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Time To Discuss Drug Prohibition?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Dec 07, 2008 09:55 PM
from the with-your-remaining-brain-cells dept.
from the with-your-remaining-brain-cells dept.
gplus writes "December 5th was the 75th anniversary of the end of alcohol prohibition in the US. The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed which argues that now may be the time to discuss our war on drugs and the drug prohibition currently in place. The article argues that the harm caused by the banned substance must be balanced against the harms caused by the prohibition. As to why Americans in 1933 finally voted to end prohibition, while we barely even discuss it: 'Most Americans in 1933 could recall a time before prohibition, which tempered their fears. But few Americans now can recall the decades when the illicit drugs of today were sold and consumed legally. If they could, a post-prohibition future might prove less alarming.'"
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SMOKE (Score:5, Funny)
SMOKE
Re:SMOKE (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:SMOKE (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously....Why is it that it took a constitutional amendment to start prohibition of alcohol, and bring it back...but, other drugs have been taken out of public use by the swipe of a pen?
I wish someone could bring that suit forth...sure would have some MAJOR repercussions if that case could win through the court system....any millionaires out there that have some free time, and want to bring this suit forth?
Parent
Or better yet (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
The war on drugs makes a lot of money for a lot people on both sides of the law.
Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
As a taxpayer, I disagree.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
As a taxpayer, you're not one of the "a lot people on both sides of the law". Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that they don't have an enormous vested interest in keeping drugs illegal.
Think of it like the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org]. It's a fallacy that smashing a shopkeeper's window is doing a good thing for the economy, but it's not a fallacy to suggest that there are some people who would benefit from smashing the window.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
More profit than not, I'd say.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
All the criminalization seems to do is increase the incentive for providing expensive, weak, drugs cut with all sorts of bad chemicals to people who are prepared to pay almost any price for them. I've stopped using myself, but I'd say decriminalize just so I can get help from some form of controlled institution for my friends before they O.D. without having to worry about getting them arrested.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
all of which can also be said of legal drugs such as alcohol.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
To some extent, yes.
And sugar.
And Diet Coke.
And Krispy Kreme donuts.
You have to draw the line somewhere; I'm not sure it's correctly drawn right now.
Parent
Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
And you don't speak about the fact that banning drugs has not made them go away. All those problems you list are problems we have right now. How, exactly, has throwing people in jail, ruining their lives (even more), funded gangs (through drug-sale profits), and generally walking all over the constitution actually achieved your goal of reducing the harm drugs cause?
Legalizing would not change most of those things, except one important one: the drug cartels (a source of much violence) go out of business overnight.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
And these things don't happen now, because of the War on (Some) Drugs?
At least one of the reasons for repealing this prohibition is that it is ineffectual. Drugs are as prevalent as they would be without it. There's just more crime and corruption to go along with them.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll agree that there's a profit motive.
But you don't speak about the abyss of drug addiction, the income-sapping expense, the parents of kids that forget parenting while doing drugs, the accidents on the freeway, the madness of things like meth addiction and its incredible debilitating affects on the body.
So it's a good thing we have drug prohibition because without it these things would be rampant? Oh wait....
You have failed to show how things would be worse if you could buy a 'teen of meth for $40 from the Walgreen's vs. being able to buy a 'teen of meth from Joe the Biker at the bar for $80. It's not like prohibition has kept drugs away from people. I know of no one who wants drugs who can't find them.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what about my $200?
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wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
if something like marijuana would legalized, the taxes collected on that would be staggeringly huge
if you want to argue profit (for the government), you argue for legalization
sure there are entrenched interests, but there is no larger entrenched interest than the taxman
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Informative)
The gov't would only stand to benefit from lifting of some prohibition
Not exactly. Government benefits tremendously from any war, including war on its own citizens. The Drug War brings power to government as a whole, and funnels bribe money to government employees at all levels. It's terrible for the country, but great for a lot of scumbags with power.
-jcr
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Informative)
The government makes BILLIONS on the WOD, the get it from the taxpayers and they get it from confiscations. They've now taken to farming out some of their duties to private prisons and other private services. Those private companies hire the politicians as spokes mouths and PR pukes and pay them millions.
The only loser is society as a whole as the cancer of high taxation, putative laws and centralized power take their toll.
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Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. No better way to punish criminals than forcing them to deal with the bureaucracy. :3
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Yes it's time. (Score:5, Insightful)
When the majority of the population can be convicted of a crime at one time or another, then it's proveable that the action is not sufficiently damaging to be a crime. Those RIAA bastards are profiting immorally and should be disbarred! Oh wait, we're onto drugs now? In that case, I maintain my statement.
