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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.'"
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
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.
Seriously. Laws used to have "sunset clauses" that would cancel the law a few years after it was enacted unless it was voted otherwise. I understand that some New Deal era laws that are detrimental, like some subsidies, are still in existance because they were not given sunset clauses a few senators threaten to filibuster their repeal. Bringing this sort of policy back to laws would probably do wonders in convincing congresspeople into considering new possibilities.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
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?
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal - it is impossible (or prohibitively difficult, at least) to "use them responsibly" and their health effects are much more marked.
Cite? The fact that Cocaine was used as an active ingredient in a popular fizzy drink would seem to speak otherwise. And let's not forget that Cocaine is known because in its native region, the indigenous people used it constantly and they did alright.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
But seriously....Why is it that it took a constitutional amendment to start prohibition of alcohol, and bring it back...but, other drugs have been taken out of public use by the swipe of a pen?
I wish someone could bring that suit forth...sure would have some MAJOR repercussions if that case could win through the court system....any millionaires out there that have some free time, and want to bring this suit forth?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_park
Addiction is about more than just the drug. Addiction causes real harm, but so does prohibition. Without prohibition we are free to address the underlying causes of drug addiction.
Ignoring the attempt at humour for a moment, I wouldn't agree with the statement. I would, however, argue that neither action nor punishment fail to deter and in some cases the combination of action and punishment have created an incentive. This is true of copyright, illicit substances and probably a whole string of other offenses. This doesn't mean they should all automatically be legalized. The opposite of authoritarianism isn't anarchism. What it does mean is that such offenses should be treated very differently and much less punitively. In some cases, yes, abolishing the offense probably would make sense, but it's not wise to assume that is automatically the best choice. If Prohibition was America's biggest mistake, abolishing Prohibition was the next biggest. You don't fix one extreme by going to the other. You certainly don't fix it by trying to pretend it never happened.
England didn't ban heroin until the 50s (and only under heavy pressure from the US). There is little evidence it was seriously abused before then. But if they removed the ban overnight, it could be a total disaster. The shift in perceptions, the change in attitudes and the secrecy of the underground subcultures that abuse such stuff, not to mention the big pockets and bigger firearms of those wanting to protect their profits, would make an instant shift an instant disaster. If you're in sixth gear, flat out, you do NOT put the car into reverse. This does not make reverse gear a bad thing, it just means you need to take the intermediate steps first. The state of the system is utterly wrong for what you're attempting.
The problem with the drugs culture is that we don't really know what the right state is. The level of neurological research on how drugs affect the brain is minimal and knowledge of the effect on the rest of the body is virtually non-existent. Sure, this could be fixed. All you need is a battery of PET, MRI and fMRI scanners, drugs containing radioactive tracer isotopes and a bunch of volunteers stupid enough to have their brain glowing with positrons for dangerously long periods of time. You'll soon find where the uptake is, the effect the byproducts have, how the brain structure changes and how brain activity is altered. Because the changes and any build-up are gradual over an uncertain length of time, you're likely to kill a large percentage of the volunteers with brain tumours from continually pumping radioactive material into soft tissue, hence the level of stupidity required. Without the neurological data, though, it is quite impossible to form a scientifically sane policy. At the moment, there's a lot of superstition and religious nonsense by both sides, but there simply isn't any science worthy of the name. Without that, how can you know when and how to liberalize?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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
I think the problem is that it isn't about morality at this point, it's just a weird social phenomenon. A lot of people hear someone talking about legalizing it, and they just say *GASP* marijuana! There's such a large social stigma on it at this point, lots of people don't think about the subject logically, so if someone tries to legalize it, they meet resistance without reason from so many people that most career politicians don't want to be bothered.
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
Perhaps it will always be a problem. That doesn't mean that fighting it is a bad idea - having it illegal and fought against may be better than the alternative (at least for the harder drugs - for marijuana, which is almost harmless and something I strongly want legal, the drug war is unconscionable).
