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Time To Discuss Drug Prohibition?
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.'"
SMOKE
And while you're at it, can you get rid of Copyright too? Let's try zero copyright and zero drug prohibition for a period of n years, then do an empirical analysis to determine what harm has resulted and come up with policy that rectifies that harm. Then have another n year trial to determine if that policy is working.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Let's just bring back alcohol prohibition.
The war on drugs makes a lot of money for a lot people on both sides of the law.
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.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I'll start off with this. I do not use any illegal drugs and have not for the past 5 years. The only illegal drug that I have ever used is marijuana.
I am completely in favor of decriminalizing marijuana and LSD use. I am in favor of using diamorphine(Heroin) for emergency pain relief like they do in europe.
I'm not quite ready to support decriminalizing cocaine, and I am strongly opposed to legalizing methamphetamine.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I've seen Reefer Madness and it still gives me nightmares. Anything that can inspire a movie that bad is terrifying and must be bad for you. Which version of Reefer Madness? Take your pick.
I'm straight edge. I don't smoke, nor even drink at all, or consume any other substances. (Unless caffeine in Coca-Cola counts.) But, if other people want to consume these substances and fuck their own lives up, hey, be my guest. As long as they don't tread on my right to live a comfortable life. Even if drugs were legalized, it still doesn't mean their carry-on effects, such as murder, drink-driving, et cetera, are legal. And at least it means that if those drugs are available through government programs, it'll be taking away some of that money that drug lords are supposedly making, and pump billions more dollars back into the government. Well, that's my 2 cents worth anyway. I'm sure someone will disagree with me. :P
Every 20 years or so for the past several hundred years, societies swing between prohibition and tolerance. One generation tries hard to outlaw substances, then the next generation tries hard to legalize it. In the 80's it was the war on drugs. In this decade it's legalizing dope. It's nonstop back and forth, back and forth.
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.
If alcohol prohibition required an amendment to the constitution then how was the gov't suddenly able to prohibit another substance w/o changing the constitution?
Wouldn't it be ironic if you could legally go out and get your cocaine fix, but had to get a prescription for some medication that you thought you needed? :)
Speed limits, the FCC, the FAA, all that "regulate trade between the States" bullshit that's crept in over the years? Torch the house, and build a new one I say.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
cannabis must be legalized to pay for the bank bailouts and the car maker bailouts with the "sin" tax dedicated to it. I pay what $10 a pack for tobacco here in new york (just paid $90 for a carton of 10 packs of cigarettes on a "discount" today from the local shop).
We have more problems in this world than cannabis stoners sitting on their couch watching comedy central and adult swim on cable playing video games. Methamphetamine, LSD, Heroin, Cocaine, are all worse than cannabis. The least we can do is have cannabis sold in liquor stores to citizens aged 21 or older, and have a huge tax to support social and federal programs. Figure $400 an ounce and $200 tax, that's $600 for an ounce I'd rather have stoners spend legally than having them buying from a drug dealer who also sells the rest of the crap I mentioned plus illegal firearms and prostitutes.
cheers! I'll drink my beer for now...
Almost the first thing that Clinton did as President in 1993 was to reverse the ban on gays serving in the military, with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that we still have.
But that change made many conservative voters very angry - that, along with the botched health care reform, energized the Republican base and led to the "Contract of America" Congress in 1994, with Gingrich taking over as House Speaker.
Which in turn led to impeachment proceedings against Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, taking everybody's eyes off Bin Laden and national security, but that's another story.
Pelosi understands this history very well. So don't expect this kind of liberal "values" initiative to occur during the first couple years of Obama's presidency.
Like any good salesman, a drug dealer will try to convert a marijuana user to use other drugs that turn a better profit. The good old upsell. Legalising marijuana would break that chain.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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)
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
While we're discussing prohibition, it's worth pointing out that it's always been a tool for expanding government beyond its constitutional powers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
News for nerds? Your Rights online? And this story has exactly what to do with Slashdot?
Should this be on idle? Should this not be on Digg?
When Obama takes office, I think that makes 3 US presidents in a row that have (at least off the record, but perhaps on tape) admitted to using or been caught using illegal recreational drugs. It does seem to make the laws hard to defend morally.
Think Deeply.
I'm all for legalizing anything one might put in their body using the orifice of their choice. Two things though:
1. I'm still for draconian penalties for anybody who sells heavy dope like heroin or methamphetamine to a minor. Anything crap like that should be heavily regulated in it's sale and taxed heavily but intelligently. The taxes should be just high enough that the bootleg bathtub stuff doesn't look good. Tax evaders can share cells with ones selling dope to kids.
2. Being under the influence should be a crime enhancer rather than an exonerator: "Your honor! It was the crystal meth that made me go crazy with that axe!"
"Fine. I hereby double your sentence for axe craziness"
Ditto for crimes committed for the purpose of obtaining drugs though they should be much more pure and affordable being regulated and with mafias mostly out of the picture. Cheaper pure drugs and delivery devices mean that dopers will be able to hold down jobs and so-forth a bit longer before skid-rowing themselves. And who knows? Dopers with dead end McJobs may have enough brain cells remaining to hold them indefinitely.....just like the alcoholics.
This is only meant to accomplish two things. We don't pack the prisons full of non-violent recreational users and small time sellers and we remove the biggest profit center of organized crime. I don't deny that out-in-the-open drug use won't make apparent new out-in-the-open social problems. I suspect that conspicuously not coddling people who mess themselves up may be be the best deterrent to "having all you can eat".
Replace drugs with sugar or fat and ask yourself the same question.
Potato chips create more health care costs than any drug ever has.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Ask him their stance about the viewing of child pornography, since in a utopian Libertarian society, it's not "harmful" because no children are harmed.
I was banned from the local Libertarian meetings due to the lol responses generated from this simple question. They say children are not harmed in child pornography - DUH - how do you think it was generated?
Libertarians = support pot legalization and viewing child porn
Enjoy
There are a lot of individuals out there in human land that are feeling a lot of pain and turn to drugs (legal or illegal) as well as alcohol to mask their feelings... if only for a time.
It is as if a cosmic force is increasing the pressure on everyone and that time seems to be flying by when in the old days it seemed to pass at a slower rate. Today it is excruciating and tomorrow perhaps more so. When and where can it end... surely not in more drugs.
Escaping to drugs only seems to work for the issues causing the escape are still there the next day... however the pain is becoming so great in today's world that those whom you never believe would use drugs are now turning to them.
Unfortunately I do not know of a solution. But, it does break my heart to see those I love do so. A friend who is a beautiful blond, 20 years old and has the world by the tail was just prescribed Lithium as a way of coping with her emotional issues. Lithium is a poison to the body... what are the pharmaceutical companies and doctors thinking?
In my mind I compare it to the days of sunscreen. Before sunscreen the sun provided us with a source of vitamin D synthesis and then the doctors said the sun caused cancer and so we now use sunscreen. Now the skin cancer is at a unprecedented rate even using the sunscreen. Go figure?
It is as if there is some correlated relationship between Beliefs and Emotions. It is becoming more murky knowing what to believe in and what not to believe.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I've always thought if certain drugs were legalized it would put a lot of criminal organizations out of business. Especially marijuana. Lots of wasted tax money processing marijuana abusers, holding them in jail, etc. I'm not sure about other drugs such as cocaine, herion, and meth. At some point we have to consider if legalizing addictive substances will hurt the common welfare. Amsterdam recently announced a cut back on marijuana cafes and prostitutes due to increased rate of crime within the red light district. I guess it's like Ron Paul said, people want to get high. We can't stop them, but we can certainly regulate it. For exmaple, if marijuana were legalized you can regulate laced substances and THC content restrictions, etc. Anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts =)
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
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.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Don't you know that drugs fund terrorism? That every puff of weed kills 5 innocent victims? And I'm talking about the white ones, not those scary looking foreign victims from the middle east.
I mean, just look at this government ad! How do argue with logic like "It's a fact because it's true"?
Suck on that, dope fiends!
I came here for a good argument
is that drug users who commit crimes won't be really punished. I think that's a fair concern because people who drink and drive, and then cause property damage or kill people don't get treated as severely as they deserve. IMO, one of the precursors to drug legalization that advocates need to pursue is that voluntary intoxication cannot be introduced into court except in extreme cases like someone rapes a woman who is passed out.
Aside from those rare cases, if we treated all parties as though their intoxication were no defense of their behavior, I think we would have the legal infrastructure in place to allow for the initial crime problems as the public gets accustomed to legalized drugs.
Ironically, I've found that many of my somewhat law-and-order conservative acquaintances have found this law-and-order libertarian tendency to be disturbing. Not sure why, since personal responsibility should not be thrown out the window just because you're intoxicated unless you can prove that it wasn't by your own doing.
Are you happy now having your pocket picked to incarcerate those who prefer to smoke pot than to drink alcohol?
I would absolutely rather my money go to improving lives by treating addiction than to have it go to ruining lives by locking them up.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
And then you bring in universal health care.
Are you happy about having your pocket picked to rehabilitate those who've turned themselves into potted plants of the sort that they smoke?
Well, we're already dealing with effects of TWOD in the healthcare system: addicts who can't get treatment, people shot/stabbed/etc. in the related turf wars, and so forth. I doubt these people are covered under your friendly neighborhood HMO. These people cost the healthcare system since they a) don't pay for ER visits and/or b) use the ER as a primary healthcare service.
Something tells me we could take the money we spend on enforcement and easily pick up the rehab costs for the few people who are addicts. And we would see a large decrease in related crime that would directly contribute to a reduction in ER visits and thus costs that you and I have to bear right now.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Most of heroin's dangers are more a consequence of its prohibition than the drug's distinctive properties.
The data on this subject does a whole lot more than suggest that if people take certain drugs then they become addicted. In this manner, whatever addiction is is irrelevant, the results are damaging and very real. I watched drugs coupled with the stupidity it brings result in a number of poor judgments in my own life as well as several dozen of my friends. Far away from that part of my life now, I am glad that someone somewhere had enough of a moral compass in Government to make certain drugs illegal.
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.
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.
Don't stop with the soft drugs but actually go so far as to set up clinics that would give out moderate doses of even the hardest of addictive drugs like meth. The idea would be to clean out the drug pushing business. Then you eliminate a huge source of organized crime's revenue while having a huge opportunity to offer councling services to addicts. Who in their right mind would ever walk into a clinic and say "Hey I would love to start taking meth"? This would be way cheaper than all the police, jails, and break-ins that we presently pay for. My argument is backed up by the evidence of a former crack-head I saw interviewed. He broke into around 1000 cars a year(~3 a day) to pay for his habit. Wouldn't it have been better to just give him the damn stuff?
How about legalization of less dangerous drugs, but with costly sin taxes, as we do with tobacco? But as for the more dangerous drugs, one only has to look at the effect of opium on the history of China to see why some controls on drugs are necessary.
take a graph: ease of addiction versus inebriation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
something like nicotine is extremely addicting, but not inebriating
should be legal
while something like lsd is not addicting, but highly inebriating
should be legal
then moderately addicting and moderate inebriating substances like alcohol, marijuana
should be legal
however, on the deep end of the graph are things like methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin: very addicting, very ienbriating. you can't maintain your relationships, you can't hold a job, you threaten your health and your life
no, these should not be legal. simply because the prohibition effects of fighting these drugs (supporting the mafia, giving the drugs a taboo cachet, etc) are still less costly than the direct life destruction these drugs create
in other words, something like marijuana should be legalized, but something like methamphetamine should not. you need to evaluate legality on a drug-by-drug basis. to just blanket statement "all drugs should be legal" reveals a very shallow understanding of some of the really devastating effects of some of the highly inebriating AND highly addicting drugs
it is only the deep end of the pool that should remain verboten
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When you look at it rationally, not economically, selfishly, or sociologically, it's pretty simple. Legalize what doesn't really hurt you, weed and shrooms for example, have standards for quality and purity. Keep tight controls on coke, heroin and the like, since they have legitimate uses. Illegalize meth, put harsh sentences on the people who cook it. It's basicly the same as prostitution, if you regulate it, it won't harm society.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
It seems every time Obs says just 1 sentence, the fans go crazy & expand his sentence to 3 paragraphs of stuff he never promised.
"Repealing the harshest drug sentences, removing federal bans on funding needle-exchange programs to reduce AIDS, giving medical marijuana a fair chance to prove itself, and supporting treatment alternatives for low-level drug offenders," hasn't really happened yet.
"But there's one more thing he can do: Promote vigorous and informed debate in this domain as in all others." but he hasn't said a word about that.
How did we get from needle exchange entitlements to 3 paragraphs about a drug prohibition revolution?
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For the most part, if someone wants to poison their body with drugs, I would recognize this, though distasteful, as their choice.
