Slashdot Mirror
The Technology of Drug Prohibition
ches_grin writes "Although the GWOT gets all the headlines, technology is proving to be the key factor in the 'war on drugs'. This article and slideshow take a look at the current state-of-the-art for both federal agents and drug traffickers, from greenhouses to Predator drones: 'In the pitched battle surrounding illegal drugs, each side has its advantages. Law enforcement can take advantage of private sector expertise, expensive machines, and, of course, the law. Those who cultivate, manufacture, and smuggle illegal drugs can leverage vast sums of cash, generated by constant demand.'"
Don't legalise drugs on the basis of taxing them. Sure, tax them like you'd tax any other good, but I hate using revenue to the state as a justification. The reason drugs should be legal is because people should have dominion over their own bodies.
Does it fool anyone anymore? Can you honestly say you feel safer because of the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism or the War on (insert political crap here)? We can't just throw money we don't have at these things forever and I would feel much better if I thought there would be any lasting effects to any of these "wars".
I would like to be treated like an adult for a change.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
> You mean legalie meth, coke, heroin, crack? That will never happen. Nor should it... I doubt we
> want any more crackheads around.
Yeah, we all know how successful making drugs illegal has been in preventing demand! Look how hard it is to get drugs now! If we didn't have laws against them, why, you could get drugs in just a few minutes from any town on the planet! Thank god we don't live in *that* world!
some drugs?
Caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco are all "psychotropic" substances.
I doubt that there would be a significant, lasting rise in hard drug use. Is there anybody you know who would start smoking crack tomorrow if it became legal today? Would you?
As a matter of fact, it's highly likely that uptake and usage of harder drugs would drop in an environment of legality and education - see the statistics on heroin usage in Holland since they began selling pure heroin to addicts and educating the population about the dangers of heroin usage.
People generally come into contact with harder drugs through criminal acquaintences (sp?) and are often inclined to ignore warnings given by the government in the 'War on Drugs' since it takes very little time and experience to realise that it's a FUD campaign. Obviously if they lied about cannabis, they must have been lying about crack, right?
By legalising and lifting the taboo and FUD, drug related problems would diminish drastically. Controversially, that would leave the law enforcement agencies referenced here and TFA without jobs. But that can't have anything to do with why the legislation stays as it is can it? Surely not...
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Evidence of this today in the article summary:
"Those who cultivate, manufacture, and smuggle illegal drugs can leverage vast sums of cash, generated by constant demand."
The war on drugs is a guise to control people and to actively have racial crimes on the books.
What negatively affects me the most about the "war on drugs" is that it essentially makes having mental illness a crime. Many, if not most, people with mental illnesses get addicted to drugs and alcohol because of their mental illness, and trying to quit because of legal reasons with little to no medical attention is next to impossible. Next time you see the wino-street-drunk, odds are he just needs medical attention, but you and the government would prefer him to just be "off the street" and out of our sight. I know one of these guys who happened to get medical help, and he is pretty cool. He used to be a "garden variety street drunk" who would badger people, spit when he talked, and all of that. And today he is better not because of going to jail and being punished, but by being helped.
Person buys marijuana legally. Becomes heavy user. Gateways over to a heavier substance. Becomes addicted. Ends up homeless, begs for money to buy drugs from the government.
Nice little logical fallacies you have there. Using pot doesn't mean you will turn to harder drugs, not even that a large majority will. I know people that smoked quite a bit, but they never expressed interest in anything harder (indeed, since they knew the dangers of the harder stuff, they decided it wasn't worth bothering with).
Also, you ignore the fact that should a person end up homeless because they'd rahter just smoke pot, that's their choice. They wanted to keep pushing things further, they choose NOT to get help, they choose to beg. That is within their rights.
So you want to remove a whole group of people's rights because some of that group can't handle freedom? Might as well just rip of the Constitution and install a facsist government right now.
Opening statement: I've never used any of the currently illegal drugs and don't intend to, yet I am a strong supporter marijuana legalization.
When I popped into this thread, I was expecting to see the usual arguments. I was expecting to spend a little time combatting ignorance. I wasn't expecting any actual progress.
However, what amazed me was that every highly rated comment (I browse at +3) was pro-legalization. Every single one. Sure, they were responding to some of the same tired old arguments, but it seemed that the pro-legalization camp was far more strongly represented by both posters and mods. That surprised me and made me hopeful. I'm a regular financial supporter of The Marijuana Policy Project. There are so many lost causes in the world, improvements I'd love to see that will never happen. But I believe this is one issue that we might actually see resolved in our lifetimes.
I live in the Las Vegas area, and there is a statutory initiative on the ballot this upcoming election. Please, please, please, if you live in the Las Vegas area get out and vote. There are initiatives in other states as well, but I don't know the details there.
I am convinced now there is more than enough support to pass legalization in many states. But people need to get active about it. They need to watch the issue an vote. If this is an issue you care about, please take the time. We're at a possible turning point in the next 10 to 20 years. We can make things better.
Cheers.
I don't like Dick Cheney any more than you, but nobody who did what he did would get charged with manslaughter.
First the victim survived, manslaughter is for when someone is killed.
second it was a hunting accident. Hunting accidents, even fatal ones are rarely prosicuted, because it is assumed that all parties understood the risk.
If you want to pick an elite skipping out on a crime pick a better eexample, I am sure there are dozens
oh yeah my spelling sucks.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Just like it didn't stop the organized crime aspect of alcohol?
I'm advocating legalizing ALL drugs. Put whatever you want in your body, I don't care.
