Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work
economist.com
economist.com
Some interesting articles below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-decri...
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-...
Ending the drug war is good, but what do we replace it with?
If a fiscal conservative isn't complaining about the cost of the drug war at this point, I would conclude they aren't a fiscal conservative.
Accepting legalisation as a superior alternative simply doesn't require the mental leap you're suggesting. It should appeal to most people, regardless of their overall political views.
But I think your point is a slightly different issue than the problem I was attempting to describe based on the original question.
As for the fiscal conservative angle, surely you can see the difference between offering rehab to people who freely chose to take a drug, vs. preventing people from committing a crime, even if you don't think that it should be a crime. And fiscal conservatives who do not believe that drugs should be illegal are certainly complaining about the cost of the war on drugs.
Experiment 1: Imagine what you'd think if an enemy nation had a "war on drugs" with similar results. (Highest incarceration in the world, strangling/shooting even children of a formerly enslaved ethnic minority in broad daylight, etc.)
Experiment 2: Ask yourself if you think that politicians systematically use rhetoric to basically lie about a policy's true intentions. (Without necessarily being aware of lying; powerful interests may support oblivious people who act properly.)
Experiment 3: If the "war on drugs" were really about health, what policies would be implemented? (No need to assume a supernaturally effective government; just one which makes reasonable errors but moves towards accomplishing the goal. For example, consider three policy types: prevention, treatment and punishment. How would you rate them in terms of priority, given abundant studies of their effectiveness and cost?)
People who want to use drugs are already using drugs.
Marijuana legalization would never have passed the ballot box in the western states if the reason people supported legalizing it was just to smoke more instead of on the policy merits.
But whenever I am part of a conversation like that, somebody inevitably makes it into a conspiracy fueled crusade -- like it is simply the most important political issue in the world -- and that person is most often a stoner. One who insists on being the loudest voice in the discussion.
Yeah, they don't really help the drive for a pragmatic solution!
Your last statement alludes to other related stereotypes; that people who smoke cannabis are the kind of people who make this argument, or that people who smoke cannabis secretly only want to legalise it for the sake of their personal weed-greed.
This isn't targeted at you, I'm not saying that you believe these things.
Do you support the marriage between any two individuals? So a brother could marry their sister? Or a mother could marry their daughter?
Do you support marriage involving polygamous relationships? Can three or four people can be married?
How do we know that? When did the word equality mean only heterosexual or homosexual couples?
It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality". They are not the same, they are two very different things.
Because marriage equality is a well-established term with a clear unambiguous usage in political discussions. Sort of like "pro-life" and "pro-choice", which could (divorced from context) each have a wide variety of possible meanings, but which, in the actual context of modern American political debate, have very specific meanings in terms of particular opposing positions regarding abortion policy.
> It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality".
It would be more accurate to say that "marriage equality" is a brand that has been established by advocates of legal marriage without distinction based on the sex of the partners.
So you want to dismiss the ideas above because they belong to a minority and are not supported by the majority? Wow, you sound like a bigot.
Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.
As it stands, the campaign for "marriage equality" is deceptive and has only been concerned with marriage between homosexuals - other minority groups be damned!
No, its not. Marriage where one or both partners are homosexuals is legally permitted (and has often occurred) without marriage equality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/gender-bias-could-tip-c...
Equal marriage is when the government doesn't discriminate by sex in who people are permitted to marry.
> Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.
Is 1991 a "few years ago"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Hawaii
I know this is a little bit of a canard and what people really mean is "I don't want to see more people go that way", but it strikes me that there is a need to separate these two things -
1. Some drugs, particularly opiates, are a bad thing to get into.
2. Therefore banning them and criminalising use is the right thing to do and the best way to stop more bad stuff.
Personally I think a system which decriminalises possession of hard drugs and legalises their distribution from (or use at) a well regulated medical centre would be a good thing, from a harm-reduction viewpoint. But I'd agree that not everything should be as easy to get as a can of beer.
--edit-- now realise we're not arguing!
I'm not sure, with heroin for instance, where recreation ends and addiction begins. By having it freely available (with a side-order of counselling and you have to take it on-site) we could reduce harm from bad needles, impure drugs etc etc. We would also reduce crime as nobody then needs to rob people to get their next fix - they can get it. In what little I've read about where this is the prevalent method (Switzerland) addicts are often able to function normally and even reduce usage quite rapidly, when the stress of finding the money and the contacts for the next hit is taken out of the equation.
It seems like a good thing to do, to me.
The prospect of heroin corporations selling advertising dirt-cheap heroin on TV is not something I would welcome.
The big "eureka" moment was to start treating drug usage as a health issue instead of a criminal issue. It's not legal to buy or sell drugs in Portugal and if you are found carrying drugs they will be taken away from you (in most circumstances) but it's not a crime to consume them so you won't go to jail or face any prosecution.
Downvote because of the implication that an idea expounded by libertarians is, ipso facto, a bad idea. Our political discourse needs minds considerably more open than that.
I can't be sue if US political influence had any weight on the final legislation, I mean, it would not be unheard of but on the other hand it would not be a matter of public record either.
In essence these were high up people in the Norwegian business world, coming to set a needle between their toes or snort a line in privacy before going off to make a multi-million deal or party.
After that it seemed all talk about such rooms became very hush hush...
This is not a thing. There are no large veins between the toes, and circulation in your feet is pretty poor anyway, not to mention hygiene and infection issues... There are some veins on the foot that can be used, but it's fucking painful and I wouldn't recommend it. If you use clean works and rotate injection sites regularly, there won't be any real visible marks. Not to mention that any needle marks are not going to be obvious to non users anyway.
I can tell you that in the late 90s some areas of Lisbon were pretty dismal if not outright dangerous, and now the city seems much safer. I believe there are some studies on the effects on crime rates mentioned in one of the links above (my original comment).