Them taking drugs is not the problem.
It's the circumstances under which they take it.
The biggest example of this problem is air-born drugs (eg. tobacco): they harm everyone in their surroundings as well as themselves. I have no problem with them taking them, but they better make sure that everyone is the vicinity is consenting and not underage.
This same problem arises with drunk-driving... Drinking isn't the problem, it's when you endanger other people...
IMHO.
The laws that jail people who use and distribute drugs need to be changed, but changing the legalization of drugs in my personal opinion is morally wrong. The government isn't stupid and if marijuana is legalized it will be taxed like cigarettes and be insanely expensive, which I don't think that people who use marijuana would honestly be excited about. The sentencing around drug use is bad, but that is a judicial issue and has no bearing on the legalization of the drugs
we should have voted for Nader.
Prohibition helped getting the mob going too, just like how drugs are helping gangs.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not convinced that rolling back the drug laws would really make a meaningful difference one way or the other. From my perspective, drug laws (consider pot or coke for an example) have really the same enforcement as alcohol laws.
That is, your chances of getting picked up solely for possession are almost zero for any of the three (pot, coke, or booze).
Similarly, you can do any of the three in the privacy of your own home without any real chance of being arrested for it while doing it in your home (or almost any other private property for that matter).
Furthermore, the only significant chance you have of being busted for the consumption of any of the three comes when you choose to be in public while under the influence. We don't allow people to drive while under the influence of any of those three substances. If you are caught wandering the streets while under any of them there is a chance you will end up spending the night in jail.
So where is the benefit to legalizing drugs? I don't see it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The per capita consumption of alcohol before Prohibition was 2.6 gallons in 1910. A gallon of that would be whiskey and the rest beer - potent stuff, too. Those numbers were cut by half in 1934. Apparent per capita ethanol consumption for the United States, 1850 The change which came with Prohibition have endured. We have never returned to pre-WWI levels of consumption. We tend to favor lighter beers and wines over 200 proof Kentucky Bourbon.
"a post-prohibition future might prove less alarming"
If you add up the amount of money passed around in the
*business* of incarcerating people for drug offences it
really makes one take pause to think,
"Where is the real money in illicit substances?".
Is the money in the actual trafficking, or is it in
the administration and enforcement business? The
administration and enforcement reinforces the extreme
cost structure of the trade of the illicit substances themselves.
If the U.S. and E.U. legalized drug use and then treated
addiction as a medical/psychological issue, which it rightly is,
the price of drugs would fall in
value and the producers would go out of business.
This would certainly be a benefit to Afghanistan and many other
places in Asia where people could then get back to their lives
without a bunch of drug lords blowing them up while trying to protect
thier [drug] turf/business/poppy_fields.
I find it remarkable how philosophy always seems
to trump common sense in these matters.
hemp is one of the world's super-plants... making it illegal should be considered a crime against humanity.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=abneijJWRys
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.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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.
And none of that goes on now.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Potato chips create more health care costs than any drug ever has.
I believe cheese is the typical culprit in that tale.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I personally am more afraid of irresponsible anti-biotic use by my neighbors, than their hypothetical recreational drug-use.
So I would call it good policy.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Forget all the bull you were told in school, its not addictive, its not a gateway drug, not won't make you think you can fly, it doesn't give you a hang over, you can't OD from it, and for a short period of time it will improve your mood.
However, I think it needs to be controlled and taxed, just like alcohol.
Lets not forget how much tax money we would save from having to arrest everyone carrying a very small amount, the time of the courts and the jail space for those who are put away from carrying a single joint (You get my point).
Legalising the commercial selling of drugs would be a bad idea in the same way that the commercialization of tobaco and its associated marketting has lead to the deaths of many people.
Experience suggests that the prohibition of drugs primarily results in the increase in price of drugs and the reward to the criminals involved. Government should both supply drugs, at reduced cost to users, and increase the penalties for illegally supplying them. The price can be chosen to undercut the illegal price while still discouraging use.
State supplied drugs would be less dangerous (while still bad) than their illegal equivalents and the illegal supply of drugs would reduce due to the lack of reward and increase in risk.
Governments quite rightly talk of the power of the market and capatalism while quite irrasionally ignoring its application to the supply of drugs. Like alcohol, people will consume drugs whether they are prohibited or not. The current system makes criminals rich and increases the suffering of those who choose this self destructive path. I hope and pray that politicians and the media on both the right and the left will have the courage to unite and stop this destructive policy as soon as possible.
How is it that it took an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit alcohol, but just a federal decree to prohibit marijuana? It seems that any federal prohibition of marijuana would have to be unconstitutional.
In fact the whole concept of a list of controlled substances seems to be badly abused. Some new synthesized dangerous substances such as fissile plutonium, weaponized anthrax, or even dynamite probably should be controlled substances. But a common weed that has been enjoyed as a recreational drug for more than 4000 years, has no business on such a list. For most of history, marijuana has been freely available to whoever wanted it, and yet somehow civilization progressed.
Now about 70 years ago we suddenly outlaw it, just after we overturn prohibition of liquor. Other than give jobs to out-of-work prohibition agents, I haven't seen any benefit to banning marijuana. But I have seen the ban cause lots of social harm, economic damage, and abuse of constitutional law.
To actually return to constitutionality we would have to amend the constitution to include a controlled substances list, and include rules allowing only substances that have severe clear and present dangers to be put on the list.
Without doing research, my guess is ...
Well the 18th Amend was passed in 1919, before the New Deal. Back then the Commerce Clause (the part of the Con' saying the Feds have the right to regulate interstate commerce) was interpreted pretty narrowly. If your business stayed within state lines, the Feds had to butt out.
Then FDR came along. FDR didn't give a damn about the Constitution and forced the Supreme Court to change their view on the Commerce Clause (FDR threatened to pack the court). Otherwise all this New Deal stuff (wage controls, price controls, etc.) would (and did) fail the Constitutionality test.
From then on, the Commerce Clause has been broadly interpreted to control ANYTHING that remotely touches on the idea of interstate commerce. Whether or not your individual action is inter-state, if the industry it would be placed in is interstate (and what isn't?), it is fair game.
So, I would assume the issue is what Democrats like to call the "Living Constitution" meaning that the Constitution doesn't mean what it meant when it was written/ratified, but what 5 Justices think it means today (president be damned). Like Lewis Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty, words mean only what he says they mean.
Conservatives refer to these people as "Activist Judges", and in stead believe that the way to change the Constitution is via Amendments (last one passed during Clinton). In short, the Constitution is a social contract and means what it meant when written/ratified.
In addition, states/cities can't make their own drug policy because the Fed has tied grants ($$$) to the enforcement of the drug laws (via the Con's Tax & Spend power). So, if the states don't play along, their budget crashes.
BTW, The Commerce Clause is why US motorways are referred to as Interstates. Aiding Interstate Commerce gave the Feds the power to set up the system of roads, versus state highways.
How is this news for nerds? I can read this crap anywhere. I come to slashdot to geek out.
"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
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
To review:
Opiates legal: Yes
Medical marijuana legal: No
I could tell it was the anniversary of the end of prohibition by the amount of puke in the bathrooms in my hall... it was a lot.
That's a good one too. Truth is there are tons of examples. Cheese, potato chips, candy bars, even just plain old meat. If we're banning substances because of the burden they place on health care providers, be prepared to eat a whole lot of tofu in the future.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
First off, it probably is not necessary to legalize brain meltingly hard drugs, just stuff like marijuana that is, contrary to popular belief, pretty much harmless.
Second off, yes, we should give help to the 'potted plant' people. Civilization is not about letting people die because they die something dumb to themselves, and if they keep doing it, they should simply be restrained for their own good.
How do you figure that controlling what people do in private is the moral thing to do?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
There is one item I question in this WSJ piece. There may be 500.000 people imprisoned for drugs alone, but how many more committed their violent crimes because of current drug laws in the US? If you factor that in, it may just be that the US isn't as criminal as it appears, in terms of incarceration.
While most countries simply ignore drug laws and put on an act for the US, this year saw quite a few declare them legal. Sometimes by prescription and in a few cases, outright legalization. The impairment each substance causes is generally well understood and it shouldn't be a problem enforcing traffic laws that forbid the use of many (including prescription) drugs.
In the US, it is probably most appropriate to start with marijuana and Heroin. The former has a good safety record and the later for the sake of public safety. Drugs like Heroin (capital "H" as its a brand name) and any drug that is easy to die from an overdose, should be Rx only. That should be obvious to most. The benefits would be immense: A half million could be released from prison and much fewer future convictions would for violent crimes as a result. Coke should likewise, at least at the start, be an Rx drug as it is unknown how the population would respond. Personally, I think a few may die of the "excitement", but the vast majority would be unaffected. In time it would be determined if the Rx policy was really needed. LSD, mushrooms and related substances are probably safe to outright legalize. Amphetamines and most other substances where it is really hard to OD on, like benzodiazapines, should also be included. Almost anything else that represents a personal or real public danger, like antibiotics, should remain Rx.
Regardless to how legalization is done, the benefits would be great for most in society. Only prison guards and similar low-life really need to fear for their jobs. The boost to society this would create would more than cover the loss of a few specialized jobs. In all likelihood, the overall use of drugs would go down. (Hardly worth mentioning as its so obvious.) Its hard to see it any other way, then again the way Americans vote scares the whole world.
As the article makes clear, illegal drug enforcement invokes a heavy cost to lives, law enforcement, and foreign governments.
I would suggest using this repeal to also damage our foes. Afghanistan warlords, Columbian cartels, Mexican gangs, and local dealers all benefit enormously from keeping drugs illegal. Cutting these groups off from one of their primary sources of funds could be a major benefit.
People will make mistakes in their lives and will sometimes turn to drugs when they should not. Destroying their life does not serve society half as well as rebuilding it could. Taxes on such drugs could easily pay for all the outreach and counseling programs you might want.
Marijuana, in particular is one of the silliest things to make illegal.
1) We are forced to make exceptions for folks that need it as a 'best treatment'.
2) It isn't as dangerous as alcohol.
3) It is trivial to grow just about anywhere.
4) We have lost all the other uses of hemp fiber (paper, rope, etc)
Tax it like hell but allow it all and put the money into proper tracking of who is using it. That's my vote. I too have worry about making really hard drugs legal, but if you make it traceable, and still allow employers to bar folks failing drug tests. I see much less harm than we find in the current destructive cycles that wastes billions annually while enriching the part of society we should be trying to weaken.
*snicker*
need to be legal. Drug war does absolutely nothing to prevent people from getting them who really want it. Complete waste of my money.
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 (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
Thank you Dave Raggett
The professional dealers my source gets his weed from are more than happy to upsell him to addictive drugs, usually painkillers. Though he says that they only mention them if he asks about other stock, so I don't imagine it is a huge deal. I've had experience with family getting upsold, but it was always from one addictive substance to a stronger one (painkillers to heroin).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I agree I don't like enforcing my morality or how I perceive morality on people, but as of right now the government backs me up with the laws that are against drugs. What you do in your private life is fine by me, but if you know it is illegal you always take a chance. As long as you know that, that do what you have to do.
Legalizing pot and other "lite" drugs is a no brainer, but what to do about crack, meth, and other hard drugs? What about the "in-between" drugs like heroine, which some people seem to be able to take for years while maintaining their lives and jobs?
I know that the war on drugs has worked in at least one case - me. I never tried pot, cocaine, or any other illegal drug because I didn't want to mess up my future with a police record or other kinds of trouble. But I do drink alcohol, sometimes to excess in social situations (Chelsea Handler quote: I don't drink to make myself more fun to be around, I drink to make YOU more fun to be around). I have no desire to get drunk alone - I get bored when my favorite toy, my brain, isn't working right. I rarely get drunk at all even socially. No one in my family has drink/drug issues either. I started drinking because friends introduced me to it, and it was a socially/legally acceptable behavior. If drugs were legal, I probably would have tried a few at parties; peer pressure works.
So did the WAD keep me from becoming an addict, or did I just self select to obey the law because I wasn't much interested anyway? My family history suggests the latter, but I don't know.
It depends on how addiction works. If there is an "addictive personality", some percent of the population which really really likes to get high, then no law will save them; they'll take risks to get drugs, and they'll seek the best high they can find. The WAD is money down a hole. So, probably, are any kind of coerced rehab efforts.
If, on the other hand, there is a drug for every person, or could be if research were allowed to progress unfettered by law, then the WAD actually saved my life - I never tried enough drugs to find the one that would have hooked me.
I don't know which it is, and I don't really trust anyone to tell me, because everyone doing this kind of research has an agenda. So I have no idea if we should legalize everything or not. I'd be cautious about it though - remember, most hard drugs use to be legal, and were made illegal for a reason. We might legalize drugs, re-discover some horrible societal effects, and make them illegal again 10 years later.
