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Legalize Drugs Now
Felipe Dana / AP Photo
The raids on Mexican drug cartels and the violence in Rio are just the latest examples of America’s failed drug war. Conor Friedersdorf on why ending prohibition is the only answer.
Mere days after Rio de Janeiro impressed the world by winning its bid to host the Summer Olympics in 2016, The New York Times reported a less-flattering story: Drug traffickers wielding an anti-aircraft gun “shot down a police helicopter just one mile from Maracana Stadium, where the Opening and Closing Ceremonies will be held.”
Shocking as that may sound, it doesn't surprise folks familiar with the city. Almost 5,000 people were murdered there last year. Crime related to the international drug trade is rampant. Numerous large neighborhoods are controlled by paramilitary gangs in open rebellion against police and the Brazilian state. “In Rio, the favelas edge up to the airport highway and spread into the distance,” Jon Lee Anderson wrote
American demand for illegal narcotics bankrolls murderers, rapists, paramilitary terror squads, and all manner of other ills in the country. Absent the enormous sum our citizens pour into a black market that is largely of our creation, countless Brazilian lives would be better, Rio would be safer, and we’d all be better off.
As Brazil tries to make the city safe for the inevitable horde of foreign sports fans—it is also the site for the 2014 World Cup—there isn’t any easy fix. Rio’s favelas date back to Brazil's abolition of slavery in the 19th century. The causes of poverty, crime, and dysfunction in the city are too myriad to list.
It is nevertheless true that American demand for illegal narcotics bankrolls murderers, rapists, paramilitary terror squads, and all manner of other ills in the country. Absent the enormous sum our citizens pour into a black market that is largely of our creation, countless Brazilian lives would be better, Rio would be safer, and we’d all be better off.
Don’t take my word for it. Brazil's former president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, declares prohibition a failure
That's a losing proposition in the United States.
Though a critic of the War on Drugs, the furthest President Obama has gone on the subject is instructing the feds to cease enforcement of anti-marijuana laws when state legislatures set less-stringent guidelines. It's pocket change we can believe in!
Congress is no better. Marijuana decriminalization is gaining some ground among the populace, especially for medical reasons, but we're nowhere near a repeal of federal laws against pot, let alone an end to black markets in harder drugs.
Given how destructive cocaine, crack, heroin, and other narcotics are, wariness of legalization is understandable. On the other hand, these drugs have ravaged American communities despite their illegality, and the black market made inevitable by their prohibition isn't just imposing a cost on American drug criminals, or even American society at large. It is literally helping to destroy whole nation states in the Southern Hemisphere.
"At least 100,000 people work for the drug gangs of Rio in a hierarchical structure that mimics the corporate world," Anderson writes. "The state is almost completely absent in the favelas. The drug gangs impose their own system of justice, law and order, and taxation—all by force of arms."
Similar ills plague so many nations in Central America and South America. Their horrors alone confer a moral responsibility to change our policies. What happens if we nevertheless proceed with our current War on Drugs? The frightening answer is that Americans won't merely be subject to added danger when they travel to see Michael Phelps compete in 2016—they'll increasingly face danger in their own front yards.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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This should've been done decades ago, its about time the US government came to their sinsemilla senses.
Legalize and then require drug tests for healthcare cover, drivers licence etc.. like they do for work on government building sites abroad.
Potheads and druggies should abound?....The money from taxing these laggerds would not cover the cost to chase their criminal activities. Sick people can still get a marijana prescription to be used at any local pharmacy why are all the pot shops needed? DEA has studies out recently on the results of long-term use of marijana....One of my family members lost her $135,000 year job as a result of several years of marijana highs. She now is on disability from brain damage. Risk your brain and future, your choice.
I am calling BS on that claim.
Wow, that is one of the most ridiculous things I have heard in a while. Seems like you should focus your fantasies on items that actually hurt people, like 435,000 annual deaths from cigs, 85,000 annual deaths from alcohol, the 32,000 annual deaths from perscription medication and even the 7,600 annual deaths from aspirin and its cousins. You are an insult to your brain.
Just because it sound like a good idea, it doesn't mean you should do it.
Amsterdam could serve as a cautionary tale. Since liberalizing drugs use, this freedom attracts nothing but low life, junkies and the criminals from all over the world.
The best, the brightest, and the creative cultures do not live in the city any more. It's really sad. What even sadder still is when you hear about Amsterdam from anyone who visited there for any reason, the only thing they could tell you about the city is the drugs and the prostitution culture, nothing else. No one has anything to say about the arts, literary, politics, etc. Just drugs and prostitutes.
I should know, I lived there for six years.
you are supposed to be at foxnews.com you must have been tricked into coming here jburrey2 there has never been evidence that marijuana causes brain damage. dea doesnt do studies
dailywackos
For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed( falsely )that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse.
The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don't have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.
Let's compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California's actual prison population is 171,000.
So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?
The situation at the moment is like the Prohibition of alcohol in the 20's & early 30's.The only people who are making any money out of this are the criminals.These are the only ones who will be hurt financially & have to most to lose from legalization.
Cannabis is technically an illegal substance in the Netherlands, although you won't get arrested for buying or smoking it in a coffee shop.Police just turn a blind eye.
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.
All you have to do is look at Holland's failed drug experiment, and you can see how much of a mistake it is to legalize drugs:
============================================
From a 1999 article by Larry Collins:
Holland's Half-Baked Drug Experiment
Summary -- The Netherlands' vaunted drug policies -- legalizing the public sale of cannabis products in the now-famous coffee shops and adopting a generally lenient attitude toward drug use -- have turned the country into the narcotics capital of western Europe. Dutch cops admit that Holland is to synthetic drugs what Colombia is to cocaine. Not only is Holland's increasingly potent marijuana not staying in the legal coffee shops, but its illegal export brings in far more money than that traditional Dutch export, tulips. Meanwhile, drug addiction has tripled. There are no easy answers to drugs, but naive Dutch legislators have made a hash of drug policy.
Larry Collins is the coauthor, with Dominique LaPierre, of numerous books including Is Paris Burning?, O Jerusalem!, and Freedom at Midnight.
============================================
The mistake the advocates make, in my opinion, is that they underestimate the effects of scarcity and fear of arrest on drug addition. When drugs are illegal, there are a whole class of younger people who are either afraid of getting arrested, or simply can't cop because the availability doesn't permeate every nook and cranny of our society.
