Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
I admit that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about drug culture, but I always had the distinct impression that the people you bought marijuana from were not the type of people who would be selling other drugs. It's a fairly distinct culture where marijuana is generally sourced from a network of friends, not some dealer on the street corner who isn't going to risk his hide for something as unprofitable and unaddictive as marijuana.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
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.
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."
And as a non-drug user, I agree. There are many things that I personally would not do, but I would not ever dare insist that no one else be allowed to do them (obvious exceptions like drunken driving and serial killing not included).
The "war on drugs" is nothing more than a pissing contest of moralities. That, and it is a "cure" far worse than the disease it was meant to counter.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
Like any good salesman, a drug dealer will try to convert a marijuana user to use other drugs that turn a better profit.
This is not the way it works. As a rule, pot users are not interested in converting to stronger drugs, any more than corporate cokeheads are jonesing for a big bongload. You've been fooled into believing the propaganda spread by the gov't, dea, law enforcement. You are forgiven.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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 like to believe that a lot of marijuana users, like myself, are mostly uninterested in hard drugs. I agree with your statement that it's not that bad, I've had far worse experiences with alcohol or over the counter medication.
I agree that it should be legalized, because really, if I want to hang out at my house and get high, that is my business and it's not like me doing that is putting the safety of the general populous at risk. I'm not out on the roads driving drunk, I'm not picking fights with people in bars, where is the harm in smoking a bowl or two and playing some video games, or listening to music, or watching a movie? There are far more productive things that the law could be doing for its people than locking up those of us who like to toke up.
Not to mention the additional waves that drug prohibition creates when it bleeds over into drug testing for jobs that really shouldn't require it. This causes people to not only be viewed as criminals for something that is incredibly common and harmless, but it uses the employer and the power of capital as just another long arm of the law.
If they have the optional power to do something specified, what kind of power do they have to do something that isn't specified?
By a straight reading of the content of the Constitution, no such power at all. Through constant incremental encroachment by degrees over the last 150-odd years, they've established themselves as having authority to do just about anything they like, constitution (particularly the 10th Amendment) be damned. Welcome to the frustration of libertarianism.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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
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.
Most of my friends are very much the type that love smoking weed but are entirely uninterested in heroin or coke. I recently had a very good friend overdose on the former, and while that was entirely horrible, it did give me some perspective on the drug laws in our country. People die of alcohol poisoning. People die from shooting up too much or snorting bad coke. Terrible, horrible things, but I have never once heard anything like, "Yeah, man, they found his body this morning. Guess he just smoked too much weed last night."
That's my biggest criticism of narcotic regulation in the US. The democratic process has been completely removed from the management of drugs. This was introduced during the Nixon administration, I believe. Possession of a drug becomes a crime overnight with little to no legislative and judicial participation. A bureaucratic agency should not have unchecked power to decide what's a crime and what isn't.
PS George Zimmer, of Men's Warehouse fame, is one millionaire with the time and money to fight these laws.
None of that has anything to do with drug use, you are attempting to show causation where there is merely correlation.
But then again I'm sure you didn't read the article, which implies and outright states in some ways, that a lot of the problems associated with drug use are caused by its prohibition.
i'm claiming that, like alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition caused far more social problems than it solved.
yes, opiates are physiologically addicted, and there were no doubt people who abused opiates and were addicted to opiates even back then. but when it is cheap, legal, and widely available, opiate dependence does not cause major social problems. this is demonstrated by the success of opiate maintenance programs in turning individuals with formerly problematic drug problems into productive & healthy members of society.
and just because opiate use was associated with upper-class lifestyles doesn't mean it can't be relatively cheap. the point is, prior to the Harrison Act people didn't go broke trying to support their opiate habits. heck, if you wanted to you could just grow your own poppies and make poppy tea yourself.
in fact, many well known figures in history were opiate users. for instance Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe are both known to have been (recreational) opium users. that's not to say that narcotics with high abuse-potential shouldn't be regulated. in fact, if it were legal and regulated like alcohol and tobacco are, it'd probably cut back on all those unfortunate chippers who accidentally OD because they didn't know how strong their new batch of heroin was.