Comparing it to crimes with a simple victim isn't meant to comment on the morality of drugs, it's simply meant to suggest that legal prohibitions can work at least in part to curb demand. Having it illegal actually does reduce demand (stateways can change folkways - to look at another example of this, when slavery was ended and when women were given the vote, societal support was a lot closer to 50-50 in the times before the legal change, but after it support for the conclusion changed drastically).
On the latter point, I was not sufficiently clear - if someone either temporarily or permanently lacks funds for cocaine, LSD, or heroin, because of the strength of the addiction of those drugs, they are much more likely to commit violence to get funds (or the drug itself) than less-or-non-addictive drugs (like pot, alcohol, cigarettes, etc).
For drugs which have a small enough cost to society, of course they should be legal - the problems with smuggling operations and the like plus the unhappiness caused by restricting people's autonomy make it very clear. For those which are inimical to civilisation, the costs that you lay out are certainly real (and worrying), but I think the alternative of permitting them is considerably worse. Your judgement may reasonably vary - I know that ten years ago I probably would've sided with you (not meant as an age-diminuative, rather meant to illustrate the difficulty of the subject matter and how reasonable people may disagree over what solution is best).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Yeah, that's true -- it makes more sense to either ban all, or ban none.
/. gets you modded troll, flamebait, or worse.
I worked with a guy who was driving and was hit head-on by some drunk idiot. He and his girlfriend were both in pretty bad shape for a while. I know that alcohol's not going to get banned again, but you wonder how many lives it would save if it did?
Of course, musing about something like this on
As someone with an addictive personality, I disagree with you. Imagine being a recovering drug addict, walking into Walgreens to get aspirin for a headache, as you are paying for it, you see behind the cashier "ICE BRAND METH $40". You didn't walk into the store to buy meth, but your old addiction starts tempting you. It would be sooo easy to say "and can you grab me some of that meth too". You hesitate... but in a moment of weakness, you buy the meth. You are now again a meth addict.
That is me every time I walk into a convenience store, except with Black and Milds (cigars), instead of meth. The ONLY thing that prevents me from actually buying black and milds, is that it isn't worth it. 2 minutes of escape isn't enough to justify the health consequences. However, if it was meth, and the promise was 8 hours of escape, who the hell knows what I would do. I am just lucky I was exposed to pot and tobacco instead of meth when I was 14.
Drug prohibition is an unfortunate response to human nature. Some people do not get addicted to things. They do not need to escape reality. These are people that drink one beer, play WoW/XBOX live 6 hours a week, etc. But some people are incapable of controlling themselves when it comes to escaping reality. These people will binge and binge and binge on drugs until they die, and cause some really bad things to happen in their communities.
Making drugs readily available is a bad idea. If I wanted to find meth, it would probably take me weeks, or months. I don't even know where to start.
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.
if something like marijuana would legalized, the taxes collected on that would be staggeringly huge
This is 100% correct.
I was reading TFA and laughing the whole way.
"The Americans who voted in 1933 to repeal prohibition differed greatly in their reasons for overturning the system. But almost all agreed that the evils of failed suppression far outweighed the evils of alcohol consumption."
Compare to this article (and many like it):
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/search/s_518872.html
What happened in 1930 that suddenly gave the repeal movement political muscle? The answer is the Great Depression and the ravages that it inflicted on federal income-tax revenues.
...
And a House leader of Congress' successful attempt to propose the Prohibition-ending 21st Amendment said in 1934 that "if (anti-prohibitionists) had not had the opportunity of using that argument, that repeal meant needed revenue for our government, we would not have had repeal for at least 10 years."
There's no doubt that widespread understanding of Prohibition's futility and of its ugly, unintended side-effects made it easier for Congress to repeal the 18th Amendment. But these public sentiments were insufficient, by themselves, to end the war on alcohol.
Ending it required a gargantuan revenue shock -- to the U.S. Treasury.
I wonder which will be easier to sell to the American people:
Legalizing & taxing hemp
Legalizing & taxing marijuana
Cutting social spending - health care, social security, etc etc etc
Cutting military spending (lol)
That's in the order I think is most to least likely to happen.