Legalize marijuana, and decriminalize harder drugs, and those people will use freely. The fact that the number of drug addicts in Holland tripled, sounds about right to me.
It's true that responsible adults by the millions smoke pot without it interfering with their productive lives, sort of like having a glass of wine at the end of the day, but that's beside the point. The point is that the number of addicts under 25 would skyrocket, if it were legalized.
Anyone in the country who wants a drug, but currently can't find it, would have access. How big is that number? I'm guessing it's pretty damn big.
The fact that Rotterdam is one of the largest port in Europe means that regardless of whether the Netherlands legalized marijuana or not they would still have drug problems.
you guessed wrong.
weed is easier to get for anyone under 21 than alcohol. for alcohol, they at least have to either steal it from their parents and run the risk of getting caught, or have someone over 21 buy it for them. with weed, they just have to find someone that deals, which i can assure you is very easy. i wish i could say you were right, but you are clearly mistaken.
and if you call someone who occassionally tokes an addict, then you have to call all the people who occassionally drink alcoholics. you cant have the double standard of smoking pot occassionally is for addicts and drinking occassionally is for regular people and not addicts.
Marijuana should have been legalized already. We would be awash in cash. Pot is not addictive and no one dies from using it (that I've ever heard of). Yet over 40,000 people a year die from both alcohol and cancer related to cigarettes. The tobacco companies have been increasing the levels of nicotine for years to keep people hooked! Talk about dangerous substances!
Legalizing coke, heroin and the rest is scary stuff. The only answer is with legalisation and taxation comes rehabilitation. Lots of them. Tax the drug to pay for it and make them free (or low cost for those with insurance). Just like emergency rooms. Initially there will be a spike in usage but it will drop off especially with treatment available.
The other component is - the black market. Like everything else, the government will tamper with the quality to try and control addiction - so the drug dealers, not happy with losing their customers, will make stronger versions and we will have a black market of drugs. But they won't be as powerful as they are now and can be controlled. It's still better than what we have now.
Of course, we'd have sooo much money. After all, if there's one thing pot dealers are known for, it's faithfully paying taxes.
And we should legalize LSD, since it's not addictive either.
/sarcasm
You are making katie's point. Nobody pays taxes on illegal products, but if "pot dealers" had a legal business, taxes could be enforced and criminals would have to find another line of work.
So what if LSD were legal? MDMA was legal until 1984 and it didn't destroy mankind that I know of.
Well, LSD is actually not very addictive and most users don't use it frequently because of the rapid increase in tolerance and the nature of its intoxication. You'd have been better using heroin as an example.
If you look at Portugal, they decriminalized all drugs and instead focused on rehabilitation, treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than a criminal issue. It's been almost ten years and drug use is at all time lows.
Does prohibition work? It didn't work for alcohol and it's clearly not working for drugs.
And not paying your taxes is still illegal. Legal cannabis dealers (e.g. Californian shops) are actually petitioning their local governments to be able to pay taxes.
So you're pretty much wrong with every single point you made. Your sarcasm just really makes you look like an ass.
LSD isn't addictive. As a matter of fact, after awhile, it becomes tiresome. Some of our smartest people used LSD. Look it up. Try doing some research. Try knowing what you are talking about.
actually in CA shops they do pay taxes. and in california, that increase in revenue from these shops can only help the situation.
OAKSTERDAM.com
LOL exactly! As if we didn't have enough groups of people leeching off the gov'ts teet, now suddenly we're going to legalize this stuff and expect that the money from the millions of potheads in the country is going to pay for everything once the gov't decides to tax the hell out of marijuana like they do with everything else.
Newsflash: Stoners can barely hold down part time jobs at their local fast food and retail stores... and the only reason they have money to buy pot and other illegal substances in the first place is because they make money by selling the stuff to their peers! One it's legalized, there goes their main source of income... and they'll be stuck living in their parents' basement forever!
Are you saying that potheads don't pay sales tax when they shop for groceries? Or consumers of alcohol don't pay sales taxes when they buy alcohol? Because that's what a marijuana tax would be--a sales tax. If it's legalized, it will be subject to taxation, and the tax will be included in the cost like with groceries or drinks. Willingness or ability to pay taxes has nothing to do with it.
I'm sorry but you are highly misinformed on who purchases and uses drugs in the United States. The drug cartels are not making 100's of billions of dollars off of kids working at McDonald's. A lot of their money comes from middle class everyday people, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc.. who have money to spend, as well as extremely rich people who can afford more expensive drugs such as cocaine.
Secondly, treatment is cheaper than incarceration, so it's not such a bad idea to end prohibition and focus efforts on prevention, education, and treatment, the criminal justice system can only react to the problem it does nothing to prevent it.
nightdragone09, you know not what you speak. Allow me to respectfully enlighten you.
I was a smoker for 18 years. I quit because it got boring, nothing more. I started in High School, went to college, where I got a 3.7 GPA ( and there I was baked 80% of the time ), got a great job and continued to smoke up until maybe 4 years ago. I am a happy, hard working family man and have always been. I am 41.
I know all kinds of people who are functioning and productive members of society and who smoke regularly. My wife for one. Every single one a white collar professionals, with a family lives no different than the rest.
The only ones, I know, who have difficulties, a propos the herb are those who have to hide from their usage from their spouses. I call this domestic prohibition. Their spouses fear the same way you do.
You sound like you have been watching that anti weed flick that was released in the 60's where anyone who smoked turned into a MJ Thriller like zombie. IT'S WAS A PROPAGANDA FILM !
Are there cases where young adults get a little lazy, indeed, but unless they are geared that way, and likely have no ambition to begin with, herb only serves to amplify the traits a person is born with. With or without the herb these characters would likely not be terribly productive. 9 times out of 10, smokers keep moving forward.
I won't go into the benefits of herb because, more times than not, you will find smokers to be less angry with the world, more compassionate etc. Let me put it this way most of the stereotypes of peace loving herb-ivores are correct, but man if we couldn't use everyone the world over in a perpetual state of peace.
But I recognize that it is hard to convince a non smoker of the benefits, although a case is made with how life changing medical herb has become for cancer patients et al. I have a friend with MS whose life was crushed by a string of pharmaceuticals and decided to stop all of that and smoke herb. Her life changed dramatically. Of course, she has coupled the herb with all kinds of natural remedies, but the herb has made living every day that much more tolerable.