There's another consideration: suppose there is an addictive personality type, and it's some percentage of the population. Do we really want to just write off these people? They seem to include some of the most culturally productive folk around - artists, musicians, actors, and writers. Legalizing drugs will lead to research by drug corporations to make more addictive drugs, which could lead to drugs that just destroy these people. We better be careful how we go about this, in any case. Maybe legalization with limits on sales and research, or government suppliers, or something.
This doesn't seem like a simple issue to me.
Insanely expensive? Why? 1/8 of an oz. of marijuana costs $50 here. That is insanely expensive considering I could grow it myself for only the cost of water and electricity. I bet over 3 months, I could grow 50 pounds for a combined cost of ~$500 (minus the initial cost of the lights and other apparatuses). If I were to buy that right now, it'd cost me about $225,000. The price can only go down if it's legalized.
The reason it's so expensive because is because someone is risking their life when they grow the shit. Either a life in prison, or death by a cop or their boss, etc.
I'd say your perspective represents what most Americans think about the issue.
I really think either a national system similar to California or flat legalization of marijuana is inevitable and will happen as soon as an *reliable* instant test for 'intoxication' can be developed. (don't talk to me about the marijuana 'breathalizers'...they can detect smoke in the mouth from over a day past use...)
It's a simple issue of accontability...if i'm high and I crash my car into yours then I am culpable b/c I was under the influence, just like drunk driving. Once we can do an instant test to see how "stoned" someone is with some sense of normalization, it will be legalized.
I know the comparison to alchohol breathalizers is problematic for some b/c it can be wrong...but it's something and I'm glad we use them. If weed were legalized, I'd be happy to regulate my usage to stay under a legal limit when driving...arbitrary as that limit may be.
Thank you Dave Raggett
all drugs exert a destructive influence on lives. every single one
you start with something like coffee (infinitesimal destructive cost), all they way up to a continuum to something like methamphetamine (huge destructive cost)
but, also for making these drugs illegal, you exert a societal cost in terms of funding organized crime, etc.
so you have to weighs pros and cons. if you say to me its all con for making drugs illegal, or all pro for making drugs illegal, you're like a 14 year old debate club idiot: you are a total ognrant on the facts of what you are discussing
you have to make a cost/ benefit analysis of legalizing/ making illegal for every single drug. you begin by recognizing there is a cost for making drugs legal, and a cost for makign drugs illegal. then you have to pick between grey areas: by making a drug illegal or legal, are gianing more or less destruction overall?
its incredibly difficult and complicated. if you think its easy and a nobrainer, you, again, are a completel fool
for a lot of drugs (lsd, nicotine, alcohol, marijuana) the societal costs of making them illegal (organized crime, taboo cachet for idiot teenagers, etc) clearly outweight the personal costs of making them legal (smoking gives you cancer, alcohol addiction and drunk driving, etc.)
but for some drugs (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine) the societal costs of making them illegal ARE LESS THAN the personal costs of making them legal
to understand that, you need to understand just how devastating the addictive effects of these drugs are. that it is easy to become addicted, and once addicted, you are unable to hold a job, a relationship, etc. (well, you are, for awhile, but its a rocketship you fall off of at some point... if you meet someone who says someone can be a cocaine adict or a heroin addict and remian in a relationship or job forever, no ill effects, you are dealing with an addict in denial and/ or a complete idiot)
if you don't understand the cold hard facts of the destructive power of hardcore drugs on people's lives, you are speaking form a position of complete ignorance
hardcore inebriating and addictive substances do to lives is nothing but a story of utter destruction
and again, you may say: so what? why do i care if someone destroys their lives? because me, society, my taxes, has to pay to feed and house people who are basically zombies unable to feed or clothe or house themselve,s just ithcing for a drug
if i'm shell out some cash, i'd rather fund the CHEAPER cost of forever (yes, the war lasts forever and never ends, i know that) of waging war on HARDCORE drugs (only heorin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.) marijuana, lsd, mushrooms: should be legal
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
understand that for something like methampethamine, the costs of legalization far outweighs prohibition
but something like marijuana, or lsd, or mushrooms: the costs of prohibition are far greater. these drugs should be legal
familiarize yourself what something like methampetamine does to a person and their brain and their family and their job
once you understand that, you understand that all drugs are not the same, and shoul dnot be treated the same legally
case-by-case is the wisest approach
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US Constitution, on balance would be no worse off if every amendment after 15 never happened, especially the 16th.
Of course, the Constitution has a history of not standing in the way of politics... for example, H. Clinton might very well be the next Sec State, despite constitional prohibitions> , as that clause has been ignored before, as if lowering the salary lets the new Executive squeak in under the intent of the law rather than the literal law.
I am just waiting for the day an average Joe is let off the hook for a crime, because he didn't intend to break it... thereby not violating the spirit, if not he actual law.
For example, if I carry a firearm, but not for criminal purposes, should I be ok? I may break the letter of the law, but not the reason for the law...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Sure, drug prohibition is a nanny state affair. Can anyone here honestly tell me that a majority of illegal drug users don't need nannies?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
you like brussle sprouts too?????
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Well, I am not in the US, and I consume marijuana in a regular basis.
It's very popular as a drug, by consumers and by non-consumers that think that stoners are no-future junkies.
Reading stuff like this makes me fear penalties for carrying or using marijuana will be increased.
Personally, I started smoking after my digestive system broke because of a medical error (without even an apology from them, and we can't afford a good lawyer, so I have to live with it).
Many in my family used to smoke as well, so I was convinced (after much resistance from me, since I don't smoke normal tobacco, and I thought it'd be a "bad thing" since I lived "healthy" without alcohol or tobacco). It was one of the best choices I had, one year ago.
Not troubled so much by pain, I started to develop my abilities further, started to make better and deeper social life (my mood became less violent, which helped at work and with friends), and met a lot of stoner people who are really nice. Unfortunately since my stomach is broken I tend to vomit at times when I am stoned, but well, happens if I do exercise too or I have too much heat. Aside from bad aftertaste and sore throat it's not a big deal (it's like once per month or so anyway)
Judging from my other family members who have been smoking for ages, they are really healthy as well. Some of my stoner friends only say "I lose a lot of time stoned" as a defect. I haven't known anyone that has died under effects of pot, either directly by overdose or indirectly (like driving and crashing, like alcohol, that is legal but it leads to heavy poisoning, violence in some cases, and shame in other cases).
You know, it kind of hurts me to see statistics like "54% of american parents are extremely worried their kids do marijuana". I don't know if it has side effect as a kid, I started well into adulthood, but my grandpa has been smoking his entire life, and he hasn't either started doing other drugs, nor he was ever violent, or has faced health issues (although he smokes a lot of regular tobacco too, so his voice is all cracked).
It would be nice if I could consume this medicine legally. It's not like law is going to be harsh to me, since it's just a small fine in my country, but I really fear "what if laws get more severe?".
umm.. actually.. yeah, I do.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think that your concern is valid, and has a pretty obvious solution: you tax the drugs, and put that money into the healthcare system. Problem solved.
That should go for cigarettes, snowboards, and anything else dangerous that is likely to incur extra health care costs. That seems like a pretty sensible way to force the people who are doing the most dangerous things to bear the burden.
Annoyed with the situation on his block in San Francisco, a techie has created Adam's Block, which has an HD camera pointed at a drug dealer corner. You can watch the deals go down. Try expanding the left window to full screen; the HD detail is there.
There's an attached blog and audit trail, and people are logging SFPD cars as they go by.
Fans of the site are waiting for an arrest. Hasn't happened yet.
It's streamed out via Justin.tv, so there's enough bandwidth for Slashdot users to watch.
The Onion ran one of their parody news articles a few years back concerning drugs. IIRC, the headline was "Drugs now legal if user is gainfully employed." I think that really cuts to the heart of the matter. What we should be most concerned about is people contributing in a positive manner to society. The negative effects to society in relation to drug use mostly revolve around crimes committed to acquire the drugs; the violent actions some people commit once under the influence of drugs; and harm done to children/teenagers who start drugs while their bodies and minds are still developing.
If people did drugs in the privacy of their own home, went to work everyday and played their part in the overall good of society, and you had to be 18 or 21 (like cigarettes and booze in the USA) to legally do drugs, these main concerns would go away.
Some people will never be able to wrap their minds around this concept. They've been raised with the "drugs==bad" mentality and can't see what goes on everyday around them. We already allow this with certain drugs. Alcohol, make no mistake about it, is a drug. It is one of the worst drugs around. Not to generalize (because there are "happy drunks"), but it makes people mean, and makes them do and say things they wouldn't otherwise. It is very addictive, especially to those genetically pre-disposed to alcoholism. It incapacitates users to a point that many other drugs don't. And the long-term health effects are among the worst of all drugs out there. But, for whatever reason, partaking in this drug is socially acceptable if you are 21 or older in the USA (other ages, usually younger in other countries). And then we have nicotine, the active ingredient in cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products. This is an extremely addictive drug, so much so that many heroin addicts find it easier to kick smack than to give up smoking.
And then we have "controlled substances," of which doctors write out legitimate prescriptions by the the millions every day. Oxycontin is known in some circles as "hillbilly heroin," because the effects are similar, and it is the closest equivalent that can be found in rural areas. Other opioid medications like Vicodin are equally addictive, and when it comes time to quit them, the user might has well have been taking heroin. The withdrawals of any opiate or opioid or all the same: a hellish process that makes user either want to get a fix ASAP, or just die. Yet these drugs are legal.
I've gotten off-track a little bit, but for whatever reason, there's three drugs that are very much legal if you are the right age, or have the right doctor. Why are they legal when marijuana is less intoxicating than alcohol, and smoking it at worst provides the same risk for cancer as cigarettes? (I think weed is less likely to cause cancer because it is not pumped full of extra chemicals, like the tobacco companies do to keep their users hooked.) A habitual marijuana user will certainly feel "bummed" if they run out, but they won't go through withdrawals that are potentially deadly, as in the case of alcohol or opiates. And a pothead can quit with just willpower; as the commercials for many stop-smoking-aids, willpower is not enough to kick the cigarette habit.
We tolerate alcohol, tobacco and addictive prescription medications, as long as their users are otherwise productive members of society. I can only see at as a great hypocrisy that other drugs are not afforded the same opportunity--especially when we are talking about something as innocuous as marijuana. Drop all the drug laws now. If people let the drugs turn themselves into criminals, there are other laws to take care of that. Just like laws that take care of drunk drivers, people that steal cigarettes, or people that forge fake prescriptions. If consenting adults want to do these things in the privacy of their own home, and keep them out of the reach of their children, and stay on the right side of the law, there is no reason they shouldn't be allowed too.
As to why they are not allowed to, there are a lot of reasons why the dope dealers and the lawmakers don't want it to change; there's plenty of posts above mine that state these reasons in an insightful manner.
:q!
I found this talk when I was doing a research paper for a sociology class. Its well-written and very funny, and does an excellent job of pointing just how ridiculous and arbitrary marijuana prohibition is. Section V - C - 2 is especially memorable.
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/vlr/vlrtoc.htm
Here is a challenge for you all. Ask a high school kid what is easier to obtain, tobacco, alcohol, or drugs etc. I am willing to bet that you will find that it is in fact easier for them to find drugs. It can all be obtained, however, with alcohol and cigs being readily available for adults it is more difficult for kids to get them. Drugs on the other hand are easier and generally cheaper to get from fellow classmates. Hell weed and shrooms can be obtained from almost any rural area.
I can remember, when I was very young growing up on my great grand fathers farm, my aunts walking into the cow pasture and getting shroom, not to mention their horticulture projects in the holler. Who needs beer when you have cultivation?
My point is that because recreational drugs are unregulated it is easier for kids to find and obtain. Alcohol and tobacco require an age check at the stores that sell them. A drug dealers generally doesn't ask for ID.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
Some of us have been openly advocating against the war on drugs for a very long time now. We welcome the rest of you to objective reality.
This past Election Day, the people of Massachusetts just voted 2:1 to decriminalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana (over 50 typical joints). If caught with that much pot, the "criminal" is issued a ticket, about equivalent to a ticket for an open container of beer, that can be mailed in with a $100 fine without even a court appearance.
Every day that goes by without Massachusetts falling into chaos or bedlam will prove how stupid pot prohibition is. Something like 50% of America's over 1 million imprisoned criminals committed nonviolent drug crimes, and about 850,000 people are arrested for pot every year. Instead of spending an average of $30,000 per year per prisoner, we could be collecting income and sales taxes from the people growing, distributing and consuming it. Probably could be a top agriculture export for this country. And with an entire state running OK mostly post-prohibition, the counterexample in favor of sanity should be undeniable.