Fortunately we do have a largely successful, bloodless war on a drug to learn from. Tobacco abuse is less than half what it was back in the early 70s in the US, and similar declines are seen in many European countries. Advertising campaigns, usage restrictions in public places and high taxes have been very effective, and also meant that the medical costs of treating the effects of tobacco abuse have been more than covered by tax revenues from it's sale in many countries.
While campaigns against alcohol abuse have not been as successful, mainly because they have not been as focused on reducing all usage, tax revenues have been high. Normalisation of low levels of use in appropriate circumstances and ammounts have also limited the harmful effects on most abusers and those around them.
A person can drink far far less than that and suffer ill effects because of alcohol.
None of drugs are a blessing to mankind, but to consider A OK and even promote it, and destroy people's lives and promote drug cartels for B, where many times B is not more harmful then A is... stupid. And we as society want to evolve and get better, right?
Great for you that you never needed medication. Meanwhile, millions of people do, and drugs, from mood stabilizers to opiates to psychedelics, directly and dramatically increase the quality of life for many people.
I'm French and when I moved to Australia, I was surprised that people were violent under alcohol. The very broad generalization for me was that for some reason, anglosaxon people were violent under the effect of alcohol: Was it because boys were told that alcohol made them violent? According to the linked study, there is indeed a large difference of alcohol-related patterns per country. Hence, violence is partly cultural.
Findings from survey research further suggest that alcohol’s contributing role
may be at least partly attributable to the perpetrator’s drinking pattern and
expectations about the effects of alcohol.
That is only because tobacco is much more widespread than meth, crack, and opium. The dangers of tobacco get inflated almost as much the dangers of other drugs get deflated.
You know, wine with dinner. A bottle of beer during a football game. A cocktail at a party.
There is a well-understood zone, both in terms of dosage and surrounding activity, within which alcohol use causes zero problems. Certainly nowhere close to loss of control. There are social rules and expectations reinforcing the boundaries of that zone. Lots of people stay within it and have . . . zero problems.
> Unlike most other drugs, alcohol intoxication greatly
> increases the likelihood that you will consume more
> alcohol
Try giving someone a 300ml dose of Everclear and see if their alcohol consumption increases after that. Now give someone a line of cocaine and tell them you have some more on you, and time how long it is before they suggest taking some more...
Alcohol is very easy to manufacture in secret.
This is a very close parallel to what we see in the (failed) War on (some) Drugs, where many people are harmed by overdoses because the products wind up tainted, or aren't produced to any uniform potency.
EDIT: see denatured alcohol at any hardware store.
> I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war
> against drugs
I'm not a prohibitionist, but we need to drop the lie that a war on drugs has even been tried in the West. Sentences for drug possession are typically avoidable and usually light. What has been done (same as back in alcohol prohibition days) is corrupt law enforcement rackets have been funded to pursue "dealers."
Well, we know that doesn't work. What does work is very harsh and uniform punishment for users. Which, I reiterate, has not been tried in the West for over a century.
A young man here in Texas was facing LIFE in prison for selling marijuana infused brownies (as well as possession of cannabis oils). That's just one case.
And this:
>>What does work is very harsh and uniform punishment for users.
Paints you as a complete fool like the rest of the drug warriors.
> That was a war for drugs
The Chinese, outgunned, had to surrender the terms.
Edit: meow, oh the butthurt. Binge drinking apparently is a significant problem but is tolerated because "alcohol is not a drug"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10825449/Britain...
It's also worth remembering that America was selling opium to China too, and that John Quincy Adams spoke in favour of the opium wars from a "free trade" stance.
'Fortunately we do have a largely successful, bloodless war on a drug to learn from.'
Drug use _started_ as illegal, and so many who have experimented and might have continued to casually use instead later on shied away.
Alcohol started as a perfectly normal thing (until modern times, beer was considered a safer drink than water and no one ever considered restricting it to _anyone_)
So, I'm not saying you are wrong - only that "Drug users are in contrast a distinct minority group" is not painting a fully accurate picture of America, and so you _could_ be wrong.
Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as a regular cocaine user, and occasional user of morphine.
At the time in Britain these were legal.
BTW, the "beer was considered a safer drink than water" appears to be a modern myth. See http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wate... for a summary. It may be that beer was considered more fortifying than water.
Huh.
From what I understood previously it was more of a misapprehension than a myth - it didn't make you ill because the water was boiled as part of the process, it's just that nobody understood that.... perhaps I am wrong!
More importantly, we are talking about people's _perceptions_ of these events and how they influence modern thought. Most of us are taught things like "the pilgrims served beer at the table instead of water". The reason for it, or whether or not it is even true, doesn't change that we all grow up thinking that "beer is no big deal - even the pilgrim's children drank it".
You could even extend that to Sherlock Holmes - it is subtle in the stories, but no one checks or cares if it was actually legal. We _are_ all left with the negative impression that he was a secret drug addict, who often disappeared for periods of time to indulge.
I had never heard about the Pilgrims and beer thing.
What we learned about was how Coca Cola used to contain cocaine. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_.E2.80.93_cocain... . "Coca-Cola once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass". It still imports coca leaves for flavoring.
I believe that is as well known as Pilgrims and their beer. While inaccurate, Google estimates 530,000 results for '"coca cola" cocaine' and 550,000 for 'pilgrims beer'.
On a purely timing note, the phrase "Drug use _started_ as illegal" is difficult to justify. Why was the non-medicinal use of certain compounds banned before there were users of the drug? How did the legislature know to ban them before there were any observed social consequences?
Only relatively recently has that been possible, as some proposed bans include "the sale of any chemical that might be used recreationally" and "any compound with any binding to any cannabinoid receptor" (quoted from http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour... ). I believe the UK also has laws regarding molecules which are "similar to" prohibited drugs.