As for legalizing the much harder stuff, ALL of which I have tried, in one form or another, and sometimes dabble with even now. Legalizing the " harder " stuff is a tougher sell to even me, someone who enjoys recreational drugs.
I am fortunate that despite having an addictive personality, the hard stuff has always hit too hard for me to want to live in that state on a normal day, but this cannot be said of many, who can and do fly way off the handle.
Legalizing the hard stuff would result in less people in jail but far more addicts and more crushed lives and families.
If your looking, no matter where you live, these drugs are available so these same people DO get hold of them somehow. The illegal aspect though is what DOES scare some would be addicts away from even trying.
Making the harder stuff the boogey man can be is a good thing. While I will never introduce herb, when he comes of age, to my son, if, many years from now, I find him smoking , I won't worry, but if I find out he is snortin or sticking a needle in his arm, even with my complete understanding of drugs, I will lose it. X might be the only exception. MDMA, for one thing, is a very happy communal drug. If you haven't experienced a room full of partiers on X, it is a wonderful space to be in and non addictive. You go to an X party and most people are drinking water.
The infamous Amsterdam needs to be visited to understand that there is no negative impact with their legalization of herb. Sure when they first broke that seal, it was a little crazy but the frenzy settled quickly and now smokin up in a cafe is no different than stopping by your local Starbucks.
Where things have gotten out of hand is a result of their decision to try and relax the rules on the harder stuff. Too many smack addicts walkin around doing bad things to feed the vicious circle habit.
All of my above explanation on the harder stuff is echoed by all of the other reasonable proponents of legalization because they almost all focus their campaigns on the legalization of herb, nothing more. Most weed smokers have tried harder stuff and appreciate how the harder stuff can be very dangerous and therefore should be controlled.
Anyway, 2 cents from someone intimately familiar with drugs. Anyone who believes the zombie hype, on smokers, is most likely someone who has never fired up. The world would be a better place if everyone smoked herb.
Unfortunately you don't know what you're talking about. Some of the most productive and creative people I know smoke on a regular basis. While there are a number of reasons for them to stop (health being primary among them) marijuana does nothing to hinder their productivity. The generalization of the "pothead" in their parents' basement is just that, a generalization. There are drunks who have allowed alcohol to run their lives, but by no means should alcohol be illegal. It is a substance that can be enjoyed responsibly and recreationally by adults. no need for our government to tell us otherwise.
On the subject of more hardcore drugs....I'm not sure there is an easy answer. Crack, heroin, etc. has not only ruined the lives of the users, but their friends, families, and others. However, marijuana should not by any means be lumped in with that group. The only reason it is a "gateway" drug is because it is lumped in with the other hardcore drugs. People see how mild marijuana is and think the other drugs it is associated with will be just as mild.
Congratulations, your understanding of the world is based on silly hollywood stereotypes. Do you actually know any stoners?
Frenchmanaz, that was one of the most enlightening posts I've read on the legalization issue. I wish you would elaborate and publish your thoughts in a more widely accessible form. I personally see no benefit to attaching more stigma to the currently illegal drugs than to legal ones. Humans have always experimented with and regularly use mind-altering substances, after all. Cigarettes and alcohol arguably have bigger health issues, and in the case of alcohol, more mind-altering qualities, than weed. Legality and illegality only bespeak of how the policy decisions went on how to control these substances, not of the properties of the drugs themselves. Policy decisions can sometimes be wrongly made, no big surprise there.
I think we're long overdue for a redrawing of some of those legal lines, especially in regards to marijuana. I'm much more leery of the harder stuff, too, and believe they should be much more strictly controlled. Ironically, such control (such as mandatory treatment and cleanup) is easier to achieve without jail sentences in many cases. I'm all for something like mandatory plea bargains when it comes to usage, as in the prosecutor cannot press for a sentence if this is a first-time offender who agrees to get treatment for the addiction. It kind of turns the current horrible, racist, destructive mandatory minimums on its head. Using threat of criminal penalty as a leverage for medical treatment may be a crude way to go about things, but criminalization has always been a tool for deterrence. Of course, the whole idea would have to be supported by a well-funded treatment program that networks effectively with private efforts, social services, and counseling. That's always been the solution to the drug problem on the demand side, but I know I'm not the only one who had a headache just thinking the previous sentence. As for the supply side... that's tougher. Much, much tougher, especially because the demand can't be expected to just dry up.
What amuses me is that Frenchmanaz and I come to largely the same conclusions from totally different places. I'm pretty much a teetotaler (maybe a sip of beer every few months in social situations to be polite), have never smoked cigarettes, heck, don't even drink coffee. Needless to say I never went nowhere near an illegal substance--I attach no stigma to weed, but am not tempted to try it. I'm someone who would have been perfectly unaffected by the earlier Prohibition era and am not personally affected by the current prohibition. Yet I am affected, really, by the huge distorting effects of and the violence caused by the war on drugs. Everyone is, whether they're a recreational drug user or a straight-up teetotaler. That's why I think I would have been an anti-Prohibitionist if I'd lived in early twentieth-century America, and it's why I am anti-prohibition now.
NEWSFLASH:
You're wrong, not only do I maintain a full time relatively high paying job, but I also go to school full time and have maintained my position on the dean's list thus far. I'm also a PTO member, political activist, actor and director and raise a well balanced family. I am also pro legalization and having done extensive research on pot I'm aware of both the pro's and con's of pot use, distribution and effects on the economy. The pro's far outweigh the cons.
Sorry to burst you little stereo type bubble.
Move on now.
Idiot! You continue to believe the stereotype of the pot smoker as a non productive homeless character devoid of any motivation or rational thought. It's obvious you know less than nothing and only repeat what you've been told.
You may be surprised to know that some of our best and brightest, most talented (not just in art, but in every genre) are pot smokers. No, really! But due to the misinformed and holier than thou crowd these people must either endure unwarranted public defamation or hide it.
@ Devilslawyer...thanks for the kind words and do I have some stories to tell =).
I have to say that you are obviously someone with strong compassion for mankind. It's takes someone who is extremely conscientious to live and let live. You are a wonderful example of someone who is happy and comfortable in their own skin, because most often people who feel the need to control or judge the actions of others do so because they are unsatisfied with their own existence and want others to suffer the way they do.
We could actually team up and write an excellent paper on this issue. Mine would come from the personal experience / emotional front and based on your own post, you could offer the rational angle. The practical benefits from someone who does not judge.