Why cut when you can (tax &) spend?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
These are good reasons that drugs (including tobacco and alcohol) should be regulated.
Here in BC tobacco products must be kept out of sight or displayed in a store where minors are not allowed.
Alcohol is heavily regulated with most sold at government stores. The government stores are nice with pleasant staff who are paid enough. They somehow manage to under price the private stores by 10% to 20% and still bring in (next years projection according to the local paper) $800,000,000+ to the government + taxes.
It is quite a bit harder for kids to get tobacco or alcohol compared to pot or meth. Even when I was a kid 40 years ago pot was way more available then alcohol (though tobacco was very available).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
If I wanted to find meth, it would probably take me weeks, or months. I don't even know where to start.
No, it wouldn't. It would take you a couple days at most.
First off, you have your immediate friends. Even those that say they "wouldn't ever do drugs" - odds are one of them does some kind of illegal drug if you've more than one or two close friends. Weed, speed, coke, etc.
Failing option one, just go to where young people congretate like a college. Go up to someone and ask if they know where you can get some weed - a relatively innocuous and common question on many campuses.
When you get to a dealer, see if he knows someone that can get you your drug of choice. (He might even have it himself.) Once you've done this you have an established contact where you can pretty much get more any time you'd like.
It's really not as hard as you make it out to be. It's frightening easy, in fact. Hell, I could buy drugs in my high school. IN my high school. I went to class with at least one weed dealer than I knew of. I'm sure I could have found stronger substances easily if I so desired. I'm not one to use most drugs, but if I had wanted to find them it wouldn't have been all that hard.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Don't think of it as a see-saw, think of it as some sort of three-person see-saw. I had an uncle tell me about an interesting sight he saw in New Jersey several years ago. In the city he was in, the cops had a very large SWAT-style van that they would throw confiscated drugs into. The drug dealers used children, aged around 9 to 10 or so, to actually sell the drugs. The cops wouldn't arrest a kid of course, so they'd capture the kid, toss the drugs into the van, and when the van was full they turned around and sold the drugs in the van back to the drug dealers.
The dealers would sell the drugs, buy them back from the cops, and sell them again. Sort of perpetual motion, except there's a third party involved: the people who are neither cops nor drug dealers. Tax payers are paying for the cops to actually be there and have the authority to take those kinds of bribes and so on, and the drug addicts are paying to keep the drug dealers in business.
Alcohol prohibition showed us that you can't stop people from doing something, even when it gets into the fucking Constitution, so we shouldn't work on stopping the addicts, we should focus on stopping the tax-money. Make the police handle drug raids as volunteers, not on the dime of the tax payers, and you'd see them not give a fuck.
Learn something new.
So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases? Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
What basis do you have for saying that legalizing drugs like meth would cause more problems? I'm happy to accept that those drugs are bad, and it would be nice if no one used them. But, arguing that they should therefore be banned requires that the ban be effective. Every piece of data I know of says the effectiveness of such bans is minimal at best. Legalization clearly causes some harm reduction, even in the case of dangerous drugs: less organized crime associated with them, cleaner and more consistent product, less disease transmission from dirty needles, etc. So, on what basis do you believe that prohibition causes less harm than no prohibition?
(As I said in another post, I tend to agree with you -- legalize marijuana and the psychedelics, but not stimulants and opiates. However, I'm not at all sure that belief is correct, and I'd like to see more data on the subject.)
As a 10-year drug addict, I'd like to make the quite important and forgotten(and relevant to the OP) point regarding 2 already legal addictive substances with a high degree of abuse. I'm talking about caffeine and aspirin- wait no, that's not right, I meant alcohol and nicotine. Two of my favorites. Well, one of them is at least (scotch, scotch, scotch...), the other's just a monkey on the back.