However, those are less than a generation old, and not part of people's perceptions.
This is how much smoking costs, maybe: £5bn
But it's a bit more complicated than that.
The research was done by a think-tank called The Institute of Economic Affairs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs ). Unfortunately I can't find the actual research information behind their study, but I did find they were paid by tobacco companies for doing it - http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/01/thinktanks-bi...
Why use the word 'abuse' when referring to the designed use?
It also gives some perspective to the Western debate – we talk about decriminalisation and healthcare. That is a good step, but it won't help the atrocities committed in the rest of the world. We need to talk about legalisation.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/Projects/IDPP/The-Expert-Group-on...
Never mind the destabilised countries, the thousands slaughtered, that's far away and not our problem. Jim-bob having a reduced bank-balance, a hole in his septum or a heart condition from cocaine abuse is far worse, somehow. To the outside world our countries are schizophrenic or just plain hypocritical - buying massive quantities of drugs and at the same time sending out military and quasi-military forces around the world to stop them.
The whole thing is crazy and pushes our demand-side problem out to the poorer places on the supply side.
HOWEVER, no one seems to spell out exactly who is hypocritical or schizophrenic: The actual people who buy drugs that originate from these countries. People need to actually stop giving their money directly to the Cartels, right?
To me it's the actions of the country as a whole. On the one hand the citizens set up this incredibly lucrative market, and on the other the (allegedly) democratic governments send out the troops/agents/whatever to make life worse for those in the countries selling/producing.
>> People need to actually stop giving their money directly to the Cartels, right?
It's both, equally. One side creates the market, the other forces it underground. Without the buyers the cartels would fold. If the trade was white-market the cartels would fold. It takes both 'sides', the buyers and the suppressors, to get where we are now.
You are got going to get the middle classes, the average parent on side by talking about some peasant farmer half way around the world. They cannot imagine it, it does not seem real.
But talk to them about their kids, or kids of family members / friends that is something they can relate to and possibly know of a few examples indirectly
This is a major problem with our societies IMHO. People must be made to realise that the policies they vote for are killing people around the world, in their thousands and tens of thousands. But as long as their kid doesn't smoke a joint then it must all be ok, because drugs are bad. What those other people do is up to them. Never mind that your kid is actually giving money to a mexican or colombian cartel, and then your government sends some people over there to destroy their crops and land as retaliation...
Unfortunately you are right, and making sure the argument addresses their lives directly is the only way to change it.
Sad.
A failure of the so called "free press" that does not delve into the root causes of issues. When the news talks about going to war to "protect our interests", it is not explained what this means.
When a brutal dictator must be removed, it is not explained how they consolidated power so profusely and with whose help.
When the horrors of the Mexican cartels are shown (quite rarely for British news considering the death rate) the logical conclusions are not drawn.
And the average person does not ask questions, just consume what they are told
--- Based on mainstream news outlets and using my parents as a base for my generalisations
---
But the status quo must benefit some, otherwise it would be changed.
How about the civil war with the farc guerrilla? That might be a bigger contribution than the drug war.
A second argument in favor of regulation over an outright ban is personal liberty. Our social contract is about protecting ourselves from each other, not from ourselves. Drug use that negatively impacts the lives of someone other than the user should be illegal, much like banning second-hand smoke. Outside of that restriction, we should value personal liberty and freedom to make choices about ourselves.
That's like not condoning execution-altering software. It's none of your business what I do with my hardware.
I suspect the reply is basically saying, "I didn't ask your permission for anything." :-)
It's also worth noting that ~99.9% of the English speaking world doesn't have a copy of Merrian-Webster and, frankly, wouldn't care what it said even if they did. I'm no doubt biased, but the OED is a much better dictionary anyway, though I wish they'd reduce the prices on their personnal subscription: they'd get 100 times the number if they'd reduce the price by 1/10th!
It is simply classless and rude to insinuate that your notions of what is or is not acceptable have any relation whatsoever to the bodies of other people.
Pro-legalisation needs all people - those who take drugs and those who think taking drugs is stupid - to pull together to work to their common goal - legalisation.
The enemy is not someone who wants to legalise drugs but advises against taking those drugs. The enemy is the police state that imprisons people, at great expense, for very long times for drug crimes.
Or to put it more simply should we whitelist or blacklist?
In the whitelist scenario one has to condone drug taking to legalize it. Meanwhile in the blacklist scenario one has to merely not condemn it.
Personally I prefer a blacklist situation.
That has been a large part of law since forever. Take contract laws that prevents a person from signing away certain rights. Are we in the right restricting their ability to sign away some of their rights? What about preventing those under 21 from drinking or those under 18 from entering into contracts?
Having laws that ban others (often under the reason of protecting them even though often the law predates or stands against scientific evidence of such a fact) is the norm.
> While I do not condone the use of mind altering
> substances
Also, you should try beer, it's AMAZING.
People act like losing consciousness to hours of vivid hallucinations is unnatural.
We have rooms and furniture dedicated to it. "This lovely house has 2 bathrooms and 3 hallucinations chambers - to prepare you for work!"
Make sure to get 8 hours of delirium in darkness every day to promote a healthy lifestyle.
Recreational drugs shouldn't be a problem though, as long as the user is aware of its effects and doesn't go overboard. Heavier stuff like heroin should remain illegal though.
Why keep it illegal? Why not heavily control it. Do something along the lines of; if you want to use heroin recreationally you must also attend 10 counselling sessions at your own cost to reduce the possibility of addiction.
That's a poor argument. People consume heroin and opiate medication like crazy outside hospital, and quite. Few of them become addicted.
The problem here is with inappropriate prescribing of increasing amounts of opiates for long term pain instead of better access to pain management clinics.