While it would be easy for many to write my opinion off because I am a " user ", you would be much much harder to argue against because you have lived a " clean " life. By no means does my use of the word " clean " make any assumption that you are an angel, because one can live just as wild an existence while simply high on life. You likely take risks that I never would like possibly sky diving =).
What a team ! Let's hope not for my sake but because I would rather have kids ( of legal consumption age ) smoking a splif rather than shooting a bunch of Tequila shots and getting behind the wheel.
We shall see, but I never thought this discussion about legalizing herb would ever go beyond Bill Maher and the pages of " High Times ".
LOL damn... I didn't mean to offend all the pot-heads on here... I must've forgot what site I was posting on for a minute there, sorry fellas... go back to your regularly scheduled toking and dream of the day when you can all nonchalantly walk into your local mom and pop grocery or liquor store and purchase as much reefer as you desire so that you can all go back to your basements, smoke up, and spend hours listening to Pink Floyd records while staring at blacklight posters you bought at the mall from Spencer's and Hot Topic.
I still find it hilarious that every single person's argument in favor of legalizing marijuana can be simply summed up by this... "I do it or I know lots of people that do it, so lets legalize it!"
And for the record... I'm in favor of decriminalizing it, but I believe that, if anything, it should only be available for medicinal purposed only... I don't see why we should make this stuff be as accessible as tobacco and alcohol is now... and that also brings up several more questions that I'm not to sure you pro-legalization folks have thought through yet.
1: Once this stuff is legalized... who gets to sell it? Will just any old schmuck be able to start up his or her own hemp business, or start their very own Garden Of Weeden in their own backyard?
2: If not just anyone can grow/sell marijuana, then who? Will you have to acquire a special license to grow/sell it, like businesses that sell and serve alcohol do? And will it be in any way controlled/regulated by the gov't, or will we suddenly see huge EEEEEVIL corporations springing up selling this stuff like at the height of the tobacco industry... will we be seeing the return of the Marlboro man "blazing" into the sunset, or "Tokin' Joe" Camel looking all cool and badass with a joint in his hand?!?
Finally, 3: Will there be restrictions on who can purchase marijuana, how much they can purchase, etc? We have age restrictions like we do on the sale of tobacco, alcohol, etc... not that that really mattters cuz, we all know that kids underage NEVER get their hands on cigs and booze, right?!? And those other "enlightened" European countries are doing so well with their non-restrictions on alcohol... just look at the British and Irish as shining examples.
All I know is that if marijuana ever gets legalized, the first time I'm gonna do is purchase stock in Doritos and frozen pizza bagels!
That's an interesting observation nightdragon. Stoners cant hold down jobs etc. etc.
I am a professional and have been to many party's over the last several years in which I have observed people who are pillars of the community, highly skilled and highly paid, smoking marijuana. Your assertion and what the government wants us to believe is that marijuana is bad for you, makes you lazy and non productive to society. I would say that these very same people would chose not to be productive regardless of whether they smoked marijauna or not
I would think that anyone on the right or left would recognize that all that these laws accomplish is the perpetuation of a law enforcement agency both local and federal that just keeps getting larger and larger.
Your argument lacks one fact. Our government experiments with pot potency now and has produced some of the highest grade smoke available on the market today. There is nothing wrong with good quality pot. There is something wrong with murdering people for growing and selling it. Prohibition is a tool of the holier than thou crowd. It didn't work with liquor and our government murdered and stole property in our name to enforce it. The same thing is happening now with pot. Church morality can't be enforced by law. Legalize it, tax it, stop the murders from both sides caused by our drug war and solve the national debt problem. Even a mentally challenged person could see the reasoning. Duddits says "Tha's schmardt.
I completely agree. Legalizing coke, herion, etc. is pretty scary, but legalization of marijuana hasn't happened because of purely political reasons.
There is nothing to fear reversing the law that made heroin illegal It is the absolute best drug - in its opium poppy form a blessing from Mother nature for eliminating pain.
When you don't have pain and you ingest opium, opium in poppy form, or in distilled heroin form you are enveloped with a relaxing haze. Some people really take to that. A sniff of heroin in the morning will last the user all day.
Were heroin available to registered users the world would not collapse, nor would the moral fiber of our nation be dumpsterized. The people who take to these drugs on a steady basis represent 1.5% of the population.
When they get hooked on the drug for its own sake, and have to come up with huge amounts of money just to stay straight - not be "sick" because they don't have their "medicine," then they commit all kinds of crime - to get the money to get the drug to not be sick . . . a never ending round robin that destroys the fabric of society.
Locking these people up does not do anyone any good - not the user - not the legal system - not the taxpayer. Were the laws reversed, all of the people purchaasing oxi-contin from street dealers and prescriptions from Dr.'s willing to write the scripts would migrate to the real opiate, at no cost to the taxpayer.
Mother nature created the opium poppy for a reason.
michaelslevinson.com
I wish there was an answer to get this stuff out of our lives forever but prohibition.doesn't.work.
Might as well tax the heck out of it. Start a new legal industry. Put millions to work. Empty the jails. Take the illicit thrill out of it.
Sounds great.
@ Veronicaxy, I appreciate your position but I don't think you see the therapeutic benefits associated with some drugs. Opiates for pain, Cocaine for pain, Herb for pain and has a deep impact on the eating habits of cancer patients, MDMA used in mental therapy.
The only drugs that were never created to help people are the manufactured ones like Crack and Meth.
While your mention of illicit thrill does ring true for some, this is not what drives most to use. Without sounding too much like a hippie, drugs have always been about exploring a higher conscience and as an escape. Taking the illicit thrill out of it will not make as big an impact as you might believe.
Whichever way you slice it though, the conclusion you reach, at least for herb is a good one, I just hope one day the anger in your opinion is diffused somewhat, because rather than legalization being about giving in and allowing the " losers " to have their way, it should be about how herb could turn kids away from the much more dangerous booze and even the much harder drugs.
Were it not for the invisible hand of corporate lobbying marijuana never would have been made illegal in the first place.
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
Direct Democracy is mob rule... so said Ben Franklin.
In Ben's day very few people could even read a sign.
In Ben's day it was smoked
...No, Marijuana was made illegal because of anti-immigrant sentiments, along with opium and cocaine. Later, there was business that was large enough and not 'Banking' or 'Railroad' to actually care. Now privatized prisons, drug testing industries, law enforcement (excluding officers actually attempting to prosecute crimes undermined by drug policy in their jurisdictions), and tobacco have enough influence to have made drug control an issue worth keeping. Now our losses and mass destruction of most of the western hemisphere below the Arctic has seemed rational to provoke continued prohibition.