Last 3 presidents (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Last 3 presidents (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the problem is that it isn't about morality at this point, it's just a weird social phenomenon. A lot of people hear someone talking about legalizing it, and they just say *GASP* marijuana! There's such a large social stigma on it at this point, lots of people don't think about the subject logically, so if someone tries to legalize it, they meet resistance without reason from so many people that most career politicians don't want to be bothered.
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I take a Libertarian POV. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I take a Libertarian POV. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if drugs were legalized, it still doesn't mean their carry-on effects, such as murder, drink-driving, et cetera, are legal.
I think a lot of the crime related to the drug industry relates to the fact that drug entrepreneurs cannot depend on the police to defend their property rights with respect to the goods they sell, and are forced to handle their own security.
I imagine the streets would be safer if one was allowed to make a phone call and report that their entire inventory for narcotics was just stolen and get the police investigating the robbery and trying to return the stolen property.
I'm sure the police would appreciate the irony as well.
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Re:Say you legalize everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Replace drugs with sugar or fat and ask yourself the same question.
Potato chips create more health care costs than any drug ever has.
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Re:Say you legalize everything (Score:5, Insightful)
There was MASSIVE marijuana smoking during the late 1960s/early 1970s with few problems. It was typical to attend concerts where the smoke was a thick fog and security/cops didn't bother anyone about it.
I did plenty of drugs back then, smoked like a freight train, and was around a large peer group that did likewise. I haven't smoked in many years for legal reasons, but strongly favor legalization. Alcohol is a vastly worse social drug in every way, especially with regard to making users aggressive.
IMO we'd be much better off with weed as an alternative social lubricant.
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No, how about... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, how about we let it be decided at the STATE LEVEL? Let the individual states decide their own drug laws, not the federal government.
Unconstitutional (Score:5, Interesting)
Reconsideration sounds prudent.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that alcohol is already legal and is more dangerous than at least the most common recreational drugs, It would make sense to at least legalise other recreational drugs that are on par or less harmful than it (marijuana being the most obvious candidate).
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal - it is impossible (or prohibitively difficult, at least) to "use them responsibly" and their health effects are much more marked.
Permitting broad autonomy to people in cases where there is not a clear and strong societal interest otherwise makes sense - broad restrictions on recreational drugs don't have arguments that meet the bar we should be holding up.
(I am not a libertarian, by the way)
Re:Reconsideration sounds prudent.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal - it is impossible (or prohibitively difficult, at least) to "use them responsibly" and their health effects are much more marked.
Cite? The fact that Cocaine was used as an active ingredient in a popular fizzy drink would seem to speak otherwise. And let's not forget that Cocaine is known because in its native region, the indigenous people used it constantly and they did alright.
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Re:Reconsideration sounds prudent.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Reconsideration sounds prudent.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal
It's important to legalize it all, and the reason has nothing to do with how safe any given drug is.
Using things like cocaine "safely" may be possible, but it's certainly outside what I'd expect of most of the population. The idea when you ban something, though, is that it will have a desired effect. In this case: less people using the drug (and therefor a safer/etc society). The many decades of prohibition has shown us otherwise. Drug use still happens, and will likely always happen. Trying to ban something and hoping people will magically stop using it is not just logically wrong, there's now many years of empirical evidence that shows that it's the wrong approach.
The particulars of any given drug are not relevant - banning them has not reduced their use in any significant amount.
So the question comes down to this: "Who do you want meeting the supply, when the demand is fairly constant?" That's a simple econ question, and there are three major answers: Private Industry, Public (.gov) Programs, or Illegal (violent) Black Markets.
Right now, we, as a society, are choosing the black market supply. We are handing large profits to violent gangs, providing very profitable opportunities for corruption, etc. Is this really the answer we want to choose? As a free-market loving American, I usually advocate the Private Industry solution, but really, either public or private solutions are significantly better than handing that market to gangs.
As a pure economic side note: even with the worst drugs, it's much better to take the standard taxes involved with them and divert that to useful things like healthcare for people that want to get off drugs and such. We could trivially fund most of those programs with how much basic tax income we'd make off drugs, and that's just talking basic things like sales tax.
On a note specific to the cocaine/etc you mention: I'd rather the addict be able to buy inexpensive and clean drugs, in a way they could fund from a McJob, than have them turn to crime to try and fund their habit. The fact that you don't see large amounts of violent crime to fund tobacco habits is evidence of this. /the only way to really stop drugs is to target demand, with tools like Good Education, not laws banning them
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You fools! (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, just look at this government ad [youtube.com]! How do argue with logic like "It's a fact because it's true"?
Suck on that, dope fiends!