For the "addicts", the primary problem is not the drug - it's the prohibitive acrobatics to mental health care, medication, and ongoing maintenance. No wonder why most people on methadone (mu-opioid maintenance) are below the poverty line - they didn't get adequate help early enough.
The minuscule percentage of psychiatric practitioners who accept the government health plans place them on separate low-priority waiting lists.
Street drugs are more accessible and affordable because we are just that stunningly bad at providing effective on-going psychiatry to the poor.
We've chosen to criminalize the victims of this catastrophic failure and claim they are at fault for not succeeding with a system they can't afford, don't have access to, and doesn't want them.
Heroin is actually a remarkably safe drug in a clinical context, it does almost no long term damage. The main problems with it are that it is highly addictive, users rapidly develop a very high tolerance and it is fatal in overdose. Heroin overdose is very easy to treat, there is a antidote to heroin called Naloxone. If administered in time, it will almost certainly save the life of somebody who is overdosing on heroin.
People who use heroin die because they share needles and contract diseases such as HIV/AIDS. People who use heroin die because they do not use clean needles and get sepsis when they inject. People who use heroin die because they do not have pure heroin.
Heroin can be cut with both active and inactive substances. Some of the inactive substances used are toxic, they make accurate dosing, which is critical to using a drug with such a low ratio between fatal dose and active dose safely. Active cuts such as Fentanyl are equally dangerous[2], they make it impossible for the user to accurately dose.
I am not calling for heroin to be sold in super markets or off licences. What I am suggesting however is that for anybody who wants it, they can go to some sort of health center, be lectured about the harms, taught how to inject properly and how to administer Naloxone in an overdose situation and then be given a licence to buy heroin. The heroin would then be dispensed by pharmacies, it would come with an adequate supply of needles, Naloxone. Most importantly the heroin would be pure and unadulterated, in solution already.
There is now a much lower risk of overdose as it is far easier for a user to dose themselves. The heroin does not come with dangerous cuts. They will have an adequate supply of needles so there will be less needle sharing and less infectious disease[3].
The obvious argument against this radical approach is that it would increase heroin usage. There is no precedent for this kind of program so I cannot refute that claim with any certainty. From intuition however, I do not think there are many people where the only thing holding them back from using the drug is the current prohibition. I have not met a single person who has said "If heroin was legal I might start doing it". What I do know is under our current system of prohibition heroin usage has increased, deaths associated from it our sky-rocketing in recent years and the politicians current answer to the crises is harsher punishment for users and dealers despite that in the past, heavier punishments do not correlate with either lower use or less deaths. It is time to try something radically different, I would love to see a trial of this sort of system somewhere in the world.
[1] http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf [2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/rash-of-fatal-overdos... [3] http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/prev_care/effectivenesssterilenee...
Being morally acceptable is just a tip of the iceberg.
Consider this: playing video games is perfectly legal, morally allowed, and the escapism and progress usually triggers some form of comfort and happiness. Still, there is a lot of people who try hard to limit their gameplay, to focus on their work, school and other activities. Procrastination (like reading Reddit/HN/Facebook several times a day) is quite similar.
My understanding is that to increase focus to the comparably unexciting work, you have to limit the activities that are easy, exciting and rewarding.
For some it is easy because they love their work so much, the work is not mentally draining, or they never tasted these easy and rewarding distractions. For others, it is a conscious effort and a life-long struggle to be productive and not spend your day on Facebook with maybe 3 hours of real work.
I believe that as drugs become easier to obtain, side-effect-free and happiness-inducing, the struggle with procrastination and escapism will be that much harder.
My two problems with this is - 1) A number of people who recreationally use the substances keep telling me "You've gotta try this" - Its none of your business what I decide I want to take or not take. (Note this also applies to alcohol)
The second issue is the real reason - There's not a problem with the majority of these drugs in their pure forms, but you don't have any guarantee what you're taking is what you think it is. At least when I walk into a pharmacy for X or Y, there is some accountability - the pharmacy doesn't want to stock bad batches of the drugs as they'll get closed down/imprisoned; The drug companies don't want to ship bad batches - it's a legal nightmare for them if someone experiences bad side effects from the drugs. If I buy from guy X on the street, and it's 50% cocaine and 50% rat poison - what recourse do I (or someone who is dependent on me being financially/personally) have against them?
Also, the organization DanceSafe is doing some great work offering resources to test the purity of MDMA.
Does it also apply to board games, computer languages and wood varnish? Why not?
Over the next half an hour or so I patiently and factually answered all of them. She had clearly been sold fully on the propaganda and had thought, amongst other things, that one puff of weed smoke could potentially kill you if you were unlucky.
Anyway, at the end of this I said "so what do you think about the law now, seems pretty stupid huh?" and she said that no, she still thought it should be illegal because it was just bad, regardless. Facts just don't work on some people.
It shakes your belief systems, specially if you built your character around some facts like these and they stuck with you for the better part of your life. You have to consider that core beliefs like this influenced many decisions in life.
People actually thinking about that they were perhaps wrong is more painful that blindly refusing to accept the fact.
*disclaimer : I'm not a professional, but am interested in human psychology from a self growth perspective.
One should be genuinely delighted when new information comes along and changes your understanding of the world. It rarely works out that easily though.
It's not about ego. It's about emotions. In this case, she is fearful of something that she doesn't understand, and has made a decision ("marijuana is bad!") based on that fear. Logic is not going to overcome that fear. She has to start associating marijuana with positive feelings first before she opens up to changing her mind.
This isn't gender-specific either. Most people, whether they are men or women, operate like this: they feel an emotion, associate it with the thing/person that caused that emotion, and then make decisions based on that emotion. They use logic only for post-hoc justification.
Correct, used a wrong term but actually thought about emotions.
How a human learns to deal with his emotions sets a blueprint for life.