Of course, moral imperative and religious and nonsensical bullshit has also played a key roll in such a stupid and wanton policy as drug prohibition; and you can see the "moral" folk who fought for and against alcohol prohibition in approximately a decade beginning to understand that their fentanyl is worse than heroin and marijuana is simply not that dangerous. However, the "drug war" is the longest and most costly war ever waged in the history of the United States of America, and has been instrumental in destroying much of the entire world over the past century.
Yes, legalize pot and they other "soft"drugs and tax them like alcohol and cigarettes.
As for hard drugs like heroin, crack and meth, we should not encourage their use at all, but there is no law enforcement answer to this. It is a social problem and a medical problem, and should be treated that way instead of with more cops and prisons. Education, rehabilitation, and social programs should be used to deal with addiction, and possibly a system of licensed drug addicts, who could get their dope legally without having to go out and steal and commit other crimes.
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Legalize all illegal drugs.Put all the junkies ( drug-addicts )
in nursing homes.Also,round up all the crooked republican
senators and put the bums in nursing homes and keep them
inside the nursing homes and throw away the keys.
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Yeah, if a task looks too daunting, we might as well make it legal and try to make money from it. For example, leave the prostitutes alone -- we've been trying to stop the sexual enslavement of women for centuries, and no luck. And murder -- no progress, there... so let's just bring back the "blood price," we'd make a fortune. How about domestic violence? Think of the money we'd save on shelters!
And lest we forget, drug use is victimless. Just ask the homeless addict on your block (if he can still speak intelligibly), or those crack-babies on respirators.
And Melissa Etheridge says the gange saved her from cancer. She only used it medicinally -- her baby-daddy David Crosby would back her up on that, I'm sure.
Yes, and the way to save those victims is tossing them in jail, thereby perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty, broken families, and addiction. Or, to go with your prostitution example, the way to save women from abuse is to call them criminals and thus make them too frightened to seek help from the law. If criminalization were the answer to prevent these ills, why do prostitution and addicts exist anyway?
No we shouldn't give up just because a task is too daunting.
But if the solution isn't working and is in fact making the problem
worse we should abandon it.
Approximately 46% percent of Americans have tried
drugs at least once in their life.I think the number of
Americans who've tried murder is much lower.
You're using false equivalences. People currently abuse alcohol and we have problems like fetal alcohol syndrome and homelessness due to alcohol abuse - does that mean we should also punish the vast majority of alcohol users who are responsible simply because there will always be those who abuse substances? Lest you forget, alcohol is a drug.
The homeless addict on the block is likely now in the prison, (and related profits), that YOU paid for, all for what such addict chose to do to itself.
Crack babies scarcely exist, most of what we thought was "crack babies" was fetal alcohol syndrome, and cocaine physical withdrawl lasts for less than the forty-eight painful hours of a babies' existence at best. Alcohol accounts for well over half of all "domestic disturbances" that involve any drug whatsoever before retaliation against law enforcement.
You, sir or madam, are a fool. I'm glad that YOUR tax money may pay for these homeless folk when they are incarcerated under such idiocrisy, however my tax money going to lock people up for what they choose to do on their own time until they endanger another and then an equal amount going to privatized prison profits makes me want to do nothing but watch as your children likely grow up finding many outlets to more and more "illegal/legal drugs". Unfortunately, your closed mind would likely damage them more than any "illegal/legal drug" ever could.
Luckily, keyboard duster is VERY dangerous, and 100% legal. So is the DMT in your pineal gland, (schedule 1), which is released some forty days after conception, at birth, and at death in large amounts.
Although I agree with your first sarcastic point. Monotheistic religion seems IMPOSSIBLE to destroy, as people are so scared of their own death, but I will continue to attempt to utilize reason and fact versus bogus stereotypes that have been the example of most destructive regimes in all of human history over a longer period of time than our current separation from Greco-Roman cultures.
Once again. Above is a total fucking tool.
Legalization of all the "vices" is the only answer if you are foolish enough to believe that Governments really want peace and freedom. But the reality is that the "drug wars" are a very, very large legal cash cow. Watch "American Gangster" it very succinctly deals with that reality.
No, watch "The Wire". It MUCH more succinctly deals with our CURRENT reality. Although you are correct for the time period.
The "War on Drugs" has been a miserable failure. Not only have we wasted trillions of $$$ on the pursuit and imprisonment of drug dealers (many of them small-time operators), but we have spawned worldwide drug cartels from Mexico to Afghanistan to the Far East that are enormously powerful, destructive and increasing in size and numbers.
It's time to make all drugs legal. Some like pot could be sold in stores and taxed as we do cigarettes. Others like heroin and meth could be dispensed at government run clinics at the lowest price possible to pay for the clinics.
I'm sure this system would create other problems, but none that currently match the violence and corruption that is growing with the international cancer known as "drug cartels."
I'm all for an end to the war on drugs, but cheaply distributed heroin really will cause problems. But as you say, maybe it really comes down to choosing between evils and the evils of the prohibition are enormous. Maybe cigarettes can provide an answer for the hard drug conundrum. Why have cigarettes, for all they're heavily taxed and thus expensive, not given rise to the same huge black market and ensuing violence that prohibited heroin has, or heavily taxed and expensive heroin might? I think I'll go edumacate myself on this issue.
Here is an idea. Just teach law enforcement to "look" the other way when encountering someone with a small amount of pot. Keep the government out of it......they'll screw it up just like everything else they have their greedy little hands in. Law enforcement and the government have their hands tied and "look" the other way when it comes to illegal aliens. This is ruining our country more than some potheads could ever dream of doing. If ppl want to ruin their lives by doing meth, coke, and any of the hard drugs.....let um. If the government was really concerned about YOUR health when it comes to drugs, the Pharmecuetical companies wouldn't be allowed to push their doses of bad, untested drugs on us through doctors. Decriminalize pot!
Legalize them, treat the usage of hard drugs administratively or like a medical or mental health condition, allow employers to refuse to hire hard drugs users if that is how they want to run their business, treat pot like alcohol, and clamp down on DUI drivers.
aperturemad (7:16 am, Oct 24, 2009) is right. The War on Drugs is just another big business\government\union venture on the 'legal' side of things.