You'd save lots of lives. Directly and indirectly. As an ER doc, I see drug use of all types in all peoples. Alcohol is far and away the most "dangerous" of them all. However, banning it won't stop it's use (as we've found out). Banning other drugs doesn't stop their use (as we've found out). Keeping a drug illegal certainly limits the drug's use as many people do not want to pay to potential legal / social cost of getting caught. But many folks will, so you put the drug underground and let the Nasty People who live there (drug cartels, Mafia and just the rampant bottom end of humanity) profit off it.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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!
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.
Bullshit. You've never bought any drugs at all, have you. Drug dealers aren't like a pharmacy with a big closet full of everything from weed to heroin. Drug dealers generally specialize in one drug, and occasionally get another one now and again. They don't have a product line that facilitates "upsell". Furthermore, I've never met a pot dealer who ever sold any of the so-called "hard drugs". Occasionally, they'd get some acid, or maybe some Ecstasy. No drug dealer has ever tried give me the hard sell on anything. You clearly got your drug education from the DEA and Nancy Reagan.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Have you ever considered it possible that much of the harm that came to that neighborhood was from the very illegality of the drugs and the black market that prohibition enables rather than from anything inherent in the drugs themselves? 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.
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
No 13 year olds are going to be whoring themselves out if crack were legal market price. It'd be a couple quarters for a rock... Now a lot of 13 year olds would die of heart attacks....but that's a different story.
The problem isn't the drugs, it's stupid people. we have stupid people addicted to WoW, we have stupid people addicted to the lotto, I even knew a stupid person in HS that if he couldn't find any other drugs would huff gas or drink cough syrup. Are we going to ban cars and cold medicine too?
The problem is stupid people will find SOMETHING to destroy themselves with no matter what. That doesn't mean that I can't smoke a joint or Gasp! do a little acid like I did in the '80s and not be fine and not go robbing my neighbors or burning down villages. Why? Because I am NOT stupid. Trying to ban stupidity is just destroying this country for no damned reason. You can NOT force a stupid person NOT to throw their life away by overdoing something, no matter how nasty you make the laws. What you CAN do is make it a vicious circle since a drug conviction pretty much leaves many with the career choices of meth lab cook or drug dealer.
It has been going on for 70 something years now and today I can score any drug in under 30 minutes. Does that sound like it is working to you? We need to try something new. If nothing else legalize the pot and tax it. Deity knows with the economy in the shitter we need the money and folks sure have a reason to want to fire one up at the end of the day. But all we are doing now is giving the prison industrial complex buttloads of cash while making a revolving door for the type of criminals we can all pretty much agree need to do the full time like violent career criminals and rapists.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Looking at it from a more cynical point of view, the federal government has built a cathedral of sorts on the war on drugs with a tremendous budget. There are thousands of federal, state and local government jobs with millions upon billions of dollars invested in this misguided war. Those persons will clutch at that budget as firmly as they can since their own livelihood depends on drug prohibition.
Alcohol is definitely the most dangerous drug in use in the US right now, having more deaths directly attributed to its use than all illegal drugs combined. We as a country have previously established that it is impossible to eliminate alcohol entirely and instead moved to strict controls and high taxation. I can only hope that in the future we make that same move with drugs since decriminalizing it is the first step to bringing help to the addicts who need it most.
Decriminalization would mitigate a lot of drug-related social issues(prostitution, gang violence, illegal weapons trade) and heavy taxation would allow drug users to support the social and medical costs of the abusers.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Anyone who still thinks that drug-related problems are cured by their prohibition is an idiot.
I think that is equally, if not more, true then the way you put it. Drug abuse is a problem that the people on both sides of the legalization debate wish would just go away. It won't. The abuse of intoxicating substances will be with us until the end of time. Until people realize there is no magic cure-all to the problem of abuse, we won't have a sane drug policy in this country. Prohibition or legalization are answers to an entirely different question, but defiantly not the question of abuse.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Specific quote regarding the dangers of overdose in acclimatised users:
There is no upper limit to the amount of tolerance that can occur in a heavy user. Several studies done in the 1920s gave users doses of 1,600â"1,800 mg of heroin, and no adverse effects were reported. Even for a non-user, the LD50 can be placed above 350 mg though some sources give a figure of between 75 and 375 mg for a 75 kg person.[30]
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I agree - I will also add that there are currently more legal addicts than illegal.