I understand your point here but I don't think that's the case. I think what we're seeing here is someone who has legitimately been brainwashed. To be clear as I do not intend to offend, I'm coming to this conclusion from personal experience with myself.
All throughout gradeschool (I grew up in southern America) I was told all the lies about drugs and I swallowed them whole. It took me years to break past this. Similar to your mom, I knew many drugs were essentially harmless but still had this resistance to try them - even just once - for whatever reason I would come up with. At this point, I was all for legalization and decriminalization but I still had this mental block that kept me from trying it even just once. I'm talking a puff of a joint here.
Well a few years ago, I eventually decided to try a few things just to see what it was all about and it was only after these personal experiences that I realized how deep those lies were internalized years ago. I knew some substances were much less harmful to my body than alcohol yet I would drink after work and continue to avoid anything else that was "one of those other drugs". I knew all the facts but still resisted. I think facts do work on people. You just have to be patient and give them time to break past that level of brainwashing. Again, I'm just talking from personal experience here because I've been there before. So I can empathize with her even if it is frustrating from my POV today.
No offence taken, and in fact I'm sure you're right!
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!I kind of agree with you there, but where do you factor in healthcare and other costs that need to paid by all due to addicition? How should they pay for their treatment?
In a social system like the one in the UK, I don't think drug users should be penalised over anyone else - taking ecstasy has roughly the same harm profile as horse riding. Do we tell equestrians we won't treat them?
People engage in stupid stuff every day. We provide treatment for the jaywalker who didn't look before they crossed the road; we provide treatment for the clumsy window cleaner who falls off a ladder; we provide treatment for the school children injured in poorly supervised school sports; we provide treatment to people who've smoke tobacco; we provide treatment to people who are addicted to alcohol (and also the drunk people who fall over); we provide treatment to obese people; so providing treatment to people addicted to drugs fits in with providing treatment to people who've made all those other unwise choices.
Funded by one of the co-founders of Bebo, a social network.
"Peter Bleksley, a former undercover policeman fighting drugs crime and an ex-drug addict, argues that the only answer in the so-called "war on drugs" is to legalise and license them."
However, he was against simply putting the supply into the hands of pharmaceutical companies instead of criminals. He was calling for an affordable, state controlled supply to remove the incentive to build a business based on pushing the crap.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05r3zby http://www.amazon.com/Gangbuster-Peter-Bleksley/dp/190340291...
I'm very pro-legalisation myself. I also think it would be amazing if we could point our pharmaceutical research facilities at recreational drugs and say "Hey! Go find drugs people like that are less addictive and less harmful!".
But given the nature of markets we'd end up optimising for the most addictive substance, because you want repeat customers, right?
And the last thing I want to see is aspirational drug advertising of the sort we've had forever with tobacco and alcohol.
"I don't often take cocaine, but when I do it's Old-style ultra-crack, because I'm a young go-getting executive type with lots of cash and a hot girlfriend..."
(Please snort responsibly. This message brought to you by the cocaine producers alliance)
The majority of drug addicts are victims of abuse. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3051362 They need medical / mental health benefits. Drug addiction is clearly a medical issue. Let's treat it as such.
We didn't learn our lesson with Alcohol, so we repeated history with the war on drugs. Now we are failing to learn our lesson yet again.
Logic, reason, and education are not the driving factors for making drugs illegal. Fear, lack of education, politics, and deep misunderstanding are the true drivers of this insane ideology.
(From Don't Legalize Drugs, http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html)
'Drug use goes hand in hand with theft'
Do you know how ignorant that sounds? Caffeine and alcohol are drugs, do they go hand in hand with theft? Is everyone legally smoking weed in Colorado a thief too?
'Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.'
Not all drugs are addictive. Most are less addictive than alcohol, nearly all are less addictive than tobacco. The vast majority of drug users are not addicts. In any sensible country those people who do get addicted would receive help and maintenance doses of their drug and wouldn't need to turn to crime. See Switzerland and their heroin programs.
'It's hardly a victimless crime.'
It's exactly a victimless crime. If someone steals stuff to support a habit THAT is the crime with the victim. Not drug use. FFS.
'Caffeine and alcohol are drugs' - yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
'It's exactly a victimless crime' - it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
And I support claim that war on drugs is wrong, and you can't win it (for economical reasons). But usage should be controllable.
My issues with the parent comment are not that addicts never steal, it's the ignorance of lumping all drug use into the same category and then saying 'drugs' make you steal.
It's the same in the UK - addicts of one sort or another do disproportionately make up the crime figures. However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft go hand in hand is just plain wrong.
>> yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem, this is not the same as saying they go hand in hand, implying anyone who has a drink is going to get addicted and steal stuff to support their habit.
>> it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
Firstly, we're now talking about a subset of drugs, rather than trying to tar all drug users as thieves. Secondly, in a situation where the government treats heroin as a health issue this doesn't occur. Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case. And there's nothing like a queue of old junkies outside a medical facility to put the youth off heroin.
OT but your parent was down-voted for what I would say was a totally reasonable and constructive comment. I guess you didn't do it because you can't down-vote those that reply to you, right? I wish people would keep the down-voting for situations where a comment is offensive / destructive / mean, instead of something they disagree with. Anyways, I'm going to up-vote to counter it.
Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
>> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem
Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems. More than half domestic murders are caused by alcohol in Russia. Whole villiages die out because if alcohol, you can hear sometimes in some village there's no one who can work, because all men became total drunks. I think magical removing of alcohol would be single most positive thing crime-wise you can do in Russia. But of course it's impossible.
>> Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case.
Yes, that's what I was talking about - using should be controllable. Special clinics etc. But Switzerland experience can be hard to reproduce elsewhere, this country just has different social structure. So it should be applied carefully.