It worked for Portugal.
Here is a pretty good history of why marijuana was made illegal from the Hearst family to Harry J. Anslinger.
Also some interesting facts such as.....it was actually illegal NOT to grow hemp in Virgina 1619.
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal
I think some drugs, namely marijuana, should be made legal.
It is the most popular illicit drug in the country and when you have such a large chunk of the population who have tried or current use the drug it is very telling.
The reason this is not happening is because lawmakers don't want to be seen as endorsing drug use. To many legalization is equal to promotion.
I personally don't think marijuana should be promoted, but if you decriminalize it you take away the unnecessary time, money and energy spent in combating it.
Hurray for fiscal responsibility!!!
The war on drugs is America's "other, other failed war".
Legalize pot and you produce much needed revenue for the states. You also save billions of kilowatts by making indoor growing unnecessary.
The other drugs are more problematic, but must be addressed. Meth labs must be eliminated because of the damage they do to the environment, not to mention the users. A possible solution would be for the state to produce a safer, better, and cheaper alternative.
We could also start buying up the poppy and cocao crops and muscle in on the criminals turf.
Another solution would be for the pharmaceutical companies to make pain killers and stimulants that don't screw up the users' neuro-receptors.
No, it is THE failed war. You loose after a hundred years, you loose like Christianity or Islam in our other, other, other failed war(s).
I am a candidate for president. I intend on dramatic changes in all of our prohibitive drug laws.
In 1988 I was on the ballot for president in the New Hampshire primary.
David Brinkley began his This Week with David Brinkley program with the following, 'Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Michael Levinson is running for president here in New hampshire and he says we should reproduuce original formula cocoa cola and sell it in drug stores for $7 dollars a bottle and use the money to pay off the national debt."
So my cocaine solution is to purchase the raw leaf from the Columbian farmers, bring it to USA aboard my own ships - i have this jobs program - to build ten thousand clipper ships, wherever there is water and people need work with college students paying lessor tuition and crewing the ships, the fleets attached to all the universities and community colleges, with semi-atomatic sales.
My clipper ship building program will create more than three million jobs up and down the Great lakes sea (um . . lake) shore. think the unemployed in Michigan.
Then reproduce "original formula" coke (the drink) and sell it in drug stores for $7 a bottle one dollar for the drug store, one dollar for the manufacturer and $5 toward paying off the national debt. Bottled in America, we will export the fabulous drink world wide. Each bottle will have about a 15th of a gram. Plenty after a chug-a-lug. We will deal with the addiction prob limb in gthe event addiction becomes a prob limb.
That is what i am going to do about the cocaine issue.
Drugs are part of the underworld e con oh me. People are employed to chase after and arrest people for buying and selling drugs. We put these offenders behind bars and pay, with our taxes to house them. Supposedly this is making our country better. It is not!
Were the illegality removed from the drugs - my plan - a lot less people would be getting locked up behind bars at yours and our expense. %u2028%u2028
Purchasing the opium crop from the farmers in Afghanistan would do wonders for the Afghanistan e con oh me. The people would have money to fix their roads and build schools for their children. The farmers would all have brand new Toyota trucks built in texas, and Taliban and al qaeda would be OUT OF BUSINESS.
Putting the Taliban and al Qaeda and the Afghani war lords who prey on the farmers out of business is GOOD for the world economy.
Every time you hear or read of a suicide bomber murdering innocent people without rhyme or reason that suicide bomber's family is getting a sum of money that originated from the sale of the opium in Afghanistan.
We need to occupy the poppy fields in Afghanistan, pay the farmers top dollar for their crop, and dig in because whoever controlsd the poppy fields will win the war! 93 % of the opium world wide grows in Afghanistan.
My plan is not an option for bureaucracies, whether military or civilian, because they support the status quo.
We need to reverse our heroin laws and put it back where it was, a conrolled substance available for Dr,'s to prescribe. Hre is how we deal with the addicts in the street:
Suppose we take an empty store front in one of our poor drug infested neighborhoods, and put a sign on the door, "No Exit" and cover the windows with pictures of Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks, and Lenny Bruce.
And the word goes out - you go inside, register, get a photo debit card and when you get to the front of the line for one dollar inserted into the special ATM you are shot up with unadulterated heroin. All of the junkies would be lined up for their dollar dose. They would insert the dollar, swipe the card, like at any check out counter, roll up their sleeve, and get "fixed."
The junkies would NOT be out robbing and stealing. For a single dollar or two a day they would be in control of their habit! One shot of heroin early in the day lasts all day long.
Say you were a junkie and your girlfriend was / is a junkie. For years you lied whored pimped stole to support your habit. Now you are in my proposed innovative junkie rehab program.
You were a waiter. She was a salad girl - you met in a restaurant, before you both became full time heroin addicts. A block from where you live there is an empty restaurant with all the equipment. You speak to the person who owns the property. He is willing to rent you the restaurant and give you a chance. But you don't have any money to get supplies and get started.
Well, you shot up 1800 doses at a dollar a pop, and your girl friend 1100 doses before you rehabilitated yourselves, a genuine possibility, because at a dollar a shot you were able to control your habit, so together you have $2900 invested in the Junkies' Ideal Credit Union.
You can always return to the program and borrow against what you shot into your veins - get what you need to get back into the stream of American life.
Yeah, the sign above the door said "No Exit," but it turns there was a way out. My heroin rehab program would bring in a million dollars a day in NYC, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lots of other communities all over the country, every day, at zero cost to the tax payer.
All of the mayhem associated with junkies trying to rustle the money for their next fix would cease, and the program would not cost the taxpayers a penny! Given the chance, the junkies would rehabilitate themselves, knowing they would have a chance once they got clean.
Were we to treat marijuana the way they do in Amsterdam, the tax revenue would be many billions of dollars and were we to earmark those billions of dollars for free medical education for Dr.'s dentists, nurses and all related persona, the cost of medical delivery would go down.
Growing and selling marijuana would also create a half million dream jobs, as there are probably a half million unemployable people in this country whose dream job would be working in the front window of a marijuana shop, wearing surgical gloves and cleaning plants, rolling spliffs, and fixing up dime bags.
This is a basic statement of my plan as president of United States. What i am going to do upon election. Relative to global warming, world wide every country uses cloth to wear and paper to write on. So we need to plant hemp on evey available spare inch of land world wide, to start sucking up the carbon dioxide.