--
make install -not war
Our family knows two girls who blew their brains getting high on nutmeg. In the summer, our street is littered with mulberries - some of them green (hallucinogenic when consumed green). Marijuana grows on the police station lawn. But if they find it in *your* lawn, you could get arrested (or they can just swipe your car on "suspicion" of drug dealing). Teenagers in Hawaii get high (and sometimes die) licking poisonous frogs. Native Americans get high on mushrooms. Bolivians grow coca and make tea. The tiny amounts of cocaine in coca tea are harmless and actually healthful and no more addictive than caffeine.
What do all these drugs have in common? They are all natural substances which cannot reasonably be controlled without obliterating worldwide an entire family of plants, fungi, or amphibians.
While these plants and animals can be and are abused, they are no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. The real drug problems come when enterprising dealers with no conscience refine natural intoxicants, or create synthetic ones. Coca is refined into cocaine. Tobacco - addicting enough in pipe and cigar form, is made into cigarettes - far more addicting (and awful smelling to non-smokers). Wine and beer are refined into spirits and Grain Alcohol. Poppies are refined into heroine. PCP and LSD are far more dangerous than nutmeg.
So, I a not a libertarian, but I support any movement to stop the ridiculous attempts to wipe out useful plants and animals - because of some idiots trying for a Darwin award.
IMO, a sane "war on drugs" would target chem labs where the truly dangerous drugs are made or refined. At least then, the people they arrest would actually have to do something illegal - as opposed to not putting enough (toxic and environmentally bad) broad leaf killer on the lawn.
Alcohol is alcohol, difference being the proof rating.
Drugs on the other hand fall into their own categories. Are we talking about just Marijuana? Or, are we also talking about PCP, Cocaine, Meth, Heroine, etc? We've got to make some serious distinctions here when debating drug prohibition. Some chemicals are far nastier than others!
Life is not for the lazy.
I would like to see those small stickers on cigarettes on cartons of pot. A new industry created and perhaps one removed, sorry to all the cops out there, don't taz me!
Get up!
The far better solution is to "reward" those on the public dole (including public education) for not taking drugs by drug testing and witholding benefits for those who fail.
Note that a recent study compared offering periodic material rewards and standard drug counseling. The giving of rewards actually had a higher success rate for keeping the participants abstinant.
End Illicit Drug prohibition and more people will use them, and the DUI charges will increase and more innocent people will get killed in DUI accidents.
What amount of money can you put on a human being's life snuffed out by a pothead or cokehead who couldn't control their car? It is bad enough we got drunk driving and boozeheads killed plenty of innocent people already, we don't need to drive that number up.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
One thing that has been annoying me to no end lately is several incidents in Japan of college kids getting busted with marijuana.
Now the media is calling it an "outbreak" and a "scourge" and bemoaning the morals of the young people, blah blah blah. They trot out so-called experts who talk about "Marijana Psychological Disorder." It's Reefer Madness all over again, and absolutely no one is open to discussing it in a rational manner. Forget the fact that these kids weren't hurting anyone or anything. Forget the fact that most of the rest of the world looks the other way on college pot use. And how about the fact that this country drinks itself to sleep every night? Bunch of hypocrites.
That's all we need, second hand smoke that makes you high. No thanks.
Oh come on. Everyone knows that drugs are legal if you sell them with the tax stamps!
Replace drugs with sugar or fat and ask yourself the same question.
Potato chips create more health care costs than any drug ever has.
No one has held up banks or killed people for sugar before. No sir, the major difference is that drugs are extremely addictive. Far more than sugar or fat ever will be.
Some drugs, like crystal meth, are so dangerous they should definitely be restricted substances. They are dangerous, not in the same manner as explosives, but far more devastating to a population. They should not be made legal.
Other drugs (marijuana in particular) are not nearly as harmful, and indeed could be made less harmful by strict government regulation much as is done for tobacco. The government could profit (with heavy taxes), the safety would be increased, and it puts the criminal underground out of a fair chunk of business. Especially if properly regulated, marijuana really isn't that dangerous.
I don't have a link, but I read something on a conspiracy theory that marijuana was banned to keep hemp from becoming a popular fiber, since (aside from perhaps its comfort value) it is one of the best natural fibers for making fabrics from; it is strong, easy to grow, and easy to handle.
1. it is not the governments position (or right) to dictate what citizens decide to do with their bodies, in any shape or form (providing they are of sound mind and are consenting to their actions)
2. prohibition *does not* work. This 'war' has been fought for decades, and drugs are cheaper than ever before, and there is no shortage of supply. In many respects, illicit drugs are more accessible than pharmaceutical drugs (your local dealer isn't going to ask you to see a doctor for a prescription first now, are they?)
3. drugs are not the demons your guidance counsellor made them out to be. Holland has had a relaxed drug status for years now, with no sign of any social meltdown or anarchy.
4. take a look at what is spent on losing the battle against drugs compared to the NASA budget, and ask yourself which of these government efforts is more productive.
disclosure: I do not, have not, and will not use illicit drugs.
Are you ready to reorganize ATF into CMFTMLAH(cocaine, marijuana, firearms, tobacco, meth, lsd, alcohol, heroine)? Frankly, until we get a more acronym-friendly group of drugs, I am morally opposed to legalizing any more of them.
My webcomic
I agree that alcohol has a negative affect on some of its users. However, I would point out that this hardly calls for replacing one drug with another.
A far better solution would be to develop a new stimulant with none of these negative impacts. Kind of like StarTrek's equivalent of alcohol ;)
Nice way to completely change the argument. I was not arguing about criminal effects or addictive qualities. I was arguing solely about health effects. The guy up above claimed that drug legalization would be too much of a drain on the health care system and therefore drugs should be banned on those grounds. If you would like to argue against my point then feel free, but don't act like you've somehow "got" me because you're refuting something I never said.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Or more correctly, de-criminalize it. Seriously, it's a felony to possess drugs. WTF? Placing you in the same category as murderers and rapists. The 'War On Drugs' is fucking insane anyone can see that. The Constitution does not give the government this right. It's none of their business and they've created a horrible crime market.
The problem that I see is that, if you legalize these drugs, then the crooks who have made such enormous profits by selling this stuff, will continue to make these profits. Thus it is that I propose the following.
The point here is to do to the drug dealers what Microsoft did to Netscape. Make it so that it's almost impossible for them to make a profit selling their product.
Now, yes, you'll probably see an initial spike in people ODing, on this stuff, but -- in the long term -- you'll see that there'll be nobody out pushing it into the new markets (mostly young kids), because there will be no profit in anybody doing so.
You will also, however, see a spike in people asking for help in getting off of the drugs because they'll have legitimate people who talk to that they will be able to trust. (at least, this was the result at Vancouver, BC's supervised injection site). In the long term, you'll see more junkie's lives saved, and fewer junkies overall.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Are you happy about having your pocket picked to rehabilitate those who've turned themselves into potted plants of the sort that they smoke?
In California, judges usually assign rehab instead of jail time. The numbers now show that the rehab sentences both lower recidivism rate, and are much cheaper to the State than prison time. Therefore, rehab is costing me less in taxes than prison costs, so yes, I would rather pay for rehab. Of course, if you legalize it, and regulate proper doses, they can pay for their own rehab via special sales taxes. If you're worried about taxes, you should be pushing for legalization ASAP, regardless of unrelated health insurance issues.
Unregulated drugs will destabilize families more. Money will need to be spent to deal with the aftermath--the damaged children.
Unregulated drugs will make the highways more dangerous. Money will be needed for enforcement and treatment.
Unregulated drugs will increase the need for social welfare programs to deal with the extra detritus.
A doped society will weaken the United States. Deregulation need not increase the 'doped' population, but we must be prepared to help the people who will be harmed by deregulation.
I'd favor decriminalization if people would pay for cleaning up the aftermath. But people won't pay.
That's all we need, second hand smoke that makes you high. No thanks.
right, because the nicotine in second hand tobacco smoke doesn't exist. What exactly is it that you think nicotine is/does? Also, you're welcome.
Oh, they've solved that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-cigarette
No second-hand smoke; safer for the user as well; and it'd work just the same to replace marijuana.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
not only chips, deaths from prescription medications each year are thousands and thousands more than deaths from illegal drugs.
hell, deaths from aspirin every year outnumber the total who have died on mdma ever!
I disagree. People have killed each other for food before. It's the sort of thing you see in the presence of mass starvation.
I think it's kinda lame to respond to your own post to argue with a moderation, but I'm going to do it anyway, because come on! How is my post a troll?
I stated clearly it's my opinion, and that I have little knowledge of the subject. I think I formed some good arguments, though! Agree or disagree with me if you want. I am in fact very interested in valid counter-points to my ideas. Marking that as troll is inappropriate.
This is a broken conversation if only those strictly against legalization of drugs are modded up. Don't believe me if you want, but I am not the typical pothead who wants marijuana legalized - I really don't do drugs myself and have no desire to.
I'm a proponent of the constitution and individual rights, not a druggie. Even a druggie should not be modded troll, unless they are actually trolling (which I will freely say they are very likely to do!)
Let's have a fair conversation please!
tell you what, lets legalize all the drugs you want in one neigbourhood and YOU move into it and see how you like it?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You need food to live. You don't need drugs to live. If there was a particular food that was so addictive that people were killing themselves over I would not hesitate in banning it.
"KopBusters- Barry Cooper goes undercover to expose Odessa Police"
KopBusters.com
I shamelessly stole this idea from a comment a friend's blog, but I think an interesting way to force a discussion on this issue is for a president to pardon everyone who has committed a drug-related crime. The sheer amount of media coverage would bring the topic to the forefront of discussion. I'm not one to partake in the use of drugs, but I think a discussion (without FUD!) would be a healthy way to see where the law should change. I think it would be interesting to watch.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
1. Man has the right to live by his own law-- to live in the way that he wills to do: to work as he will: to play as he will: to rest as he will: to die when and how he will.
2. Man has the right to eat what he will: to drink what he will: to dwell where he will: to move as he will on the face of the earth.
3. Man has the right to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will.
4. Man has the right to love as he will.
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
For countries with the political courage to try treating drug use as a social and medical problem, instead of as a legal one, the jury is in. It works. Switzerland has had prescription heroin for a decade on an experimental basis. They just voted to make the law permanent. Nothing chic about heroin in Switzerland. Just a bunch of old losers. Addiction rate is going down. Most hold crappy jobs. Opoids don't completely incapacitate a person -- as many on pain meds know. (They are hard on the gut) The Netherlands have also had progressive policies. There is of course a downside (particularly as people from countries with prohibition come in and cause problems), but in the balance the Dutch are okay with the openness. The great thing about relegating drugs to the medical sphere is that the cool factor evaporates. And the financial incentive dissipates.
Prohibition uses sovereign power to create artificial scarcity increasing price and creating an underworld. Get this crap in the sunshine. Give it to the people who want it for cheap and they will mainly fill low paying jobs -- with some exceptions.
Handle it in the private sector. You can test for drug use for security clearances and operator licenses etc. We need people to push brooms and flip burgers.
"Dude, here's a spliff, now take this broom and sawdust and clean the warehouse. And by the way if you want a better life the clinic is open and the NA meeting is down the street."
The exception is of course with creative people. They can do fine with drugs if they don't go overboard. Code poets, jazz men and artists will use. But they also get clean, too. Up to them I say. This puritanical nanny stuff is for the birds.
Interestingly, I read that Cisco systems decided to scratch their testing policies. Too many good people came up dirty. True or not I do not know. And perhaps the status has changed. Comments?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
never intends to be airtight
nor does making a ban airtight mean it is not effective
preface: marijuana, shrooms lsd should be legal. heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine should NEVER be legal
the war on drugs will last forever. the war on drugs SHOULD last forever. its simply a maintenance function of society, like taking out the trash. there is a "war on trash". that we don't get rid of garbage means we should stop taking out the garbage? there's this strange mentality out there that says that because the war on drugs isn't 100% effective, that it isn't effective at all
if you make something illegal, you make it more difficult to get, not impossible. when you make something more difficult to get, you decimate the number of people who use or try something
there will ALWAYS be someone who will go to any length to get a drug. the existence of such people means nothing, teaches us nothing, about the hundreds of thousands deterred from ever trying a drug, which only has a downside, because it is illegal
there is a difference between harm reduction: once someone is addicted, making sure their lives are less of a disaster area than it would otherwise be, and harm reduction: making sure the person's life is never a disaster area in the first place by never letting them get near a drug
of course, when you make something illegal, you give it a tgaboo cachet among some idiots, and you feed organized crime. for most drugs, this means legality is a better approach. but for the highly inebriating+highly addictive drugs, the destruction of people's lives is such that even taking the negative effects of illegality into account, illegality is still worth it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Make that "cocaine".