Maybe we have. One of the reasons I was hacked off at the first comment on this was that it's not even talking about addicts - "drug use goes hand in hand with theft". This is just not true.
>> Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
I've never heard of anyone stealing to support their Ketamine habit either!?! K causes various bladder problems, and while it does seem to be a little addictive isn't really very high up the scale I don't think.
>> Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems.
I will defer to your knowledge. I know we have problems with alcohol in the UK but I get the impression Russia is more familiar with this problem! I agree actually, that decreasing use of alcohol in our societies would probably be a really positive thing. And that it would be next to impossible. Perhaps if everyone had access to some cannabis they might not bother so much? (I'm only half-kidding there).
In general I don't think addiction is a good thing, and I don't think anyone should be encouraged to take drugs of any sort, let alone the really nasty ones. I'm very pro-legalisation but that doesn't mean I want to hide the damage drugs do to people and to society.
I just think it's way off-mark to say "all drug users are thieves" !!
Yes, the inference only goes in that direction...
That's a succinct way of summing it up :)
This would likely not be the case if cocaine cost about the same, or even ten times as much as sugar. The high price of drugs is a direct result of laws against their production and distribution. I expect addicts stealing to support their habits would be much less of an issue with legal drugs, even if there were moderately high taxes on them to offset the costs of treating addicts.
I agree that war on drugs can't be won because of economical reasons, though.
The cost to society would be far less.
You most certainly don't.
How much does generic-brand sugar cost? A dollar per kilo? Two?
Cocaine should cost about that, definitely less than ten times that, if it was manufactured at scale by corporations in a competitive market, and one didn't need to compensate everyone in the distribution network for the risk of being arrested or killed.
Your stereotypical addict on the streets should be able to get as much as they "need" from panhandling for an hour a week. A tragedy, but a contained one.
Instead, they need twenty bucks for the next dose, precisely because of the war on drugs. Think about that.
Not at all.
Of course, you could just get a job that pays enough to support your habit? Software Engineering works for me, for example, and has allowed me to maintain a twenty year heroin habit, almost.
I'm guessing a GBP 80 (1/16 oz) per day habit could drop to around GBP 10-15 (not really sure about purity, but assuming adulterated to 10% would mean 0.1g street Heroin is equivalent to one of these pills, so that would be the equivalent of 10g or over 1/4 oz which would be GBP 160 probably)
We seem to be getting a lot of stuff wrong in this area....
Consider a alternate example. Say you downloaded a few megabytes of data. In this case, the bytes were produced by actions involving a child being abused, but it would've been possible to produce them with a photorealistic CGI application.
Always a tough question :)
>> Say you buy a drug that comes from a cartel that uses kidnapping, rape, and murder to hold their power. It is possible for the drug to have been produced safely, but it wasn't in this case and you are feeding the market.
There are indeed lots of moral questions here. As someone who tends to buy things that are free-range, organic, fair trade etc. I fully agree that one cannot divorce the action of purchase from the background process. This is one (of many) reasons I'm not going to be buying any cocaine or heroin any time soon.
The argument put forward above is that stopping the war on drugs just because we can't win is equivalent to stopping the 'war' on (for example) burglary. Burglary by its very nature, in the commission of the act itself, creates victims. People whose house was broken into and whose stuff is gone. Drug taking does not create these victims in the act of taking drugs itself.
So I would argue that yes, the government preventing the drug from being created and sold openly is very relevant - it is the government regulations that support the extremely lucrative black market as well as the consumers. The cartels, the violence, they could not exist without our laws propping them up.
This is where the comparison with Burglary really breaks down - legalising burglary leads to a world where there is no deterrent to breaking in to someone's house and taking their stuff. A worse world, I hope you'll agree.
Legalising cocaine, for example, would make most of those horrible side-effects go away at the expense of (probably) increased drug-related healthcare costs in the developed world. I think that's a better place to be.
>> What happens if, given a safe production option, those purchasing it do not do their due diligence in checking the source.
What happens with, say, coffee? Some people choose ethical brands. One hopes that there are minimum standards of human rights applied to workers on any product coming in to the country (no slave labour, no blood-diamonds...), and AFAICT there are no coffee cartels using kidnap, rape or murder to protect their hold on the coffee market.
I do agree that stopping the war on X differs greatly when X is something that deserves stopping in and of itself compared to when X is not inherently harmful, but closely tied to things that are (though I do think that different people will classify certain actions into other groups, for example some people will say some drugs are so bad that they deserve to be stopped in and of themselves).
They will indeed. And to them I say "good luck with that!"
I agree with the sentiment there, nobody should be encouraging the use of heroin, for example. But we've tried banning it and it hasn't actually helped all that much. I think it's time to admit that's failed and investigate what we can do, with a close eye on the evidential and scientific basis of our actions, to reduce harm as much as possible.
Stamping our feet and threatening people hasn't made them stop. Lets find the best way we can to keep more people from getting there, to keep the harms to them as minimal as possible, and to make society better for the rest of us while we're at it.
Part of the problem isn't even the bans, but the money being made off of the war that leads to things like prisons lobbying for three strike rules and other horrendous laws.
The thing that winds me up the most is the prevalent attitude of kneejerk banning of anything of everything, damn the consequences and fuck the evidence.
I don't have a strong opinion about this, I'm just saying it's more complicated than victimless crime, war that cannot be won, etc. For each such talking point there's a counter-point. What will actually happen once you legalize a given substance I don't know.
The article I linked to has a lot of arguments against legalization, which, judging by the comments, the commenters didn't bother to skim through.
It's a long article, and it contains ungrounded assertions like this -
"Addiction to, or regular use of, most currently prohibited drugs cannot affect only the person who takes them—and not his spouse, children, neighbors, or employers."