Every lawn in America should be pkanted with hemp. Instead ot you paying someone to cut the lawn, the landscaper will pay you to cut down the mature six foot plants. hemp is good for food, like oats 'n hemp gruel. Very healthy. Good for oil to run hybrid cars, and good for cloth that won't wear out for at least 30 years. Good for paper.
Bureaucracies are rigid. Politishinz love bureaucrats because they vote for them on election day to keep the status quo.
michaelslevinson.com
...dumbass.
Very funny. Just what , or combination of what, were you on when you wrote that ?
Cup of gree tea with half teaspoon of honey.
The heroin program will end the cartel heroin dealing and end all related crime saving the victims of heroin driven robbery billions of dollars. Cost to the taxpayer - nothing.
The cocain program will have the same affect. The proceeds will surly dent our national debt.
michaelslevinson.com
The marijuana program will also create one half million decent jobs.
Drugs? I thought we were after the commies and terrorists. Hmmmmmm, maybe I'd better go back to school. Of course maybe that is why the USA has over 500 military bases around the world and the number is growing. Good luck to the pea brains in Washing DC.
Its not the leagalization of drugs that would be the problem it is the investment put into oversight and health risk that is the problem. Try installing a legal meth. lab. Pot clinics are all over CA. look how screwed up CA. is. wake up people.
California has economic prob limbs like the rest of the country. They are not "screwed up" because they have medicinal marijuana clinics.
Methamphetamine is an issue not dealt with in hte article or the posts. Speed kills. When our drugm laws are revamped, as above in my post for one example, the meth prob limb will go away. The customer base will migrate to other, more safe drugs.
michaelslevinson.com
There is a legal Meth lab, know as Abbott Labs the huge pharmaceutical company in suburban Chicago. You can still get it with a prescription, under the trade name Desoxyn--I'm sure a generic is available, too.
If you could buy it over the counter, would you be compelled to go out and gobble some? Do you think the people who are afraid to use it now would rush out and buy a bunch of speed if the cops weren't tyring to stop them?
If all drugs were legal, the biggest social consequences would be 1. Decrease in the income of physicians, 2. Increase in successful suicides.
Yes! if it was legal, you bet tweekers would be compelled to "gobble" or just slam it. Your unexperienced to think otherwise. Oliverckerr, please go away.
They're already doing it, just making a more of a mess in the process because of the laws.
I trust people to be in charge of their own bodies.
I'm older than you. I have traveled in more countries. I have way more experience and I am not going away.
michaelslevinson.com
What most people don't understand is that you could go to the drug store and buy anything you desired in the US until 1913. Then they passed laws that make it difficult to obtain any medication. The percent of people addicted to drugs before and after 1913 has not changed. So the intent of these laws has been proven false.
I am a physician with 40 years of practice. I have seen patients in all levels of the social spectrum and can easily say that the drug laws are killing us. As a result of these laws we are increasing the number of AIDS and Hep C cases as well as endocarditis. All these illnesses are associated with a substantial drain of health care dollars for all of us. The amount of money we spend on the DEA and local enforcement is out of this world. Over 50% of prisoners in our overburned prisons are in because of non-violent drug charges.
It is past time to stop the regulation. Allow people to buy what the want at the drug store as they would an aspririn. Think of the reduction of people going to the doctor for simple prescriptions and the reduction in need for doctor visits.
Good post David and thanks for taking the discussion to disease states associated with the ongoing criminalization of drugs.
Broken families, Billions upon Billions spent, Police State, erosion of constitutoinal rights.
The definition of insanity is to repeat a mistake expecting a different outcome.
These insane laws were passed to appease a right wing ideological thought coming from good people who THINK they know what is best for the rest of us..
I am living in Oaxaxca , Mexico now. The worst of the drug wars are far from me here.
Still, we see plenty of the side effects...and hear of a few drug murders a few kilometers up in the hills now and then. But no more that is usual any day in Los Angeles, for instance.
The one thing most expats and normal Mexican citizens do not want to see, is the U.S. getting involved with this 'drug war' and bringing hordes of American soldiers invading and shooting and bombing away willy nilly as they do everywhere they go. American involvement only exacerbates the situation.
America can do its part by dealing with the major problem of the availability of sophisticated weapons in the U.S. Make guns illegal as they are in the rest of the Civilized , and even not-so Civilized countries.
And deal with the huge American market for heroin and cocaine and their derivatives .
Legalize all drugs and control them . There has never yet been a heroin or cocaine addict that couldnt somehow afford whatever their drug was going for on the street.
And last, but not at all least (maybe first) ...Everyone knows full well that the U.S. military and government is behind the world drug market. This should have been completely obvious since Ollie North. Everyone from Morocco to Cambodia and Afghanistan to Mexico to Bolivia and all of Central American knows this first hand. Quit being in such denial. Nothing will change until the biggest international drug dealer is brought down.
What a fascinating post! And so full of total bulls**t. The American military and government is not behind the world drug market. We are not going to ban guns in the United States in the near future or ever. Legalizing drugs does not 'control' them. Your whole post makes it sound like you could use more drug control yourself.
And therein lies the reason America is so popular around the world... but a few comments:
-No one's asking for guns to be banned in the US, we're just asking that you make it a bit trickier for people to, say, by assault rifles in bulk, too much to ask? Lets be realistic here, do you really need them? and if so, enough so that you're pleased with the fact that drug cartels are fighting using american manufactured weapons?
-While the American government and military may not run the global drug trade, it would be naive to bar their involvement even tiny in it altogether, the messes you've caused in Latin America and South-east asia alone should really make you stop and ponder that one.
-Legalizing drugs actually does control them, read through these comments for expansion on that one, i don't see the need in repeating everything...
Mancha Theo - The guns used by the cartels are Chinese made for the most part, and a lot of them are obtained not in America but on the international market. It's cheaper and easier. The poster was indeed asking for guns to be banned in the US. As far as assault weapons go, you can't even define assault rifle. If you have any proof the American government is engaged in the drug trade, let's have it. Otherwise, it's just more pipe dreams.
Great post nanbmaroc,
My God - the voice of reason
May it continue and grow
The solution is here - it is available now.
It is being done with heroin addicts in England - they are allowed enough heroin to keep them off the streets and out of crime - it is a resounding success - one of the greatest benefits is to the addicts themselves who for the first time feel they are in control of the beast rather than it in control of them - and they ALL use this new freedom to KICK THE DRUG
What if the same simple reasoning were applied to all drug use?