OMFG A TOPIC I CAN RELATE TO! (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in California. A few years back, the voters passed the medicinal marijuana act, opening the gateways for use by cancer patients. Pot is *almost* decriminalized now.
I say *almost* because my pot dealers (plural) have been a pot dealers all their lives. Only difference now is they got a doctor to give them a pot prescription for "nerves" and instead of having to go through the old network of pot growers, they can pick up a few OZ's from any number of dispensaries here in the bay area. Sells their OZ's off as 8ths for 2x what you paid, and make a nice profit.
Then there is the supplier side. There is no regulation on where a club gets its pot. A few years back, we had a sheriff shot when he stumbled upon a pot farm on Mt Uhminum being run by mexican gangsters. Even though they couldn't find a direct connection to the clubs, many people suspected that that is where the weed was heading.
Did I mention ALOT of the marijuana dispensaries look more like a club or a coffee shop and less like a pharmacy?
Prohibition repeal needs to happen. We waste way to much money on the drug war. Not that i'm complaining about the lack of regulation with the medical marijuana situation in California as it works to my advantage. I am never more than 15 minutes away from multiple suppliers. This is pot I'm talking about though, a drug thought to be fairly benign by a majority consensus.
My fear though is that all forms of lawmakers, city, county, state and fed have all been riding the fail truck for a while now. I could see them doing something like selling out to a special interest drug lord and making laws that on the surface seem like they benefit us, but really only benefit the drug lord.
Some things need to be regulated, others don't. Weed should have no more regulation than beer or tobacco.
Even though the purpose of end drug prohibition would be to un-fuck things, given the track record of our politicians they're going to figure out a way to sneak a fucking in there, somehow.
The time has always been right... (Score:5, Insightful)
To discuss the war on drugs.
From a libertarian standpoint, what right does the Government have to tell people what to do with their own body? This debate is as much about the power of government as it is about the morality of drug use.
However, there are some angles to the issue which never seem to be discussed:
I think the reason why the opponents of the War on Drugs failed is that they never discussed it in terms that ordinary average Americans could relate. They discussed it in terms of dollars, but federal law enforcement spending is truly minuscule compared to things like social security and defense. They talked about it in terms of prison population, when the average person thought simply, "well, I just won't use drugs and won't go to prison..." Instead, they should have framed the debate in terms of individual rights.
That's what the gay movement did, and look where they are now. It seems that Americans don't want the government to mandate morality, and the gay movement capitalized on that. The reason why the War on Drugs lasted so long was because its opponents never pushed the civil rights aspect of it.
A MUST READ (Score:5, Informative)
"The Consumer Union's Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs", 1972, Consumer's Union
I usually detest peoples' hyped up assertions such as the title of this post, but in this case I think it's almost subdued in comparison to the facts of the matter.
Due in large part to the contents of this book, marijuana was almost legalized ... during the *Nixon* administration. Yes, that's when us long hairs were making a lot of noise about many things, including drugs. But we had very little power then. It wasn't us who was attempting to change the law.
Reading this book is like finding out that the tin foil hat crowd was right all along. This story is a conspiracy theory that happens to be true. This book provides the evidence, with references. It is an even handed historical recounting. It's hard for some people to believe it's even handed because the conclusion and its supporting evidence are so drastically lop sided.
The summary is that the war on drug users started as and continues to be conducted for the economic benefit of the drug manufacturers and sellers that can guarantee sufficient tax income to the government. And more recently for the direct benefit of the government since they can now seize any property belonging to anyone they care to arrest.
I was a substance abuse counselor for 3.5 years, and addiction remained one of my main interests through my PhD and beyond. The worst bodily harm comes from two drugs that are both legal: tobacco and alcohol. The worst withdrawals come from these two, plus another legal drug (or class thereof), benzodiazapines (valium family). I would rather a person use any drug, legal or illegal, other than these 3. Withdrawal from tobacco won't kill you, but the other two can.
The bottom line is the URL for the book. If you care about this subject, no matter what side of any part of the argument, you really should read this book in order to learn how things came to be the way they are. It is one of the best, but certainly not the only, example of psyops (psychological operations) perpetrated by the US government on its own citizens. That's not hyperbole -- I studied that subject too.
It's available in its entirety at: http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/cu/cumenu.htm [druglibrary.org]
Re:Dear God Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Dear God Yes (Score:5, Informative)
don't forget those Chinese immigrants getting high in their opium dens--as opposed to upstanding white folks who only use opium & alcohol (always a smart combination) tinctures.
really, i have yet to see any empirical evidence to back up the idea that before drug prohibition we had more drug-caused social issues than today. in fact, all the studies i've read about seem to point to the exact opposite. consider these points:
you don't have to be a drug-users or even like drug users to be against drug prohibition. it serves everyone's best interest for the government to adopt a sane/rational drug policy.