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Does the law treat speeding the same as smoking pot?
It was "time to discuss drug prohibition" a LONG time ago.
Legal marijuana:
Eliminate, what, 800,000 people or so arrested each year for marijuana-related offenses, thus reducing the costs assocated in processing & housing them.
Fewer lawyers to deal with the now-reasonable amount of court action. Obvious benefit.
Prisons are no longer overcrowded, thus no longer requiring more prisons to be built, thus saving money.
Prisons are no longer overcrowded, no longer requiring people to be released early who shouldn't be.
Fewer law enforcement personnel needed to conduct now-reasonable-size 'war on (other) drugs', thus saving tax money.
Tax money from now-legal marijuana sales (budget is balanced, free healthcare and a Wii for all).
Less alcohol abuse now that Marijuana is legal, fewer drunk-driving accidents (Marijuana is less-impairing than alcohol), thus saving thousands of lives per year.
Nothing standing in the way of Hemp production except the Cotton industry (who would be the biggest beneficiaries of switching over appropriate products to Hemp, go figure). More Hemp can now be grown with less water and pesticides than the Cotton crops replaced, thus saving money and the environment. Still can't get high off of Hemp, which isn't the same as Marijuana, dumbasses learn this the hardway by trying to smoke it to avoid the 'sin taxes' of the now-legal Marijuana.
Snack food industry profits increase 25-fold in the first 9 months after legalization of Marijuana. Frito-Lay stock is up 5200%. Combination packs of Cheetos and a Joint second biggest-selling item in history of United States. Taco Bell stock up 9200%. Biggest-selling item in history of U.S. is the 'Fatties and a Skinny' combo from Taco Bell, consisting of 3 bean burritos and a joint.
Following the success of legal marijuana nationwide, prostition becomes legal 5 years later, after the next round of elections. Las Vegas becomes bigger than ever, while Reno disincorporates as noone is willing to travel there anymore. Legalization of gamling comes in on the hells of legalized prostitution, and the Native American tribes expand their casino experience into the rest of the country, but come up against the Italian Mafia, and a new Mob War ensues, leaving Chicago and New York littered with the scalped bodies of Italian Mafia members everywhere, within their circled Cadillacs and SUVs.
Oh yeah, taxes off sales of marijuana accessories pay for new space program which gets humanity off Earth just in time to avoid being wiped out by asteroid the size of Texas.
Alcohol is a vastly worse social drug in every way, especially with regard to making users aggressive.
Exceptions: unlike alcohol, smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, and the smell is somewhat offensive - although, in both cases, less so than tobacco. In general, though, I agree with your point.
Thing is, addiction is another kind of need. Making an addictive substance illegal means that some addicts will break the law to get what they need. There's plenty of evidence over the past century or that that's exactly what happens. My take is that it is simply far better to legalize it and mitigate the consequences rather than make it illegal. After all, the worst thing from an addict's point of view about an illegal addictive substance is that it is illegal not that it is addictive.
i suppose you are referring to ethanol laced with methanol, wood alcohol. that kills your liver and causes blindness
in which case, it would be more appropriate to compare drugs on the black market laced with bullshit (literally, bullshit), strychnine, and other toxic impurities
and you are correct: if methamphetamine were made legal, toxic impurities disappear
however, you need to study what methamphetamine does to your body and brain, permanently, to understand something like methamphetamine is not something you exmperiment with. its something you steer clear of and keep teenaged idiots away from in spite of themselves. oh certainly, there will always be idiots who will get it no matter what, but making something illegal actually means orders of magnitude less people are exposed to it. that has great value
the negative aspects of making methamphetamine illegal are smaller than the negative aspects of making it legal. and if you are telling me what business is it of mine if someone else destroys their life, well me, taxpayer, society, we have to clothe and feed and house zombies who would otherwise be normal functional people. that waging war on something like meth is cheaper, even with all the jails and police, than supporting legions of drug zombies, because they got exposed to it when they were dumb kids, that we should have prevented, for our sake, and theirs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What kind of twisted logic is that?
If someone has an unhealthy addiction to a substance you should be breaking that addiction, not fueling it. When gambling addicts sell their homes away the correct response is hardly "well, addiction is another kind of need". No, this kind of addiction is ruining people's lives. We shouldn't be facilitating this kind of destructive behavior. The more hoops people have to jump through to get trapped in this kind of destructive behavior, the better.
I really doubt that the US is ready to go there. Too many boogie men in that basement. It is much easier to paper up the problem, stick the police on it and hide your head in the sand.
The prison business is big in the US, and, just like the militaro-industrial complex president Eisenhower warned you about, it's a self perpetuating cancerous leech on your society.
Look at the numbers, just like the US spends several times more per inhabitant on its military, even adjusted for GDP, it has 10x more prisoners than other nations. In fact it has more than any other nations.
So what's happening? There is an industry around providing prison-related "services", and they provide plenty of campaign money to influence policy the right way.
The modern man is required to live as the following Be born Go to School Get job Consume shit Get married Consume more shit Invest in something Retire Die Anything that deviates from ruthless pursuit of the above is frowned upon or banned.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
How many people drink bathtub gin anymore? Moonshine? Rotgut? When alcohol prohibition was lifted in 1933, people went back to "the good stuff." I guarantee that if certain controlled substances were legal you'd see certain very unsafe and insane substitutes become a whole lot less popular.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
No one has held up banks or killed people for sugar before. No sir, the major difference is that drugs are extremely addictive. Far more than sugar or fat ever will be.
Not true. In the Napoleonic Wars, access to sugar was successfully used as a weapon. And thousands of slaves were killed during the rise of the sugar trade, a direct result of our desire to harvest and market this deadly white powder. Why, just a few months ago, 14 workers were killed by a blast of sugar.
To paraphrase Nancy Reagan: The casual user may think when he licks his lollipop or spoons a dollop of the devil's carbohydrate into his tea in the privacy of his nice condo, listening to his expensive stereo, that he's somehow not bothering anyone. But there is a trail of death and destruction that leads directly to his door. I'm saying that if you're a casual sugar user, you are an accomplice to murder.
I'm going to get burned for saying this, but if who here actually thinks these aforementioned drugs should remain legal? Everyone who is posting in here is having a one-sided conversation.
Anyone?
Sugar is fattening, and of course if you leave yeast in some sugar water you end up with ethanol... Better ban all the foods that contain glucose/sucrose to be safe.
It's this kind of stupid reasoning that makes me despair at the legalisation movement.
The hemp one is another good'un. Hemp is ok for ropes (but it has major problems with rot) and canvas. It isn't however, good for clothes. It creases incredibly easily and heavy creasing actively damages it. Also doesn't take very well to a lot of washing powders and ironing. It's not a wonder material that will render cotton obsolete. It isn't a good replacement for paper either as paper has been able to be produced in a cheap, relatively envoironmentally friendly way with reknewable wood sources for about 70 years.
However a lot of these half truths and wishful thinking cloud the argument for legalisation. You try searching any of the major issues and you get flooded with pro-legalisation sites which give incredibly one sided viewpoints.
Stop the war on drugs! and bring the price of drugs to reasonable level so mafia would have no profit.
I think at the center of this whole issue is the question of whether we want to face up to the problem or not.
There is no doubt that drug use is a problem, or at least causes problems; but research clearly shows that there are several drugs that are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. Still, the overwhelming majority of people are able to live a productive life, even while enjoying alcohol or using tobacco regularly, and the reality is that it is perfectly possible to use several other drugs in a responsible way - it is a simple matter of learning how to handle it. Information campaigns and teaching about it in schools should do the trick.
As it is now, people are being kept in a state of permanent hysteria about it - and I can't see why, really. There are certain factors that contribute, like the far too influential religious conservatives, to whom anything that might look like Wild Wantonness - such as feeling happy, relaxing and enjoying yourself - is a Sin. As I think it is becoming clear to most, there isn't any rational argument in favour of the kind of prohibition we have now in most countries, so all we are left with is the irrational fear of those we allow into power, one way or the other; but should be really let fear make the decisions for us? Isn't that what got into the Iraq mess, just to whip that old, dead horse once more?
There are many benefits to changing the way this is handled: enormous savings on unnecessary policing and jailing people, just to mention one. The increased tax revenue from putting a tax on the now legal drugs, as well as income tax from the now legal drug traders. Alcohol consumption may even fall, because mixing alcohol with eg. cannabis will probably not appeal to most people - and of course, while drunk drivers are likely to drive too fast, a person under the influence of cannabis is much more likely to drive too slowly, thus reducing the likelyhood of fatal accidents.
In fact, the only people that would suffer a serious blow from the legalisation and regulation of drugs, are the ones that now benefit the most from it being illegal. As always it is a question of following the money.
>Potato chips create more health care costs than any drug ever has
let's give every man woman and child cocaine and see if this statement still stands. It is about cost to society not just health.
Though much information has been washed away in the overflow of
out-of-this world experiences and the legality/medical issue,
every new mind that looks at this conundrum has a chance of
figuring it out.
A majority of people have let a very important aspect of the
drug phenomon be obscured; namely that of, what are these drugs
doing to us? And what does the changing of perception do to
a mind and the reality around it? Do psychedelics mimic the
religious experience of olde or is there a part of the psyche
that all of that stuff resides in?
The exploration of consciousness, memory, and the mind, will be
highly influential in the direction of the world. I think that
is the major point that drug use brings up. But does everyone
need to sign themselves up to be a guinea pig?
All drugs are not the same, but when forced to buy a considerably
'mild' and slightly addictive drug from someone who may also
be selling a 'highly' addictive and 'hard' drug, the line
is blurred.
Legalization is one concern, but not a major one. The poor
decision of criminalization caused a much bigger problem.
And the [american] government (and probably others..)
possibly helping traffic the drugs isn't really a clear
message.. [its a constantly recurring theme.]
On one hand you have hippies and druggies saying drugs are
ok and have minimal consequences. On the other the establishment
proclaims that they are the $devil, and you will turn instantly
into an alien if you even think about it. Kind of hard for a young
kid to get a clear message from that, also. Both sides are just
plain wrong.
You will have no problem finding a person using them, whether
they are obviously intoxicated or just glassy eyed, and
socially many people accept them, discounting the people
with obviously hyped up phobias that should actually just see
psychologists.
Prohibition is a clearly ineffective operation, at least for
the goals it advertises.
I think a much more intelligent solution to drug use has to
be facilitated. Making them illegal didn't "work", and I don't
think blanket legality will either.
Another social problem overlooked? A scientific discovery awaiting?
I don't know, I forgot.
"making brand new memories .. and recalling .. ..." - buck 65
upside down, the feeling of free falling
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
You can't legalize drugs in one state while the rest of the country keeps the prohibition in effect and expect to get a reasonable picture of what would happen if drugs were legalized everywhere - it'll lead to a massive amount of people going to the one state to get legal narcotics, which will inevitably create a lot of undesirable side-effects.
Ethanol consumption 1850-2005
The whole world is waiting for it. Or at least our whole western world. If the US would cut the crap, prohibition would be quickly gone everywhere. There is no real cause for this kind of regulation.
1 - Prohibition makes some drugs very expensive. There would be less crime were they cheaper. There's no reason cocaine should only be consumed by the rich.
2 - Marijuana is better than prozac in many ways. It does not block emotional processes. Still it gives everyone a fair sleeping night.
3 - The health care cost of drug abuse should be measured against the whole real cost of the drug prohibition, including thousands of deaths per year in the poor countries that produce or export the drugs to the rich countries. There are more corpses in South American drug wars than in Iraq's war.
4 - Prohibition makes a lot of money for the wrong people, including terrorists. The Taleban and the FARC are trading drugs for guns for a long time now.
"but there is no larger entrenched interest than the taxman"
pork pork pork, war in iraq, war on terror, military spending, big business welfare, ...
I don't want to sound like Michael Moore here, but ...
I know people who do hard drugs (Cocaine, mostly), and I know a lot of people (actually, most of the people I know) who do illegal drugs in general (smoking dope, mostly). The only ones who ever had any issues due to their drugs were those who got caught.
The bad side of drugs are indeed mostly due to prohibition. Prohibition causes
Would making drugs legal solve all problems? No, of course not. Would it create new problems? Probably. Would the sum of all problems be lower? Most definitely.
There's nothing to discuss. Drug prohibition has nothing to do with the dangers of the prohibited drugs as classified by experts. If it had something to do with that, either tobacco and alcohol would have to be prohibited or XTC, LSD, marijuana and a lot of other drugs that cause less harm than tobacco and alcohol, would have to be legalised.
Drug prohibition is not based on any rational argument, so there's nothing to discuss. Drug prohibition laws as they are now are based on superstition, religion, arrogance, hate, misplaced autority, stupidity and a lot of money. In short: FUD. Good luck trying to discuss about that.