What if a cocaine addict could simply be treated in a clinic on a daily basis. ( lets be clear here - the problem is cocaine )
This may sound far-fetched - but here is one thing that would seem even more far-fetched - that would happen - that would be a ENLIGHTENMENT level event
Cocaine would lose it's COOL
It would be dead as disco
p.s. I KNOW this to be the truth ( don't ask )
England has not resolved there drug problem. Just because you hear of one of their programs that is as well received as the Midnight mission downtown L.A., does not mean its working. And please stop comparing opiates to stimulants. The issue of drugs has to do with inequity. The needle exchange program was supposed to curb the HIV rates in US but that still has not worked.
T1Brit
We are on the same page! (read my post above.)
michaelslevinson.com
I see the terrible effects of the drug trade all the time since I live on the border and spend a lot of time in Mexico. However, if drugs were legal, several new problems would arise. First, they generally just aren't good for you. They're physically dangerous. You know the arguments. The second problem is seldom thought of. If drugs were legal, would an employer still have the right to test for drugs and deny employment if a person was using them? If not, do we really need people working for us while they're stoned? If it were legal, who would hire people who tested positive for drugs? If people who used drugs were unemployable, how would they pay for their drugs? We might solve some problems by legalizing drugs. Given the American propensity for drug abuse regardless of legality, the idea drug use would go down is a pipe dream.
Aslanleon -
I'm sorry but your arguments lack merit.
To your first argument: health risks do not justify legality. If they did, alcohol and nicotine would be illegal, and doctors could not use morphine in hospitals. Saying that "drugs" are unhealthy/deadly/addictive, and thus must be illegal, fails to recognize the blatant hypocricy of other legal "drugs," and I've yet to hear one reasonable argument justifying marijuana as more dangerous and more deadly than alcohol.
To your second argument, are lumping a number of concerns under one big umbrella. As a result, you make assumptions based on faulty foundations.
First and foremost, no one is advocating allowing marijuana consumption on the job, just as no one would allow smokers to toke while driving under the influence. There is no reason why the same restrictions enjoyed by alcohol consumers could not be applied to marijuana enthusiasts.
As to hiring practices, it is a bit more complicated. There is the difference between the public and private sectors, but private employers can set hiring standards however they want, up until a point. It is their right to hire the employees best suited for the job, but they cannot discriminate based on certain recognized factors, i.e. race and gender to name a few. Denying a prospective employee a job hiring based on their enjoyment of a legal, personal right may be considered discrimination. But again, I doubt it would get to the level of the SCOTUS.
It is much more likely that it would go the way of alcohol and cigarettes. Just as employers don't care, nor do they ask, if you drink or smoke in your private life, so too with marijuana.
ND Squid - "Denying a prospective employee a job hiring based on their enjoyment of a legal, personal right may be considered discrimination." You bet it would. When people have a legal, personal right to be stoned, an awful lot of people are going to do it. When they are disabled because of their drug use, they'll be entitled to disability. That's what we really need. Tens of millions more people on disability.
The same way people don't hire alcoholics with due cause, they wouldn't hire people who's drug habits interfered with their productivity.
Thank You Aslanleon.
For 15 years, I served as the Medical Director of an Alcohol & Drug Detox unit. The insights gleaned from this experience have established the following truisms:
Marijuana should be legal & subject to controls similar to those now used for alcohol. It is a natural plant product which has been used safely by millions for centuries, including over 100 million of today's Americans. It is undeniably much safer than are alcohol & tobacco, two legal drugs which none of the pot-phobics propose outlawing. Not one single patient ever had to be admitted to our unit if they used no substance other than pot.
It makes no sense to maintain ignorance-based restrictions on marijuana. The war on drugs is a miserable failure. If people have a problem with use of a drug, the American way is to let that person decide when & how to seek help, after consulting with their family, friends, doctor, clergy, etc. Unrealistic laws against pot & the fiction used to support them
serve only to cause young people to disregard warnings about harder drugs.
Marijuana can be & is used responsibly by the vast majority of users. I personally know hundreds of productive, healthy, well-adjusted pot smokers. Unlike alcohol, pot doesn't cause cirrhosis, dementia, heart disease, kidney damage, or pot gastrointestinal bleeding; unlike alcohol, pot doesn't lead to motor vehicle crashes or to aggressive behavior & fighting. Alcohol use & abuse constitute one of the world's biggest public health problems. This has never & will never be the case with marijuana.
Our laws regulating use of recreational substances must reflect the relative dangerousness of each individual substance. Our current laws fail to do so. It's high time for a change!
The worst offender we have is tobacco. (Alcohol isn't far behind.) It is the most addictive substance out there and kills more people then all the others combined.
Prohibition has never worked. Let us find ONE example in history where it has been successful. There isn't one...
While I have no experience with drugs myself, I have friends who are. For most of my life I have been opposed to drug use, but recently I have changed my mind, for a number of reasons.
First, I think a person should have the right to ingest whatever substances they want, provided that:
1. They are mentally qualified to make decesions regarding their health (if you can smoke an addictive cig, then you should be able to smoke a joint).
2. Their use of drugs does not harm others, in particular dependents (such as children) or neighborhoods. (This would prevent use of meth, since meth labs are dangerous to others and the environment).
3. The chance of addiction is no greater for the average person than niccotine or alcohol. (I think this would prevent the legalization of dangerous drugs such as heroine or cocaine).
4. It is not fatal or seriously dangerous. (Paint or glue sniffing would therfore be excluded).
Second, the use of drugs does not cause a collapse of society. Having visited Amsterdam I can say for certain that drug use does not lead to serious criminal problems. (Chicago was more dangerous, at least for me). It is important to remember that passing laws does not reduce the number of criminals or crimes.
Third, more dangerous substances are already legal. Specfically, smoking and drinking are equally, if not more, dangerous.
Fourth, pot was legal for most of U.S. history prior to a scare campaing mounted by a business tycoon who's income was threatned by it. Prior to the previous century, there was little concern about a drug problem. It has only been since it was made illegal that it has become a problem. Prohibition serves as an interesting parallel to the War on Drugs.
Fifth, the issue of utility is of little importance to me. I do not care about possible tax income or medical application. For me, it is a matter of justice and I remain unconvinced of the justification for the War on Drugs. (I am open to being convinced otherwise though).
Thank you.
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