The history of the prohibition of drugs is the history of shitting on blacks and mexicans. As I have repeatedly stated here and in other locations, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 utilized the interstate commerce clause of the constitution in order to allow the federal government to "regulate" the sale of marijuana, which it does by requiring federal tax stamps for the sale of any of the stuff. Of course, actually getting the stamps was not possible.
The point was twofold, and both sides were economical. First, hemp was a threat to the paper and plastic industries. Second, blacks and mexicans were competing with white people for jobs during the depression. The solution? Demonize them so no one will hire them. The plan? Paint them as users of marijuana and then paint marijuana as a dirty drug that caused antisocial behavior. The plan came off swimmingly.
Today, the real issue is all the revenue that creates all those jobs; plus, the more money is moved around, the more of it can be siphoned off into the pocketbooks of the powerful. Well, that and that the government keeps us from boiling over by separating us from one another. They have nothing to fear so much as people getting together and ignoring their differences, which will give them time to gang up on the feds.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be honest, any behavior where people go "I am willing to fuck up my own body because I know if it comes to the crunch I'll be seen by a doctor" is highly questionable and probably should be illegal. Yes that goes for smoking too.
Two responses to this:
1) Where do you stop? Okay, smoking is an obvious one. What about drinking? (You may recall that there was a little experiment called Prohibition a few decades back.) Eating crappy fast food? Not exercising enough (whatever the government decides "enough" is)? Exercising too much, to the point of injury? Living in a particularly polluted place, or in a place prone to natural disasters? All of these things can fuck your body up just as much as heroin, and all of them are personal choices. There is no clear cutoff line between "too dangerous" and "dangerous, but just safe enough that we'll tolerate it."
2) Total cost. Yes, all of the behaviors mentioned above, as well as illegal drug use, have costs to society, which we all have to pay. But against this, you have to measure the cost to society of illegalization. We spend an insane amount of money on the War on Drugs: the salaries of the law enforcement personnel, the maintenance of the prisoners, and the high-tech equipment are only the most obvious ones. How about the cost of productive working lives wasted in prison? How about the general rise in the power of organized crime, and all the ills it brings with it, which have a ripple effect far beyond the drug money which provides the initial funding? (The venture capital, if you will.) How about the medical costs incurred by the violence inherent in any illegal trade? (Liquor store owners may tend toward alcoholism, sure -- but since 1933, their rate of death by Tommy gun has gone down to almost nothing.) Add these up, and I suspect they dwarf the direct costs of drug use. Ban smoking, or drinking, or McDonald's, and you'd see a cost to our government and society that would make the current budget for the WoD look like chicken feed.
Once it's legalised it's really hard to go back if it turns out to have been a mistake.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that Moses came down from the mountain with a stone tablet reading "Thou shalt not smoke up," and since then, thus hath it ever been -- in other words, that illegality is the natural state of drugs. But cannabis, coca, poppies, and for that matter tobacco have all been growing for a long time before the law ever even came into existence. Drugs, of any kind, haven't always been illegal. People made those laws, and did so fairly recently in historical terms. We can unmake or remake them as we choose.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
SUGAR
Sugar is one of the most prevalent drugs used in the USA. It causes significant and dramatic changes in brain chemistry in a very short time after ingestion; it is both habit-forming and addictive.
How is sugar addictive? Your brain measures blood sugar levels to determine how hungry you are. Research has shown that over time it becomes more resistant, and it requires more and more to make you believe you are full. Thus, the more sugar you eat, the more sugar (and other carbs, of course, but sugar breaks down most quickly) you will have to eat to feel full.
Youth diabetes was basically unheard of in this country before the advent of the food pyramid, which places carbohydrates at the base (5-7 servings; I think this has been decreased in the new one?) and which also coincided closely with the advent of processed foods, nearly all of which are packed with sugar. Can someone explain to me why a fucking hot dog needs 6 grams of added sugar?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think part of the problem is that the government knows America is not ready for drug availability. Look at alcohol---you have to be 21, driving drunk is a punishable offense, giving it to minors is a punishable offense, using it to manipulate someone is a punishable offense---but it's still a HUGE problem! There's plenty of date rape involving alcohol, lots of minors drinking, lots of people driving drunk---I mean, come on, use common sense if you're going to drink!
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if it was legal at an earlier age and people learned how to use it responsibly. Think there is any great mystery to booze in a country where you can legally buy it at 18 and where your parents have been giving it to you at dinnertime since you were 5 years old? Think those countries have a problem with binge drinking?
Only in the United States can I sign away my life to a cell phone company/credit card company/military, vote and be tried as an adult without being able to legally buy booze. And date rape/DUI are completely separate issues and bringing them up seems like FUD.
An interesting idea is a "psychoactive research license." Someone could take a special training course, take an exam, and be granted a license for a few years that would let them purchase small quantities of illegal substances and use them in the privacy of their own home. I mean, the Native American Church has an agreement that's sort of like this for the use of peyote in religious ceremonies (the Church has a permit to buy peyote from special DEA-licensed growing farms for certain restricted uses with registered Church members). Of course, if you trafficked the substances, used anything around a minor, became a public nuisance while intoxicated, or tried to operate a vehicle, you'd have your license revoked and be punished in some way.
Funny you should mention the Native American use of peyote. Native Americans are the only ones that need "permission" from the Federal Government to practice their religion. What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is so hard to understand? What you purpose would only create a massive bureaucracy with further control over our lives.
Here's an idea: Legalize all drugs. Prohibit employers from requiring drug tests with an exception for jobs that actually require you to be sober (i.e: truck drivers). Make people take responsibility for their own actions. You may not agree with that extreme of a viewpoint. But you'd have a hard time convincing me that THC should still be illegal.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.