenty of victim related crimes that require on going and reasonable public safety and criminal justice expenditures. So I am missing the logic in your conclusions that, we should shut down the penal system as a result of possibly decriminalizing drug use and prostitution as a means of decreasing the problems associated with it.

When it comes to America’s health care system, studies have been done that the current American Way provides that more is spent on healthcare with less results to show for it. Sobering thought isn’t it.

As for your arguments for legalizing prostitution and drug use. If we follow your argument to its conclusion, then we would be better off doing away with penal institutions and saving the money we spend on law enforcement. NOPE is what I say.

Rather than ask me “what ruinous policies has McCain proposed”, I would ask, how has McCain as a senator worked to limit the role(s), size, and impact that the Federal Govt. has on individual American citizens’ quality of life?

Regarding health care:

I agree that something does need to be done. But why should the federal government be involved in the solution, when its current Medicare program and the DHHS only creates burdensome ineffeciencies that result in non-value added healthcare outcomes at a cost to taxpayers that is just not affordable in a free society? Why should the federal government play a part in citizen healthcare policy to the extent of forcing me as a taxpayer to pay for healthcare services for someone else who lives on the other side of the country and refuses to practice living a health lifestyle? Why should I pay for healthcare for someone with an unhealthy lifestyle (sedentarty poor diet and nutrition) who has high healthcare utilizaton due to their multiple comorbidities? A better solution is to pull the federal government out of the equation, which will lower spending and the tax rate, allowing more local, community based efforts to take root. The bureacracy and administrative costs that accompany a national healthcare plan makes it impossible to pay for, let alone deliver positive outcomes.

I agree that family values start at home. Cultural diversity cannot allow for homogeny of a core set of values to be rigidly followed though when not all people have traditional families to instill them.

Victimless activities like drug use and prostitution are made that much worse by making them criminal acts. I do not advocate doing drugs or paying for sex because of the personal health risks that such activities carry. But, so long as drug users and professional sex workers and johns don’t impact on my quality of life, why would I want to treat them as criminals and engender the problems associated with their having to get around the law to do what it is that they think they should be doing?

Why not outreach instead of criminalization as a means of looking at the problems associated with drug abuse and prostitution? The U.S. spends hundred of millions of tax dollars on criminal justice and correctional services. Why have we not seen a reduction in drug use and prostitution with all of the effort pured into addressing it? Making these activities illegal and locking up the citizens who partake in such does nothing for solving the problem.

Supporting candidates like Ron Paul is not all against addressing the problems of access to good healthcare services, healthy living, and family values. Unlike the majority of candidates who have already held tenured positions in government and have had their positions adopted, candidates like Ron Paul are ready to inject common sense into the vexing problems that face our society to which the federal government has done nothing but make worse rather than better.

Problems with Americans and healthy living, access to healthcare services, drug abuse, and prostitution are not independent symptoms that can be siloed into some linear policy solution. These are symptoms of a much sicker society that has been suffering for generations at the hands of government mismanagement, interference, and tampering in personal and private matters of citizens. The more that the government tries to contribute to citizen quality of life in these personal areas, the further and further we get at finding the solutions that are truly effective and sustainable in our free society.

What “ruinous policies” has John McCain proposed?

Actually, while you might describe it as ruinous, I am in favor of doing something about healthcare as Hillary proposes. It does not have to be her prescription, but SOMETHING needs to be done.

Ron Paul represents (thankfully) the fringe of both our society and the Republican Party. Repbublicans are at least supposed to be the “family values” party and I find it hard to equate legalizing prostitution, drugs etc etc as being amongst those things that attracts me to the Repubican Party.

People who are interested in real change as being a motivator to decide to whether or not participate in the electoral process of American Government are likely not interested in McCain because he is the same old bureaucratic politician that has disenfranchised the American Voter.

I still think the low turn out of voters for the GOP primary indicates that the Republicans aren’t very enthused about their choices. There are many active Republicans in my local committee who have stated that they would hold their nose if they had to vote for McCain.

The Libertarian fringe that scares people like you from considering a candidate like Ron Paul is not as bad an impact on your life as the ruinous policies and laws that will be enacted by a candidate like McCain, Obama, or Clinton.

In answer to your question I’m not a Republican. I am a “moderate independent”, the kind of voter who decides who wins elections.

I most certainly would never vote for Ron Paul for President, but evidence is that most Republicans would not either. Thank goodness most Republicans have not fallen off their rocker and might actually nominate someone (John McCain) that I might actually vote for come November.

Looking at our electoral process and the voter turnout, Republican Committee members at the local, district, and state level are responsible.

They create and manage the GOP electoral process that results in loss of grassroots party activism. They are the ones that allow big business consultants and lobbyists to suck the honesty and integrity out of conservatives and force them to play the beltway game.

It is that frustration that has led me to join my local GOP office. If the only path to a congressional seat or the White House is rode via the back of the Donkey or the Elephant, well, I will try to ride the Elephant.

I am distrustful of both party’s ability to abide by the Constitution. If there is going to be a resuscitation of responsible approaches to limited government, I have no doubt the capability of such rests in the GOP.

I am bringing my Ron Paul perspective to the disucssion and working to make the changes that I think are necessary to save our great but sickened nation. If that makes longtime GOP’ers nervous, so be it. A little debate will do us some good. Maybe we can examine how conservatives lost their way and work to shore up the problems that have led to the party losing its identity.