Although I'm a confirmed smoker, I have never seen/experienced nicotine provide a physical pleasure that can't be obtained for free by hyper-ventilating. It's hard to define "abuse" in the case of tobacco/nicotine because I have no concept of what "moderation" can mean when the drug provides no real pleasurable gain, while simultaneously being so addictive (and destructive). Smoking, in the U.S. at least, has pretty much gone out-of-vogue by this point, which (since its intial attraction is for social purposes) has severely decreased the number of new smokers over the last 10-15 years. But tobacco/nicotine will for many decades yet remove (cumulatively) millions of years of life from Americans through their contribution to heart disease, cancers, et al. But there's also the fact that tobacco/nicotine actually decreases the quality of the oft-shortened life for the far majority of addicts. Don't believe me? That means you're not a smoker...so go ask them yourself if they would be happier if they had never picked up that first cigarette. They'll almost all (unless they're new to it) admit emphatically that they would be.
Alcohol, however, is totally socially-acceptable, despite the best efforts of its opponents, even though the abuse of it is at the root of all sorts of scary statistics and anecdotal stories of vehicular death and domestic violence. And don't forgot all the liver failure, heart disease, et al, that are contributed too by excessive drinking.
The idea that ALL the "soft" drugs together, if legalized, could have as much of a negative impact on the lives of Americans as these two legal drugs, is frankly, laughable.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
The problem with that "solution" is that it totally ignores the racial history of a nation like the United States. Minorities are adversely and disproportionately affected by drug use, and such a "solution" would result in more problems, not fewer. We don't need to concentrate on getting our minorites addicted and relegated to low-status jobs with others of their kind - we need to uplift them and provide opportunities for decent housing, crime-free living, and most importantly education. "Get those people out of here and get them some free dope" sounds like a meme from a nutcase rightwing AM radio station.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
No amount of taxation (limited to) DRUGS will be enought to make up to the massive loss of productivity of drug addicts.
It's important to remember that the loss of productivity will only come from NEW drug users (as the productivity of the current users is already lost). Despite $SCARYSTATISTIC, I don't know how anyone could reasonably estimate what the loss of productivity would be without performing a significant and rigorous study for that specific purpose.
Also, not to be forgotten, is the quantity of resources/productivity saved by not fighting a "War on Drugs". Although, like I said before, I think a study would have to be done for any real help in calculating this total "net loss/gain to society", my $0.02 is that there would not be that many new addicts, and that the far majority of the use (especially of something like pot/ecstasty) would be recreational, impacting the productivity of the users VERY little, while providing MASSIVE amounts of tax revenue. Our culture is already pretty negative towards meth, crack and heroin and so I think the number of NEW abusers would be pretty small (as a percentage of the population), however the health impact of abuse of these drugs is much more severe, so I could definitely see these drugs being a net loss if legalized. However, I could also see the numbers for abuse actually going down due to the greater acceptance of "moderate use" of the drug (see: excesses/abuses during Prohibition vs. after) so I could also see these drugs being a net gain, it's just pretty close in my mind. The other drugs (shrooms, acid, et al) would have such a small abuser rate, with the effects of abuse being relatively minor, that I don't think it's worth bickering over.
Overall, though, I would never argue just on the cost/savings to the system. The much more important point is the principle of "greatest liberty for all" held so dearly by us libertarians. This principle, if accepted, quickly tips the scale in the argument far in the favor of legalization. Of course, if THAT principle were held by our politicians we wouldn't see nationalized health care any time soon (further decreasing the cost to society)...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
"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
When was the last time you heard of anyone going blind because his liquor had wood alcohol in it? That was common during prohibition. Poisoning by ingesting automotive antifreeze was also not uncommon, since the illegal stills often used used car radiators for their coils.
I've heard rumors that drug dealers are adding Viagra to pot. I strongly supect this is an urban legend (Viagra isn't cheap, especially black market Viagra) but PCP (animal tranquilizer) is. Back in the '70s pot laced with PCP was common.
You cannot regulate an illegal substance.
The only good thing I can see about drug prohibition is it's easy for me to get laid - there would be a lot fewer hookers if crack was ten cents a hit instead of five dollars. I can get laid for the price of a "dub" (twenty bucks). The crack whores' competetion keeps the price of hookers down whether or not the prostitute is an addict (some hookers just love sex and money).
Free Martian Whores!