I know of quite a number of people who are addicted to prescription pain medication and have been for years. 15 minutes before "time" for their pill and they get all panicky trying to find the thing (if they do not take it one time they will experience "pain" - I've yet to find a pain pill that works that way). Many of them take the same, and more, pills as so called "drug addicts" that would be put in jail because they do not have a doctors script. I have realities who had knee surgery (torn ACL - a real injury) and 15 years later are on regular high strength drugs. Heck, I have relatives who are trying to "get off" those pills and have been going to a methadone clinic for over two years now (uh huh - they really are wanting to get off).
As far as I can tell is that most of the legal addicts can still function in society despite their addiction - though a number will do things any addict does when the supply starts to stop (say, for instance, a cousins mother decided to quit paying for the methadone clinic and suddenly, in an totally unexplained and unrelated incidence, the exact amount of money needed for the clinic "disappeared" from her purse and he disappears during those same days he used to go - of course those are totally unrelated incidences).
I would also add that the number of people that wanted my fathers higher dosage of hydrocodone given to him after his bypass surgery were an absolute shock to us. Even worse were the people who just picked on up out of his hand when the noted what he had (they had a prescription, but for a lesser does and were "hurting" that day).
As of right now the main thing separating legal vs illegal addicts is the ability to maintain a steady job while addicted or have enough money to fund any doctor out there. The illegals can not control the addiction enough for a part time job and enough to pay the slightly greater cost of the legal market for them.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
a couple years ago I read a story about kids in the midwest getting high by strangling themselves.
Seriously, the human race will always find a way to get high. Always.
Legalize everything and supply and demand will take care of that problem for you. With a wide choice of alternatives at competitive prices, meth's popularity would dwindle, if only because of the health consequences.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
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
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.
I think Chris Rock put it best... What about the good side of crack? For $2.99 you could buy yourself a brand new sofa and a stereo system...
Think about that for a second. And watch shows like intervention. Anyone who still thinks that drug-related problems are caused by their prohibition is an idiot.
Speaking of Freedom of Speech, Expression, etc. Are you really Free when you do hard drugs? Or are the drugs the ones in control?
Except those of us who lead successful, even famous, lives and do all kinds of recreational drugs on a regular basis. No addiction, no overdosing, no problem.
It's much more common than you think, we just hide it because we fear the damage to our lives the LAWS will cause. If we speak out and say "Hey, it's no worse than smoking, or drinking!", we'll likely lose our reputations, assets, families, hell even our freedom.
You know at least 5 people who smoke marijuana on a regular basis and you don't even know it.
You know at least 10 people that have tried or have wanted to try a "harder" drug.
The point is, it's hidden all around you already. You live in that world, and you can't deny it and longer. I function just fine doing what I do, because I'm not stupid about it. You will have addicts either way, so you might as well not pay to house me in prison as well, using your tax dollars that could be going to your children's education, or even fixing that annoying pothole in your street.
I've seen all kinds of people on that show hooked on pain killers and other legal drugs, are you saying we are idiots for not adding them to the list of banned substances?
Bonus points if you can tell me how the joint I smoked last night affected your life or anyone around you, and why I deserve to be punished for that but the people at the bar don't.
It's funny when the ignorant start calling out the idiots.
>Think about that for a second. And watch shows like intervention. Anyone who still thinks that drug-related problems are caused by their prohibition is an idiot.
Counter argument: alcohol and tobacco. Of two drugs to have legal, these two are among the most dangerous and addictive there are. While many people die from their use, they have almost none of the problems that we associate with the 'hard' drugs. There are no gangs fighting turf wars over alcohol, and almost nobody killing themselves with dirty alcohol.
Some people can't handle any drugs, and some people can shoot heroin on the weekends and never have any kind of problem. Hell, most of the people I know who have tried meth have never had any trouble with it, besides legal troubles. Anyone looking at the costs associated with drugs has to admit that the cost of prohibition is far greater than their cost if they were legal.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!