This is ... well it's just wrong. Many people regularly use alcohol in moderation, there's no reason to think that regular, moderate use of cannabis and various other currently illegal drugs would be any worse when alcohol has one of the worst harm and addiction profiles of any drug.
So I'm not convinced I want to take the time to answer it, as it's not really honest.
--edit-- I've read more of it now, it's full of preconceptions and assertions like this one, no grounding in facts. It's not a good set of objections.
This argument always seems a bit silly to me.
Perhaps these people oppose legalization in part because they don't want more drugs to be as common and socially acceptable as alcohol and all the evils that come with it, and simply regard alcohol and tobacco use as a largely lost cause. This argument is common and it always frames the issue as if the person is 100% pro-alcohol.
Fact 1 - lots of people, maybe even most people in the western world, use alcohol to varying degrees and have jobs and families that are not falling apart due to their drug use.
Fact 2 - many currently illegal drugs are less severe in their acute effects than alcohol, are less severe in their chronic effects than alcohol and are less addictive than alcohol.
Combined, these torpedo the point stated in the article, but not your point. The only way to address your concerns there is with studies of what happens in places like Amsterdam and Colorado.
Personally I would argue that even if legalising drugs makes some things worse (more users, more addicts), applying the cost of the drug war to mitigating the harms instead of amplifying them is a win regardless.
Our work puts dozens, if not thousands of people out of work. When driverless vehicles are finalized, that work will put millions of people out of a job.
Is it a crime? No. But it sure very negatively impacts people. Why not illegalize implementation of automation?
On a very basic level, illegalizing things because they 'negatively impact people' would bring capitalism to a grinding halt.
Sounds like you need to get to know more Republicans.
While some people say not to ascribe to evil what can be ascribed to stupidity, I disagree strongly. Evil is just as pervasive and I just cannot believe that this drug war in Asia comes simply from stupidity, especially given the tyrannical governments now perpetuating it. Well, at least the US is now in the proper company with other tyrants--just as our laws are changing. It's hard to estimate the power and money that governments can make when persecuting and oppressing any group of people deemed to be enemies, whether they're deemed so because of drug use, race, religion, etc.
This campaign against drugs is not racist in essence, but it is coincidental with race in some places. However, you'll see the same attitudes toward drugs in homogeneous countries as well as Africa, Latin america and Asia.
The policy against drugs comes from a fear it will make citizens beholden to something unproductive. That is drugged up people don't contribute to society and makes people lazy. It also means the government has less influence on these people. They provide unwanted drag.
On the other hand, if you want a docile population, do drug them up like they did during the opium wars in Asia.
I think any association with race is coincidental. That's to say we'd have had this policy in the US even if we had been 100% homogenous population. However, we do know the policies affected those population most susceptible to the effects of drug addiction. Poor people black and white. Appalachia is just as ravaged by drugs as any place in the us, trailer parks, etc. Poor people can't get treatment, they can't hide their addiction as easily, can't hire competent lawyers, etc.
It was never a war though. It was a bad policy. Just like the one child policy in China. It was not a war on families, it was terrible policy.
This is America. Have you seen the wars we fight? Millions dead throughout the word. Millions in jail being tortured. I don't know what definition of war you have, but that is war.
"I think any association with race is coincidental."
If it's not about race, please explain the arrest and incarceration rates for different races given that consumption is roughly equal for all races.
You don't criminalize an everyday, common activity without an agenda. The war on drugs was not a policy mistake, it was intentionally created. It was intentionally labelled as war and now has those connotations despite not being a traditional war. You cannot remove connotations that exist in the world simply by wishful and naive thinking.
Look who gets locked up for drugs offences in Russia. The poor. It's not race. Race is a byproduct.
In towns with black mayors or black police forces, judges, etc., people still believe that drugs are a scourge and anyone involved in it needs to be corrected. It's not a white conspiracy, it's people's genuine belief drugs add to undesirable behavior and want to lessen it. I think this attitude stems from people's religious upbringing, believing addiction is a fall from grace, some personal failure.
I think as a society we're beginning to realize that this infatuation with punishing addicts is counterproductive. And the real enemy is poverty.
If you address poverty and allow people to earn a decent wage, you'll have a better society, fewer social problems, more social cohesion and more bonhommie.
It is a tool of politicians much like the issues with pornography. It relies on fear, uncertainty, and doubt, with a big dose of apathy thrown in. The last is because the majority really doesn't care what happens to users because they do not themselves use these drugs. Images on TV, internet, and newspaper, reinforce the image of those who do as low lifes, malcontents, people you cross the street because of, and such.
Politicians love power with which comes money. Police love the job security and money. Prison systems love the job security and money. So any solution is going to involve taking the monetary rewards out of it to those who enforce it.
One example, instead of paying prisons by the number of people you penalize the system for repeat offenders. This would drive the implementation of more programs designed to get people off the drugs and also get them jobs training so that the job is more valuable than the drugs. Should it end up costing too much then the system needs to adjust what it jails people for which eventually would lead to the decriminalization of drugs.
Make it too expensive for those who currently profit off the situation as is and it will lead to a road where it can be fixed
-Businesses should be able to fire someone for being under the influence of any mind-altering substance. The CA proposition a few years back had a clause in there that made it very difficult. Calling addiction a "medical issue" makes it even worse because the differences between recreational use and addiction aren't that easy to distinguish. -The individual should pay for all of their own issues, medical expenses, etc due to drug addiction. Many of the advocates not only want legalization (because it's their choice, their body) but none of the consequences that come along with it (medical bills due to addiction). It's unfair for me, as an individual that chooses not to put those drugs into my body to also have rising medical costs that pay for the people that willingly ingest drugs. -Tort reform. We all know heroin is addictive and will cause many deaths and ruin many lives. If a company sells it and you choose to take it and die, your family shouldn't be able to sue the company or the government.