0x or or snor perron?!
I just wanted to point out, in response to your post, that the vast majority of cough syrups contain dextromethorphan, which is a powerful dissociative anaesthetic similar in effect to ketamine. Hence, while "drinking cough syrup" may sound sensational and like someone is in the throes of desperation to achieve a high, it's actually just a completely legitimate route to a very interesting drug experience that simply happens to be legally obtainable, and is actually quite safe on the grand scale of drugs of abuse.
When organized crime ie growers, traffickers, and dealers and the government want the same thing that is a bad thing. It should send a message that just as in 193o's prohibition has caused a great black market that pays nothing into the system and only promotes fear and violence.
We need a rational drug policy not one based on politics of how we would like to be through rose colored glasses.
Oh wait was I supposed to say something witty here?!?
but you wonder how many lives it would save
None. Death is the debt all men owe. You get only one life and one death. The life can be spent once only, the death can be deferred, but the life cannot be "saved" and the death cannot be prevented.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The world actually wont be better until people like *YOU* die.
And the violence is caused by Prohibition. You obviously didn't read the article. You obviously voted for McCain, too. Assholism is that easy to read in a slashdot comment.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
and the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
Prior to this, drugs were subject to transfer taxes, but were not actually illegal if the taxes were paid. Of course, the taxes were so high compared to the value of the drugs that nobody ever paid them, making the drugs "effectively" illegal. But the lawmakers up to that point realized that they didn't actually have the power to BAN drugs without a constitutional amendment, so they went with a tax-based approach.
The controlled Substances Act changed all that. A new "superagency" called the DEA was created from parts of several different agencies, and was given the (unconstitutional) ability to ban whatever substances it saw fit by bureaucratic fiat.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Let's compare:
/usr read-only and ignore the scratching sounds coming from your hard drive.
Drugs are illegal and thus unregulated. Only criminals sell them and they aren't interested in protecting people from themselves. Children can buy drugs and indeed ar encouraged to do so by the dealers. The result: Lots of people get addicted at a young age.
Drugs are legal. Laws can be enacted that limit access to them - for example only to people age 21 and up. The dealers are out a job as getting the stuff into the legal stores is much cheaper than smuggling it into the country. The result: Way less minors get access to drugs.
Also, with drugs legalized people would be much less hesistant to enter rehab, which would further mitigate the problems.
Fact is that drug prohibition actually reduces the hoops people have to jump through. I don't have to present my ID card/driver's license at a store, I just have to ask around for a dealer. And since dealers are always interested in acquiring new customers I am surely able to find on in a few days at most. Also, illegal stuff is exciting (at least to teenagers who want to feel like they can change society by rebelling against it) so demand is created by the very laws designed to reduce it.
(Of course teenagers will still find drugs interesting if they are merely age-restricted but it's going to be mre difficult for them to obtain them. Currently they just have to ask that guy who always hang sout near the schoolyard.)
B
Banning something and hoping it just somehow goes away is like pretending your OS won't be trashed if you make
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
15 people is considered too small of a sample size by anyone into science. If I ran 15 people studies, I could fund conclusions that state anything.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
If crack was legalized tomorrow, you'd go out and smoke it? Most surveys I've seen in the past [*citation needed] indicate that most people WONT run out and do a drug just because it is legal.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Do the opium wars mean anything to anyone?
I'm no history student, but didn't opium play a key role in the toppling of the Chinese empire by foreign powers?
Marijuana was much weaker back in the day...
Are you happy about having your pocket picked to rehabilitate those who've turned themselves into potted plants of the sort that they smoke?
As opposed to having my pocket picked by the klutz that sprains his ankle every other week playing handball or the guy that gets drunk and picks a fight every weekend? Potted plant guy is probably cheaper. Especially if he never gets around to going to the doctor.
If you had actually been involved in getting help for someone addicted to illegal drugs you wouldn't spout nonsense like that. People don't WANT to be addicted, they're SCARED of getting help, so they put it off, until what would have been a little problem is a big problem.
And since making it illegal hasn't made it harder to get, what's the point?
I live in Ohio, where cannabis is considered decriminalized, but if I get caught with a plant in my closet I'm looking at jail time and a permanent criminal record. In places like California you can pay a couple of bucks and get a card that lets you grow your own pot to treat a huge variety of illnesses. I consider myself an American before an Ohioan, and in some places in America I could legally grow pot to treat, say, depression. In another part of the same nation, I would become a felon for the exact same thing. I think prohibition itself will not be lifted like they did with alcohol, but I would like to see a consistency for decriminalized and medical marijuana across all of the states and at the federal level as well.
As a side note, I find it interesting the way the FDA struggles mightily to make any alternative to cigarettes more expensive than smoking (by trying to call them prescription drug dispensers). You would think they'd want them to be cheaper than cigarettes to encourage smokers to switch to a less harmful alternative. You'd especially think they'd want to make a nicotine patch cheaper than a day of smoking and easily available OTC even if it is a drug dispenser.
no, because its cheaper and easier to buy that stuff
the only reason people grow their own pot is because its illegal. if pot were made legal, only a tiny fringe would continue to still grow their own pot. somewhere between the number that microbrew their own beer and the number that grow their own tobacco for smoking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Most Americans in 1933 could recall a time before prohibition, which tempered their fears..."
I'd have to say this statement is patently false.
Most Americans in 1933 could recall a time before Prohibition, which made it terrifying.
Some people perhaps believe that the Temperance movement was just a bunch of stern-faced moralists who 'got off' on the idea of circumscribing peoples' freedoms or just enjoyed being repressive.
Hardly.
The pre-Prohibition world was poisoned by alcohol. The pervasive use of spirits was destroying society from the bottom up. Remember, there were no 'minimum drinking age's in those times; in some communities it was not uncommon to see 8- and 9-year-olds passed out like winos in alleys. Largely a male problem, it inspired mostly women to try to do SOMETHING to stop their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers from killing themselves slowly.
So while we all chuckle at how naive the 'Prohibitionists' were, we generally do so from a position of total ignorance at HOW BAD the problem really was before 1920. Further, most people today are in almost complete ignorance at the very necessary post-Prohibition compromises that probably would have been impossible to emplace without Prohibition in the first place.
One might draw a parallel to today's 'legalize pot' crusaders, who may have been unsuccessful partly because they likewise trivialize and mischaracterize the very real concerns expressed by mainstream adults on the other side of the issue.
For my own point of view, I personally don't have any problem with broad legalization of a wide range of narcotics - people, as self-aware adults, should have the freedom to destroy themselves if they want. Simultaneously, however, I'd like to see DRACONIAN, brutal penalties for dealing to children or for being cognitively impaired in situations where your condition could harm others, like driving.*
* I'd say that this should be far worse than today's drunk-driving laws, and should equally apply to alcohol.
-Styopa
... and this is the problem with government healthcare. If the government is paying your bills, they get to say what you can do with your health.
The federal government has not been granted to the right to tell the citizenry what they can or cannot put into their own body. I see it as a Constitutional issue at the federal level.
However, at the state and local level, it's a moral and ethical issue. The arguments I would make have already been made in the ~5 5-modded posts made prior to this one.
To summarize, though: no one has a right to tell me what I can or cannot put in my body. They may advise me; they are within their right to deny me government jobs and programs, but it is an abrogation of my personal liberty to throw me in jail for my putting something into my body.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Non sequitur. The major reason potato chips are so dangerous is because practically everybody eats them, whereas most people don't and won't do cocaine even if it becomes legal.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
That's pretty easy to disprove. Look at all the people on Medicare and Medicaid, does the government get to say what they can do with their health, more so than the rest of us? Not that I've seen. Look at Canada, most of Europe, and any other place that has socialized medicine. Does the government have more say is what they can do with their health than the US government has over its citizens? Not that I've seen.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
...if we could at least get our decent cold medications back without having to "check in" every time someone in the family gets a cough.
The "war on drugs" might have made some sense when it was first put into place, but now it's just gotten ridiculous. It doesn't really solve any problem other than satisfying the "think of the children" crowd and, much like DRM, it ultimately makes the legitimate user suffer most.
Another item I'd like to see go away are those sleazy anti-drug/anti-smoking ad campaigns which are more than willing to feed you lies or half-truths about a topic as long as it serves their agenda and their perception of "the greater good".
8==8 Bones 8==8
One way or another, people that want drugs are going to get their hands on them. At least by legalizing them and putting out health information similar to tobacco, you'll end up with a situation where there are a lot fewer drug related crimes. At first I think there would be a spike in overdoses, for various reasons, but that would go down over time. This might even bring some stability to countries where the drug war creates some much havoc.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I think Canada would have likely legalized marijuana by now if it wasn't for the US and their continual "war on drugs".
It would be political suicide otherwise, regardless of how much common sense it makes. As it stands a lot of pot crosses our borders illegally and many times it seems the payment of choice is illegal guns from the US.
Personally I would like to see a Canadian Politician grow some balls and legalize it. For all the flak we would take it just doesn't seem right in the current situation.
It sort of pisses me off that we can't have legal pot due to the US and yet also due to the right to bear arms and weak gun laws in the US we also have to put up with the spill over into Canada. Due to the fact that pot is illegal gangs and organized crime sell it and were do you suppose they get most of their guns? Not Canadian Tire I can tell you that much...
So when innocents are killed, who is at fault? The guy that pulls the trigger certainly, but there are a host of enablers that could also be stopped that would improve the situation and it least make the situation less likely.
Then FDR came along. FDR didn't give a damn about the Constitution
Horseshit.
FDR threatened to pack the court
If you gave a damn about the Constitution, you might know that it doesn't limit the Supreme Court to 9 justices. There's been as few as six and as many as ten sitting justices, and FDR's plan was not only perfectly Constitutional, it had precedent. Ah, consistency: the enemy of all wingnut arguments.
Otherwise all this New Deal stuff (wage controls, price controls, etc.) would (and did) fail the Constitutionality test.
Wrong again. Promote the General Welfare. It's in the Constitution. Twice. If you're response to that is the canned "promote, not provide", Article I, Section 8 uses the word "provide." And if your response to that is that General Welfare is limited to the specific list in Section 8, then Common Defense is also similarly listed, since it's not only in the same section, but the same sentence as General Welfare.
In other words, if Social Security is unconstitutional because it's not specifically spelled out as a Congressional power, then so is the Air Force, as Congress only has the power to fund an army or a navy. As well as the CIA, the NSA, and any other intelligence agency not attached to the Army or the Navy. Ditto for our spy satellites, border patrol, and large parts of the FBI.
But I've bet you've never heard a wingnut bitch about the unconstitutionality of the New Deal and the Air Force. It's almost like their standards and ethics depend entirely on the situation, like they were partisan hacks or something. Huh, interesting.
So, I would assume the issue is what Democrats like to call the "Living Constitution" meaning that the Constitution doesn't mean what it meant when it was written/ratified, but what 5 Justices think it means today (president be damned). Like Lewis Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty, words mean only what he says they mean. Conservatives refer to these people as "Activist Judges", and in stead believe that the way to change the Constitution is via Amendments (last one passed during Clinton). In short, the Constitution is a social contract and means what it meant when written/ratified.
You mean liberal activist judges like Antonin Scalia?
No one has held up banks or killed people for sugar before. No sir, the major difference is that drugs are extremely addictive. Far more than sugar or fat ever will be.
An important distinction you are ignoring: people don't rob to get drugs, they rob to get money to buy drugs. If sugar had high black market prices, you'd see people fighting over that too...as has happened, as another poster pointed out.
Drugs legalized + government taxes on sales. As they become more commonplace, the profit involved with the current sellers will decrease (potential profit and risk often run together), and legal industries will be created, along with tax revenue, etc.
If someone has an unhealthy addiction to a substance you should be breaking that addiction, not fueling it.
No. Not if the breaking of the addiction is more harmful than the addiction. Sure the addiction is ruining peoples' lives. But doing hard time for drug possession ruins peoples' lives even more effectively.
When gambling addicts sell their homes away the correct response is hardly "well, addiction is another kind of need". We shouldn't be facilitating this kind of destructive behavior.
Yes, we should facilitate. Because the law enforcement apparatus that prohibits what you consider to be destructive behavior also prohibits constructive behavior.
The more hoops people have to jump through to get trapped in this kind of destructive behavior, the better.
Remove the hoops. Freedom is more important than banning destructive behavior.