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Re:Dear God Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
If they have the optional power to do something specified, what kind of power do they have to do something that isn't specified?
By a straight reading of the content of the Constitution, no such power at all. Through constant incremental encroachment by degrees over the last 150-odd years, they've established themselves as having authority to do just about anything they like, constitution (particularly the 10th Amendment) be damned. Welcome to the frustration of libertarianism.
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Re:Yes and No... (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a non-drug user, I agree. There are many things that I personally would not do, but I would not ever dare insist that no one else be allowed to do them (obvious exceptions like drunken driving and serial killing not included).
The "war on drugs" is nothing more than a pissing contest of moralities. That, and it is a "cure" far worse than the disease it was meant to counter.
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shrooms not acid (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll start off with this: I've used most drugs at least once and marijuana and quite a bit (used to work at a head shop), though now I'm straight edge for reasons that have nothing to do with my drug use.
I agree wholeheartedly with just one caveat, lets substitute Psilocibin mushrooms [wikipedia.org] (magic mushrooms) for LSD. It provides the same basic effect (there's nothing that happens on labratory made hallucenogens that doesn't happen on 'shrooms) but it is natural and controllable.
When using 'shrooms you always know they are pharmacologically safe (relatively speaking) but LSD, even if it was legalized, is too unstable to be used widely, IMHO.
I've known more than a few people who took too much acid and experienced permanent brain damage. With shrooms I have not seen any long term physiological problems.
so..."don't take the brown acid"
and for the love of God...legalize marijuana
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Re:Elimitate upselling (Score:5, Insightful)
I admit that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about drug culture, but I always had the distinct impression that the people you bought marijuana from were not the type of people who would be selling other drugs. It's a fairly distinct culture where marijuana is generally sourced from a network of friends, not some dealer on the street corner who isn't going to risk his hide for something as unprofitable and unaddictive as marijuana.
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Re:Elimitate upselling (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to believe that a lot of marijuana users, like myself, are mostly uninterested in hard drugs. I agree with your statement that it's not that bad, I've had far worse experiences with alcohol or over the counter medication.
I agree that it should be legalized, because really, if I want to hang out at my house and get high, that is my business and it's not like me doing that is putting the safety of the general populous at risk. I'm not out on the roads driving drunk, I'm not picking fights with people in bars, where is the harm in smoking a bowl or two and playing some video games, or listening to music, or watching a movie? There are far more productive things that the law could be doing for its people than locking up those of us who like to toke up.
Not to mention the additional waves that drug prohibition creates when it bleeds over into drug testing for jobs that really shouldn't require it. This causes people to not only be viewed as criminals for something that is incredibly common and harmless, but it uses the employer and the power of capital as just another long arm of the law.
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Re:Elimitate upselling (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of my friends are very much the type that love smoking weed but are entirely uninterested in heroin or coke. I recently had a very good friend overdose on the former, and while that was entirely horrible, it did give me some perspective on the drug laws in our country. People die of alcohol poisoning. People die from shooting up too much or snorting bad coke. Terrible, horrible things, but I have never once heard anything like, "Yeah, man, they found his body this morning. Guess he just smoked too much weed last night."
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Re:Elimitate upselling (Score:5, Funny)
I think that the worst that's ever happened to my pot-smoking friends is that they got very baked one day, and ran down to the 7-11 to buy taquitos. That's stimulating the economy. How can you possibly think that's bad?
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Bad idea for some drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
For stuff like antibiotics, allowing random people to decide what they can take when they want has a definite negative effect on the society at large.
It's a big enough problem getting patients to comply with complete antibiotics regimens as it is. Giving everyone the ability to just pop a few for a couple days when they cut themselves or have the flu or whatever is a recipe for massive, widespread increases in resistant bacteria.
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Re:Bad idea for some drugs (Score:5, Informative)
While you're right that antibiotics shouldn't be used when not necessary, focusing on human use of antibiotics isn't that productive. More than 70% of antibiotics are used in animal feed. [wikipedia.org] Most cows in feedlots are fed massive amounts of antibiotics so that they don't die from being fed food they weren't evolved to digest. [uic.edu] A very quick way to massively reduce the amount of needless antibiotics used in the US is to regulate the beef industry.
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Re:Regulation smarter than Prohibition (Score:5, Informative)
anybody who sells ... to a minor.
That's a good point, and a strong reason to legalize it all. Street drug dealers don't ask for ID, but a well-regulated place like a liquor store does. It's far easier for a kid to get illegal drugs right now than it is for them to get liquor, and that really needs to change.
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