We still have cigarette lawsuits..and it's been known to cause cancer for 50+ years (it's even written on the box).
I think my overall issue is that advocates want all of the benefits (ability to use illegal drugs legally) yet also want society to pay for any of the negative effects that come along with it (death, addiction). You should have the choice to legally put anything in your body....but be responsible for anything negative that comes along with it. If you don't have the resources to deal with the consequences, you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Pretty sure they already can, you do not come into work drunk, for example.
>> -The individual should pay for all of their own issues, medical expenses, etc due to drug addiction. ... It's unfair for me ...
You already pay lots and lots and lots and lots of money to drug-war enforcement efforts. The cost of health problems related to drugs would be minimal compared to this.
Lots of conservatives seem to want all the benefits of drug legalisation (reduced tax bills) without any responsibility (helping out your fellow man).
Further, those taxes help keep you safe. You want to be robbed by an addict or do you want to give a few cents to the free-heroin-for-addicts program that keeps them from committing crime and helps them become contributing members of society?
We don't have medical alcohol, so it's not the same thing.
"You already pay lots and lots and lots and lots of money to drug-war enforcement efforts. The cost of health problems related to drugs would be minimal compared to this."
The costs can't really be calculated at this point. We don't really know how many more or less people will need medical care after the legalization of many drugs. However, in my experience, it will most likely be many more than we estimate now.
"Lots of conservatives seem to want all the benefits of drug legalisation (reduced tax bills) without any responsibility (helping out your fellow man)."
That's not how taxes work. Yes, we will have have more taxes, but they will be spent on something..and we will always need more. The benefit is that our fellow man gets the option now of recreational drug use without going to jail.
"Further, those taxes help keep you safe. You want to be robbed by an addict or do you want to give a few cents to the free-heroin-for-addicts program that keeps them from committing crime and helps them become contributing members of society?"
I'm unclear why the reason I need to legalize drugs is to appease a criminal from not robbing me. It's answers like this that make me glad I have multiple guns at my disposal to protect my home and my family.
If heroin is as bad as you describe (creating addicted criminals that want to rob me), why again should it be legalized?
You aren't really making a good case, sorry.
Yah, we do. Addicts in the UK are given maintenance IIRC.
Alcohol is also used in cases of methanol poisoning and various other emergency treatments, though that's not quite the same thing I guess.
>> We don't really know how many more or less people will need medical care after the legalization of many drugs. However, in my experience, it will most likely be many more than we estimate now.
It'll still be cheaper than the prisons, the militarised police etc etc.
Of course, like you, I'm not naive enough to think those things will just go away.
>> I'm unclear why the reason I need to legalize drugs is to appease a criminal from not robbing me.
>> If heroin is as bad as you describe (creating addicted criminals that want to rob me), why again should it be legalized?
Legalising would help you be less likely to have a criminal rob you by not pushing up the prices of their addiction to the point they feel they have to do this.
But we're talking here about your demand that we not fund any healthcare or rehab once we have legalised/decriminalised. This is all part of the picture of helping people to recover and contribute to society rather than casting them out and saying "you fix it", which has a long history of not working.
I mean, you're just kind-of OK with legalisation, not outraged at the billions spent in your name on making everything worse, but you're demanding that not one red-cent be spent on helping people? Sick dude.
>> You aren't really making a good case, sorry.
There are not many cases that can be made when someone has already decided that everyone else in society is not their problem.
That's sorta special cased for alcohol, pot, etc. You'd have a hard time firing someone for being on Prozac, even though that's mind altering.
Drawing a line at "recreational" usage is bad, as it just reinforces the unfair power arbitrary doctors have over people's lives. Got money and can persuade your doctor into rx'ing what you want? OK, no problem! Poorer or marked "drug seeking"? Screw you then.
So companies are free to do as much advertising and marketing as they like to make drugs pervasive, and only the consumer is supposed to resist? It's a heavy penalty on everyone's brain cycles. In Europe we generally forbid ads, marketing and product placement for alcohol and tobacco.
[edit: If you go down the road of charging the consequences of drugs on the users,] I also believe that many of us aren't mature enough, and recreational first-time users should have to consciously unseal a sticker: "Upon consuming this drug, you are not allowed to work for x years, drive, or be treated for health", in addition to cancer/addition-related notices. I have no idea how to convey this message to users.
If you feel you aren't mature enough as a "first-time user", then maybe you shouldn't be using in the first place. Think of it like shooting a gun for the first time.
With more educated and mature people using drugs, it will make for a healthier society.
Why the hell would you be so nasty about it? This is pure hysteria.
Most drugs do not last all that long, are less harmful and addictive than alcohol and there is no reason at all to try to exclude them from work, care or driving (beyond the time the drug is in effect, obviously).
We don't turn people away from healthcare because they have the odd drink do we? So why would we do it with ecstasy? Or cannabis? Or... ?
I very much agree with you about the advertising too!
--edit-- I didn't actually downvote you I don't think...
That being said, I believe drug wars can work. China and opium a century ago and modern day Singapore come to mind. The reason the drug war isn't being won in the West is because it isn't being executed properly. So why not drop the pretense?
Maybe the citizens of the USA just aren't serious enough about eliminating drug use, which leads to the election of leaders who aren't serious, which leads to poor execution of the drug war.
I think (hope) the citizens of the USA and Europe would not put up with people being executed for what we currently consider quite minor offences.
I guess in some ways you're right - if this was transformed to total warfare, with no mercy for anyone in any part of it, then it might be won, maybe. But the price is unacceptably high.
(Oh, also, Singapore is one small island with one city on it and a comparatively huge security service, it's often considered a sham democracy and a police-state. Cure worse than disease, IMHO)
Unacceptable prices and value judgements aside, drug wars _can_ be won and they have before.