During Prohibition my Grandmother used to go to speak-easys (sp?) with my Grandfather. She didn't drink much before or after prohibition, but during she did some. Why? It was taboo, it was exciting to do something bad. Reason magazine did a fantastic article about 15 years ago on the pros of legalization. Prostitution should be legal too. Latest article from reason magazine on legalization http://www.reason.com/news/printer/36178.html
Simply for the fact that old drugs lose resale value. Fast. Ever smoked month old stale ass weed? or snorted month old coke? I'd hate to see what happens when you try to inject old heroin into your body. Here is how this drug war really works:
Goverment (through a proxy) sells arms illegally to a rebel group that imprisons innocents to grow/make drugs. Rebel groups sell to entrepreneurial buyers who have a lot of disposable money. This buyer imports the dope into the states and sells it to many smaller buyers at inflated prices. This continues about 4 or 5 generations until it reaches you.
The government will not prosecute the arms proxy, as that would cut into the nations profits. The government has the ability to, but will not raid the rebel groups. Instead we leave that to the goverenments of the foreign countries which generally look the other way (save one or two television raids to make the world think they're trying). The money man importing drugs into the US will only be arrested if enough people can point fingers at him. If he deals in cash and stays low on the radar long enough he can make his money and disappear without the government really caring about him. Now everyone after him is who gets fucked. The government will arrest all small sellers down to the user to show they are tough on the war on drugs.. That is enough of a legal and social deterrent for most users.
What I hate about this ideological drug war, is that it makes people judge you. I am a long time marijuana smoker and support its legalization.. Out of fear of judgement by my peers, I don't tell anyone (except a small subset of friends) that I smoke. Sad really because it helps my depression. But I guess if I told them how the prescribed drugs fuck with my head when i stop taking them, or shreds my stomach over time they would still think its OK because its legal. It's a crock of shit and we all know it. So is the war on terror, luckily it seems that the US population is waking up to that one...
But if the organic alternatives were available - coca leaf, poppy tea, marijuana - I believe you'd see more of those and less cocaine/crack/heroin.
Remember, the Hard Stuff is smuggled because of the risk/reward ratio - nobody's shoving bails of coca leaf up their ass to get through customs. (ruins the taste!)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If the U.S. lifts drug prohibition, you wouldn't be able to control people's use of it in critical situations such as an E.R. nurse, air-traffic controller, pilot, railroad engineer, etc. etc. etc. Clearly you wouldn't want someone completely doped up performing surgery on you. Okay, so as an employer would you be able to legally say "I won't hire you because your drug use would impair job performance." or "You're fired because you slammed your train into the back of another one because you were stoned." Who then is liable for the harm a drug-user imposes on another person perhaps hundreds of other people? Clearly the concept of Personal Responsibility is unheard of among a great many people these days. And how long would it be before drug-use discrimination lawsuits arise saying you can't not hire or fire someone simply because they use drugs?
drug prohibition article: 993 comments /. about web best practices: 300 comments /. is a crackhead community: priceless
ask
knowing that
Drug abuse is an arms race.
Drug A will get you high for only so long.
Then you progress to a more potent drug, B.
This cycle continues as tolerances develop.
Bacteria does it to antibiotics.
Moderation is tempered by accessability.
Eventually in the arms race we had to start signing non-poliferation acts to slow the arms race.
Often those treaties are abandoned after a time.
Prohibition was effectively an attempt to stop a growing problem. It's success and failure cannot be measured effectively as we do not have an alternate universe where it never happened to look at.
We CAN see other countries and the issues they have with many of the drugs ranging from Opium, Cocaine, and relaxed standards for "soft" drugs.
Legalization, prohibition, do not address the root issue of drug use: why people turn to them in the first place.
The truth is hard to swallow. Most people can drink responsibly. Most people when they drink do not beat their spouse. Most people can handle booze just fine and have a good time.
Of course most people can be trusted. The problem is the small % of those who cannot handle drugs (or weapons, television script writing, etc.) can inflict MASSIVE damage to not only themselves but also those who don't even use drugs.
A pot smoker skateboarding may not pay attention and accidentally skate into an intersection and get hit by a car (Happened in St. Paul back in the 90s when I was in High School). The kid was killed and if that was it I'd be ok with legal bud. But the driver wasn't smoking. And now that driver lives the rest of his life with the fact he killed that kid. It wasn't his fault but the damage is done.
It is never a clear and easy decision on how to deal with drugs, legal or other wise but not only does the harm to the user have to be factored in, but the risks to everyone else that a person in an altered state poses.
The most acceptable solution I ever heard was the "Xanadu Pleasure Dome" solution. A center where a person can go to get lit like an xmas tree where they cannot leave until they "land" back on the ground. Only in the pleasure dome can you "alter" yourself with a drug for recreational purposes. With a staff and team trained to deal with and issues that may arise. Also with a record they know what you can and can't handle. Those that have "negative" reactions (violent, depressed, etc.) would then be further restricted.
More importantly the whole idea then was to record your session so your sober self can see the results. I quit getting blitzed after seeing myself sign Doctor Feelgood at a karoke bar. After seeing that I gave up getting that shit faced and also stopped listening to 80's hair bands...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"an addict can managing their use intelligently"
thanks for the laugh
kind of like saying "so an elephant can fly gracefully"
the idea is harm reduction right?
the best harm reduction approach, for something as truly vile (highly addictive+highly inebriating, so job/ relationship maintenance is horribly difficult) as meth/coke/heroin is TO PREVENT THE CREATION OF ADDICTS IN THE FIRST PLACE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Rehab people who've ruined their lives with chemical injury and need extensive therapy to even be able to function in society semi-normally?
Yeah, that's a tough call.
That is not what people who oppose nationalized health care oppose. (well.. maybe a few) What we fear is that universal health care will inflate the price and result in LESS availability of lifesaving or enhancing treatments. It's already happening with insured health care: the insurance companies get very little ability to choose their costs, so they get reamed. Only they don't get reamed, YOU do.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And then you bring in universal health care.
Are you happy about having your pocket picked to rehabilitate those who've turned themselves into potted plants of the sort that they smoke?
Legalize it in, say, Nevada, and see whether everything goes haywire. We certainly can't worsen the baggage Nevada sends to Congress.
What about the health costs of other substances that are currently being abused?
What about the health costs of food, tobacco, and alcohol?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
That's a lot of effort...you can buy DexAlone gelcaps that have 30mg of DXM and that's it. I bought a pack of 30 to try DXM tripping (and it IS a trip, not a high) a few years ago. Took 9 since it was my first time and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but I haven't done it since.
There are always people who take things to the extreme and for them the dangers you mentioned are real. In my experience, though, most people who trip don't like to do it too often because a trip is more than just a fun time like a high...they tend to be quite introspective and leave you with a feeling of well-being when they're done. In other words, most people feel like they don't need or want another trip for a while (in my own case, this would be at least few months).
The main thing with any drug is to do your research (erowid.com is invaluable here) so that you know what you're getting into, how much you should take, etc.; take precautions like making sure you are in a safe place; and (depending on the drug) have a sitter who is sober and/or has a lot of experience with the drug you'll be taking. It's not hard to be safe with DXM, and I guarantee that you'll have a better trip if you go into it with a feeling of preparedness.
I checked out that wikipedia link ... wow. That's an awfully complicated device to replace the proverbial cheap batter of brownie mix.
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
I had a Jr High teacher who told us that "back in the day" (1970s), marajuana grew wild by the train tracks in town. I've also heard that the potentcy has increased a LOT in the decades since. After all, if what you want to do is illegal, why not go all-out?
In regards to the health hazards of highly processed snack foods vs illegal drugs: most drugs have some level of addiction included. There are some people who get addicted to eating, but there are no real withdrawal symptoms when switching from potato chips to carrot sticks.
it is a terror justifying Draconian measures of almost limitless extent to stomp out any degree of illegal drug use.
It's very easy to stomp out illegal drug use, no Draconian measures needed - just make it legal! While the drugs themselves are obviously a part of the problem, their illegality is a much bigger reason for the kinds of problems you are describing.
Certainly car crashes are too big a problem with so many fatalities.
Government sanctioned buses should suffice.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I don't mean to pick on you especially, as many people hold this view, but it's just wrong.
"The government makes BILLIONS on the WOD, the get it from the taxpayers and they get it from confiscations."
This is 100% incorrect. The government makes no money whatsoever from the war on drugs. The government makes money by taxing the citizens, and it does not lack for reasons/excuses to do so. In case you hadn't heard, the U.S. is looking at nearly a $1 trillion deficit next year.
If the war on drugs went away tomorrow your tax bill would not change one cent. There may be a lot of reasons to oppose our current drug laws, but lowering taxes is not one of them.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As a taxpayer, I disagree.
That's because, as a (presumably drug-free and sober) taxpayer, you are not on either side of the drug war.
You are caught in the middle, in between the two sides. And since you're being forced to fund one side with your tax dollars, then you are effectively caught in the crossfire and are suffering harm because of the war.
Psychedelic drugs created an entire genre of culture -- psychedelic art and music were landmarks of the '70s, and neo-psychedelic culture can still be seen today. Importantly, psychedelic drugs induced an altered state of consciousness in users, something unique among drugs (other drugs just exaggerate existing states.) By prohibiting use of psychedelic drugs, the government is prohibiting literally a state of mind. This is real thought-crime. The government is keeping you from altering the way that you think. How about freedom of thought?
For many of the harder drugs, it would make sense to make them prescription-only. Prescriptions would be written for addicts.
There are a number of ways to legalize/decriminalize, and not all drugs were created equal. However, putting drug users in prison is not helping society at large. Nor is leaving drugs a cash-cow business for organized crime doing the general public any favors.
My question for the legalization crowd is ...
Which drugs would you legalize?
Marijuana?
Cocaine? Crack?
Heroin? Morphine? Opium?
PCP?
Meth?
LSD?
Shrooms?
Peyote?
Penicillin?
Other?
Why? Please explain.
There's no chance of Obama doing anything about this in his first term since it would doom his re-election.
I'm just hoping he has the balls to do something if he's elected for a second term.
Vote Libertarian
Here's some (il)logic:
-Alcohol is legal.
-Alcohol is more damaging than many illegal substances.
-Therefore, many illegal substances should be legal.
Are we being serious here? Can none of the ranked previous posters here see the fallacy?
Here's some LOGIC for everyone:
-Alcohol is legal.
-Alcohol is more dangerous than many illegal substances.
-Therefore, alcohol should be illegal as well.
When has legalizing *more* detrimental things every helped any situation?
NOTE: I have sworn off alcohol since seeing its effects first hand, but I still consume many schedule 1 and schedule 2 substances almost every weekend without guilt. I'm not for making these substances legal, because imo their illegality makes people cautious about using them responsibly, rather than doing something like DRIVING while drunk, which (once again imo) people often thing is okay simply because the substance is legal even though the action is against the law. Making other detrimental substances legal could perhaps have the same effect.
Which drugs would you legalize?
Let's start by decriminalizing all drugs that are less addictive than tobacco (oh, wait, that's all of them).
Decriminalization doesn't mean "legalization". It doesn't mean it's legal to sell them without a prescription or anything like that, just that simple use is not criminal. If you're addicted to a prescription pharmaceutical, you're not scared to get help for it. It may be embarrassing, but you're not going to worry about going to jail for falling off the wagon.
That's a lot smaller hurdle, no? And one that doesn't dismantle your pugnacious security blanket all in one go.
I don't mind if you (Americans) collectively give up pretending to be responsible adults and just get high 24/7.
All I ask is that you turn in your nukes and other long range weapons. We Europeans, among all others, are already a bit uneasy about you having them.
Really doesn't. Opiates are opiates, and heroin was widely used before prohibition was introduced in the 20th century.
Nick
You think the current crop of opiate and cocaine barons are bad? If alcohol was banned you would never dare walk the streets ever, the amount of money going to gangsters would be be unheard of in human history.
People like to focus on the lives lost by drugs but for some stupid reason they don't like to think about the lives lost because of the gangsters that are around because of prohibition. It's like how people pick the same set of numbers every week because they couldn't bear it if their numbers came up but, realistically, you have just as much chance to win each week regardless of your numbers. People don't kick themselves because they didn't change their numbers to the winning numbers or, even, because they didn't stop playing the damn lottery because there's almost no chance of winning.
People don't judge risk properly and that's why so many people are convinced drugs are dangerous and can't see how much more dangerous prohibition is.
Nick
Cocaine is fairly safe as drugs go and not even that addictive. When you run out it's a total bummer but it's not as bad as an opiate withdrawl and even that isn't as bad as the flu.
Addiction is a choice. You can become physically dependant on something to the extent that it'll kill you to come off it (i.e. alcohol) or it'll just be incredibly uncomfortable to come off it (opiates, the worst part is the constant low-mood that can persist for months afterwards, not the initial shock) but to continue to take drugs you have to continue to make a series of non-trivial choices (getting money, ringing all your dealers, testing the quality of your supply to make sure you're not being ripped off). It's a whole lifestyle that consumes all your time.
Just legalise it all. It's the only sane solution.
Nick
You're completely correct. The idea that dealers try to up-sell is total BS.
Some dealers will sometimes give out first times for free. This will happen on a social basis in the same way that you might give someone a chocolate or a drink they've never had before. If you like it then you buy more.
Just about the only dealers who properly out samples like that are crack dealers. You have to be in pretty dodgy company to start with to end up hanging out with guys who wash up coke so if you walk into a room with a couple of hundred quid don't be surprised if they give you some crack and then, when you're high, offer to sell you lots more.
Most people would then wake up the next day and realise that even though they had the most awesome time ever it just wasn't worth all that money. Addicts like to follow a harder path though.
Nick
If you let anyone take any antibiotic then the problem is that they'll get a real infection then only take the antibiotic until they feel better. That means the last few remnants of the infection will probably gain resistance and you'll transmit a resistant strain before your body gets rid of the last of it.
That's why antibiotics need to be controlled by doctors, so you can have a little lecture telling you how important it is to finish the whole damned course!
Nick
Look, you may disagree with what he said. You may not like how it's said. But it's clearly *not* flamebait.
Fucking Slashdot mods...
"Marijuana was much weaker back in the day.."
Cheaper too, which more than made up for it. 1-ounce waterpipe bowls were common (many a school lab lost Pyrex funnels).
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We've decriminalized pot years ago and don't really charge anyone with simple possession any more. You can walk down the street smoking a doobie and no one really cares. I do it often. Our roadside sobriety tests now cover pot too.
There is even a pot cafe in Toronto where you can't buy it but you can smoke it openly. I've never seen a problem there.
If you legalized all drugs then yes some people die. So what. Not everyone is supposed to make it. That's what Darwin is all about, the weak deserve to die.
I resent not only the drug laws but the arrogance inherent in a government I didn't vote for that thinks it has the rightful authority to decide what I put in my body.
I would say that politics (Left and Right wing) and religion both cause more social harm than drugs ever could. Lets ban them.
The only reason that pot isn't legal in Canada is because our asshole neighbors (US)complained and made threats.
Me, I take it for granted that drugs should be legalized. I don't even want to argue in favor of it, could reiterate someone else's point (I actually read less than a half, it's so obvious to me).
It's funny that wsj comes up with an article like that. A good sign that even those on the conservative side (the smarter of those) are questioning the benefits of prohibition and this "drugs are bad" mentality.
The problem with cocaine is not cocaine per se, but the fact that it's refined into pure form and snorted.
The amount that was in the old Coca-Cola or present in coca tea (commonly drunk in South America) isn't any more dangerous than caffeine. I see no reason to ban things like this.
As always, moderation is the key.
Yea all a stoned dude does is sleep. Not sure i would call that social though. Seriously, what was the unemployment like back then. I had some friends that are users, and they are nothing but social welfare leaches.
I got out of a marriage because my ex and her kid were stinking up the house with marijuana. Not that the law about drugs made a lot of difference but if it were legal, then I would be the odd one out just because of my preferences. But because it's illegal at least I have that on my side in their campaign that I needed to "get with it".
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
do you have any idea what the current markup on a bag of weed is? Do you have any idea how cheep it is to produce if your not worried about getting ripped off or busted by the governement?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Drugs don't kill people. Ninjas kill people.
Banning alcohol is simply impossible. It's just too easy to make. The ingredients for beer are the same as the ingredients for bread, and it's simple to brew high-quality beers, ales, meads, etc. both safely and inexpensively.
And also undetectably, I might add. In college, some fraternity brothers of mine brewed enough beer for the entire house for all of our parties (we served the guests Busch Light) inside a small closet. There would be no way to spot a home brewery.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
"A person can become (psychologically) addicted to anything."
No, that's called dependence, or abuse, not addiction.
That being said, only people who don't know WTF they're talking about even use "addiction", professionals retired the term years ago, and now use "dependence" or "abuse".
In other words, if you use the word "addicted", that is proof you don't know WTF you're talking about.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"Anyone who still thinks that drug-related problems are caused by their prohibition is an idiot."
Well, I'm a professional in this area, and I have to say your observation is moronic.
If there was a stronger word than moronic, one that would indicate a need for society to sterilize you to prevent you from furthering your genepool and prevent your offspring from reducing the collective intelligence of the world I would use it.
Fuck I don't even have to be a professional to observe that you're drawing your conclusions from a FUCKING TELEVISION SHOW. You lose the right to comment on that basis alone.
That said, your comment betrays your ignorance. Most people who abuse drugs (NOT use recreationally, but ABUSE) have underlying mental health problems. This has been established conclusively and is not open for debate.
Criminalizing drugs has turned what should be a public health problem into a criminal one, and it's not a good change.
Do yourself a favor, get educated or shut the fuck up. And DO NOT attempt to claim you re educated, you wouldn't have said "watch intervention" as though that were an intelligent observation if you were educated.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"Of two drugs to have legal, these two are among the most dangerous and addictive there are"
This is only true because of their easy availability. From a purely pharmacological standpoint, they are VERY far down the list. I don't think your observation in really useful in any practical way as it compares apples and oranges.
More importantly, your entire line of reasoning is not helpful. The incessant "what about cigarettes and alcohol" whinging completely misses the point. This is a personal rights issue, plain and simple, and it DOES NOT MATTER that tobacco and alcohol are legal, the fact that something else is illegal is an infringement on my liberties, and your observation of the hypocrisy of the system is nice, but ultimately irrelevant.
More importantly, I seriously doubt pointing out hypocrisy is going to do anything at all to improve the situation, and with the increasing move to criminalize tobacco use may ultimately end with those drugs being made illegal as well, NOT with the decriminalization of drugs that are illegal now.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2003/cocaineheart.htm
"They've recently found that it isn't the cocaine causing the heart attacks."
No.
They found that cocaine causes heart attacks, and the failure to make the doctors aware of the cocaine use results in the standard treatment being counterproductive.
They did not, in any way, form or fashion, find that "it isn't the cocaine causing the heart attacks".
"The cocaine (powder or rock) can give the symptoms of heart attack without the victime actually having heart problems."
The symptoms of a heart attack in this case ARE heart problems, so your comment here makes it clear you simply didn't understand the article as well as you thought you did.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I genuinely don't care WHO gets saved or how many people go uninjured.
The prohibition on drugs is a direct and clear violation of my rights. There is no discussion, and no amount of "saving people", or rather, no number that isn't bordering on astronomical, makes it a worthy trade off.
You get modded down because you forget that part of this discussion, not that said moderation is correct.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Bullshit.
I'm a fool, you titled your post and I read it anyway.
Sadly, you were right and now I feel silly for reading it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I see no equivalent situation regarding "illegal" drugs, so why, apart from answering his question, does a restriction on antibiotics matter?
And more importantly than that, it is not the USE of antibiotics, it is the MISUSE of antibiotics, which moots your observation totally.
So, no, the government does not get to step in to stop my USE of drugs, but if I MISUSE those drugs, the government can very rightly step in and deal with it.
In that case, the drug being used is irrelevant, as it is the BEHAVIOR that is the problem, not the substance.
So again, you are wrong, there is no reason for the government to step in, not even in the case of antibiotics.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
THAT is the tenth amendment. It says you are COMPLETELY, IRREFUTABLY, UTTERLY WRONG.
Don't bother replying, you are wrong and there's nothing left to say about it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"Opiates aren't particularly equivalent, there are multiple receptors"
No, there aren't. ALL opiates are converted into morphine in the body. The concentration and metabolites vary, but it all ends up as morphine.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"See the problem?"
Yes, you're not very bright and made a retarded assertion, that once completely destroyed, has left you reeling and unable to form a coherent rebuttal.
Guess what not-too-bright-guy, there is no coherent rebuttal. You don't get to tell ME I can't do something because YOU are too weak to do that same something responsibly.
Period.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"Didn't say that at all."
Um, yes, you did. Stop trying to backpedal off of what you now realiz is a stupid attempt at a point. You're embarassing yourself.
YOU said
"many people that need protection"
Guess what genius, that IS what you said, and if you think it applies to drugs then you can't claim it doesn't apply to something else without looking like a disingenuous twat.
"When an addict then shuns personal responsibility, doesn't provide care as a parent or care giver, and becomes incapable of dealing with the addiction (cost, self-care, even nutrition), then this is a problem that must be addressed by society and community."
Ok, I've had enough. ALL of these things are possible results of ANY repetitive behavior, and you're not even intelligent enough to realize it.
I genuinely hope you don't live in my country, because YOU simply aren't informed enough to have an opinion worth considering.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
"Uh huh. Very professional answer there. Where do you work again? :)"
Professional doesn't mean polite, genius.
Fuck off now, thanks.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
there's people who can also drive 90 mph all the time and never get in an accident
i don't know what such oddballs are supposed to teach us about the average human abilities though, to manage the standard human biochemical response to a highly addictive substance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Drug addition certainly has a devastating effect on its own, but I argue that prohibition has made the effects worse rather than effectively stopping the trafficking, sale, and consumption of the drugs it seeks to eliminate.
In a nutshell, the drug problem is really a *capitalism* problem -- aided and abetted by a pro-"free market" government. One more example of the free market's invisible hand -- gone apeshit. Illegality of product has distorted the market by skyrocketing the price, inviting entry into the market by amateurs; territorial clashes are inevitable. With no civil way of resolving conflict, such as through a court system, cruder methods of solution inflict excessive damage to the participants and bystanders. It is these overt social effects that are then used as *justification* by the government that we *must* continue the war. But they deliberately confuse cause and effect. What started as a free market situation has been mutated into a problem that seems to require a governmental 'solution'. It's clear that they are controlling both ends of the game.
Even if customers *want* to exit the market, there's little help from a government who has a vested interest in the market continuing, as it makes the rules, processes the arrestees, and then pays taxpayer money to private corporations to oversee the prisoners. (Talk about an Iron Triangle!) The very existence of the system all depend on the maintenance of a steady flow of lawbreakers, doesn't it?
The only real solution is to *replace the laws*, which means *replacing Congress*, since *they* are not going to change the laws, as they benefit greatly by them in many ways. (Campaign contributions from prison industries, appearance of "tough on crime", etc.) But until *that* is done, nothing at all will change; the 'war' will continue. The fix is in; the junky dozes.
"Any "professional" who uses the word "abuse" shouldn't be working in the industry. It's a sign of ignorance and low intelligence."
No, moron, it's actually a CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS. But you're a fucking idiot, so you wouldn't know that.
The diagnosis of "addiction" was revised, because too many of the bhaviors needed for diagnosis were not present in cases that were clearly clinically significant.
So TWO diagnoses were created to discern the difference between those people with impending problems, versus those with what would have been classically called "addiction".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_abuse
"By 1994, The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) issued by the American Psychiatric Association ,the DSM-IV-TR, defines substance dependence as "when an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed." followed by criteria for the diagnose[4]
DSM-IV-TR defines substance abuse as:[5]
A. A maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by one (or more) of the following, occurring within a 12-month period:
Recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home (e.g., repeated absences or poor work performance related to substance use; substance-related absences, suspensions or expulsions from school; neglect of children or household)
Recurrent substance use in situations in which it is physically hazardous (e.g., driving an automobile or operating a machine when impaired by substance use)
Recurrent substance-related legal problems (e.g., arrests for substance-related disorderly conduct)
Continued substance use despite having persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused or exacerbated by the effects of the substance (e.g., arguments with spouse about consequences of intoxication, physical fights)
B. The symptoms have never met the criteria for Substance Dependence for this class of substance.
The fifth edition of the DSM, planned for release in 2010, is likely to have this terminology revisited yet again. Under consideration is a transition from the abuse/dependence terminology. At the moment, abuse is seen as an early form or less hazardous form of the disease characterized with the dependence criteria. However, the APA's 'dependence' term, as noted above, does not mean that physiologic dependence is present but rather means that a disease state is present. Many involved recognize that the terminology has often led to confusion, both within the medical community and with the general public. The American Psychiatric Association requests input as to how the terminology of this illness should be altered as it moves forward with DSM-V discussion."
It seems you're totally wrong and a fucking idiot.
"BTW, I won't be replying with any more completely idiotic Trolls."
FYP
Do yourself a favor, before you decide to run your fucking mouth, make sure that you're not completely wrong about everything you've said, so you don't look like a colossal fucking moron.
Like you did here.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
if alcohol is tolerated then imo at least THC and xtc (MDMA, MDA) should be tolerated as well ... as to heroin, cocaine and chemical boosters like amphetamine ... i have my doubts still if mankind is ready to handle legal distribution of those (i mean, they're clearly not ready to handle legal distribution of alcohol afaic see ...)
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)